The circus featured in Sara Gruen’s Water for elephants trundles its way across an American landscape devastated by the Depression. The appeal of carnivals has always been that they offer an escape from the everyday: a whirl of lights and sweet treats; exotic animals and sideshow freaks; the chance to win a prize or see something magical. Considering that this still has an appeal in an era of modern travel and communications should put into perspective how much excitement they would have caused back in the 1930s.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about fictional carnivals, and the era for this book reminded me of the TV series Carnivale, which is also set in 1930s America. I watched the first series when it was aired, but I missed the second series. Can anyone recommend it? I can borrow it from the library, but if I did want to watch series 2 I would probably watch the first series again (because it’s been a few years) – and I’m wondering, is it worth the time?

I can’t write about fictional carnivals and not mention the malevolent Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show of Ray Bradbury’s Something wicked this way comes. If you haven’t read it you’re missing out on something very wicked indeed. It’s a wonderfully dark coming-of-age story with characters that have haunted me for many years.

I recently read Johannes Cabal the necromancer by Jonathan L Howard. The author acknowledged that he has been hugely influenced by Bradbury’s Shadow Show, crediting the idea of his novel as stemming from speculation on where carnivals of the damned come from (you know, it’s a rainy Wednesday afternoon and you’re lounging around wondering…..hmmm, how do I get my hands on one of those?)

Another extraordinary collection of disturbing fictional freaks can be found between the pages of Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. This seriously bizarre story is told by Olympia, the hunchbacked albino dwarf daughter of carnies Al Binewski and his wife, Crystal Lil, who breed their own freak show through the horrifically simple expedient of Lil taking drugs and exposing herself to other harmful substances while pregnant with Oly and her siblings.

Does anyone have any favourite tales of circuses or carnivals they can recommend?

Hello, there.  My fixation this week is neither animal, vegetable, or mineral.  (By which I  mean fanfiction or anime or manga.)  It’s a television show.

What show, you say?  I thought you’d never ask!  It’s “Carnivale” from HBO, starring a bunch of people you’ve never heard of, and Nick Stahl.  It only got 2 seasons, probably because it is acid-trippingly weird, but it is amazing for all that.  HBO always comes up with the most amazing stuff, and I’ve totally been hooked on the first season all week.  It’s so freaking fascinating.  Magic and apocalypse surrounding a kid in a travelling circus during the Great Depression.  Main themes include tarot cards and the plagues of Egypt from Exodus (that’s the Bible, folks).  No, it’s not supposed to make sense.  Or maybe it is and it’s just going over my head.  Or maybe I just need to watch more . . . Yeah, I’m gonna watch more.  RIGHT NOW.  Goodbye.

Carnivàle

Ah, Carnivàle. The crack in my heart, the tear on my pillow, the cut that never healed. Not because it was a bad show, but because it was the most beautiful show ever made, and was cruelly cut down in its prime by HBO, never to return, and never to fully whisper its secrets into the world’s ungrateful ear.

I know I’m really big on hyperbole – in fact, nobody in the world has ever, ever overused it like me – but in Carnivàle, television has never been more cinematic. It’s hard for movies and TV to find original settings, and there are scant few eras or locales left to plunder, but in Carnivàle’s depression-era dustbowl, they had a backdrop that’s never really been taken advantage of, and when there have been shows with American period settings, they’ve been lifeless family fare like The Waltons or Dr Quinn Medicine Woman. Infusing that with the magical realism of Carnivàle works in the same way that Bear-Lords and supernatural Jack the Rippers do in Victorian London fiction, as it’s a setting distant enough to be slightly mysterious and alien to us, but within the reach of a handful of dead generations. The self-contained world of the travelling carnival gave us a language all of its own – rousties, shaking dust, etc – a self-governing set of codes, and a way of life that doesn’t exist anymore and certainly hasn’t been portrayed onscreen. The attention to detail in bringing this grimy, antiquated setting to life was flawless, and so vivid you could almost feel the sand crunching against your teeth, like those horrible and ill-thought out sandwiches you take to the beach. From the rustic period music to the enormous sets, right down to the costume design that would sometimes clothe hundreds of background artists, every cent of the purported $4m an episode budget was right up there on the screen.

As well as the striking setting, Carnivàle’s mythology was something that, in entertainment circles is rarer than footage of Danny Dyer not acting like a total wanker; a completely new, 100% original concept. How often do you see that? While other genre productions, no matter their quality, jog along the same well-trodden path of vampires, werewolves, zombies, the Mafia, superheroes, space, cowboys or whatever, Carnivàle’s world was one of the richly drawn, fresh concepts of Avatars and Ushers, Vitae Divina and tattooed men, and beings of Light and Darkness. To strengthen that magical realism ambience, and the notion that the age of magic was supplanted by the age of reason when man harnessed the atomic bomb, the mythology weaved itself into real world history like the Knight’s Templar and the A-bomb test at Trinity. It’s the kind of thing Dan Brown would wish he could do in his wildest dreams, if he wasn’t such an unimaginative arse. In spirit, there’s somewhat of a Preacher vibe, with the section where Ben returns home particularly reminiscent of Jesse Custer’s homecoming, but I don’t know if that was intentional, or if a huge Preacher fan like myself is vicariously living out dreams of an HBO adaptation.

"This turns into Christ's flesh, right?"

Every aspect of Carnivàle was a strength, but the greatest of these was one of the single most solid casts ever put together, containing many performances that, had they been in other, lesser shows, would have been stand-out show-stealers, but in Carnivàle were just part of package. Clancy Brown’s Brother Justin, whose true nature doesn’t become apparent to him or us until quite a ways in, is a performance of extraordinary power, and you could argue a very real case for Brother Justin Crowe as the all time greatest bad guy there ever was. Justin evolves hugely from the caring yet silently tortured pastor of the opening episode, trying to find God’s purpose for him through altruistic deeds, but beset by tragedy that brings out brief glimpses of the beast within. As he denies, then finally accepts what really is, and as his true, true nature becomes apparent, Justin becomes monstrously frightening, an overpowering presence, both physically and charismatically. Those moments where he’s putting on his public face, dealing with parishioners and bureaucrats with increasing disregard, he’s at once creepily charming and terrifying, a pinging piano-wire of demonic tension barely keeping himself in check, and threatening to spill out and fuck them all black-eyed into madness, like that poor maid.

In Iris, he has the perfect foil, the puritanical church-marm who, like Justin, is freed from the burden of concealing who she really is, and develops into the sinister, incestuous, stop-at-nothing killer in a church hat that may actually be worse than her brother. On the Carnie side of things, Michael J Anderson’s beautifully nuanced Samson is a performance that you’d never have expected from someone whose biggest role was the backwards talking guy in Twin Peaks. That’s not a slight on him, just on the maddening fact that the guy isn’t getting a ton more work. Samson is the ultimate tough-but-mostly-fair surrogate father of this big, fucked up family, labouring under the burden of having to bow to management’s orders and doing what he can to keep everyone happy, but still with that carnie streak where business is business, and you’ll never know if you’re getting worked. Samson’s “he was my friend” line may be the most heartbreaking of the whole series.

Nick Stahl held up the other end of the story perfectly, bringing out likeability in a character who could easily have veered off into whiny, while you can say the same for Clea DeVall, and it’s one of many tragedies resulting from the cancellation that we’ll never get to see Sofie become her father’s girl, giving DeVall the opportunity to really go to town. Also notable are Patrick Bauchau’s Lodz, who was such a magnetic presence, he almost pick-pocketed the early episodes away from the rest of the cast, Adrienne Barbeau’s Ruthie, centred, strong, but not a finger-snapping “I am a strong, independent woman” cliché, and sexy as all hell, and dependable but broken Jonesey. Robert Knepper followed up with his sleazy Tommy Dolan by routinely being the best thing about otherwise poor hit TV shows, and if there was a comedic centre to the show, it was be Toby “I’m the Wiz!” Huss’s frazzled Stumpy. Speaking of the Cootch family, Mama Cootch was essentially a 1950s teenager’s sketch of what a sexy woman looks like come to life, and eye candy enough to lock you into a metaphorical sugar-coma until 2050. Baby got back and front. So I’m just listing characters again, because they were all so great, but I have to mention Ralph Waite, who spent season two acting under the severe limitations of his character’s stroke, with basically nothing but the eyes through which to convey a myriad of complex emotions and a silent determination to put a stop to the monster he raised. It’s a stunning performance.

Visual representation of my Christmas list

I have this bee in my bonnet (and it is a lovely bonnet) about how we British can’t do TV drama, not for the past couple of decades anyway. Everything’s a variation of a cop show, a medical drama, or a vehicle for whichever soap star has just been poached from the other side. When we do try and do genre stuff, it’s virtually without exception unbelievably cheap looking sub X-Files bollocks. Can you imagine anything like Carnivàle coming out of the UK? Forget about budget, but creatively? I’m sure it’s not the writers, it has to be a problem at the commissioning level. Every great dramatic show of the last fifteen years has come out of the US – mainly HBO – and what was our great red, white and blue hope? Red fucking Riding, a pretentious barrel-load of overused clichés and Victoria Wood style Northern caricatures that the critics and press wanked on about as being revolutionary while blithely ignoring the slapping sound of the emperor’s dick whacking them around the face. Try and imagine if a British channel had made Carnivàle. Go on, picture it – it’d be lit like Emmerdale with Ross Kemp as Brother Justin, Ben played by a twat from Hollyoaks, and James FUCKING Nesbitt as the voice of management.

But I digress. Carnivàle’s pace was something that turned a lot of (lazy, stupid) people off, with the first season the definition of a measured slow-burner, and the two main characters not sharing a scene – barring a short dream sequence – until the tail end of season two. When the Carnivàle finally does show up in Justin’s world, even Johnny Storm’s getting chills. The first episode of the second season answered more questions than the previous twelve hours combined, and the pace suddenly jumped into a thrilling breakneck tempo that, if it were a book, you’d be excitedly turning pages so fast it’d blow your wig off. After the reveals of the mythology and of the characters’ true natures, rewatching the first season feels as though you’re seeing it for the first time, and when you’re clued up, that pace suddenly doesn’t seem so slow anymore.

Despite how amazing it was in every way, and the none-more-blueballing ending, the network decided that the inexplicably dwindling audience just wasn’t big enough to justify the heavy price tag, so we’ll have to make do with the memories (or, you know, the DVDs). Brother Justin’s speech about bankers, politicians and whores, Ben’s encounter with the roadside hunchback, and Mama Cootch pouring water over her spectacular knockers – just like Marilyn, it’s clear that the reason Carnivàle died is because it was just too beautiful to live.

What a day to lose the maid.

A lovely town.  One you must visit, although it’s still not my favorite Italian city.  That spot (so far) is reserved for Verona, just an hour up the autostrada towards Milan.  But other than speeding through Verona, Goddess and I didn’t make it there this trip.  But we will.  Plus, there’s a lot Italy we have to explore.

And a lot of great wine.

So anyway, Goddess and I arrived on a Saturday evening.  After checking into the hotel to find our hotel room very cramped and reeking of cigarette smoke (both typical Italian hotel experiences), we headed off to find some dinner.  We got a recommendation from the lady working the hotel’s front desk and off we went.  We think we found the place that she recommended, mainly because there really weren’t any other options in the small downtown area of Mogliano Veneto.  We arrived “American early”, meaning around 7pm, which is at least an hour or so earlier than anyone else in Europe shows up for dinner.  So we had the place to ourselves. 

The food was good and the wine was better.  Apparently everyone else knew too, because the place filled up quickly after 8pm.  We enjoyed taking our time, but apparently not as much as the wait staff.  Once we were done, we asked three separate people and waited 25 minutes for our bill, even though they kept walking by not very busy.  It actually took us getting up to walk out before they moved.  Funny how that works.

So the next morning we headed off into the city.  Visiting Venice by train is the way to go, since parking VERY expensive (more later) and once you’re in the city, you can’t drive anyway.  So it’s better to get delivered directly to the grand canal with no traffic hassles.  And here’s the welcome:

As you can see, it’s pretty busy, even though it’s only 9am.  The tourists are already bustling around, making the walkways quite crowded.  But not unbearably so.

Goddess and I had rushed out of the house and had left behind my Venice maps from my last visit, which was just over ten years ago.  The beauty of the city is that it couldn’t change that much in ten years.  Sure, the shops may change owners, but the cathedrals, squares and markets would be in the same place.  So we had to buy another map.  At tourist prices.  And that became a recurring theme over the next two days.

Once we got walking, we noticed that there were people running down the alleys, each wearing a race number.  Very odd, considering the large number of tourists.  But these folks were clearly in hurry to get places, so they were definitely racing.  We watched a few and realized that it was an orienteering race.  The folks had their map and compass and would have to pause to get their bearings before taking off again.  It was fun to watch them weave their way through the crowds.  Some even at a pretty brisk run.  And I’m sure they enjoyed the ramps from the Venice Marathon, which was held just two weeks before.  I know those ramps made it easier to get over some of the bridges than actually running up the steps.  Hell, it made it easier for us to walk.

We worked our way to Piazza San Marco, passing canal after canal after canal.  One thing I found interesting was how green the water appeared.  It almost didn’t seem natural.  But it certainly was.  Even out in the open water, it was a different shade of green, but nowhere as bright as within the small canals, framed by the pastel colored buildings.

Once we arrived at the Piazza, we decided it was time to sit down and watch the world go by.  We sat at one of the cafés and ordered our coffees – me a Doppio (double espresso) and Goddess a cappuccino.  The total was €18, which works out to about $27.  Tourist prices. 

At least we got water and a chocolate with it.

But it wasn’t all bad.  We sat for the better part of an hour watching people go by, taking in the view of St Mark’s Basilica and clock tower.  We did what we do best – people watch.  One nice surprise was to see a young Asian couple, newly married, parade out and get their pictures taken in front of many of the buildings. 

Lovely couple.

After a while, we decided to head down along the waterfront.  Outside of the canals, this to me is the best view in Venice.

That’s the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore in the background.  A phenomenal complex that I’ve yet to visit.

So, being the tourists that we are, we decided to do the gondola ride.  If you go, beware that it is not cheap.  Bring the suitcase.  But it’s worth every second.  I’ve spent many hours roaming down side alleys, through doorways and into hidden courtyards.  But this is a completely different view of the city.  At one point our gondolier actually apologized for a jet flying overhead on its approach into the airport; he was upset that it shattered the calm.

But unlike the movies, he never sang for us.

Again, worth every penny.

And those of you who’ve traveled with me know how much I hate doing the touristy things.  I’d rather explore the back alleys.

Which is what Goddess and I did the rest of Sunday, well into the evening.

And we returned Monday.

Monday was definitely different.  The city shifted energies, away from a tourist-focused city to a living, breathing city on Monday.  The markets burst to life, the canals were packed with boat traffic as deliveries were made, and children filled the streets on their way to/from school.  And the tourists were still everywhere.

So we went the other direction.  To the point that the locals were looking at us funny, because it’s pretty obvious when two blonde folks are walking down a back alley in Venice that they aren’t locals.

And we’re better for the experience.

If you subscribe to National Geographic, then you saw this past Augusts’ article “Vanishing Venice”.  A wonderfully well-written, well photographed article (as you’d expect from NG) that delves into the disappearing native Venetian population.  But we caught glimpses of them at every turn.

Plus we got away from the tourist prices.

Believe it or not, this lunch (wine included) cost less than our two coffees in Piazza San Marco.

And we had it the tables all to ourselves along the side of a canal.

It was too cold for the Venetians to come out to take our order.  It was in the mid 60s (Fahrenheit for you snarky comments [you know who you are]).  But we sat out, sans jackets, and enjoyed the lovely day.

Soon it was time to make our way back across the city to look at carnivale masks. 

When I was here in 1999, I found one that I wanted to get Goddess.  We were dating at the time and I wanted to bring her a bit of this part of the world.  So I found the one I wanted to get her, then decided to go out and do some comparison shopping.  When I returned to buy it, the owner had taken her lunch siesta, but had hung the sign that she’d return at 2pm.  Well, 2pm came and went.  By 330pm I had to leave for the airport to catch my flight, which I did without the mask.

So ten years later we were in the store, picking out the ones that she wanted.  She walked out with a few.  All beautiful, including one that’s freaky (to me) when she puts it on.  But those will remain invisible to y’all until we find an opportunity to wear them.

But here’s one that was on the wall.

After that, we headed back to the garage to pick up our car.

Where we needed a suitcase of money to spring it free.

Since we had checked out of our hotel that morning, we couldn’t leave the car in their massive parking lot of four spots.  So we drove it to Venice, full of suitcases, then parked it in one of the towering parking garages at the city entrance that had a flat rate for any amount of time for under twelve hours.  The flat rate was the low, low price of €24 (that’s $36 USD).

From there we did a fine, fine job of getting lost in northern Italy.  But that’s a different story that involves not updating our GPS with new maps since we bought it.

But I won’t tell that here.

Next stop, a few places in Northern Italy (once we figured out where we were).

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BTW, you can click on each of the photos above.  The ones with the borders around them will just take you to a larger version of the image.  The ones with the blue lined borders will take you to my website, where a few other images are loaded.  I’ll be adding more in the coming days.  And if you see one you like, please consider buying it.  I’ve gotta pay for the parking somehow.  ;^)

Several months ago I spent four days in Riverside California on the set of HBO’s Carnival (Christina Aguilera’s video “Hurt” was shot there to). There I shot Carney’s debut music video “Love Me Chase Me” ! The band was awesome, a great bunch oh boys. Evan Rachel Wood stars in the video opposite Reeve Carney as Mr.Green.

Check it out:

Love Me Chase Me – Carney

Here is also a behind the scenes video. This is not the one I am in but that will be released soon! Stay tuned : ).

http://justjared.buzznet.com/2009/11/18/evan-rachel-wood-carney-hit-the-carnival/comment-page-2/#comments

I also have behind the scenes photos they will let me release soon!

That’s me on the dolly in the blue tank top!!!

I blog today as a sick woman… Unfortunately, I got sent home from work ill. However, having spent the day in bed, I feel no better and am now just getting plain bored. On a plus side, it’s allowed me to break open the Mad Men box set I ordered about a month ago. So far, I’m not hugely enamoured. I like it well enough; but the storylines are playing second fiddle to the whole look of the series at the moment.

Joan: my new style icon!

I do love the setting and the costumes of the programme, but apart from Joan, I’m not really loving the characters yet. Also, there is the whole smoking and sexism issue. I know this is a major part of the programme, and the era for that matter, but it’s a little grating at the moment. I feel like I’ve been watching the two episodes I’ve watched so far through a haze of smoke and glass ceilings…

Cigarettes aside, Joan (played by Christina Hendricks) has the most amazing outfits! I just love her whole look, from the red hair to the tight dresses and the fact that she isn’t a size zero is fab. This is definitely a vintage look I would like to emulate, and for once, it’s something I could actually attempt to achieve.  The Mad Men website has a little tool where you can Mad Men yourself.  Here’s my attempt:

 I would actually dress like this all of the time if I could! Really, there’s no reason why I couldn’t do so. I already wear the brooches, much to the amusement of my colleagues and students. I think I might even be starting a brooch revolution. Before I left this morning, one of my students walked in wearing a Hello Kitty brooch on her blazer: wrong brooch, right idea…

I love the green dress that Joan is wearing in this picture – I’d like that for my Christmas do this year, please.

Another retro-set television programme that I am enjoying at the moment is ‘Carnivale’.  It’s set in 1930s America, following around a carnival troupe in the Dust Bowl.  Again, costumes are gorgeous, but this series has a supernatural twist to it that has caught my attention more.  Unfortunately, I’ve been able to watch it on Youtube; furthermore, there’s only the first episode fully uploaded. So my appetite has been whetted but not satisfied with this one. I might have to give in and buy the box set for this as well.

30s fashion in 'Carnivale' - Libby Sue Dreyfuss

There’s a link between ‘Carnivale’ and my next TV programme that I wasn’t aware of until I researched some pictures for this post.

Mulder and Scully

The link between X Files and Carnivale is this: Michael J. Anderson was a guest star on “Humbug,” a 1995 episode of “The X-Files” in which he played a hotel owner who was offended when Mulder mistook him for a carnival worker (the episode was about a town inhabited by a large number of retired or wintering carnies). In “Carnivàle” (2003), Anderson plays the head of a traveling carnival. (Taken from IMDB.com)

Quite a good link between the two, I think. The episode, Humbug, is one of Aidan’s favourites, but it genuinely gave me the creeps!  To be honest, most of the X Files episodes scare me a little bit…

X Files is a more recently set TV programme, but the only one actually produced in its decade.  It wasn’t considered retro at the time, but when you watch it now – wow – I didn’t realise how much fashion had changed since the early Nineties!

There are some truly retro moments in nearly every X Files episode, including: Scully’s reflective, round glasses; the enormous computer in the ‘Ghost in the Machine’; Mulder’s high trousers, the bouffant, unstraightened hair, politically incorrectly named episodes such as ‘Gender Bender’; the pairing of maroon and brown suits with Scully’s red hair… it’s an early Nineties’ extravaganza!

I do want to believe: that one day, I’ll look back at television being produced today and truly appreciate the vintageness of it because it is so set in its era.  It’s difficult to imagine what the defining look of the early 2000s will be.  Reality TV? Celebrity culture? Not sure.  I also want to believe that British television producers are seeing the success of shows such as ‘Carnivale’ and ‘Mad Men’ and are thinking about creating something vintage for British TV.

For now, I’ll content myself with watching my ‘Mad Men’ boxset; though hopefully I won’t be ill everytime I do so. Just had to mention it again for another picture of Joan’s dress:

Ahí va mi primera propuesta para el proyecto:

Este nuevo documento contiene la cabecera definitiva y modificada y las secciones reestructuradas.

I’m having a little photo event Thursday, Nov 19th.  Details on flier.  All are welcome! Drinks will be served!! I know people like to come to events where there are drinks.  Laser Touch is sponsoring the space.  Really nice spot in Soho.  Free consultation will be available by Laser Touch.  Hope to see everyone there!

Location: 150 Spring Street/2nd Floor, Soho

Time: 7:30 to 10:00 pm

Segunda y última entrada, al menos por ahora, de esta entrada que empecé el otro día, y que habla de esas series que debería ver y no me apetece, a las cuales yo las agrupo bajo el epígrafe de “Uff, qué pereza”. Se trata de esas series tan aclamadas por crítica y blogueros, que generalmente proceden de canales de cable, sobre todo de cable premium y para más señas de la HBO, pero que a mí se me hace muy cuesta arriba ponerme a visionarlas, y que no le encuentro ningún elemento que llame un ápice mi atención.

Mad men. Según las críticas, lo mejor que se ha hecho últimamente. Lleva incontables premios y por lo poco que he visto he de reconocer que tiene una factura intachable y se ve que el producto es muy bueno. Pero el tema no me llama nada ¿publicistas, años 20? Uff, que pereza. Me da la misma pereza que ante una magnífica película antigua (más si es en blanco y negro), que piensas “sí, sé que debería verla y algún día lo haré, pero hoy me apetece algo más ligero”. Esta está entre las que algún día veré y sé que probablemente me gustará, pero me cuesta horrores dar el paso.

Buffy, cazavampiros. Dicen que tras su apariencia chorra de instituto se esconde una serie que va mucho más allá. El humor de Whedon dicen que es magnífico y muchas listas posicionan la serie como una de las mejores de la historia. Incluso tengo una amiga que es la mayor fan de la serie y no para de recomendármela. Pero reconozcámoslo, los inicios de Buffy son muy duros para ponerse ahora con ellos. Empezando porque la primera temporada es ya muy vieja y el lenguaje televisivo ha evolucionado en este tiempo, porque las primeras temporadas no son las mejores, y porque daña la vista verles con los pantalones subidos hasta el ombligo. Algún día la veré, y cuando pasé el trance inicial la disfrutaré, pero hasta entonces, ¡Uff, qué pereza!

Carnivale. Cuando leí sobre ella me parecía interesante. Una serie sobre un extraño circo ambulante antiguo bastante oscuro. Pero una vez más, con la HBO hemos topado. El piloto me pareció lento, aburrido y pretencioso. Me costó acabarlo, por favor, Uff, qué pereza me dio seguir con ella. Si a eso le añadimos que leí que la serie fue cancelada sin tener un final cerrado, las ganas de verla disminuyen hasta casi sacarla de mi lista de series por ver.

Studio 60. Con esta serie me pasa al revés que con muchas. Una serie sobre televisión con Mathew Perry son dos alicientes que me motivaban a verla. Pero tras ver los dos primeros capítulos pensé “Uff, qué pereza”. Todo muy serio, muy cultureta y poco televisivo, y sobre todo, con una fotografía pseudo-cinematográfica en sepia que aburre hasta las ovejas. ¡Qué aprendan de Tina Fey y compañía!

Friday Night Lights. Todo el mundo la pone por las nubes pero, ¿una serie sobre deporte? ¿sobre futbol americano? ¡Uff, qué pereza! De verdad que con esos reclamos no me van a pillar. Sé que detrás de los partidos habrá un drama, con sus familias, amoríos, y tal, pero me dan la impresión de que también me van a meter la moralina americana de la superación, conseguir las metas, U-ESE-Á y las barras y las estrellas. Y no me apetece. Además, por lo poco que he visto, no me agrada la realización que usan tipo independiente con cámara al hombro y demás.

Aquí terminan las series que para mí están catalogadas como “Uff, qué pereza”. No obstante no cierro la puerta a nuevas adquisiciones y tal vez habrá alguna más que ahora no recuerde.

I have been neglecting my blog ever since this quarter of grad school started. Which I regret. I have rehearsal in less than an hour for “click here 4 slideshow or 6-8 character limit,” the piece previously entitled “3 boys & an old prophetess,” to be premiered in a couple of weeks in Anthro(pop)ology II at Columbus Dance Theater downtown. The piece is devastatingly beautiful, and rocking with pop culture. This is one project on which I am working, and hopefully in the next half hour I will have time to share some info about a few other things I’ve been doing.

I am creating a new piece right now with three amazing dancers (Erik Abbott-Main, Eric Falck, and Amanda Platt). I feel like I hardly know what to say about this piece yet. The creative process is very different than anything I have ever made before. It reminds me modes of approach that we explored in a “creative processes” course with Bebe Miller in the spring. In the spring this way of working was so foreign, and frankly frustrating. It has to do with pursuing points of interesting, interrogating those interests through exploration, and spending time with a thing to discover what it is rather than starting out with a concept to materialize. In a previous post I detailed the list of interests in between which this piece is evolving. Rehearsal have involved exploring some Butoh, enacting KNOW(TOUCH)ME(YOU)(MY/YOUR BODY), a piece I designed last year intended to privilege the body as the site of identity and interpersonal knowledge, learning and repeating movement material, discussions, writing exercises, degrees of undressing, watching video clips (Uma Thurman’s way of moving in Kill Bill vol. 2, a kind of snapping wispy-ness, the cooch dancers in Carnivale, a kind of disinterested, detached, and almost clumsy attempt at sexy, and the angry crowd of men watching Jenny strip at the end of season 2 of The L Word, my source material for escalating angry gestures, the kind that are demanding intimacy; all of these have shades of movement interest that relate to the movement I’ve been generating for the piece.)

If there is an idea or concept about which the piece seems to be orbiting, it is “getting inside who one another are,” through movement material (by learning my movement the other dancers in the piece are accessing something of my identity), by biting (coming from my interest in the vampire craze in pop culture, but also relating to a forceful entry, and welcome intrusion), undressing/being undressed/perhaps redressing in someone else’s clothes or literally getting inside their clothes with them, writing and reading (personal body histories adapted from Andrea Olsen’s Body Stories, and answering a series of questions offered below), etc.

Some of the questions we’ve answered and shared with on another (maybe you would like to answer them and post them as a comment, contributing to creative research?):

“My body is _____.”

“Sex is _____.”

“A man is _____.”

“A woman is _____.”

“I am ashamed of _____.”

Describe when you were most happy, or a memory of a time when you were truly happy.

Finally, I can offer a video clip of our progress. It is a rough cut, mainly for our own purposes of seeing and analyzing the movement, but I offer it as further insight into what is being made. Enjoy:

We had a fantastic game on Friday and I want to thank everyone for coming out to our largest Mage game yet. There are a couple things I want to throw out there in case anyone is actually reading this.

1. This is the official end of the 6th month of games. In that time we’ve run 18 games, 4 social events and changed venues. We’ve added 8 players in that time that weren’t here at the original launch party. Thank you all for your time and your commitment to seeing this shared story we’re all working on.

2. We don’t have a Player of the Month yet for September, or October. So we’re doing the old double up. There will be two PoM elected for October. As people are nominated they will be added here. If no one else is nominated these two win.

Eric Zelasko

John Sita.

E-mail me to change this.

3. PRE-REG for the damn tournament.

Much love,

Christopher

sadece 2 sezon

Because I have neglected my blog since this Autumn quarter started, I feel the need to offer a quick update on thoughts/ideas/creative activity/etc. It will hardly be comprehensive, but I need to take a break from reading; blogging will be my break.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to take a Butoh class with Marianne Kim. It was amazing. it was the most pleasure I have taken in movement in years. I’ll confess, directly after the class, I wanted to drop out of grad school and just go do Butoh somewhere. This is of course not what I’ll be doing, but it did reawaken a need for that way of moving in my life. I’m not sure how that will affect my physical practice, my choreography, or my research . . . but Butoh has been essential to my evolution as a dance artist, and it feels like it is time to return to that “movement home.” I’m not yet sure what that will be.

Last week I started working on a new trio (maybe a quartet if I dance in the piece; I haven’t yet decided). It is one of the most ambiguous works of choreography on which I have ever embarked. I don’t yet know what it is going to be or even what I want it to be; I simply have a field of disparate interests, and this piece is forming somewhere in between those interests (it’s always about the in-between). I feel now that Creative Processes with Bebe Miller in the spring affected me more profoundly than I could have been aware of at the time. I have never just gone into a studio with a cast to see what happens; I always have a plan, an idea of what the piece will be, and even if I deviate from that plan, I have the fundamental structure as my anchor; that is not how I am working with this piece. I began by casting the piece; the cast went through several evolutions. As of now it is comprised of: Erik Abbottmain, Eric Falck, and Amanda Platt (plus myself). I generated several movement phrases. I listed my interests and shared that list with the cast. it included:
-the cooch dancers in the HBO show Carnivale
-the cultural fascination with vampires, with biting, the sexiness of it, the tension between predator and willing prey, the possible relationship to rape fantasies
-Undressing/Redressing; the actual body v. the socially presentable body (many of these ideas I began to explore in the solo I performed in 60×60)
-How we know one another, how we “get inside” who one another are
-Getting inside one another’s clothes (a metaphorical action)
-KNOW(TOUCH)ME(YOU)(MY/YOUR BODY)
-My larger research interests concerning the constitution/negotiation of identity as the body, the extension of identity in the generation of movement material, the intimate act of choreography in which the movement material (extension of the choreographer’s identity) is transmitted to the body of the dancer and integrated into her own corporeal/kinesthetic identity

I don’t know where this piece is going yet. For this week, we will likely engage in KNOW(TOUCH)ME(YOU)(MY/YOUR BODY); we might try biting one another; I may teach more movement material, and we will review the material we learned last week. The existing movement material is dance-y and a little vulgar; there are choreographed facial expressions (this is likely influx from my History, Theory, Literature of the Analysis of Movement course; we’re looking at Delsatean systems of theory and training; more on this below).

This course (HTLAM: The History, Theory, and Literature of the Analysis of Movement) is a core Ph.D. course in the department. More than anything, the meta-inquiry of the course is, “How do we find movement meaningful, and what are we looking at in order to apprehend that meaning?” We began doing readings in phenomenology, then into analysis of movement for meaning (work by Paul Ekman, David Abram, Charles Darwin, John Martin, etc.) Now we are looking at Delsarte and his theories about the meaning of the body (this is what I am reading about tonight). I am already starting to consider my potential final paper topics. I am thinking about something like: the construction of female identity through Delsarte, compared/contrasted with female identity as constructed through contemporary lesbian dance club practices. Both evolved in primarily homo-social settings but exist(ed) in social structures driven mostly by male power/dominance. I’m not sure yet, but that’s the direction I’m considering.

I finally saw a video of the piece I co-choreographed last year (I supplied a libretto that was the interpreted into choreography) with Audrey Lowry called “Observing Solitude.” I am not yet prepared to write a description/analysis of the piece, or even describe my experience of it beyond simple, stunning beauty. I was very pleased.

I am still in rehearsals with CoCo Loupe, preparing for Anthro(pop)ology II, the piece now entitled “click here for slideshow or 6-12 character limit.” Here is CoCo’s blurb about the piece:

“cocoloupedance will be premiering click here for slideshow or 6-12 character limit. Choreographer CoCo Loupe has structurally designed this piece to metaphorically resemble an internet slideshow. Composed of interconnected (still-framed, slideshow-like) solos, duets and trios danced by Eric Falck, Jeff Fouch, and Michael J. Morris, this work examines the kind of dehumanizing social fragmentation that results from overwhelming over exposure to current trends in rapidly developing technology and mass mediation. CoCo Loupe will sit “in a cafe” on stage and engage in blogging, texting, emailing, and tweeting activities directly related to the performance. Her real-time computer interactions will be projected on a screen in such a way as to question what it means to interact socially in today’s touch screen (rather than touch each other) world.

For more information about cocoloupedance or CoCo Loupe, visit http://www.cocoloupedance.com/“

I am writing a grant right now to hopefully travel to San Francisco in December to view/review a show or prints by Love Art Lab at Femina Potens Gallery, and to interview Annie and Beth about their work. Here is my working “project description”:

“I am requesting funding for travel and lodging in order to interview performance and mutli-media artists Annie M. Sprinkle and Elizabeth M. Stephens—who together make up the artist couple Love Art Laboratory—and have the opportunity to experience an exhibition of their work entitled “Sexecology Solo Exhibition” at Femina Potens Gallery in San Francisco. While Sprinkle and Stephens are not specifically identified as dance artists, I find the work of the Love Art Lab to have profound implications for politics surrounding the body, the emergence of progressive physical cultures, and the body as the site for sexual, ecological, and political activism, all of which are relevant conceptual situations for the evolving field of dance. These ideas are expressed and explored through their performance work, including their annual performance weddings, various gallery and alternative space performance installations, and theatrical stage productions, as well as their photography, paintings, and prints.

In addition to the relevance of their work to issues surrounding the body, I am also interested in interviewing Sprinkle and Stephens about their integrated art-and-life practices and the concept of sustainable practices in arts professions. In my analysis of their work, the Love Art Lab seems to produce work that functions not only as their profession, but also as an expression of their personal relationship, their sexuality and sexual identities, their creative interests, their politics and activism, and their ecological concerns. I am interested in hearing them speak on these subjects, and how integrated life/art practices contribute to personal sustainability. I feel that Sprinkle and Stephens may in fact be authorities on these subjects, and there exists very little critical writing about their work as Love Art Laboratory.

It is my intention to review the show of prints at Femina Potens, potentially for publication, and also generate critical writing surrounding their work and the issues discussed above, also potentially for publication or conference presentation. I feel that I have exhausted the limited literature that has been produced about the work of Love Art Laboratory, and I believe there to be value to expanding critical dialogue surrounding their work by contributing to the existing literature. I have yet to have a first-hand encounter with Love Art Laboratory’s work, basis my understanding and limited analysis on existing literature and web documentation of the work. Having the opportunity to experience Sprinkle, Stephens, and their work first-hand would profoundly enhance my ability to write critically about the work, and its relevance to issues that concern both the field of dance and art practices as a whole.”

It’s a draft. it will probably evolve. But it offers a sense of something I am working on/towards.

And that’s all I have time for. That’s my brief offering about my creative life.

“I’m gonna find God.”

“God.”

“Yes.”

“God.”

“Yes. He isn’t in heaven, he has to be somewhere.”

“Try New Mexico, I hear he’s on a tortilla.”

“No, he’s not on any flat bread.”

If you’ve been watching Supernatural Season 5 (and if you haven’t then you’re an idiot) recently, either on tv or online as I have been forced to due to the arbitrary bastard nature of delayed British releases of US tv shows, then you’ll have noticed the narrative arc has taken a distinctly religious turn. Moving beyond the typical supernatural fare of demons and monsters, the angels and humans are now on a full on quest to find Him, the big G.

His presence has been cautiously hinted at throughout the series (a programme premised on the supernatural could hardly ignore the biggest supernatural entity of them all) even before the angels showed up in season 4, and now finally the man Himself is being hunted down by his discontent and feuding creations.

This thrilling and also slightly ominous prospect of an actual glimpse of God begs some serious questions of the audience. For starters, do we actually even want to see God? How would he be portrayed? Would he be Alanis Morrisette? Would he be empathetic? Would he be to blame? Would he be seriously pissed off? So many possibilities for the writers, we can only sit and wait to see how their imaginings of the divine head honcho unfold. They have taken a bold step to say the least in invoking Him as a potential character, or even as a potential material presence.

But the Supernatural writers are not the only ones grappling with the enormous responsibility of invoking God as a cast member. In fact there appear to me more and more American tv dramas dabbling in religious narrative arcs. Joan of Arcadia, Wonderfalls, Carnivale, Tru Calling, Saving Grace, Pushing Daisies, Reaper, Battlestar Gallactica – the list goes on.

Is there something in the fact that all of these tv series are American? Possibly it’s the simple fact that because America makes a lot of tv programmes it will logically have larger selection of similar themed programmes. It would be extremely lazy to just accuse the American quality television industry of bible thumping. We Brits make a lot of soap operas after all, and it’s not because we all live in the economically deprived back streets of cities, drinking in grotty local pubs, shopping at the market, and shagging the neighbours for all their worth.

Not most of us anyway.

And what does it say about us, that these tv shows are just as popular in our own countries, some even more so, than they are on their home turf? Did we ask for these shows? Or are we being coached by a malign evangelical force at the top of the tv production ladder? Conspiracy theorists and anthropologists: feel free to step in at any time. Is the rise of ‘Islamic extremism’ and the militarism of ‘Asian values’ making us all rethink our slack Western agnosticism and our arrogant atheism?

Is the religious quest the new front in the war on terror?

Will finding our faiths again make us less terrified?

Is tv the new pulpit?

Is that all a load of bollox and entertainment is just entertainment?

You have to wonder though, why there are no western tv programmes involving Buddah, Moses, Muhammad, or any other denomination for that matter. The west does seem, for all its cultural and religious pluralism, to be rather preoccupied with Christianity. Still. Maybe it’s time we all stopped trying to kid ourselves that we’re a secular culture when our entire civilisation is built on the foundations of our Christian heritage. It’s like trying to deny your parents are your parents. You might not like them, but you kind of sort of owe them your existence.

Our loss of faith has been a relatively fast one. Over the last sixty years, religion has taken a back seat for the general western population (who don’t live in the American mid-west), church attendence has dwindled to next to nothing compared to the levels of our grandparents’ days, and young people today would not be seen dead in a church. Except for their own funerals – ah you know what I mean. How many people under the age of 30 do you know who go to church regularly or even irregularly? Two or three? There was a boost when the Poles came, but their goals are mostly to return to Poland – depite what the BNP would have you believe – so what then?

What has the rejection of God actually gotten us?

Society is in the shitter, we all know this, but does it have anything to do with the absence of a moral force in our lives? We claim we are intelligent enough to make our own moral decisions without religion to arbitrarily tell us how to behave, but isn’t that confidence just astonishingly arrogant? Do we really think we can be trusted to our own devices without the fear of an omnipotent power watching us and judging us? Without the fear of a punishment for our transgressions in the afterlife, even if we get away with it in life? Can we really get our heads around the notion that evil people escape when they die, because there is no Hell? Can we really deal with the horrifying, terrifying idea that death really is like dreamless sleep – absolutely nothing.

I’m sorry, but it’s not shameful to have faith considering the yawning abyss that is the alternative. In fact, faith is the natural human condition. We have always worshipped, even when we were hunting and gathering and chasing wilderbeasts we worshipped. Who the hell do we think we are to claim we can just throw all that away? Bloody arrogant, that’s what. And bloody stupid.

Maybe these tv shows are proof that we haven’t thrown the baby of faith out with the bathwater of organised religion. We don’t need to go to church to have faith. It’s our actions, and our attitudes, and the moral codes we live by that define our faiths, not thumping great tombs of antiquated fairytales. The west shouldn’t be ashamed of the presence of Christianity in its popular culture, it should be proud of it, especially in comparison to other religious cultures which are so terrified of themselves they can’t even draw their own prophets, let alone put them in musicals in a nappy.

I think God probarbly had a good laugh when he saw Jerry Springer the Musical. And that’s the beauty of faith. God is what you and you alone believe it/him/them to be, and no one else can tell you otherwise, which is why it is so important to explore, parody, criticise and expose religion in popular culture, whether in books like the Satanic Verses, in theatre like Jerry Springer, or in tv series like Supernatural.

It’s the day we start trying to censor our faiths that we really need to worry about.

Como no podía ser de otra forma la serie televisiva que más he disfrutado nunca ha sido Carnivàle. Producida por HBO, creada por Daniel Knauf y situada en la depresión del 29 en el sur de EEUU, tiene una estética evocadora que paladeé con placer semi-ascético -elemental teniendo en cuenta mis raíces-: feria ambulante, fenómenos nómadas, situaciones paranomales, personajes extraordinarios… orgasmé con su exquisita ambientación retro-decadente, la veneré como hice en su día con Freaks (La parada de los monstruos) de Tod Browning (1932) y le perdoné su ritmo exasperantemente lento en ocasiones porque estoy acostumbrada a que las buenas historias, las deliciosas, se cuezan a fuego lento en el puchero de la abuela.

Mantiene el interés y el misterio capítulo a capítulo como el amor extraordinario, ¿serie de terror? yo no lo diría, aunque lo dicen, y lo mal-dicen, es lo que pasa al alejarse del mainstream y personificar al demonio en la piel de un sacerdote que fue un inmortal de cuello grapado (cómo me pone el fornido Clancy Brown! qué favor le hacía con la sotana puesta y todo!). ¿Carnivàle esperpento? Sí, pero como dulcísimo halago,  como luz de bohemia que alumbraba mis noches con su oscuridad y su lirismo…

La defendí a ultranza, con vehemencia de fundamentalista, siempre que se  cruzaba un injusto detractor a mi paso; y lloré su cancelación en la segunda temporada por falta de adeptos y de rentabilidad, a lágrima viva, a chorros, como un cacuy o un cocodrilo, con la nariz, las rodillas, el ombligo y la boca, de frac, de flato, de flacura, la lloré como Oliverio Girondo, como María Magdalena, como una niña lóbrega de gustos insólitos.

Pero claro, es mucho mejor ver a las putas lesbianas verduleras del Gran Hermano, eso es lo que vende.

Hasta la presentación era una obra de arte.

Página de Carnivàle en HBO

I heart Carnies!!

Oh how the mighty have fallen!  The once ubiqitous Heroes premiered this week with barely a whimper in the media.  And while I’ve been very disenchanted with the show for awhile, except HGF alum Zachery Quinto, I was still willing to give it another chance.  And what do they bring out to try and resurrect flagging interest?  Carnies!  Super Carnies!  Which got me reminiscing about the HBO Series Carnivale.  Which is ironic on a couple of levels.  First, a good friend and I had been talking just last weekend about the show, trying to explain it to his wife as a weirder, meaner version of Twin Peaks.  Which is doubly ironic considering last week’s HGF alum Kyle MacLachlan.  And did I mention Michael J. Anderson who played the dwarf in Twin Peak’s Black Lodge plays the manager of the carnival?

All of this circuitous musing aside, Carnivale was a perfect fit for cable in its dark, brooding, epic feel.  It’s been tried before on television and usually comes out poorly or poorly supported.  And in the end, that was the demise of Carnivale as well, its carnie creepiness even too much for HBO, who cut its six season run short by four seasons.  But it did give us almost two perfect seasons of biblical weird, the battle of dark and light played out in the blowing sands and starkness of the Great Depression, a time of desperation, where souls got lost as well as entire towns.

The basic premise follows the traveling troupe trying to make their way through the carnival circuit.  From the very beginning, we are told about the two opposing forces and introduced to the strange trailer holding a hidden voice that directs carnival manager Samson to help an escaped fugitive farm boy, played expertly by Nick Stahl.   This farm boy has known he’s special and fights to both hide and understand his abilities and his dreams of a dark future.  That future seems inexplicably bound to a flawed and potentially evil California preacher played by one of my favs, Clancy Brown.  As the preacher struggles with his flock , he discovers he has certain abilities and prophetic dreams that drive him down his path.

One of the best ensemble casts ever put together, the stories weave about in uncertain ambles, taking you down dark places and daring you to look away.  Anchored against the vast darkness by hints of the goodness and pettiness of the everyday relationships within the troupe and town, Carnivale doesn’t quite reach its destination with its abrupt cancellation.  Sad especially when HBO seems determined to stop anyone else from finishing off this would-be masterpiece.  But there’s enough wonder and shudder in what remains to keep you guessing and marveling and the uniqueness that is this traveling show.

Check out both seasons of HBO’s Carnivale on DVD.   And don’t worry if you need to keep the light on afterwards.

TV has for the most part lost its way. With all TV companies making cut backs as well as the fact you no longer have 4 major channels but about 800 low quality ones it seems the day of the high quality TV show are coming to an end. Sure we still get high budget shows like Lost but high budget and high quality are two very different things.

I thought tonight I’d list a few old and new shows worth checking out, not just because their enjoyable, but because their well put together. I hope you’ll find something you enjoy in this list, I’ve loved each one of them at some point.

1. Life
Life is one of those shows that starts off seeming like it’ll be boring, but before you know it you’ve wasted a day watching a whole season and somewhere in that time you fall in love with the cast and world around them.

The show suffers from some floors, it lags from time to time and the introduction of a new detective in season 2 although logical did feel wrong.

Sadly the show isn’t coming back for a third season even though there is a lot of unanswered questions but season two ends in a way which lets you make up the ending for yourself but not in a way which leaves the gate wide open and just makes you think the writers were lazy.

Well worth a watch!

MORE ABOUT LIFE HERE
BUY SEASON 1 HERE & SEASON 2 HERE

2. Fringe
A lot of people have referred to Fringe as X-Files for this generation, and although I can see where they are coming from I’d have to disagree because where X-Files pretty much obsessed over aliens as much as one of its main characters Fringe looks at man made oddities and has a much darker feel to it because although it was creepy how X-Files set out a world of dark and sometimes evil government departments and agents Fringe focuses on companies and people gone rogue and thus feels like it’s closer to our world than that of government black ops.

The show is very well put together with a strong cast, none of which feel shoe-horned into the show. Admittedly it feels like some of the characters can do too much (probably to keep down the number of cast members as there are quite a few) and only bring it up at convenient times (kinda like when kids play super heroes and there’s always one kid who has all the powers) but little hiccups like this can be over looked by some high quality acting from almost everyone.

Admittedly I find it hard to like the main character of the show, shes a bit too cold but her supporting cast are a mix of lovable and dark characters who balance out her coldness.

Good show and it’s just entered Season 2!

MORE ABOUT FRINGE HERE
BUY SEASON 1 HERE

3. Carnivale
A dark and twisted show which takes place in the frontier times of ye old America. The show pits good against evil but it’s almost impossible to tell who’s truly good and evil. The show is deep and complex with a passion for creeping out the view.

The shows cast is huge and each character has a personality of its own, even the smallest roles feel well written and always seem to have a purpose.

The show ran for two seasons before sadly the budget to make it became too much for the production company to afford, as much of a shame as it is, it’s also a sign of quality. The creators would rather let the show end than try to sell us something less than their image of perfect, it was also not axed due to lack of viewers. It went out as high quality as it started and theirs something nice about that.

MORE ABOUT CARNIVALE HERE
BUY SEASON 1 HERE & SEASON 2 HERE

4.Firefly
As much of a sci-fi fan as I am, I’ve never been into the space based sci-fi like Startreck and Starwars, that is until I watched Firefly. The show has a strong earthly feel to it as much as it is a space based story because every planet they land on feels very much like a western world. Because the story mostly focuses around a group of smugglers who do their business in the poor areas of the universe your not constantly bombarded with hover cars or laser guns (even the guns look old). Also this isn’t some kind of alien world, this is a future where humanity has just expanded out past Earth and thus you wont see any aliens walking around in the back ground which is a nice change for this kind of show.

The cast in the show are as different from each other as can be and this is nice because it means everyone at some point or other clashes and this gives the writers a chance to show us the other side of even the calmest of the crew.

The most interesting character though is a girl who’s lost her mind called River. Shes the key to the whole shows plot and you never quite find out whats going on in her head which is quite enjoyable because it isn’t like Lost that leaves you guessing everything, instead it’s just one small unknown which over time explains it’s self.

Sadly the show got axed very soon in (I’m not even sure if season 1 is actually the originally planned full season), this was due to the show being aired in the wrong order causing viewers to dislike it.

A little while after the movie Serenity came out funded by the fans of the TV show, the plan was to wrap up the whole thing in one go. A nice idea but in the movie a lot of the characters because unpleasant and they pretty much point blank told us stuff which you can tell was ment to be explained over seasons. It didn’t feel right and I along with a lot of other people would like to pretend that Firefly didn’t end that way.

Never the less the show is very very good and well worth a watch if your into sci-fi. It may even be worth a look if your just into westerns, hell even if your into nether it’s still a good show!

MORE ABOUT FIREFLY HERE
BUY SEASON 1 HERE

5. Bored To Death
This show has only just begun on HBO but already it has won me over. The story behind it is simple and kinda sweet. The characters are a mix of loveable and down right insane, and the music is perfect too (only this, Scrubs and Life have ever won me over on Music alone). The main character feels like someone we can all identify with in some way and if not you’ll find someone in the supporting cast who you can identify with anyway.

The only issue I have with Board to Death currently is how simple the cases are solved, although I am only 2 episodes in so I’m sure it’s building up to something big. At the same time being only 2 episodes in the show could turn out to suck in the long run, if so I apologise, but right now it seems good and fingers crossed it’ll continue to be so!

MORE ABOUT BORED TO DEATH HERE

I started this blog with the intention of posting regular updates on on the creepy, halloweenie new stuff I know of or encounter as the season of falling leaves and horror movies approach…. Instead, I’ve been sidelined by work, unexpected foot surgery (minor but debilitating) and more work/life issues and changes. SO – this post is an effort to get me back on track.

So over the last few months of stress and trauma, I’ve been treating myself to revisiting my boxed set of the Carnivale series originally aired on HBO a couple of years ago. Only living two seasons, Carnivale is an incarnation of all things I love – creepy, symbolic, filled with great, fulled-developed characters with incredible flaws, carnies and carnality, human oddities, an epic battle between good and evil, and mysticism. It’s all set (you guessed it) within the lives of a carnival troupe, their hangers-on and an evil (?) preacher a la Night of The Hunter meets The Exorcist during the The Great Depression.

Slightly Victorian, very dark, deep and completely engrossing – Carnivale is a must for fans of Ray Bradbury, David Lynch, Cormac McCarthy, Patrick McGrath, Tim Burton, the Coens and Elias Merhinge.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be making more suggestions on October-esque viewing and reading. But rent Carnival and pick up a copy of Bradbury’s October Country to get yourself set for the season.