No need to steal HBO, just wireless Internet

I wrote this last night but, for reasons that will become obvious, wasn’t able to post it:

Sitting in a Motel 6 in Portsmouth, N.H. , trying to steal a wireless signal because the budget motel that we’re staying at in this city, founded in 1623, is about as clued into the 21st century as my namesake – Daniel Webster – would be.

As the clerk downstairs said, “We have dial-up … but you’d probably be better just tapping into one of the wireless services around here.”

Well, that’d be fine. Except the wireless signal keeps coming and going, which means that I might not get this posted. Oh, well. It’s been a nice couple of days (since Tuesday, actually) being offline. Everybody needs a vacation, even bloggers.

In any event, no movies – unless you count watching Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film “Foreign Correspondent,” starring Joel McCrea and Laraine Day, which was playing on cable television last night.

But lots of reading. Just finished Michael Dibdin’s newest, “Back to Bologna,” and am halfway through Laurie R. King’s “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice,” which features the character of Mary Russell solving crimes with none other than Sherlock Holmes. Beach reads.

And in between I took in three different graphic novels. Two new ones – Ande Parks’ “Capote in Kansas,” a reimagining of Truman Capote’s experiences of writing “In Cold Blood,” and J.P. Stassen’s “Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda,” a horror show about the 1994-95 genocide in that African country – each being an unusual, if powerful, example of the form.

Also re-read Frank Miller’s 1986 graphic novel “The Dark Knight Returns,” which I found in a Barnes & Noble store in Ithaca, N.Y. Two decades later and Miller’s vision retains all the shadowy power of its comic-style vigilantism.

Next up: Alan Furst ’s new World War II spy novel “The Foreign Correspondent” – no relation to Hitchcock’s film, of course.

But for now, I’ll just try to stea … uh, find a signal. And post this. Then we’ll watch “Deadwood.” The computer service here may suck, but we do get HBO.