Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Kelly Shaw's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
8:35 am	Subterranean Press unleashes The Skylark! Earlier this week, I was disappointed to hear that Doubleday pushed back the release date of Peter Straub's next novel, A Dark Matter, to January '10. This morning, I was thrilled to discover that Subterranean Press will publish an expanded version of the book, re-titled The Skylark, featuring more than 200 pages than will appear in the mass-market edition! It's due for release this fall. Peter Straub explains: “What Subterranean Press will be publishing is an earlier state of the novel now called A Dark Matter, not merely the limited version of the trade edition. I wish to have it preserved and published in this form as well as the final, many-times-re-edited form to indicate what I hoped its shape would be like. This is a much looser, sloppier, more wild-eyed version of the book, with blind alleys, red herrings, and false trails." Straub's also edited two anthologies ready for release this fall, the 1,500-page "American Fantastic Tales": Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps and Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to the Present. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 9th, 2009
5:28 pm	Justice, please! From one of my favorite movie-bloggers, Jeffrey Wells: "Obama needs to go after the greedy bad [Wall Street] guys and make them suffer for their misdeeds in ways that are vivid and theatrical and dramatically satisfying. Send the worst of the Wall Street scalawags to jail. Make the greedheads who don't go to Sing Sing or Danbury or Leavenworth pick up trash in public parks while dressed in orange jumpsuits, and not just for 30 days -- make them do it for two or three years, day in, day out. And take their money -- take it right out of their bank accounts the way Charlton Heston led the Hebrew slaves to the grain silos of the high priests in "The Ten Commandments" -- and distribute it to struggling small banks, deficit-plagued municipalities, crippled companies and the desperate poor. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 7th, 2009
5:27 pm	The return of Glen Hirshberg Glen Hirshberg has finished writing The Book of Bunk, an ambitious, career-defining novel he's grappled with for fourteen years. He recently began blogging about the book's creation, its place amidst crumbling capitalism, and its path (I hope!) to publication. The blog is well worth your time -- it feels honest and revealing, like a glimpse into a writer's heart and what could be a truly special project. Here's a taste of what Hirshberg says about The Book of Bunk. Turns out it’s another Glen Hirshberg book, alright. For better or worse. Another story rooted hip-deep in history that isn’t really a historical novel. An old-school adventure tale – complete with multiple romances, three separate fires, F. Scott Fitzgerald, railroad tramps, orphans, a haunted forest, Communists, a (possibly) imaginary country of shadows, and at least one murder – told by a narrator who thinks he’s an impostor (but isn’t) to the brother he believes is also an impostor (and might or might not be). A fairy tale with no magic (the book is in fact subtitled A Fairy Tale of the Federal Writers’ Project); a page-turning thriller about sitting around telling stories. A book our narrator doesn’t want to write about the creation of a series of books no one wanted to write that just may have created the myth of America. (Comment on this)
8:35 am	Random thoughts on Watchmen Plenty of ink has already been spilt about Watchmen, with consensus opinion saying director Zack Snyder gave it gallant go. I don't disagree. It's a worthy production with lots of pretty pictures, a sensational credit sequence, an admirable loyalty to the source material, and an unwillingness to comfort the audience -- this is one violent, black-souled Hollywood picture! But, Snyder's film is a paradox: very watchable yet oddly un-engaging. It lacks the texture of the graphic novel and an emotional, intellectual center. Many of the book's resonant character moments, such as Hollis' death and the newspaper vendor's social commentary, were excised. I'm hoping they were filmed and make their way into the 205-minute DVD director's cut, which I'm curious to see -- but only in close proximity to a bathroom! (Cinemas really need to consider bringing back intermissions for movies longer than two hours.) Many mainstream critics have taken Snyder to task for being too faithful to the graphic novel. I wish he’d been even more faithful! By replacing the giant squid, he lost some of the book’s essential strangeness. And by introducing a little of the old ultra-violence, he makes the story all about the visceral. For the record, in the graphic novel Rorschach does not take a cleaver to the child-killer (he incinerates him), nor does the fat prisoner get his arms sawed off (he gets his throat cut). I may be picking knits, but Snyder’s changes are made not to advance Moore’s story but only to please the gore-hounds. Snyder's Watchmen, ultimately, is worth seeing on the big screen, but it's too much about flashy surfaces to reach greatness. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
4:59 pm	Public Enemies trailer Michael Mann's new gangster film, Public Enemies, hits theaters July 1. Like everything Mann touches, the just-released trailer is utterly classy and stylish. (Yes, I've even come to appreciate 2006's Miami Vice.) (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 1st, 2009
4:46 pm	Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca This weekend I read Nick Antosca's second novel, Midnight Picnic (2009), which takes place in a uniquely American afterlife – think Jonathan Carroll by way of Stewart O'Nan. It’s a study of all-consuming revenge, as the ghost of a six-year-old boy hunts down the ghost of his elderly killer. With limpid prose, Antosca conjures up poetic and sometimes wonderfully weird images, such as the boy vomiting up razor-teethed ghost dogs to do his bidding. Overall, though, Midnight Picnic felt too slight for me to strongly recommend -- I couldn't help but wish the author had delved deeper into his rendition of the great beyond as well as spilled more ink on the story’s major moments. Antosca's story inherently harbors a lot of emotional weight; it needed more than 200 pages to deliver its full payload. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
9:29 am	The last days are here! Brian Evenson's new novel, Last Days, has received a lot of positive publicity in the blogosphere. It's all well deserved! Composed of two connected novellas, Last Days is a sharp punch to the gut and a shock to the mind – it’s one of the darkest, most violent noirs I've ever encountered. Many passages, particularly in the first half, "The Brotherhood of Mutilation," made me squirm ... as well as laugh! Peter Straub, in his generous introduction, calls attention to the humor permeating the horror. Last Days, while less than 200 pages, haunts the mind long after the end. Evenson's prose is precise and literary, his imagery striking and cinematic. Indeed, in story and style, Last Days reminded me of Park Chan-Wook’s masterful 2003 film Oldboy. Evenson has delivered a lean narrative, one that makes you feel the flesh: the pain and suffering of being human. He’s created a surreal city of cults and strange rituals, of evangelical fanatacism and revenge. The kind of place you know exists, but pray you never see. I highly recommend Last Days. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
8:53 am	Watchmen is coming I've been successfully resisting the hype of Zack Snyder's uber adaptation of Watchmen, only to succumb this past week. I reread Moore/Gibbons' super-detailed, alternate-history, Cold War-era, super-hero satire. Yeah, Watchmen's 12 issues contain multitudes and can be see in many lights. For sure, it's a zeitgeist book, as much a part of 80s "geekdom" as John Carpenter movies, Stephen King doorstoppers, and Star Wars. Regardless of the film's quality, it'll be wonderfully surreal to take a trip to Watchmen's world of vibrant colors, noirish shadows, and paranoia politics. Come next Friday, Richard Nixon, the atom bomb, and the Soviet Union will once again invade America's psyche. I'll be taking off of work to experience it. Here's a roundup of early Watchmen reviews, many quite encouraging for fans of the source material. It appears Snyder doesn't pull any punches with the violence. And here're details of two DVD director's cuts -- one 190 minutes, the other 205 minutes, which includes the "Tales of the Black Freighter" animation. (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
9:17 am	Other places • This past week, Jeff VanderMeer announced two exciting books in progress: A Tour of the Southern Isles, "a somewhat Borgesian novella centered around the Southern Isles mentioned in the Ambergris books," to be published by Payseur & Schmidt, and The Heart of the Beast, a novel collaboration with Jay Lake. • The Guardian's published a list of 1000 novels everyone must read, including 125 science fiction, fantasy, and horror books. • In a recent blog entry, Elizabeth Hand drops a couple of hints about future novels: She's completing final revisions on her next novel, Wonderwall, and "going back to Reykjavik for a few days to do research for Available Dark (a sort of sequel to Generation Loss)." • Over a recent three-day period, I devoured season one of David Simon's addicting, uncompromising-in-every-way, thoroughly rewarding The Wire, and was pleased to jump on the bandwagon: It probably is the best TV show of all time. At Salon, Laura Miller delivers a convincing argument. • Disappointing but unsurprising, Virgin's horror imprint appears to be shutting down. • If Barack Obama's extraordinary inauguration has you contemplating history, I highly recommend James Oakes' 2007 The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. At around 300 pages, it's a detailed, accessible, and occasionally quite moving page-turner. Oakes concludes with an appendix about further Civil War-themed reading; I'm compelled to learn more. (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 10th, 2009
11:03 am	Minority movie opinions I can't evaluate the overall quality of movies released in 2008. Too many films of interest, such as The Wrestler, Waltz with Bashir, Che, and Let the Right One In, have yet to reach these Lake Michigan shores. But I'll unequivocally say: The hype and hullaballoo of The Dark Knight and Wall-E bored me to tears in 2008. If these are Hollywood's best, cinema's in a sad state. That's not to say I didn't enjoy Christopher Nolan's film, an ambitious crime epic overflowing with stuff: plot twists, charismatic characters, elaborate action set-pieces, and a welcome sense of chaos -- to say nothing of Heath Ledger's frightening performance, truly one for the ages. But it's also marred by poor pacing, unsubtle dialogue, confusing hand-to-hand combat, and strange directorial decisions. (Why doesn't Nolan show the reaction of the Hong Kong businessman being burned atop the pile of money? Nolan seems preoccupied to a fault with his iconic main characters, to the point where the secondary characters are insignificant.) The Dark Knight is one of the most interesting if deeply flawed blockbusters in years. But, please: Great cinema, it is not! Embraced by both high- and low-brow critics alike, Wall-E is the year's most overrated film. It's adequate entertainment for children, but what does it offer for adults? Sure, the dialogue-free sequences and post-apocalyptic earth were well done. But the movie devolves to deliver a simple, heavy-handed message (We're fat, lazy, consumer-driven and destroying the earth!!! Did you get that?) as well as uninspired action scenes geared toward the ADD video-game generation. If you want solid Pixar storytelling for kids and adults, go with Brad Bird's The Incredibles or Ratatouille. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
5:13 pm	Various and sundry horror books to covet Brit Joel Lane is a writer of intense, terminally bleak horror fiction; the kind of writer the genre can never have enough of. I've sampled his most recent collection, The Lost District, released by Night Shade a few years back, but always hit a brick wall when reading more than one piece in a sitting: Regardless of how well crafted, the stories melded into suffocating blackness. Today, I can't remember a single plot, just images of grit, grime, and people in despair. His next book, though, The Witnesses are Gone, sounds like it could be a real gem, one to put next to Flicker on the bookshelf. It's about "a bootleg copy of a morbid and disturbing film by a little-known French director, Jean Rien," and one man's journey to the underworld to discover more of the director's films. Conrad Williams provides the introduction; PS Publishing will release the book this spring. *** While recounting the H.P. Lovecraft Festival last October, Laird Barron reveals: "I also read a few pages from 'The Broadsword.' Now I may say the novella was acquired by S.T. Joshi for an anthology that will feature Ramsey Campbell, Caitlin Kiernan, and possibly T.E.D. Klein, among many others." Now, I'm pleased as punch to hear Joshi's putting together an anthology with some of my favorite writers -- I always welcome new fiction from Barron, Campbell, and Kiernan. But I’m absolutely, positively thrilled at the idea of new fiction from T.E.D. Klein! OK. I'll be cool, keep perspective: Klein's post-Dark Gods stories haven't been much to speak of. Still, I can't help but feel Joshi will pull something meaningful out of Klein. Maybe he's got one more major novella in him. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 4th, 2009
12:27 pm	Most-anticipated fiction of 2009 Here's a list of books I'm most looking forward in 2009. Keep in mind, publishing schedules ebb and flow and, invariably, there are many interesting books I'm unaware of at this date. 1) Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (Fall) Why? VanderMeer mixes noir mystery with surreal fantasy to conclude his extraordinary Ambergris sequence (City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword). 2) A Dark Matter by Peter Straub (August 11) Why? After a five-year hiatus, the horror genre's most respected novelist returns to the long form. The new book’s plot, about a sexually abusive professor haunting his students, brings to mind the seriousness and intensity of one of Straub's masterful novellas, "The Juniper Tree." 3) The City and the City by China Mieville (May 26) Why? Not unlike VanderMeer in Finch, Mieville (Iron Council) tackles surreal noir, deviating from his fantastical city of Bas-Lag. 4) Untitled novel by Jonathan Lethem (Fall) Why? 2003's The Fortress of Solitude made me a life-long fan of Lethem, and it's been far too long since he's produced any meaty work. His next novel sounds intriguing, if this quote at Wikipedia is anything to go on: It is "set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it’s strongly influenced by Saul Bellow, Philip K. Dick, Charles Finney and Hitchcock’s Vertigo and it concerns a circle of friends including a faded child-star actor, a cultural critic, a hack ghost-writer of autobiographies, and a city official. And it’s long and strange." 5) Under the Dome by Stephen King (Fall) Why? This novel has eluded King for more than 20 years. Because of its length and good-versus-evil themes, he's compared it to The Stand. Yes, I'm fully aware this could be plodding and insufferable (like many of King's doorstop novels). But King's showed us as recently as 2006 (Lisey's Story) that he's still fully capable of producing engaging, imaginative, suspenseful work. Here are some other forthcoming books of interest, a few previously published in different editions or outside the U.S. Ellen Datlow’s new anthology, Poe, is omitted because I just purchased it yesterday: Campbell, Ramsey, Creatures of the Pool (Fall) Elliott, Will, The Pilo Family Circus (March 1) Evenson, Brian, Last Days (February 1) Harwood, John, The Seance (February 3) Joyce, Graham, How to Make Friends With Demons (Winter) Kiernan, Caitlin R., A is for Alien (January 30) Kiernan, Caitlin R., The Red Tree (August 9) Langan, John, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Imminent) Langan, John, House of Windows (April 15) Langan, Sarah, Audrey's Room (April 28) Ligotti, Thomas, My Work is Not Yet Done (April 28) Rickert, M., Holiday (Unknown) Roden, Barbara, Northwest Passage (Unknown) Schow, David J., The Shaft (1990 reprint; Winter) Sclavi, Tiziano, The Dylan Dog Case Files (April 15) Shepard, Lucius, Ariel/Vacancy (Spring) Shepard, Lucius, Viator redux collection (Unknown) Simmons, Dan, Drood (February 9) Tem, Steve Rasic, Deadfall Hotel (Unknown) Thomas, Jeffrey, Thought Forms Trembaly, Paul, The Little Sleep (March 3) Williams, Conrad, Decay Invetible (August 25) Williams, Conrad, One (June 9) Book-buying in 2009 should take a toll on my pocketbook -- but I'm not complaining! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
11:39 am	Monstrocity (2003) Motivated by this Enter the Octopus interview, I kicked off a new year of reading with Jeffrey Thomas' Punktown novel, Monstrocity (2003), a noirish cyberpunk riff on H.P. Lovecraft's mythos. I've long been a fan of Lovecraft-inspired fiction -- Thomas' novel is one of the best! Without eclipsing the author's own voice and vision, Monstrocity captures the essence of Lovecraft: It features a lonely first-person narrator, reworks the Elder Gods versus Old Ones mythology, and delivers a philosophy of nihilism and a world consumed by chaos. Monstrocity, my first visit to Punktown, is not for the faint of heart. It contains a palpable air of danger: Ultraviolence, blunt sexuality, and mutant strangeness are de rigueur. But it's all told honestly, with passion and intelligence. If the novel stumbles, it's when the protagonist somewhat unbelievably becomes an action hero toward the end. I look forward to exploring more of Punktown as well as Thomas' substantial body of work. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 2nd, 2009
9:45 am	Housecleaning: Favorite books of 2008 Is this thing on? I've always been an erratic reader, and 2008 proved no different. To illustrate, I finished as many as nine books in April and as few as zero in November. Not counting graphic narratives, I completed just under 50 books last year. Too many unfinished collections, such as Jeffrey Ford's The Drowned Life, Lucius Shepard's Dagger Key, and Michael Shea's The Autopsy, taunt me from my bedside. Trends: I didn't read many new releases, treaded mostly in the horror genre, and continued to buy about three times as many books as I have time or talents to read. Sometimes I think I like the idea of reading more than the act itself, an ailment I'm dead-set on remedying in 2009. Here're my favorites from the past year. 1) Dark Gods - T.E.D. Klein (1985) 2) Midnight Sun - Ramsey Campbell (1991) 3) The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman (2008) 4) Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis (2005) 5) The Man on the Ceiling - Steve Rasnic and Melanie Tem (2008) 6) The Situation - Jeff VanderMeer (2008) 7) Our Lady of Darkness - Fritz Leiber (1978) 8) The Resurrectionist - Jack O'Connell (2008) 9) The Darkest Part of the Woods - Ramsey Campbell (2002) 10 - Tie) American Supernatural Tales - S.T. Joshi editor (2007) 10 - Tie) Leviathan - Paul Auster (1992) Other highly recommended reads: The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham (1951) Ghosts and City of Glass - Paul Auster (1985-86) Rapture - Thomas Tessier (1987) Prodigal - Melanie Tem (1991) Skellig - David Almond (1999) The Night Country - Stewart O'Nan (2003) Come Closer - Sara Gran (2003) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 21st, 2008
9:03 am	Forthcoming: Conrad Williams novels! It's nice to have one novel from a favorite author to look forward to -- two's even better! Conrad Williams reports that One is "coming soon" from Virgin Books (Amazon lists an April 2 release date) and Decay Inevitable is coming from Solaris Books next summer. I believe One is a reworked trunk novel. Decay will boast this extraordinary Dave McKean artwork. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 11th, 2008
6:44 pm	Andrew Sullivan on McCain For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign? So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. (For those disinterested in politics, here's a book tip -- run to your nearest bookstore and buy Andrew Davidson's brilliant debut novel, The Gargoyle. OK, I shouldn't lavish praise impetuously; after all, I've still got 250 pages to go. But a novel this assured, mysterious, edgy, and surprising in the first half can't possible crumble down the homestretch.) (Yes, it can!) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 6th, 2008
9:35 am	Palin is pathetic! Slate provides an invaluable Sarah Palin FAQ, featuring everything you wanted to know about Sarah Palin. Here are some excerpts -- and just a few of the reasons I believe she's a reckless VP selection and dangerous for this country. Did she oppose the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere"? When she was running for governor in 2006, Palin said she supported a $223 million federal earmark for the Gravina Island Bridge. Congress eventually killed the earmark after it became a symbol of pork-barrel spending, but Alaska was given the same amount of money to spend on other projects. Last year, Palin put a halt to state support of the project, saying, "We will continue to look for options for Ketchikan to allow better access to the island." The reversal was hailed by budget hawks, but it irked local politicians like Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein, who said, "[S]he pandered to us by saying, 'I'm for this.'" What is her relationship with indicted Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens? They've worked together since at least 2003, when Palin was a director on Stevens' independent fundraising group, Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service Inc. In her unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor in 2002, she received about $4,500 in campaign donations from an oil firm involved in the Stevens scandal. Palin also filmed a commercial with Stevens in 2006 to demonstrate the senator's support of her gubernatorial campaign... Cindy McCain and others have asserted that Alaska's proximity to Russia has contributed to Palin's foreign-policy knowledge. What dealings has she had with Russia? The campaign has not come up with any. Palin has never been to Russia. Was she ever a member of the Alaskan Independence Party? Officials from the AIP, the state's third-largest political party, have claimed that Sarah Palin attended the 1994 party convention with her husband. Public records indicate, however, that Palin has been a lifelong Republican since she first registered to vote in Alaska. Her husband Todd Palin did register as a member of the AIP—which supports holding a vote on Alaskan secession from the United States—in 1995 before reregistering as "undeclared" in 2002. According to the New York Times, Gov. Palin recorded a video segment for the party's convention this year, wishing the AIP "good luck on a successful and inspiring convention." Did she want to ban books from the public library as mayor of Wasilla? Yes, at least according to John Stein, the town's former mayor. Stein says Palin asked the Wasilla library "how she could go about banning books" with offensive language. It's not clear whether any book was ever banned. And these excerpts don't cover her close-minded, backwards policies (i.e. abstinence-only education; drilling in ANWAR; etc.) and beliefs (i.e. that Creationism should be taught in public schools). Nor does it mention the scandals -- she has a track record, as mayor of Wasilla and as governor, of dismissing employees who disagree with her. Like I said, you can learn a lot more about her at Slate. (Comment on this)
Monday, September 1st, 2008
9:12 am	Books from the future, past I burn way too much mental energy thinking about books I'd like to someday read, as opposed to actually reading. Here're two books I've been thinking about reading. John Langan's first novel, House of Windows, which Night Shade will publish in April 2009. It's being described as a psychological ghost story in the vein of Peter Straub, Joe Hill, and Laird Barron. Here's the plot synopsis. In the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fred Chappell writes convincingly about Esther Forbes' out-of-print 1954 novel, Rainbow on the Road, calling it "a Doppelgänger tale with pronounced supernatural elements — appearances of the devil, ghosts, clairvoyance, etc. — that are mostly explained away. Yet a Halloweenish, spooky atmosphere suffuses much of the narrative." (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 31st, 2008
5:15 pm	Is this really happening in our country? Leading up to the Republican national convention in Minneapolis, the Federal government's been involved in some frightening law-enforcement actions. Read: Today's Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants planted in protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate "vegan groups" and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. I don't live in Minneapolis, but my wife's a vegetarian -- should I be worried? You can find a lot more information on the disturbing situation at Salon.com. (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 30th, 2008
11:21 am	Who is Sarah Palin? The following is copied from a MoveOn.org e-mail (I removed the citations for readability): Yesterday was John McCain's 72nd birthday. If elected, he'd be the oldest president ever inaugurated. And after months of slamming Barack Obama for "inexperience," here's who John McCain has chosen to be one heartbeat away from the presidency: a right-wing religious conservative with no foreign policy experience, who until recently was mayor of a town of 9,000 people. Huh? Who is Sarah Palin? Here's some basic background: She was elected Alaska's governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no foreign policy experience. Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest. She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000. Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools. She's doesn't think humans are the cause of climate change. She's solidly in line with John McCain's "Big Oil first" energy policy. She's pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won't be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species—she was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska. How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position. (3 Comments |Comment on this)