For the last couple episodes of True Blood, the denizens of Bon Temps have been concerned about a maenad in their midst. The maenads were the handmaidens of Dionysus or Bacchus. Dionysus is the deity in charge of boozing, ecstasy, and ritual madness. On his high holy days, his female worshipers would get wasted, engage in random carnal acts, and tear animals limb from limb with their bare hands and eat the raw flesh. Ya know, party hardy.

On season two of True Blood, the vampires and shapeshifters and telepaths and regular folk are all scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to deal with the character of Maryann Forrester wreaking havoc in their town. Maryann Forrester is apparently a maenad and she calls Dionysus or Bacchus “the god who comes” and she is hoping to sacrifice something sufficiently tasty to get the object of her worship to actually show up for the party. According to the vampire queen, maenads always expect their deity to show up and they get stood up every time. Unfortunately, the vampire queen is played by Evan Rachel Wood, who looks beautiful in her red-painted lips, but is utterly unconvincing as a ruler who has been undead since before the industrial revolution. As a disaffected teenager, Evan Rachel Wood is a believable enough actress and I think she even gets prettier as she gets older, but Bill Compton’s maker Lorena, played by Mariana Klaveno, comes across so much more elegant and queenly. And what is up with the late 40’s-ish bathing suits and Eisenhower references and the whole art deco thing from a vampire who is older than man’s mastery of the steam engine? Anyway, oddball casting and styling and not exactly this otherwise excellent show’s finest hour.

Back to the maenad Maryann Forrester. Maryann Forrester is played by Michelle Forbes, who I first came across as the morbid but fun Dr. Julianna Cox from the coroner’s office on Homicide: Life on the Street. No stranger to genre, Michelle Forbes has been in Star Trek: Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, 24, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Lost, and more. I’ve seen some people whining about a genre show like True Blood appearing on HBO, but I hardly think True Blood pushed Sopranos or Deadwood off the air and I like seeing someone actually put effort into making a serious quality genre program for adults.

At any rate, Maryann Forrester is down with whatever keeps the party going. Every time she orders in a restaurant, it makes me crack up because I looooooove ordering multiple entrees and appetizers and waiters and waitresses often ask parties I am with if we are expecting more people. So Maryann Forrester is a sensualist. She likes to eat. She likes to throw legendary parties. She doesn’t mind the rough stuff, evangelizes it even. She cooks a delicious semi-human heart. And she wants to sacrifice Sam Merlotte (the workplace sexual harassment wereguy) to her deity. I admit that I am way past the point where I find orgies tiresome, but there is no denying that Maryann knows how to throw an exciting bash. Even if she does keep getting literally left at the altar.

I admit I like a good party as much as anyone and I might have thrown a few parties which revelers still talk about. But, more and more, I feel so sorry for the beautiful life of the party who is always waiting for a man who is never going to show up and treat her right.

Would you want to party with handmaidens of Dionysus?

PS Apparently, Michelle Forbes was in a movie called Love Bites in 1993 where Adam Ant plays a vampire. I’d be grateful if anyone could point me to where to find this vamp flick.

I know that, with Twilight and True Blood and Being Human and the onward march of more and more sexy vampires, nonconformists are hoping for a different monster to idealize. It is always vaguely uncomfortable when the supposedly appalling, unique, and individualistic thing you are into becomes commonplace. For a while, those who loved monsters but did not want to jump on the vampire bandwagon made do with werewolves. The thing is that werewolves represent rage, not sexual rage, just mad-as-hell out-of-control blind rage. And that is ultimately not that hot for most people. Although I confess to having had one or two stories published where I did write some werewolf sex or romance in there, in my defense, one was written on assignment and one was written partly to match accompanying illustrations already selected. At any rate, werewolves just plain don’t have the sexual magnetism of vampires and werewolf costumes are really difficult as heck to put together.

Zombie costumes, on the other hand, are pretty easy to put together. You just need to look decaying and injured and you can even make a sexy zombie costume by distressing your zombie wardrobe. A costume which is easy to do is good for group activities. Getting a bunch of people to dress up as monsters and go out on the town together is fun. Fewer people have sort of cannon ideas of what a zombie must be, as opposed to what a vampire or werewolf must be, so there is more freedom in costuming for zombie parties. But zombies are still ultimately kind of leprosy monsters. You and fifty comrades chanting “brains, brains, brains” in your torn underwear in a public place is awesome. But the actual zombie concept of a shambling stupid corpse with parts falling off is not so hot, Julie notwithstanding. And, although I forget which company it was, one of the big media corporate giants ran a zombie walk at Comic Con last weekend. So, after co-option, nobody really tends to get individuality points for being into zombies over vamps any more.

So I was looking at this half naked photo series by Ivan Hidalgo which featured sexy zombies and it brought the vital question to mind: Are zombies sexy or do they just make for good costumes?

As you all probably know, the HBO series True Blood, based on the Charlaine Harris novels, was one of my favorite new shows this past year, maybe my very favorite. The new season is kicking off with fun altmodel cam boy and local vampire blood dealer Lafayette Reynolds possibly in trouble and more murderous whodunit and more surprisingly well done and extended sex scenes. I’m not sure the first True Blood Season 2 teaser pics and True Blood Season 2 promo photos really do the show justice.

I am sure that a bunch of the product placement tie-in billboards and suchlike around Los Angeles are a bit cringe-inducing. There are billboards for motorcycles, cars, automotive insurance, and and Gillette razorblades and other not terribly vampy products. (I don’t necessarily want to give tons of bonus exposure to silly things advertised this way, but I have to give Gillette a shout-out because years ago I worked the product launch for the Gillette Sensor and it was the most awesome and creative technical theatre gig I ever saw.) Pale-skinned dark-haired vampy femme fatale Dita Von Teese says, “I don’t understand this vampire bandwagon. Just saw a billboard advertising razors that “vampires prefer”. Vampires don’t have to shave!” I could get into a dissertation about the necessary equilibrium between enjoying the success of what you love verus avoiding having what you love co-opted. But really this brings me to another much more pressing and vital concern about the new season of True Blood.

What is up with vampire hair on Alexander Skarsgaard? In the season opener, big wig vampire sheriff and nightclub impressario Eric Northman, played by the always charismatic yet unsettling Alexander Skarsgård had foils in his hair. Like he was bleaching highlights in. It appears that he will be wearing shorter hair for Season 2. It is too early in this portion of the series to get into much philosophy of prejudice, or presentation of sexuality and sensuality in media, or the nature of the erotic, so I can’t help turning over and over in my head whether I feel like vampires should have to deal with hair growth. It would suck to have hair chopped off in a battle with another vampire if it could not grow back. If no regrowth were the case, then all vampire altercations would look like hair pulling catfights. It would suck to be turned on a day your hair dye was not fresh or you hadn’t shaved your shavable parts. Hair and nails do grow a bit after death, but not much. Would vampire hair just regrow to the length and/or shade it was at time of death?

Should the fictional undead require hair dye and razors? How do you want your media to handle vampire hair growth?

After a brief hiatus to make room for election coverage, My Own Worst Enemy returns to airing on NBC tonight after the supposedly revamped Heroes. If you have not checked out this new television vehicle for Christian Slater, you can watch the first three full episodes of MOWE online for free now.

If you like espionage with just a dash of science fiction, you’ll probably enjoy this show. In its general category, My Own Worst Enemy is a lot more fun than MI-5 and a bit less fun than Burn Notice. MOWE also has a bit of an interesting externalized study of the sorts of internal conflicts many people face. Christian Slater stars in MOWE as a super spy who has had a reverse-Manchurian candidate done on him. The norm in this sort of storyline is to have a regular person who is secretly a ticking time bomb of a killer. It makes so much more sense psychologically and just logically to have a multilingual martial artist military guy create a normal guy cover identity. I want someone to give me a chip where I can also live a milquetoast life and communicate with my alter-ego about the pros and cons via cell phone video messages.

The conventional wisdom in Hollywood, for a long time, was that movie stars could not do TV, that a movie star who did TV was finished. With shows like Breaking Bad, The Wire, and Mad Men being so obviously higher quality and more interesting than most movies today, it gets harder to view acting on television as somehow lesser than a role in Saw V or Sex Drive. With an Oscar winner like Anna Paquin starring in True Blood, Alec Baldwin doing a hilariously good job on 30 Rock, and Entourage being practically a who’s who of Hollywood, it is simply more implausible for anyone to claim that television is a step down. The current season of Entourage is ironically somewhat about the conflict actors face when deciding whether they will strive to be cast in movies or television roles.

Nonetheless, there are people saying how Christian Slater has come down in the world if he is starring on an entertaining new spy series on network television. As near as I can tell, a lot of Christian Slater fans first discovered him when he starred in the very very dark (and very very awesome) teen comedy Heathers in 1989. So I’ve seen a ridiculous number of reviews of the show going on and on and on about how Christian Slater has obviously had Botox, like that is a bad thing. Yes, anyone who has spent a significant amount of time watching Christian Slater act will probably be of the opinion that his forehead would not be that smooth without a bit of Botox. He hasn’t overdone it. He is still more than expressive enough to effectively convey two very different personalities, with his acting. If there are some televisions reviewers who are pissed off that they are not aging as well as Christian Slater, here is the link to the Botox site, if you really ever thought you looked like Winona Rider and there was a chance J.D. was going to come to your window and plot murders with you. Good luck. If not, then I recommend just watching the show for its entertainment value and not for beauty tips.

My Own Worst Enemy really is a fun show. I like to contemplate what awful jokes different sides of my general personality would like to play on one another, if they were divided into distinct personalities. MOWE has some cool gadgets too. I like cool gadgets.

Alan Ball’s True Blood on HBO is moving along at a brisk clip. (If you haven’t viewed through episode 109, you may want to stop reading here.) Episodes 108 and 109 really highlighted the theme of who is really the hunted in Charlaine Harris’ world of vampires who have come out of the coffin.

We’ve learned that human beings can get high on vampire blood or V. We also learn that, while vampires can drink the synthetic blood substitute Tru Blood, nothing is enjoyable quite like the real thing. So there are plenty of small-minded folks in the True Blood world who fear vampires because they could hunt them and feed off of them, even if they are not doing so. Yet there are also reasons for humans to hunt vampires, although again most do not do so. Time to look in a mirror to figure out who is the hunted and who is the hunter.

Some vampires, such as the jaded 1,000-year-old nightclub impresario Eric, played by Alexander Skarsgard, are annoyed by the whole vampire pride and vampire rights amendment thing. They are satisfied with their position in society and are perfectly happy to exercise their power from the shadows. There is a scene where the human leading lady Sookie Stackhouse, played by Anna Paquin, is kissing vampire leading man Bill Compton, played by Stephen Moyer, and their chemistry is notable. Eric’s most trusted retainer turns to him and says that if she still had feelings, she would be moved by this public display of affection. Eric replies, in the most bored voice imaginable, that he wouldn’t.

The best culture clash in the most recent two episodes is where Sookie’s best friend Tara Thornton, played by Rutina Wesley, turns to her alcoholic and possibly formerly possessed mother and her friend, who are all decked out for church, and points out that putting on a ridiculous hat and going to church isn’t going to make them better or happier than Tara. I personally kinda like the jelly bean colored Southern church-going style of hats, but I don’t really have a hat-shaped kind of head. My skull and hair are generally wrong for most hats I’ve tried on, although I always welcome hat source suggestions.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s episode of True Blood. There is going to be a vampire tribunal, presided over by a vampire elder played by Zeljko Ivanek. Zeljko Ivanek is perhaps best known for his portrayals of Governor James Devlin on Oz and of the driven prosecuting attorney Ed Danvers in Homicide: Life on the Street. The Ed Danvers character was so popular that he was brought in as a crossover character in a number of episodes of Law & Order, even after Homicide was canceled. Zeljko Ivanek has actually done a lot of political and legal acting roles over his long career, so I think he will be very entertaining as a vampiric judge who gets to decide when it is or is not all right to kill.

Given the huge ad campaign HBO’s True Blood ran just about everywhere, including this site, you have probably heard that there is a new vampire show of some sort on cable television. I actually had planned to do a feature article about the brilliant ad campaign for the show, but it was one of those times when pesky life gets in the way of writing. True Blood had some damn sexy billboards, posters, and bus adverts and, of course, banners on targeted sites like Blue Blood, and some sort of sweepstakes. The show takes place in a world where vampires have “come out of the coffin” and are looking for equal rights, opposed by the expected fundamentalists, and assisted by a mysterious Japanese company which has produced a synthetic blood substitute called Tru Blood. We’ve actually still got some great background videos explaining the setting of True Blood which I’ll see about posting after the hectic rush of Halloween is past.

But the really cool thing about True Blood is that the storylines are character-driven, the themes are righteous, the sex is in-your-face varied, and the lighting and cinematography are really beautiful. The series was developed by Alan Ball, award-winning writer of American Beauty and creator of Six Feet Under, based on the Charlaine Harris Southern Vampire Mysteries. The sort of focus character is the telepathic Sookie Stackhouse played by a perky yet strong Anna Paquin, the Oscar-winner best known to dorkdom for her recurring role as Rogue in the X-Men movies. Her character would probably come across as more feisty if not for her balls-to-the-wall best friend Tara Thornton, played by powerful newcomer Rutina Wesley. I don’t know where they found Rutina Wesley, but I love everything from the way her arms are just a little butch to the way she embodies the character cussing everyone out, both when needed and when not needed. Brother Jason Stackhouse is played by Ryan Kwanten. Sookie’s romantic leading man is played by Stephen Moyer. I normally wouldn’t mention someone’s personal life, but, whether it is out there for PR or privacy invasion, the gossip blogs are abuzz with reports that Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin are real life lovers, which may account for their incredible smoking hot on-screen chemistry for Sookie and Bill the vampire. In theory, I guess the audience is supposed to wonder whether Sookie will end up with Sam Merlotte, the owner of Merlotte’s the bar where she waitresses. Some people in the fictional Louisiana town Merlotte’s is in might find the guy suspect because he is from elsewhere and has a hint of the supernatural about him. Maybe part of the reason I personally instinctively don’t like the character is that the only other thing I ever saw the actor Sam Trammell, who plays Sam Merlotte, do on camera was get murdered by serial killer Dexter Morgan on Showtime’s Dexter. But really I’m bugged by someone’s boss at their regular all-the-time job hitting on them aggressively. I know they may not enforce anti sexual harassment laws that well in the South, but, ew, so not hot. The characters who inhabit True Blood’s Bon Temps are plentiful, deepy realized, and very interconnected, so I won’t list every single one, but there are two hot boys I can’t go without mentioning. The first is camboy/hooker/drug dealer/short order cook Lafayette Reynolds, played with gusto by Nelsan Ellis who hadn’t been in a whole lot of things before, but is jump-off-the-screen charismatic in this show. The second is Viking/nightclub impresario vampire Eric Northman, played by Alexander Skarsgård, fresh off his textured starring role on HBO’s Generation Kill.

I realize that a high percentage of the Blue Blood audience has been watching True Blood all along, what with the whole vampires, sex, kink, gothic punk, clubland and bar nightlife, and both disenfranchised and entitled weirdos thing in common. But, if you haven’t treated yourself yet, all previously-aired episodes are now available via On Demand. Incidentally, True Blood showcases a variety of different moods and types of sexuality, manages to shoot each sex scene a bit different from the last, makes the sexuality feel consistent with what each specific character would be into, and is so hot that even a professional can’t tell whether some of the actors are actually having full-on real sex or not. When the acting and styling is that good, the point of insertion is just a footnote in my opinion. So, uhm, yeah, True Blood is pretty much my favorite new show this year.

This week, True Blood kicked it up another notch with a guest starring turn from Stephen Root, of Office Space fame, playing the lonely dork vampire who lives for Monday nights when he watches Heroes and then trades his blood for hot gay hooker sex with Lafayette. Plenty more grisly human nature ensues and let’s just say we definitely can’t wait until next week to see what happens to his stapler.