Respect Authority

Before my morning coffee.

Sometimes, when I’m not letting the television’s warm rays actively melt my brain, I read books. No seriously, I do.

In fact, my love of the written word at the very least equals my love of the idiot box, and may even in fact surpass it. So it stands to reason that I’ve devoted no small amount of time to the consideration of what type of book I would write, given the opportunity, motivation and lots of Adderall.

The answer? The money-making kind. And what kind is that? Well since I don’t have the patience to research my way through a Paris-based mystery involving washed-up professors discovering ancient mythological secrets that create worldwide controversy – I’d settle for the next best thing: vampires.

Indeed, a recent analysis conducted by me in my own apartment yields these findings: I have read no less than eighteen books about vampires in the last year. Eighteen. At the current rate, I’m well on my way to achieving a “one vampire book per month” frequency, which I’m pretty sure is the point at which it would be socially acceptable to label me a loser. Read More ›

"What's my line?"

Television, the one place in which the Golden Globes isn’t a primer for the Academy Awards (rather, just a reprisal of the Emmys), dropped a handful of strong candidates into the pile this year, a welcome reprieve from a far more dismal performance on the cinematic side of things. Indeed, while best movie nominees seemed to all have come in the last months of the year (some hadn’t even been released yet), TV has provided no shortage of potential candidates, particularly with the advent of phenomenal HBO programming. So I was far from surprised to see True Blood’s various nominations – except one.

Anna Paquin, for whom my undying hatred is no secret, was actually nominated for best actress in a television drama, and against all odds – in fact, against all that is right in the world – she won. Let’s repeat: Anna “I bat my eyes and that’s how I act, that’s acting” Paquin actually won a Golden Globe for her performance as a vampire-fucking mind-reading moron on HBO’s True Blood. The show itself lost in the best television drama category to AMC’s Mad Men, which as far as I can tell is pretty much entirely about hair gel and smoking in the office.

Who did she beat, you ask? The corpses on Dexter? The weed in Weeds?

No, actually Paquin seems to have elbowed out some legitimate competition. Sally Field’s performance in ABC’s Brothers and Sisters was nominated and although I’ve never seen – and never plan to see – that show, Sally Field is legit. She played Abby’s crazy mother on ER, and Forrest Gump’s mother, and the thoroughly duped mom on Mrs. Doubtfire, so I have very little doubt about her ability to play a mother better than Paquin plays a 20-something Southern telepath. Mad Men’s January Jones was also nominated, as was Kyra Sedgwick for The Closer. Considering Mad Men took the win for best show, and The Closer seems to have resonated with CSI fans and other people over the age of 45, I’d be surprised if either woman gave an awful performance.

And finally, in the ultimate act of Golden Globe betrayal, Paquin beat out SVU maven Mariska Hargitay, I have to imagine only because fighting vampires is at least mildly more dangerous than fighting serial rapists. Fine, Golden Globes, fine. But if Mariska starred in a show about fighting serial vampire rapists, she would have had this in the bag.

With the first season of HBO’s True Blood about to end, it’s high time I said what’s been on my mind for the last eight or so weeks: Anna Paquin is a terrible actress.

It took a solid five episodes for True Blood to become a must-watch show for me. Although I was enthralled with the plot from the beginning — it’s set in modern-day Louisiana except vampires have revealed themselves to society demanding equal treatment and after the invention of synthetic blood that they can drink to ‘mainstream’ amongst humans — the show’s execution is uniquely stylized, much as all HBO shows are, and it took a handful of episodes to really understand and accept True Blood’s eccentricities. Read More ›

Remember a few years ago when everyone was into pirates? Pop culture messiah Chuck Klosterman wrote on the subject in 2004, and made the kind of insightful points I wouldn’t have been able to think of my own, let alone write down. But Klosterman’s basic point was this: People love free music, music is made free by theft, and pirates are THE representation of thieving things that should be free. Essentially, pirate ships were the world’s first Napster.

Since the Pirate Renaissance of 2004, not much has changed: we’re still at war, the James Bond franchise continues to pump out movies, and there are no flying cars. But the obsession with pirates has slowly faded, perhaps as iTunes made it semi-logical to pay for music again (Would a pirate buy rum for 99 cents a jug? Methinks not). Instead, the once-popular pirate, epitomized by people like Johnny Depp and David Cross, has been replaced by longstanding villain and Halloween competitor The Vampire.
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