No movie tonight, but I did watch Episode 9 of "Twin Peaks", moving it up on the schedule from Saturday to Friday because I am contemplating watching a Dickens BBC Mahstah-piece Thee-a-tah production of "Our Mutual Friend", which I have never seen before. I know it's not the time of year for Dickens, which is why I say I'm contemplating watching it rather than "for sure gonna" watch it, but if I do, I wanna have "Twin Peaks" out of the way because "Our Mutual Friend" is 6 hours long, four nights worth of 90 minute episodes, so if I watch I will have to pound an episode each night from Saturday through Tuesday. Weighing against it is that Dickens (for me) is best during the holidays, and weighing in it's favor is that I found the dvd up at Granada Hills libe, don't know if I could find it again next Christmas, and also I love Charles Dickens. So we'll see. Check back tomorrow night to end the suspense.
And please remember once again that "schedule" is to be silently pronounced in your mind as "Shedge-yoole", whenever you come across the word in a British context in one of my blogs. Thank you.
As for the ninth installment of "Twin Peaks", we are back to working the plot, such as it is, after the epic avant-garde imagination of Episode 8. I have only two minor quibbles that I would like to voice, now that I have gotten halfway through the series. One is the use of what I will call "the drawn out scene". Lynch has specialised in this technique ever since his debut film "Eraserhead". There is a scene where the protagonist Henry is seated at the dinner table of his girlfriend's creepy house. Her Dad sits across from Henry and, just to make small talk, asks him point blank, "So, Henry........whattaya know"?
Henry is nervous to begin with, and the question only increases his distress. He fidgets in silence for several seconds. Meanwhile, the camera cuts back to the Dad, who, having finished his question to Henry, is now grinning maniacally at him. Henry finally answers, "Oh......not much of anything".
This exchange in a normal movie might have taken five seconds. In "Eraserhead" there is a long pause between question and answer. I have never timed it, but it seems inordinately long, and the pause is used to both denote the creepiness of the dinner table scene, and to heighten Henry's tension. It is a classic bit of dialogue from the movie, which I have never forgotten.
But now Lynch - who has apparently never forgotten that scene either - is using the technique of the "drawn out dialogue" all over the place in the new "Twin Peaks" series, and I wish he would not have utilized it as much as he has done thus far. Sometimes it works to maintain the hypnotic pace of an episode, but other times it drags things down just a bit. It's not a huge problem, but it is Minor Quibble #1.
Minor Quibble #2 is the overuse of the F-Word. I know we aren't on network TV anymore, but part of the original "Twin Peaks" charm was the folksiness of it's characters. I know they couldn't say "F" this, and "F" that, because it was ABC Network TV, but I don't think those characters, weird as they were, would have used the F-Word so unsparingly anyway. In the new "Twin Peaks", which is peopled with a whole host of much more unsavory characters, few of them folksy, the F-Word is heard with regularity, which to me is very un-Lynchian.
I mean, I'm not perfect and I can cuss up a storm at times, but in general I try to avoid it, and that's not the point here anyway. Prudery, or lack thereof (crudery?) in real life is not the point. The point applies to the fictional characters of "Twin Peaks". I mean, what if they did a cable remake of "Mayberry RFD" and all of a sudden you started hearing the F-Word sprinkled about, not by Barney and Andy per se, but by other characters. You might feel that the folksiness of the show was being compromised.
And that's my Minor Quibble #2 about the new "Twin Peaks". The main deal with the new show is that it bears very little resemblance to the old show. I wasn't expecting that, but I jumped right in to the new weirdness, and in that respect I have enjoyed the new series very much. I am now halfway through. ///
I have begun a new book, "Double Standards : The Rudolph Hess Cover-Up" by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince. They wrote a book awhile back about the life of Christ that caused a sensation and likely influenced Dan Brown to write "The DaVinci Code". All that stuff about Jesus being just a regular human with a bloodline and all of that. I delved into that subject, and read Dan Brown. His book was a page turner, but the premise was a bunch of baloney. The same is true of Picknett's career-making book about the Bloodline. I suppose she had to start somewhere, and she surely got attention, but phooey on that book. I am reading her book about Rudolph Hess because it was recommended by Dr. Joseph Farrell in his book about Hess, and Dr. Joe - being an Orthodox Christian - would never endorse a book by a phoney-baloney, even if she presents Christ as human.
Back to Rudolph Hess, I bought this book on Amazon last Summer and have had it sitting in a stack of books that are Booking Me Out Of My Apartment.
This reminds me of when I was living at 9032 Rathburn, and I became part of a Dog Sandwich.
I was the middle section, or at least I started out that way. I had two big Labs that would get up on my bed every night to sleep on either side of me : i.e. "Dog Sandwich".
But I would inevitably wind up getting pushed to the edge of the bed, and sometimes off of it and onto the floor. I never fought it, because dogs are dogs. Especially Labs.
In my life, I just do what the dogs tell me. They are the Shot Callers.
Now it's becoming the same with The Books. The Books are booking me out of my apartment.
All I'm trying to do is read about Rudolph Hess, like anybody else.
But the books are stacking up and closing in.
Maybe I should get some dogs - two big Labs - to move in and push them out.
Ahhh, screw it. I need a giant sized place with room for dogs & books....and me.
And.....someone who doesn't mind a lot of dogs and books......or me. :):)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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