I have loved tales of vampires ever since I read Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. Barlow was one bad-assed vampire that didn’t want to romance you with witty sexual innuendo. He wanted to eat you because humans were food. And he also wanted to psychologically damage you before he ate you almost like the proverbial cat playing with a mouse until it gets bored.
Dracula had a bit of romance going on but the bottom line is he was hungry.
Vampires changed in the 60s, of course with Barnabas Collins (although I never thought he was especially hot), and then they went mainstream in the 70s with Frank Langella. Now don’t get me wrong, there were more, but I do remember that Langella made my hair even sweat when I was 11-years-old.
And now to the part after the jump that might give my blog an R-rating.
A great deal happened in last night’s episode of True Blood, but when you break the components down, there really was only one big event because the other stuff was a continuation of previous things that have already been set up. That’s how this show gets you, and it was the ending of “I Will Rise Up” that changed the direction of many things.
But I’ll get to that after the break for those folks who haven’t seen it.
We are seeing characters change as we head to the last quarter of this second season. I’ve said it before, as I’m sure I will say it again as I adore repeating myself, but this is a trashy yet oddly erotic, soap opera. The uncompromising mother, the evil vixen, the Too-Good-Too-Be-True blue collar bar owner (who happens to be a shape-shifter), the fallen cop, the All-American Girl, the men/vampires who love her and the Big Bad.
This week’s True Blood was extremely tasty due to one Eric Northman, the Viking vampire who never smiles did so on a number of occasions, and there was human heart eating with unexpected results.
As I have sort of made this, and Big Brother once again due to the unreasonable desperation of people willing to subject themselves to ongoing humiliation, my summer watching program, I have decided to blog about it. Not Big Brother necessarily because although we have a weekly lunch scheduled around it (we do these things in Hoots), that I might fill you in on later, it is True Blood that has hold of me right now.
Now, True Blood is another beast indeed. If you have read this blog for any length of time, you know I adore vampires, zombies, Sasquatch sighting, Bat Boy and parallel universes. And I dig small towns with secrets.
In Timebomb, the basis of what we saw in the first fifteen minutes was absolutely amazing. I love television that is unapologetic. If you are expecting Gone With The Wind, you are in trouble. If you are looking for fast food, Timebomb scratched that itch.
I was a late bloomer to watching the True Blood series on HBO but I have read the majority of the Southern Vampire Mysteries (not the last one though.) I’ve written before that I’m a sucker for not only horror/scifi movies but for parallel universes that combine paranormal elements in to everyday life.
Let’s get to the fact that Charlaine Harris’ novels are like drinking a mocha on a spring afternoon. The mocha is pretty tasty, but you drink it and it’s gone, the sun is still shining and you go back to your car to the next adventure.
It’s unmitigated fluff, but it’s amusing to me at least.
And the funny thing is that her descriptions of juke joints in the south is pretty dead on. I like the quirky (everyone use’s that damn word about these books, but it works) characters because I can pretty much identity them here in Hoots Central. The books focus on small town life, petty gossip that can be heard by the heroine which is the basis of the series of Harris’ novel and those subcultures that make a small town interesting.
Oh, and they are dime-store mysteries thrown in with a bit of Harlequin Romance where the sex is just lying out on the table. There is not doubt that all the characters are very unapologetically sexual. Groovy.
And that, campers, is why I read them because they are light, get some of the gist of small-town Southern USA (especially regarding the easy, or sometimes tense, banter in a bar) and there is that bit of hypocrisy that goes along with anyone who is blind to one cause and devoted to another or is just high falutin’. Happens everywhere (although the TV series has pretty much beat me in the brain with the Fellowship of the Sun, although having read the books, I know where that’s going and it’s important to the canon of the tale.)
So I’m fixin’ (because like Sookie Stackhouse, I’m southern) to talk about the differences between the two mediums, why I think they work and that’s it’s just soap opera fun in all reality.
There I said it, we have a new soap opera on the air where you get to see the sex, the gore, the betrayal, loyalty and supes. This is not your Dark Shadows of 40 years ago, but it’s the same premise behind all the glitter of HBO.
And, I rather like it.
Major spoilers after the break and I’m talking serious spoilers from the book so you have been warned.
As I just started watching True Blood (although I’ve read several of Charlaine Harris’ books), I did what anyone would do.
I started dicking around on YouTube.
A few comments on True Blood, the folks in that show other than the vamps sorta look like people in Hoots. Second of all, any man that can look that sexy and pretty damned scary beating the hell out of someone with their very own arm with foil in his hair and flip flops on deserves my undying admiration. (They don’t make them like that here in Hoots though. He is like an updated version of Spike from Buffy before Spike got a soul.)
As a Southerner, the accents are pretty laughable but I am enjoying the hell out it anyway. For horror buffs, it’s fun.
Yeah, I like my vamps. Just do.
So, I found this video. If you don’t like vampires, just turn the song up. It’s that good. (I don’t usually do Fan Videos but this one is pretty decent.)
