Category Archives: Chicks Yesterday

Headphones.

Posted by Maria Diaz & Marco Sparks on

An introduction: Months ago the amazing Maria and I had this little chat, and like most of our chats, it started off most interestingly…

Maria Diaz: Hey…

Marco Sparks: What an interesting video. That man stabbed himself in the chest! Multiple times! That is some serious follow through.
MD: Huh? Oh, I sent you the wrong one. But i do love that song. Look at this:
:) and…
:)
Marco: Oh man, that song.
MD: This one is better:
Marco: I just remember hearing it one night, late at night when I was homeless and living with a friend, and I remember loving the song. It’s a tired complaint, I know, but this was back when VH1 and MTV still played… sigh… music videos.
MD: Which one, the Nine Days one? Or Vertical Horizon?
Marco: Oh, the Nine Days one, sorry. But I think a lot part of it had to do with really thinking that the girl in the video was super duper cute.
MD: Yeah, that was probably the real reason. Especially because that Vertical Horizon song is terrible.
Marco: Part of it was also because I was really trying to win over this girl who looked like the girl in the Nine Days video and… I don’t know, maybe I felt justified in my affections by the song/video?
MD: the song is kinda cute, I think.
Marco: She was dating this ginormous drug dealer at the time. Well, not “ginormous,” neither physically not, you know, stature in the suburban drug selling racket, but… well, either way, I just couldn’t compete with the guy. And yeah, the song is fine. Probably better than fine.
MD: Awww. Yeah, drug dealers are very attractive to women. All that money. And all those drugs.
Marco: That particular Vertical Horizon song… I liked it maybe the first time I heard it, but every time after… grating.
MD: It’s the reveal at the end of the song… that HE is the one the girl doesn’t want.
Marco: Of course she doesn’t want him. (He’s hideous.) This…
“Love can be so boring.”
MD: OMG this song.
Marco: There’s a very sad, very tragic playlist of recurring songs that I listened to a lot circa 1999 – 2002ish, and this song was on it intermittently.
MD: I bet we had many of the same songs. This was definitely on mine.
Marco: I feel like I was carrying around this very shallow sense of sadness or regret… like I had lost something that should be crucial but wasn’t, not really, though you at the time you couldn’t convince me of that… and my music reflected that.
MD: Exactly.
Marco: It’s strange that you got me thinking about that cause I was really thinking about a lot of music from back then lately the first summer I moved to this shithole state I live in… I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Ate shitty food. “Ate shitty” as in “ate terribly.” Drank beer. Lots. Laid on the couch in my huge bedroom listening to music and reading. That was it. Oh, and thought up ridiculous plots of silly Clive Cussler-esque thrillers.
…but that one U2 album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind? I associate that album so strongly, oddly enough, with Bret Easton Ellis’ first book and with Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary because I listened to that album on repeat while reading those books for the first time that summer.
MD: The first Bret Easton Ellis, that’s Less Than Zero?
Marco: Yeah, Less Than Zero.
Okay, that invisible pain I mentioned… do you want to see a really bad example of a song from that period?
MD: Of course. Always.
Marco: okay, this artist I’m about to bring up is ridiculous and you kind of knew that when she first debuted, but just how ridiculous and plastic hadn’t quite hit yet…
Anyway, her first two singles were just silly radio pop fluff, but this was her third single, I believe, and I remember hearing this song for the first time on headphones while walking somewhere late at night… and it just seemed to resonate with that tragic void living inside me…
MD: hahaha YES! I felt similarly about this song…
Marco: (Holy shit, Lizzy Caplan is in that video.)
It’s probably been so long since i’ve bought an actual CD i’m sad to say because I still like CDs, I’m still a guy who likes CDs, but I have a lot of bad pop punk CDs from that circa Avril era. I mean, I probably have 700 cds and it’s just this incredibly awesome, sexy music collection, but just figure that 30 or so of those cds are from artists like…
and
MD: Nothing to be ashamed of.
Marco: Well, maybe a little, but it was a time and a place and everything changes and you make explorations and sometimes what’s bad is good and vice versa. And blah blah blah. And anyone who doesn’t get that is an idiot, right? Plus, these tiny revelations made here are hardly the worse musical sins I’ve committed as a listener…
Though, thankfully, this was the time period in which was i also really discovering, like, The Get Up Kids, so it wasn’t all bad. And that said, I gotta tell you, I’m sorry, but I can’t join you on the Jason Mraz journey.
MD: hahahahaha.
When I was flying back from Europe with an ex, we had a HORRIBLE fight. And this is like 10+ hours of flying BTW, and I just listened to this Jason Mraz song over and over again on the airplane radio system. It was really quite sad.
Marco: I can imagine. I think I’d like the song if it was a different artist, you know?
MD: Yeah. Jason Mraz is easy to hate.
Marco: And it’s something about Mraz himself that I just despise.
Okay, so I am about to hit you with two megahits from that time period. i don’t know if you’re ready for it.
MD: I’m so fucking ready.
Marco: That is exactly what I wanted to hear. But first, let me just say… Thinking about that Unwritten Law song… I was working where I am currently already when that song was unleashed on me and it’s so vivid in my memory the girl I had a crush on then that I associate that song with… I mean, nothing ever happened with that girl. She thought I was profoundly weird without ever realizing just how right she was and yet I still think of her when I hear it. Anyways… Prepare thyself!
MD: Getting ready…
Marco: You say that but can ever truly be ready to go back to… this:
…and also this:
BOOM!
MD: OH MAN, that Lifehouse guy. Do you think he made his voice sound like that?
Marco: Ha ha. Do you remember where you were when you first said out loud, “NO WAY, THAT BIG VOICE DOES NOT SOUND LIKE THAT LITTLE GUY FROM THE CALLING.”
MD: Wow. Seriously. I had no idea this band even had a name. It was just a song that was everywhere at the time.
Marco: Like back then, as they were signing their record contract they must’ve known they would not last.
It would be so much easier if we were talking about just the 90s here…
from here.
or late 90′s fin de siècle music, but this period we’re talking about, that early 00s, was just so fucking weird. Here’s a really, really sad fact: I also recall the first mp3 I ever downloaded and while this wasn’t the very first, I believe that lifehouse single was either #2 or #3.
MD: Hmm has this song been on a lot of commercials?
Marco: Probably so very many.
MD: Here’s one for the ages:
Marco: the first comment on that video’s youtube page is:
“I paused my porn for this. (:”
Editor’s note: This was a few months ago, mind.
MD: The ultimate compliment for any music video, really.
Marco: For serious. Yeah,back then I really liked the Bleed American and Futures album, which made me go back and look up Clarity. So emotastic.
MD: yeah, all the emo kids were soooo mad when they got popular for 5 seconds.

Editor’s note: I then told MD again about the 600ish page political novel that Benjamin Light and I started writing back during the time period being covered in this music discussion. (Separate editor’s note: Those 600 pages ended up only being probably 1/8the the novel’s probable length had it lived past its infancy. Jesus.) Anyway, about 75 pages of that book were written to Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity album. -Marco.

Marco: Wow, the neural pathways of memory and musical taste progression that this trip and fall down memory lane is opening up for me…
MD: That’s what it’s supposed to do!
Marco: I remember there was a period where I went to Burger King for lunch every day – ugh – and I’d order my food and sit myself in the corner, with my back to the TV and so I could see everyone there and I’d listen to music on headphones and eat and read articles from the internet I had printed out earlier in the day at work and just write. I was working on so many things back then and I had downloaded the Wicker Park soundtrack of all soundtracks because I had heard it was “hip.” And on it was this song:
MD: Very interesting that the video you found is a fandom vid for The Office.
Marco: …and that begat me downloading their album at the time and I would listen to that Snow Patrol album all the time during that period and write and, of course, it’s strongly associated with a girl at the time and all that blah blah blah. Words and music and women… funny how they’re all so strongly tied together in my head.
And yeah, I thought that was funny too, re: The Office video. I guess Pam/Roy was someone’s OTP at the time?
But anyway, that Snow Patrol thing… I think that was the start of me pushing into a new aeon on musical interests, as far as cruising on the surface of mainstream “alternative rock”ish type music for the masses, and enjoying something about the generic nothingness there.
And that strange sadness that belonged to nothing real in my life? I really think that perhaps it died when I first heard this song…
MD: Ah, such a lovely song…
Marco: I remember listening to this song on headphones on a lunchbreak at work and just breaking down into tears. I had to call in to my job from 100 yards away and tell them I’d be late and I just walked around, listening to this over and over again and feeling terrible, and wonderful, and terrible and sad and wounded, and it was like somewhere around then I stopped feeling sad about nothing and it was like the real regrets and misery entered my life.
MD: Like catharsis, like a breakthrough of sorts.
Marco: Yeah, exactly. I mean, like everyone, I have things that happened when I was younger that I carried the pain of those things with me, but I was always too shallow to really be affected by them properly, I think. I was suffering from a different kind of pain, I think, as my early 20s were crystallizing around me, and with that song… It was like the end of something more innocent and silly in my emotional dealings with the world, and the start of me experiencing real world sadness and hurt? Perhaps.
If all of this right now was a part of a documentary about my sad dealings with music at the dawn of my 20s, then the song that would be playing over the end credits sequence would be this:
MD: Ha ha, nice. And what does the hero learn at the end?
Marco: Nothing. Nothing is ever really learned.
And that end titles sequence, also, would just be sitting on the sidelines of a Quinceañera, watching young Spanish girls in pretty dresses dancing around with their family.
MD: You know, that sounds oddly hopeful.
Marco: Le Sigh. Remember when everything was just so simple and innocent and… BRITPOP?
MD: And it’s probably right there when i realized that this whole conversation would a blog post.
Marco: Yeah, sorry about that, but I think you’re right… Or maybe it’ll even be two!
Editor’s note: TO BE CONTINUED!

will it be just like i’m dreaming?

Posted by Peanut St. Cosmo on

greetings y’all. i’d like to treat this as any other post, but i’m not a frequent poster. can’t just be easy going, “hey, what’s the hapz, guyz?” kinda deal. but rest assured, this peanut cares.

me, caring.

what do significant occasions mean to you? to each person, they carry their own weight. birthdays always mean a lot to me. surviving in our world isn’t as easy. ask anyone to make it to make it past 80s movies.

exhibit A

exhibit B

these guys care a lot about their movies. you know why? their whole career rests on it. they have something to say for themselves. whether that news says they’ve made a career out of being the nerd that fails with gingers, or they fail at being charlie sheen’s less coked up brother. either way, that’s great! i regret to say that i have not achieved such a status. do i regret it?

schmaybeeeee??

so i guess i’ll break the bad news. i put it off long enough, right? i turned 30. joined the leagues of benjie and marco will be following us this year. it just doesn’t seem like it’s my time. why now, is 30 a death sentence?

i'm the baddest b.

maybe.  i used to be cuter. i think? say some? maybe a lot of some. but i’ve gotten smarter since then, my 20s were not my brightest. since then, i’ve at minimum had a flashlight to guide me from my stupid mistakes. we’ve all had to guide our own light to show us the way for self respect. its not easy to find it, but i praise the lord *St Cosmo* i found mine!

tanning is awesome.

i dyed, wrote, clicked, drank, talked, listened, typed, through a thousand different scenarios. all of which were fantastic and actually blog worthy. i loved it and hated it all. it was a fantastic time i could only tell you about if i had a phenom publishing deal.

thought you knew?but sadly i’m just a sociology major thats waiting for a bit of input on her own life. or some unwelcome outside input that will just fuck it all up, but set the wheels into motion at least. do you know how hard it is do that for yourself? do you? i do. i know it well and considered it all. and here i am. what will you do?

i’m proud of where i’ve landed. i know i’ve chosen for myself rather than let a man choose for me. life is not complete, but it’s not been unlived either.

The Human Fund.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

It’s that time of year again…

Since I mentioned it the other day, I’ve been watching a lot of old Seinfeld clips on youtube. And, related to that, I have three random thoughts for you…

1. This video…

…is a roundtable get together from the big box set of the entire Seinfeld series featuring Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, Michael Richard, and Larry David himself. It’s a pretty fascinating and fun look into the behind the scenes of the show, with the cast and creators going over their successes, their failures, and how hard it was to have that much fun being that great. Related to that…

2. One of the things they go into in that roundtable get together is how hard it was to keep a straight face or to do a lot of the scenes right because of how funny each other was. The biggest offender to this, apparently, was Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

And as much has been said about how great her performance as Elaine Benes was, I still don’t think it was nearly enough. What you always saw onscreen was so trailblazing and yet so understated. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course.

And all that said, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is undoubtedly a beautiful, incredibly talented actress, and one who grown into full MILFitude as she’s aged so wonderfully. And these behind the scenes clips and bloopers are amazing in how infectious her laughter is. It’s an intoxicating thing, all men know, to make a beautiful woman laugh. It’s a rejuvenation on your part, a kind of validation you desperately seek. But even more holy of a grail: Making an incredibly funny woman laugh.

3. Also, I just realized that the guy who correctly guesses “Gonorrhea!” in the episode where Kramer gets the job as an actor acting out symptoms for medical students to practice diagnosing is none other than…

…Daniel Dae Kim.

How weird is that?

We await silent Tristero’s empire.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

“There’d been no escape. What did she so desire to escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: and what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited upon her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disc jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?”

-from The Crying Of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.

Pictures from here and here.

The lady disappears half way through.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

It just occurred to me the other day that 1960 was the year in which…

…both L’Avventura and…

…a little film called Psycho both came out. That’s interesting. Perhaps only to me, but I’m okay with that.

Season of the witch.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

In honor of Halloween and Tuesday’s election and Gawker‘s recent ridiculous and intriguingly lame (and anonymous) account of “I had a one-night stand with Christine O’Donnell,” we present to you a selection of comments from that very page…

“I’d be bitter too if an attractive MILF asked to come back to my place and I still couldn’t figure out a way to hook up with her. I’d be bitter, but at least I’d direct my angst towards my own failings, not run off to tell the Internet. What a douche.”

“Based on the title I was expecting Penthouse Letters. I can’t believe how anticlimactic this story is. This douche, nor his douche-roommate, couldn’t get laid.

It should have been titled, ‘BREAKING EXCLUSIVE! O’Donnell has hairy pubes, turns off anonymous dude.’

Anyway Gawker wins, it got my click, and it seems a million other people’s…”

“Dear Gawker, please tell me this man did not benefit financially from this story. This is a non-story story. It would have been relevant if there was deviant sexual intercourse, but not by much. it would have been “groundbreaking” if she’d made out and slept in the same bed with another woman.

But this? This is your exclusive? The title is misleading. You really should retitle it ‘Wax On, Wax Off: The True Story of Christine O’Donnell’s Bush.’ Because the only issue Americans care about is waxing.

Talking about O’Donnell’s sexuality is hard to avoid since many of her platform’s positions are related to the social issues of sex. There’s no way a candidate can say ‘I will stop America from having sex’ and not have constituents wonder if The 40 Year Old Virgin was written about her. So part of it is her own doing.

But why keep beating a dead horse? If you were trying to cast doubt on Christine O’donnells purity/integrity, you failed. O’Donnell is not a virgin. If you wanted the nitty gritty, contact the dude she slept with in college. Contact the witch dude she went on one date with. But don’t say you have an exclusive one night stand tell all when all you have is a dude who kissed and told.

There are many, many reasons not to vote for Christine O’Donnell. But the Ladybug costume and this douchenozzle with the photographic memory are not one of them.”

from here.

“Perhaps Ms. O’Donnell should consider changing her surname to Bush.”

“Remember Gawker, whenever you recall this particular stunt, NEVER GO FULL RETARD.”

“What a tool!

How do you get a women, naked and and natural in your bed, after only five minutes of initially meeting, and not close the deal?!”

“Actual irony here because this will bump her about 5 points and move people into her camp.”

“I think the real story here is an adult dude in a boy scout uniform unable to perform unless a vagina looks like that of an 11 year old.”

from here.

“Damn you, Gawker; damn you for making me feel sympathy for this woman.

The only silver lining here is that the author didn’t get laid. In light of what he wrote, I’d say he deserves a prolonged bout of involuntary celibacy. He’s also a coward for editing himself out of the pics.

That puts him somewhere above ‘Big Ben’ Mills of Peaches Geldof fame –illustrious company, right? — on the Great Big Scale of Douchebaggery™.

Bravo…”

“Damn 700,000+ pageviews. Christine O’Donnell in a ladybug costume is the new iPhone 4 leak.”

“Anonymous should have held out for a pageview check instead.”

And then there’s a post on Gawker noting that Christine O’Donnell has responded to the previous article. Below is a selection of comments from that page…

“I can’t believe they try to pull the woman card here. Someone who knows a candidate has a story with pictures, and people are actually against Gawker running it?

Just terrible. We’re talking about a candidate who won’t even give an interview to anyone but FOX, but would jump on Bill Maher any chance she got to expouse her craziness. Now we finally might have some insight into her real character, and its an invasion of privacy? GTFOH!

Remember that the person in question has pretty much offered themselves as holier than thou. A story like this about a young, single Hilary Clinton or Obeezy wouldn’t be a story at all, because those people don’t shove family values down people’s throats.”

“It’s amazing how many people feel empathy for Christine and decided to vote for her, because of that post. She deserves to be in the U.S. Senate now!!!
She’s the main beneficiary of the posting and should thank Gawker for the effort, besides sending an apology to Chris Coons.”

“RUH ROH!!!

Christine O’Donnell is closing in on Coon’s lead. According to the latest poll results O’Donnell has cut Coon’s lead in half in just the past two weeks.

And that is according to polls that were completed before Gawker’s latest attack on her character. According to the Washington Post an informal poll of female and independent voters in Delaware taken this morning found them to be more symphathetic to O’Donnell after this latest attack.

I just hope the Republicans show proper manners and thank Gawker Media for helping them win BOTH the Senate and the House instead of just the house. Perhaps they can name the bill to repeal the healthcare reform package (or maybe the one repealing the financial reform of Wall Street–or the one restoring the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy) after Gawker Media.”

“I didn’t see anything particularity sexist about reporting that O’Donnell is a lush.

Sure, the dude who was telling the story didn’t shy away from gender-based statements, but this story didn’t make Gawker because she’s a woman, but because she’s ridiculous.

In fact, her insanity up to now has actually helped her here. If this were a male candidate who got drunk and seduced a stranger, it would be the defining scandal of the election.”

“Two, separate issues here:

1. It was pretty despicable of Gawker to publish that article, especially some of the more hurtful personal details. That’s not nice.

2. Regardless, it shows that O’Donnell is a hypocrite and displays little to none of the introspection and self-awareness required to come to terms with her own nature as a human being. I’m not sure that that’s who we want voting on, say, who we go to war with.”

“I see a lot of people saying they are thinking about supporting her now because of this. Please, yes the guy was a douchenugget for airing his almost one night stand publicly but lets not forget that she is Palin level crazy and doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near a political office.”

Editor’s note: You have to love the different variations on the word “douchewhatever” that are used by the various commenters.

“I can’t tell you how much I hope this dopey twat and the rest of her ilk get their asses handed to them on election day.”

“I have to side with Gawker 60/40. The story shows Christine as human, dealing with a world that’s lots of shades of grey (just ask Cheney and his gay daughter). In this way, it’s a sad girl-meets-boy, girl-sorta-lets-boy-get-past-second-base-but-will-still-probably-have-to-spank-one-out-later story.

But she likes to tell people that there are not shades of grey, that your choices are either good or evil, and frankly it doesn’t take much to fall over to the dark side. And I can’t get behind that sort of ridiculousness because once you label them “evil” for masturbating, why not steal, or murder or even cut people off in traffic? What’s to lose? Evil is as evil does!”

“Sexist? Please. Put an idiotic hot male Republican and I’ll make the same ‘I want to hate fuck you’ comments.”

“Yeah, that article was pretty disgusting.

But trying to blame it on your un-involved opponent is too.”

“Christine O’Donnell reminds me of Margaret White (the character played so brilliantly by Piper Laurie in the movie Carrie): condemning sexuality while secretly relishing it.

‘After the first time, before we were married, he promised never again. He promised, and I believed him. But sin never dies. Sin never dies………..He took me, with the stink of filthy roadhouse whiskey on his breath, and I liked it. I liked it! With all that dirty touching of his hands all over me.’”

“I don’t know about ‘sexist,’ but publishing anonymous letters is pretty bush league.”

Editor’s note: I hope that was an intended pun.

“She could have had some sympathy out of this, but then she tries to tar Coons as somehow – what? – being involved with the Gawker story? Where the hell did that come from?”

“Sexual harassment? Isn’t that taking it a bit too far? Why is it that when women in politics are exposed it’s not alright, but when the men are exposed, the media tries their best to delve deeper and deeper into their personal lives? If O’Donnell hadn’t portrayed herself as a “pure religious virgin” in the media, I would think this story was unacceptable, but she IS portraying herself that way and I think that she should be exposed. I have no sympathy for this anti-gay, anti-sex, anti-masturbation, anti-abortion, and anti-first amendment bitch.”

“It was a terrible article. Full stop. I felt dirty and petty for reading it.”

Paradise Circus.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

The other day as I was wasting time away on the internet, as I’m typically wont to do, someone posted this song for all the world to hear and join in on appreciating…

That’s Massive Attack’s “Paradise Circus” featuring Hope Sandoval  (whom you might know from her Warm Inventions or, of course, Mazzy Fucking Star), from their last album, Heligoland. The person who posted that song the other day, Sarah Lynn Knowles, had previously listed Heligoland as one of her favorite albums of this year so far and mentioned that “Paradise Circus” was probably her favorite track of the year.

It was so weird to me, seeing those words from another person, which basically forced me to realize that this is also my favorite song from this year. I had wanted this song to my song of the summer, and what a great summer that would’ve been, but instead “Paradise Circus” became, if not the song I most identified with in some sad way over the summer, than certainly the song I probably listened to the most.

Months and months ago Conrad Noir had sent me a link to the original promotional video that went with the song, directed by Toby Dye, and I had enjoyed it, thought it was the usual amusing and charming NSFW stab at internet marketing that a serious musical artist with cred usually takes (think Sigur Rós’ “Gobbledigook” previously), but, while I loved the song, and thought that promotional video really fit it, I think something about the novelty of it just… lost me. I forgot about the song.

Not shocking. It’s been a busy year for me, and the summer has been especially crazy. Crazier than I usually am, and that’s a pretty astounding feat. Plus, I cram a lot of new music into my head. It’s a sponge most times, sucking in all the good and the bad and the everything in between, but sometimes things go in one ear and bypass the chewy center and slip right out the other ear…

But then somewhere in the past few months this song worked it’s way back into my life, back into my head, as songs are wont to do. Something about that first hearing (second, actually) was amazing, and it was probably due to my having heard it before, but either way, the song started to grow on me. I downloaded it somewhere, possessed it, played it whenever I wanted, commanding it like a snake charmer, summoning it like a genie in a musical bottle. And, like I said, it became the song of my summer, if you will. And if it wasn’t that, then it was certainly, as my itunes will certainly attest to, the song I listened to the most.

And when I started to slowly realize that, that was when the universe started throwing it in my face. As the universe is wont to do, of course. First it’s used in an episode of True Blood from this past season…

…and it’s used perfectly. And the dancer in that video is absolutely right when she mentions that she knows the secret to life and it’s simply this: “A hell I’ll never get out of alive.” And then Bill the vampire tells her, “No one ever does.” And then he adds, SOOKEH IS MAHN!”

And again, the song is used perfectly there. It’s the perfect song to be playing during a particular poignant moment with a stripper in a darkened club somewhere. It’s also the perfect song to be playing on a show about vampires and werewolves, with all the metaphors for darkness between humans at play there, and all that dirty, raunchy, wonderful sex. “Paradise Circus” is just a song that evokes something in you, something twisted but smooth, something sexy but hidden away from light. It reminds you of a time in your life that you had something nasty but wonderful going on, of when you related in a way to parts of season 6 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and you have a hard time putting that resonance in words.

Or maybe not. Maybe that’s just me.

As I was sitting down to write this, just browsing around the wildways of the internet, as I am always so wont to do, I found another video that someone made, somewhat amateur-ish, but a glossy production.

Then, the other day I’m laying in bed watching something on my ipod, watching the first episode of Luther, the police drama that Idris Elba (Stringer Bell!) did back in his native country not too long ago, and of course “Paradise Circus” is the theme song to that song. Of course.

But, again, it fits perfectly. Luther is a dark, sexy show about a brilliant cop who’s always walking just little bit more than just a little across the dark side. I truly wish that American cop shows had not just the weight and intensity of a show like this, not just the style, but the intellect. And it’s nice to see Idris Elba (who is soon to take over the role of Alex Cross from Morgan Freeman, in addition to starring in both Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming Thor and the new Nic Cage/Ghost Rider movie) in a role where he sacrifices nothing of his presence but does shed the cleanness that we’ve seen from him on The Wire or on The Office a year or two ago, whenever it was.

The show starts with Luther tracking down his prey, a killer of women and children, and quite possibly letting the man fall to his death intentionally without helping him. The first episode, trying to avoid spoilers as much as i can here, ends with Luther’s new antagonist, whose nothing that he’s faced before or can predict, finding that killer of women and children, who survived the fall and ended up in a coma. Somewhere between those two points, Luther went a little crazy from what he did, took some time off from the job and was separated from his wife for a while. When he’s cleared of all wrong doing (oh, you foolish police inquiry boards) and returns to the job, he decides that he’s well enough to return to his wife…

When it finally happens, we’re dreading it because we know that his wife will have some bad news for him and Idris Elba’s Luther is a big and ferocious guy. The moments after she tells him her bad news in the living room of the house they once shared, the screen is absolutely charged. It feels for a moment as if no room will ever be big enough to hold his rage and sadness.As he storms off into the night away from her, I heard the echoes of the Massive Attack song just pinging around in my brain.

And then I saw the thing there on tumblr, from SarahSpy, and all of this coalesced together in my brain. But that’s okay. It’s a great song, one to be appreciated by people who have great taste in music, but also those identify with a certain something, maybe. A kind of long ago sadness or darkness, and an appreciation of that time in their life. You only see connections and links after the fact and pain, suffering, and/or sadness can only really be learned from far removed from the infliction of the wounds. And it’s all so much better when it’s set to music.

Vampire sluts.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Previously on Counterforce: Fuck you, Dracula.

One of my favorite webcomics out there is Kate Beaton‘s Hark! A Vagrant, which takes a hilarious look back on history and literature. I’m a little behind on it, but was elated when I checked the internet today and saw that, in honor of Halloween, Kate Beaton was reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula…

…and getting at what the book was really about more than a fear of undead bloodsuckers returning to life, but the horrific idea of sexually-liberated women. What a terrifying notion, right? Anyway, I would always recommend the works of Kate Beaton and Hark! A Vagrant, but the stuff on Dracula is especially good and you should get it out.

I Got You Babe.

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

There’s no such thing as fresh starts because lives are always going on, or is there? Or are they? I don’t know, but I do know that you can always go home again, as long as your ex-wife hasn’t sold it, because it’s where the heart is (and perhaps where the head is not). That and maybe more as we talk about last night’s “Tomorrowland,” the season finale of Mad Men…

August Bravo: No matter what we thought, well, maybe a little, or what we thought the writers might have thought, this episode, and season for that matter, was about Don Draper, or as some know him, Dick. Lives, businesses, relationships, friendships, and all those other ships we thought were sinking, didn’t. Like Marco told me earlier, this finale wasn’t as upbeat as last season’s. It showed slim promise and some possibilities, but didn’t leave you thinking, “What the fuck is going to happen next?”

Marco: Well, I’d definitely say it leaves you wondering what happens next, but more so than usual, I think you can guess what’s going to happen next and you’re worried that it may not be so great for the characters. Don, especially.

August: Don’s somewhat “redemption” was almost completely omitted from this episode making everyone believe that crises was averted or that it may play a role in his probably inevitable divorce with Megan. Is it Megan?

Marco: “Megan… out there?” as Roger puts it so perfectly. As Joan says, Don’s grinning like an idiot, as if he’s the first schmuck on Madison Avenue/in professional New York/the world to marry his secretary, but having Roger be surprised adds a very special symmetry, especially since Don’s pulling a Roger there, and it’s kind of weird.

Can you imagine the Don Draper version of Sterling’s Gold?

August: The somewhat reference that the rest of the cast ACTUALLY exists was finding out, which we thought we knew, but thought it might be too obvious, but I guess wasn’t, was that…

…Joan is in fact still pregnant.

Marco: I love that Mad Men is such a unique show that amongst it’s many other wonderful qualities, still has it’s own rhythms and ways of going about the rules of storytelling, counter to other popular ideas about narrative. There is a certain pattern you can expect from each season, we’ve finally learned, isn’t there?

It’s usually: The season starts with some intriguing signs of where the characters have landed since the previous season. Intriguing ideas and/or questions are brought up. Should they actually answer those questions, it’ll be in a relatively vague though still meaningful way. That question, which literally started off this season was: Who the fuck is Don Draper? We’ve gotten a multi-faceted answer to that, certainly.

From there, certain problems and dramatic conflicts will arise around mid-season. They’ll seem massive – Oh no, the government is about to discover that Don Draper is a liar and a deserter! – but will fizzle quickly, leaving you curious as to their placement at all. Certain things will pop up, which will make you suspect where the story is going – did Joan actually not get that abortion? – but you’ll think, “No, that’s far too obvious. They won’t go there.” They will, friends. Then, whatever the endgame of the season is, it won’t appear until the last two or three episodes and it will be an all consuming fire.

August: Except for Megan. That carrot was dangled in front of us and we’ve just been waiting for Don to take bite after bite after bite.

Marco: True. It’s funny how we believe certain things from this show. When Dr. Faye said to Don that he’s the kind of guy that would be married again within the year, I think we all believed that.

Though, of course, I don’t think I stand alone when I say that we hoped that it would be Dr. Faye that we hoped Don would end up with, or that she’d be the kind of partner he’d strive to find happiness with. The fact that she’s a feminist and someone who has pushed Don to accept himself, and possibly integrate his two personas as it were, didn’t hurt. She’s helped his business, helped his mind, and helped his soul, as it were, yet there’s certain things she couldn’t provide Don that seemed to really make him look elsewhere.

August: She couldn’t be a caregiver to his children while he was off doing whatever he wanted to. She’s the anti-Betty.

Marco: That and she couldn’t worship him the way Megan seemingly can. Plus, I think that as much as Don wants to be able to stop hiding and stop running from the spectre of Dick Whitman, a part of him enjoys the lies that come with the running and hiding. Don Draper is the greatest product he’s ever advertised, and with Megan, he can find a fresh start at that.

August: But Henry Francis says there are no fresh starts!

Marco: I can’t believe that Henry Francis has lingered this whole season.

Sadly, we’ve really dropped the ball this season, August and I, because there’s so much we could say about this episode, so much that needs to be said, but it all ties into this past season and that’s a dialogue that I’m incredibly sad that we haven’t had here at Counterforce. On behalf of us and directed at the three people who actually reads these Mad Men posts from us, I apologize. I had some shit going on and August didn’t have cable. And refused to buy the episodes on itunes. And couldn’t figure out megavideo.

from here.

August: You just knew where it was all going once Stephanie handed Don that engagement ring from the real Don Draper.

Marco: Oh, seriously. Chekhov might as well have come out to California with Don and the kids and fired that ring out of a gun right at Megan.

It’s funny that I posted this picture from Videogum the other day…

…and sadly it came so true, in a lot of ways, since we’re speaking of Megan and Dr. Faye and Sally and… Well, have we mentioned Sally yet? Cause if we haven’t, we should be talking about Sally this season, right?

August: We haven’t mentioned her yet.

from here.

Marco: Sally! I believe I kept mentioning in our conversations about the show last year how much I liked Sally’s character, how interesting I thought her storylines were, and I feel like that’s only been compounded on more wonderfully this season. Bobby’s still kind of useless, but I’m glad that Sally has really stepped forward and is becoming a real person, even at such a young age, though, again, it’ll be interesting to watch her grow into herself and who she’s going to be while still being the child of Don and Betty Draper.

Anyway, so that once picture: Sally telling Dr. Faye that she’s fired. Ha ha, funny. But kind of eerily prescient in a way, considering that episode, “The Beautiful Girls,” when I know that a lot of people read that one scene there, Benjamin Light included, as Sally kind of picking Megan out of the rest of the “beautiful girls” that surround her father. And maybe Don picked up on that.

I mean, we knew Don wanted to fuck Megan. That notion was exploding louder than bombs for a handful of episodes before it happened, but this picture from Videogum…

…is kind of funny for how very accurate it had become.

August: I can’t write too much about this episode because in my head I’m still processing how to feel about it all. The bit I particularly enjoyed the most was Don telling Peggy that Megan(??) looked up to her, and had the same sort of spark, and Peggy being completely jealous. Maybe Peggy will be wife number 3 (or is it number 4??) Her childlike jealousy really made this episode. To see Don slowly turning into Roger (maaaaybe), or to see the evolution of Betty, and I guess Peggy’s, unhappiness/jealousy, or maybe Megan’s (yes, it is Megan) slow transition into the life of being Mrs. Draper/Whitman will be the most interesting thing to watch next season.

Marco: I don’t trust Megan. Well, no, that’s not true. But she’s very manipulative. And Jessica Paré is, I think, very good at playing that so subtly. Megan’s incredibly smart, but dumb and silly in all those ways that a 25 year old would seem or should see to a 40 year old man who should know better – though Don has two addictions in his life: women and the sauce - but it’s not hard to see the way she’s worked the situation with Don to her advantage.

That’s not particularly insidious because all stabs at romance are some form of manipulation, if you think about it, no matter how well intentioned and wholesome they seem. But she’s told Don exactly what he needs or wants to hear, especially that she doesn’t care about his past, just who he is now. For a man who’s finally started to accept that he has all his life ahead of him, what he really wants to do is live in the now. Especially with a girl like Megan, who seems to adore him, but I think will be much better at getting what she wants or deserves than Betty was.

Maybe this really will be “happily ever after” for Don, but I doubt it. But really, it’s not the happily ever after I would’ve picked for this character. I suspect that he’s traded in one “lost weekend” phase for perhaps another? But let’s face it, Don’s not a guy who will get a classical happily ever after, is he? He’s too prone to a life of solemn remorse.

That said, I would disagree with your take on Peggy. Jealousy? Maybe. But I think that was a very, very small part of that look she gave Don. I think if we could’ve heard her thoughts or seen them in a comic book word bubble floating over her head, they would’ve read as: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? HER?! HUH? WHAT?

But Peggy’s defined her life by Don to a lot of degrees. She has, in her own small way, just saved the agency by finally signing some new business, no matter how small, and here’s Don, her mentor, running around like an idiot. And his comment to Peggy about how Megan reminds him a lot of her is the ultimate slap in the face for a great many reasons. For a season that contained the show’s best episode, “The Suitcase,” in which Don and Peggy finally bond in kind of a real way, it was kind of hard to watch their interaction this year end like this.

But, that scene with Joan and Peggy immediately after was perfect. A Joan/Peggy show? I’d watch that. I hope that next season shows those two really claiming some of the power around SCDP (or will it just be SDP?) that they more than rightfully deserve.

August: I think this season had a lot of ups and downs, but mostly ups. Overwhelmingly ups. Like I said, the storyline I’m most interested in for the next year is the stuff with Don and Megan, should Don and Megan really work out. They didn’t leave us with a lot of answers this season, but we maybe that’s because we were all asking too many questions.

Marco: I think you’re right about that. The status quo’s been changed, some things and people are gone, and some are still with us, just amplified. We think we’re ready for what tomorrow will bring, but we have no idea. Just like Don there, we’re laying awake in the dark with a near stranger sleeping beside us as stare out at the night.

Red dawn.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

I finally fall asleep around 7 am. That’s been the pattern for the last few days and last night/this morning holds true to it. Haven’t gotten much actual rest in weeks, so all of my decisions always feel suspect to me, especially when I give up just a little bit of control. I turn off the lights and flip on the TV, clicking to some random channel and hitting the mute button.

Whatever the channel is, there’s Laura Leighton on the TV, formerly of Melrose Place. And last year’s sequel/rehash. She’s starring in some TV movie here, looking very concerned about whatever the script is telling her is important, and yet, she looks radiant. It’s a nice last image before I lay down on the hard surface I’ve been calling my bed for far too long and slowly make my way into dreamless sleep.

Petty little things wake me constantly over the next several hours. Again there’s no real rest. A half an hour later, forty five minutes later, an hour later, just like that I keep getting called back to the waking world rather rudely. Sometimes it’s a dog barking, sometimes it’s a phone call or a knock on the door, sometimes it’s someone in the other room screaming that they can’t find their medicine. Where is it? Right there in front of them. No apology. Exchanged vulgarities. Again and again. And again I try to retreat back into sleep.

On the TV again, there’s Laura Leighton. It’s hours and hours now since I first turned on the TV and there she is in a TV movie. Still. A different one this time. This is possibly two or three TV movies after I’ve turned on the television, isn’t it? Have I discovered the all Laura Leighton channel? I’m tired so that’s funny to me right now. But then I stare at the screen a little longer. Her latest male co-star is a B-level television actor, the kind of guy who probably once had a show on Sci Fi channel that got canceled, back when it was Sci Fi channel, before it got canceled/warped into whatever SyFy is supposed to be.

If they don’t surrender themselves back into daytime soap operas, I guess TV movies are where actors go in the wake of the 90s (though I know that Laura Leighton has a small role in Pretty Little Liars, which isn’t that different from TV movie quality). A commercial for another television movie, this one starring Shannen Doherty as someone trying to grow the world’s largest pumpkin or something, confirms this for me. How sad. And, of course, Laura Leighton’s movie looks terrible. Lifetime channel or Hallmark channel or ABC Family quality. Or worse, even.

And yet, Laura’s radiant. She glows in a way that only someone who’s trapped and going through the motions can. The guy who plays Freddie Rumsen on Mad Men appears to be the villain here. He’s barking orders to some other guy, probably one of the only 10 or so native American actors working Hollywood these days. One second Laura’s ducking down behind something with a new male co-star, then they’re running, then they’re in a diner somewhere with a bunch of older ladies. Is that Ann-Margaret? I can’t tell what’s going on, but I’m positive it doesn’t matter.

I try to get some sleep. It won’t last, but I’ve got to keep trying. Laura Leighton’s acting career has told me that, if nothing else. No matter how bleak it is, you gotta keep going. Also, there’s a paraphrasing of Churchill in there somewhere too. It doesn’t matter now. I unmute and then mute the  TV again. As my head hits the pillow again, I realize that Laura Leighton’s hair color has gotten darker and darker as it’s gotten brighter outside my window. That seems incredibly significant to me for a moment and then it doesn’t.