...way out on the corner of fucked up and evil...

are you kidding me? king falls puts out a fucking musical episode and TANIS gets the twin peaks sponsorship? what are you playing at universe.

Watched the American remake of the Killing. At first, it was sort of like someone had sucked all the weirdness out of Twin Peaks and replaced it with Billy Campbell. I was saddened by the loss of weirdness, but pleased with the addition of Billy Campbell, so it was a fair trade. Tragically, only a few episodes in, it mutated into a regular crime TV series thing and lost all of it's beautiful Twin Peaksian atmosphere. I am very sad.

Also, the Fades sucks. Everyone in it is ugly, the dialogue is terrible, there's no comedic timing, the plot is boring and basically it's terrible. I hate everything.

I'm going to watch the Losers now, because I need some beautifulness in my life. After that, I may have a shower. I sent Prawn into town to get me some berries. I hope he comes back soon. I need berries.

To whom it may concern: if you’re reading this document, it means you are about to learn of the greatest kids show ever made.

I am talking, of course, about Eerie, Indiana, a show aimed at roughly the nine-to-fourteen year old market, which aired nineteen episodes between 1991 and 1992 before being stolen by aliens because it was too good for this world. Or maybe it was cancelled because the idiot network didn't know a good thing when they saw it.



If you liked Twin Peaks, if you liked Carnivale or American Gothic, or if you liked the movie The 'Burbs (and seriously, why would you not like The 'Burbs?) you will like Eerie, Indiana.

The premise of Eerie, Indiana revolves around 13-year-old Marshall Teller and his nine-year-old best friend Simon Holmes. Prior to the start of the show, Marshall lived in New Jersey, “just across the river from New York City. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime… I loved it. But my parents wanted a better live for my sister and me, so we moved to a place so wholesome, so squeaky-clean, you could only find it on TV.”

Are you intrigued yet? You should be. Shortly arriving in Eerie, Marshall begins to notice that his new home town is… different.

“What’s wrong with this picture? The American Dream come true, right? Wrong. Nobody believes me, but Eerie is the centre of weirdness for the entire planet.”


( The Characters )

OH GOD I love that Peter Pan movie! I mean, I was already aware of this fact since it's shelved on the top lefthand side of my DVD collection, which is where I stack my most-loved stuff for easy acess, but I just watched it again and it's like ALL OF MY LIFE I HAVE BEEN WAITING TO GET ENOUGH DISTANCE ON THIS FILM SO THAT I CAN WATCH IT AGAIN AND HAVE ALL OF MY LOVE COME FLOODING BACK TO ME!

Jeremy Sumpter is so awesome, you guys. I sometimes totally forget about him because I am too busy admiring the wonderfulness of Jason Isaacs, but he is a fucking amazing actor. That bit right at the end where Hook lets the crocodile eat him, and as he resigns himself to his fate there's a shot of Peter closing his eyes and saluting with his sword, and it is magnificent and wonderful and just so great I have no words!

What happened to Jeremy Sumpter, anyway? I kind of assumed he would go on to be in like eight million things after Peter Pan, but I never saw him again. Has anyone else seen him in something other than Peter Pan? I demand to know why he is not currently improving the quality of the many TV shows I watch by appearing in them and actually portraying emotion and stuff. Shame on you, Jeremy Sumpter, you'd better not be fucking dead or appearing on reality TV or something else hideous and awful!

Also, I saw the trailer for the new Sherlock Holmes movie, and apart from inexplicable Rocky Horror!Downey Junior, it looked pretty good. I normally want to kill Jude Law, but RDJ has this weird super-power where he makes normally unbearable people slightly tolerable by his presence - see also Gweneth Paltrow in the Iron Man movies.

One more thing that I completely love that has nothing to do with the rest of this post - that bit in Twin Peaks where those Swedish dudes come to stay at the Great Northern and they make loads of noise and wake Cooper up, and he's super pissy and ranting into his little dictaphone thing to Diane about it and after he asks for her to send him earplugs, he's like "I didn't expect to need them on this trip, but as you can hear..." and he holds the recorder up in complete silence for a few seconds to record the noise and then he clicks it off in this really definitive, "so there!" kind of way, and all the way through the scene he has this AWESOMELY grumpy face on him and it's BRILLIANT.

I just wanted to share that with you all. I love Agent Cooper's grumpy face. One day I hope my grumpy face can reach such heights of grumpiness. It is unlikely, but still something to strive for.

Oh you guys. I just saw a movie that had Shawn Farrell from the 4400 in it, except instead of being beautiful and earnest, he was torturing dudes and generally being horrible in a non-entertaining way. OH SHAWN! What would your beloved Uncle Tommy say?!

Also, I have been reading the Locke and Key comics - I heard about them initially because beautiful Nick Stahl was supposed to be in a TV series based on it, being beautiful and probably doing some other stuff that I may or may not have cared about, but Fox didn't pick it up so now we'll never know. That aside, the comics themselves are really good - without giving anything away, a family moves into a big old house with loads of locked rooms and cupboards, and if the right person opens the right door with the right key, magical shit happens. If I say much more I will totally ruin it for you, but it's awesome and you guys should watch it.

On the subject of Nick Stahl, none of you are talking about Carnivale enough. This makes me cross. White Collar dudes, you should also be watching it because it has Tim DeKay in it aswell. Don't make Liamneeson send you to hell with all the Twin Peaks-ignoring rejects.

One last thing - I mentioned a while ago that I'd been reading a book about a zombie PI who went around fighting crime, which was cool, and having a non-zombie girlfriend, which was not cool, even if saying so makes me a racist. I just finished the third book, and the girlfriend is pregnant, which is so horrible I don't even want to discuss it, but I keep reading because it's full of these little scraps of meta-humour that make me smile. Case in point:

'Before we could start toward them, the front door opened and a teenage boy with mussed hair and a pouty expression walked in. He had the elongated canines of the Bloodborn, but his skin gave off a glimmering sheen.

A couple of bald, overly muscled, heavily tattooed vampires clad in scuffed leather snarled at the sight of the luminous teen. They rose from their chairs, stalked toward him, flanked him on either side, grabbed hold of his arms, lifted him off the floor, and started escorting him back toward the door.

"Hey, take it easy, guys!" the teen whined. "It's not my fault I sparkle!"

The biker vampires laughed as they left the bar, and the iron door slammed ominously shut behind them.'

Well played, Tim Waggoner. Very well played, and vastly superiour to that piece-of-shit Supernatural parody that offended my precious eyes last week. If they ever made a Nekropolis TV show, I would watch it.

As long as there was no overt zombie/regular person smooching. I have my limits.

Fuckssake. I think I'm starting to get sick - my throat is all sore and tight, my eyes are watering, and I just found (refound?) a load of Twin Peaks slash in my favourites list but I cannot work up the energy to read any of it. And we just got tickets to see the new Harry Potter movie on Sunday. WHATEVER.

I think I'll print off my porn, go take a shower and then emotionally blackmail the Prawn into building up the fire for me by hanging around him looking mournful until he asks me what's wrong.

GOD, LIFE. Stop making it hard to enjoy things that normally I would love! I have a Toffee Crisp here and I want to partake of it's delicious crispy, toffee-y, chocolatey goodness but I am afraid it will STAB ME WITH DAGGERS OF PAIN IN MY MOUTH.

So lately the universe has been hinting to me that I should watch Twin Peaks again - the adverts for it are showing on Sky, McNerdcakes mentioned it last week, and my brother described a roasted chicken he found at the back of the fridge as "dead, wrapped in plastic." Never one to ignore signs from the great Liamneeson, I of course have obeyed His will and dug out my old, non-Gold-Box DVDs.

On Saturday I had a few friends 'round that I haven't seen in nearly a decade - we all went to the College of Knowledge together back in the day, but our contact over the last ten years has all been via text messages, so we decided to have a movie-fest/catch-up/crazed-almost-fatal-sugar-high extravaganza.

When they turned up I was watching Twin Peaks, and it turns out that not a single one of them has ever heard of it.

You guys, this is totally inconceivable. Now I'm sad because Liamneeson is going to condemn all my old friends to Hell for not being cool enough to have seen Twin Peaks. I'm sort of tempted to try to save them from damnation by arranging a three-day Twin Peaks fest, where we watch the whole series and imbibe nothing but pie, coffee and doughnuts* until we all die from weirdness and sugar overload.

Clearly I will need to purchase the Gold Box edition before the event. I feel that is only right. Liamneeson would totally agree with me.

*Actually, I hate doughnuts, so I will subtly encourage them to bring pie and coffee only.

Okay dudes, googlebrat has come up with the awesome concept of the Anti-Wishlist. No, it's not a list of things that are shit that I do not want you to buy for me. These are beautiful things that I already own, that I think other people should also own. Because they are beautiful.

In the grand tradition of all the best memes, once you have read my Anti-Wishlist and been overwhelmed by my good taste and encyclopedic knowledge of everything that is good ever, you have to write your own Anti-Wishlist. Be it games, music, books, films, TV shows, whatever, make a list of ten things you think other people should want for Christmas, and why.

1. How To Rob A Bank
   
   Dudes, it totally offends me that more of you are not talking about the greatness of this movie. It basically starts with Nick Stahl (aka Ben Hawkins from Carnivale) ranting about bank surcharges while trapped in a bank vault, then moves to him ripping the duct-tape off the mouth of Jessica, a saucy librarian type (saucy librarians are my favourite kind of librarian, FYI) who proceeds to verbally abuse him, which prompts him to snap "Whoa there, Skippy. If I wanted more verbal abuse, I would just call some customer service centre somewhere." She mutters something behind the gag, and Ben (he will henceforth be refered to as Ben) asks sarcastically, "What was that? Was that 'Sorry for being a bitch'? 'I'll be nicer now?'" Anyway, Ben goes on to get into a snarking match via mobile phone with Balthazar from Constantine, who is there trying to rob the vault, and is cranky because Ben has ruined his plan by getting stuck in there when he ran for cover during the robbery and the door closed behind him. There's a lot of completely genius moments, but my personal favourites are the scene where Ben gets Balthazar and the hostage negotiator, Officer Degepse, on a conference call and cons Balthazar into apologising to Degepse and Degepse into accepting the apology, before being distracted by Jessica and hanging up after telling them to "talk among yourselves," and the moment when Balthazar's 'phone battery dies, prompting him to walk out of the bank, hurl his mobile at the SWAT officers surrounding him, hitting Degepse in the head, and then staring at them for a long moment before walking calmly back inside.
   
   
2. Carnivale
   
   Seriously guys, why have more of you not watched this yet? If you liked Twin Peaks, American Gothic or Eerie Indiana, you should be watching Carnivale. Beautiful Nick Stahl takes time out from screwing up bank robberies in order to play the worlds unhappiest Avatar of Light. Ben wanders around looking miserable and confused, pausing occaisonally to shag Clea Duvall and Adrienne Barbeau, pretty much making him my hero for life. Meanwhile, Clancy Brown proves his evilness by making a mean paedophile dude kill himself (what?) and totally wanting his sister, while Cynthia Ettinger and Tim DeKay have pretty much the hottest on-screen romance that I have ever seen, ever. This is basically Twin Peaks if it was on HBO and took place in a travelling circus with strippers. It's awesome, and you should all be ashamed for not loving it like I do.
   
   
3. The 4400
   
   I have pimped this in way more detail here, but this is basically Heroes if Heroes had a cast where everybody could act instead of leaving the beautiful Pasdar to struggle on alone, and the characterization, dialogue and plotting didn't totally fucking suck. In brief, a giant ball of light appears over Seattle, and from it emerges a whole mess of people who have disappeared over the last 60 years. They haven't aged a day, and some of them have come back with magical powers. A beautiful, earnest government agent dude with a penchant for being in a shower whenever an important plot point comes up investigates. There are flavours of man-hottness to suit every palette, and oh, it's quite a good show too.
   
   
4. Profit
   
   Speaking of the beautiful Pasdar... this is pretty much him wandering around naked, with messy hair and too much eyeliner, while being evil in a variety of ways and narrating about how evil he is. Oh, and sleeping with his mum. AWESOME! My favourite bits are when he persuades a woman to go back to her estranged husband, even though he knows that the dude is a total psycho who will probably kill her, because it's the only way the husband will sign a deal that means more monies for the Pasdar, and the part where he deliberately traps another character alone with the uncle who molested her when she was thirteen, and then is totally smug and gleeful about it in the voice-over. That's some cold shit, the Pasdar. And I love it.
   
   
5. Wasting Away
   
   You guys, this is simply the best zombie movie EVER. Yes, better than Dawn of the Dead. Yes, better than Shaun of the Dead. Yes, better even than if they made a movie of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and somehow were able to travel back in time and get thirty-year-old Colin Firth to star in it. The premise is that a bunch of people get infected with Zombie, except they don;t know that they're zombies and they think everyone else is all crazy and high-pitched and runs around really fast. They meet this other dude who tells them that they're super-soldiers, except it turns out he's just this zombie caretaker dude and then he goes crazy and does a dance. Wendall from Bones and the guy from Tigerland who isn't Colin Farrell star. It's marvellous. Why aren't you watching it right now? In fact, why aren't I?! Fuck this list, I'll finish it later.

Just finished watching Desperate Romantics - I'm aware that some of the MASSIVE LIBERTIES taken with historical accuracy should be making me wince, but somehow Slutty Frockcoat-Wearing Mitchell makes me not care. Though I do think he could have beeen naked more often, and also if he could have seen his way clear to debauching the narrator dude - who was so clearly gagging for it - that would be even better. Come on Rossetti, put a little effort into it!

However, those slight criticisms aside, I do think that any series that ends with Aiden Turner gleefully robbing somebodys grave before scampering off into the night is quite beautiful despite any other failings it may have.

Also, oh my God, there is Twin Peaks slash. Did everyone know this but me? Best. Day. Ever.

Comment to this entry and I will pick three of your fandoms. You must then update your journal and answer the following questions:

I was given American Gothic, Carnivale and X-Men.

1. What got you into this fandom in the first place?
American Gothic: I got some gift vouchers at work and it was on sale in HMV for a ridiculously low price. I initially confused it with Twin Peaks, resulting in some very weird looks on the way home when I was happily babbling about wee evil dudes in cowboy boots and a friend saying (in a highly offended tone) "Gary Cole isn't wee!" Anyway, I decided to give it a whirl anyway as I love shows about spooky happenings in small towns and it seemed like a win. So I put it on and it's like, HO DUDES THERE IS THIS TOTALLY EVIL SHERIFF DUDE! AND OH MY GOD THERE'S THIS WEE BLONDE DOCTOR WHO'S TOTALLY SNARKY! AND THEY'RE LIKE ENEMIES BUT SECRETLY THEY'RE A BIT GAY FOR EACH OTHER! Also, Caleb was lovely and sympathetic and not at all annoying like most kids on TV, so that was win. But yeah, at first it was the whole Lucas/Doctor Matt thing.
Carnivale: The first season was a present on my birthday - I took it home, watched the first three episodes and was right there the next day getting season two. I loved the opening sequence, I loved Sampson's monologue at the start of episode one, I loved how bleak the whole look and feel of the show was. I also really liked how you couldn't tell which Avatar was the Avatar of Light and which one was the Avatar of Darkness for like... pretty much until the first half of season two, really, although apparently that wasn't intentional. I loved that all the characters had their parts to play - there wasn't anyone there who felt superfluous. I loved Rita Sue because she was tough and smart and kind of a bitch with it. I loved Ben because he was so damaged and so completely without social skills. I loved that you had to think your way through each episode instead of being spoonfed everything.
X-Men: Like most 80s children, my first exposure to it was the cartoon that used to air on Fox Kids. Of course, in my case they seemed to endlessly repeat the Dark Phoenix Saga, which lead me to a) assume that the stories were always about Jean and Scott and b) to really hate Jean and Scott. I did, however, develop a kind of pre-pubescent crush/hero worship thing with Storm and Rogue. I desperately wanted Rogue's hair and beautiful Southern accent, along with Storm's poise and self-assurance and, of course, absolutely kick-ass powers. The first X-Men movie, while a lot of fun and containing plenty of Hugh Jackman in leather - surely the best kind of Hugh Jackman - didn't really bring my adolescent self back into the fold. I was a little busy with Pokemon by then. But then X-Men: Evolution came out and I fell in love. Kurt was so adorable and Pietro was so hilarious and, God, even Scott was semi-likable.

2. Do you think you will stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
American Gothic: It went off the air in like, '96, and it only ran for a single season, so there isn't much of a fandom to speak of. However, if anyone ever wants to squeal with me about how awesome it was, I am more than happy to oblige.
Carnivale: Again, there's not a whole lot in the way of fandom - I do think it's another one of those shows that I'll rewatch over and over and have minor gleefits about, and again, you are all welcome to join me.
X-Men: With Evo having ended a few years ago, that part of the fandom is pretty much dead. I will always love Hugh Jackman in leather, and I do like the Ultimate X-Men comics, but I would say I already have.

3. What are your favorite episodes/books/movies/etc?
American Gothic: To Hell and Back, the Beast Within and the Plague Sower. To Hell and Back is, for all it's ostensibly about Doctor Matt and his wife and daughter, completely gay. The Beast Within is hilarious - I love how totally mean Lucas is about Archie and the prospect of soldiers in the psych ward getting blown up. The others are all like, we have to save Archie! and Lucas is all, "I don't care about that Jarhead!" And then Gail is all, wahh, hundreds of people will die, and Lucas is like, "Yeah, hundreds of crazy people," and it's so mean and heartless and wonderful. I love when Ben refers to his kid's stepfather "the Bionic Man." I love the way Caleb says "I hate you" with such venom in his voice. I love that Doctor Matt punches Lucas and Lucas responds by decking him. Plague Sower is lovely because it showcases what a great kid Caleb is, and the empathy and mercy he feels for the people around him, and the importance he places on love. I liked that it was part of a darker character arc for Merlyn, and I like that Doctor Matt's version of "going mental" mostly involves highlighting everything.
Carnivale: Babylon, because it was fucking terrifying. Over the course of the episode there's this mounting sense of dread that rises to a point where it's almost unbearable - the sense of impending doom is so vivid, it's almost a seperate character in itself. Then there's the scene at the very end, where Sampson sees Dora Mae standing in the window of the bar, and he makes this face that's somewhere between a sob and gagging as if he's about to throw up, and the full horror of it crashes down on you as the credits roll.
X-Men: Survival of the Fittest, purely for that bit where Avalanche and Scott get into it and Lance pushes Scott into the river and Jean's all, "Scott is far too mature to sink to that level" and then Scott (off-camera) fully eye-beams Lance into the water. Joyride, for that scene at the end where Bobby's all, "Yeah, we stole loads of things - the X-Jet, the X-Coptor, Wolverine's motorcycle..." and Wolverine's all like, "My motercycle?!" and Bobby's like, "Ummm bye!" The Hex Factor, for Pietro's girly "Wanda!" scream and for the X-Men getting totally curb-stomped during the battle in the mall. No Good Deed for the random old dude who glomps Todd.

4. Do you participate in this fandom (fan fiction, graphics, discussion, etc.)?
American Gothic: Again, there's not really much by way of fandom, though if it comes up I am right there with the squeeing and the hand-clapping. I am a shockingly bad writer, so a lack of fanfiction from me can only be seen as a good thing.
Carnivale: Again, not much in the way of fandom, although I have read a couple of astoundingly good fics involving Ben'spower and the circumstances that have him shackled in a chain gang before the start of the series.
X-Men: Aside from a little Evo-squealing and leather Jackman appreciation? Not really.

5. Do you think that people should get into this fandom?
American Gothic: YES! You should all watch it and be amazed at it's beautifulness and write lots and lots of fic for me to read.
Carnivale: Oh God yes! Not even for selfish reasons this time, do it for yourselves. Carnivale's a masterpiece. You won't be sorry.
X-Men: I'm certainly not adverse to a little post-X2 Wolverine/Scott porn, or some Logan/Victor action set around the time of the Wolverine movie. If we're talking Evo, let's have some Lance/Pietro and Scott/Kurt action.