Vampire Diaries is most likely the single worst program I have ever watched an entire episode of. No close second place.

Longtime Blue Blood readers are probably aware that I find vampire legends so compelling that I wrote my thesis on how they function as a paradigm for human sexuality. You are probably also aware that I thought Twilight was great. I have no objection to either love or wholesomeness and most of the people who hate Twilight soooooooo much haven’t seen it. So the pain in my temples produced by watching Vampire Diaries had nothing to do with any problem with vampires being teen fare or not being sufficiently horror genre or anything like that.

Vampire Diaries sucks because, first of all, all the characters read too old to be in high school. It is impossible to keep track from casting, styling, or acting which characters are supposed to be younger or older than one another. They are all extremely poised, perfectly coiffed, and apparently have no parental supervision or annoyance of any kind. Their main hangout looks like a bar. The female characters all approach sex like aging cougar divorcees or at least very very very jaded twenty-somethings.

When I was in high school, not only did I run with a fast crowd, but most of us had diplomatic immunity and knew that there would be no legal consequences for our actions. Although I found Twilight’s approach to relationships refreshingly positive, I have no objection to teens drinking, drugging, and having either fabulous or poorly-managed sex in literature, but I prefer it be a bit, ya know, plausible. I was, in point of fact, legal to drink in most of the countries I lived in during high school and my friends’ favorite hangouts actually were bars. But, for a teen show, set in the United States, the main teen hangout should probably have set design which looks more like a Denny’s and less like a liquor establishment or, if it is a bar, that needs to be explained.

Adding to the weird anachronism of Vampire Diaries are the pop culture references. The most painful one is when one of the cougar teens tells another that her ex is clearly pining for her because he is acting cool on the outside (he’s not), but you just know he is continuously listening to Air Supply’s Greatest Hits. Air Supply’s Greatest Hits. How hard would it have been to come up with something vaguely contemporary? I mean, I know Vampire Diaries is based on books from the 1990’s, but, for slightly past sappy lovesick music, surely the CW could have hired a writer who had heard of say Dashboard Confessional or Bright Eyes. I consulted the internet and Air Supply’s Greatest Hits came out in 1983. I’d like to say this is before any of the actors on Vampire Diaries were born, but some of them are really old to be playing teens. It is, however, obviously before any of the teen characters were supposed to have been born.

Paul Wesley, the male vampire romantic lead Stefan Salvatore, who was indeed born before Air Supply’s Greatest Hits was released, looks oddly like a misshapen Robert Pattinson, who played the male vampire romantic lead Edward Cullen in Twilight. He was obviously cast for the comparison, but the gambit doesn’t really work. He is a nice-looking guy and only looks deformed because of the context making it feel like he should look like someone else. He is also kind of beefy to make a convincing vampire. Or a convincing teenager for that matter. In all fairness, Vampire Diaries is based on books by L. J. Smith which predate the Stephanie Meyers Twilight Saga, so the execs at the CW could have chosen to riff less directly on Twilight.

The special effects are pretty hokey too, although more convincing than the teenaged status of any of the actors.

Full disclosure: Vampire Diaries advertised with a number of sites I work on. I probably watched the pilot in its entirety because of this and I definitely postponed mentioning its suckage until now out of deference to an advertiser.

I did think the posters and ad creative were really sexy though. There are still some big billboards up in Hollywood with some sexy photography and graphic design on them. So they have that and trending on Twitter every Thursday going for them.

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?

The most anticipated moment of the MTV Movie Awards was when they premiered the Twilight New Moon trailer for the movie which comes out in November. Taylor Lautner, whose martial arts moves in a My Own Worst Enemy scene Nixon Sixx appeared in looked aesthetically pleasing, has his shirtless appearance on camera showcased in the trailer. Twilight fan sites have been showing pictures of Robert Pattinson shirtless as well and looking quite a bit more buff and defined than I would have expected.

It kind of looks like the werewolf and the vampire have been passing around steroid precursors instead of blood, but I’m not complaining.

When I heard Saturday Night Live’s Andy Samberg was hosting the MTV Movie Awards, I thought for a split second about whether they would be worth seeing. Hot Rod was an unwatchable mess of a movie, but Andy Samberg brought us Dick in a Box, Natalie Portman Rap, I’m On A Boat, and more awesomeness. My brother went one year and reported it was unutterably dull, but staying home and TiVo can assist with that. But I only really thought about even TiVoing it for a split second. I suspect Eminem, who walked out of the proceedings, wishes he had not even TiVoed it as well.

I wondered what remotely cool or remotely music-related movies even came out last year, besides Twilight? From all reports, the only notable events of the MTV Movie Awards evening were the premiere screening of the Twilight New Moon Trailer (which we’ll have for you here in a moment) and that grody Sacha Baron Cohen creep being dropped on Eminem. Basically Sacha Baron Cohen put on this white outfit which riffs unoriginally on the already satirical White Gold heavy metal milk commercials and shows his ass (which ranks lower than Fred Durst’s ass on the List of Asses Nobody Wants to See) and MTV flew him over the audience on a wire and dropped him in Eminem’s lap, crotch up. If multiplatinum rapper and movie star Eminem, who has the best gothic video on MTV right now, ups the MTV Movie Awards star quotient by gracing them with his presence, how disrespectful and unappreciative is it to stick an unappealing stranger’s tiny groin in his face?

If you don’t know who Sacha Baron Cohen is, count yourself fortunate, but he is basically this disingenuous pseudo-comedian who never owns his own stupid presentation. Sacha Baron Cohen always pretends that he is just playing a character, but most of his characters are exaggerations of someone trying pathetically hard to be cool. The ego protection Sacha Baron Cohen is engaging in there is so obvious, just in case someone notices that he is not cool at all, that I find him painful to watch under the best of circumstances.

I guess one could argue that Eminem plays spoof characters in some of his videos, but I feel that is deeply different because one has a sense that sometimes Eminem is clowning around and sometimes he is being raw and real. And nobody would greenlight flying Eminem over the MTV Movie Awards audience and dropping him in Bret Michaels’ lap, crotch up.

It is now the morning after and Twilight unsurprisingly swept the MTV Movie Awards with standard award show fare like Best Movie and MTV special awards like Best Fight Scene. So Robert Pattinson who played vampire leading man Edward Cullen, Kristen Stewart who played viewpoint character Bella Swan, and Cam Gigandet who played bad boy vampire James all spent a lot of time clutching boxes of gold popcorn on stage. Apparently the other music-related movie worthy of MTV consideration was High School Musical 3: Senior Year which starred Zac Efron. Zac Efron is nice-looking enough and I saw him host SNL and so I can’t say whether High School Musical 3: Senior Year was robbed when Zac Efron lost in the Best Kiss category he was nominated in which was won by Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson from Twilight. I’m not sure what Zac Efron did win, as even the clips from the MTV Movie Awards show this year are kinda unwatchable and IMDB shows no 2009 wins, but, when he was called to the stage by Sacha Baron Cohen, who was apparently a presenter, poor Zac Efron, being put on the spot, looked like he wanted no part of it and was considering following Eminem out of the building. Edit: MTV reports that, although most viewers missed it in the hubbub, Zac Efron won for Best Male Performance (as opposed to Robert Pattinson’s win for Best Breakthrough Performance Male Winner.)

I’m going to get on posting that Twilight New Moon trailer now, but, seriously, I think Eminem should get a Get Out of Jail Free card for pistol-whipping Sacha Baron Cohen any time he feels like it. Ideally without warning and in the (tiny) crotch area.

Some pundits are suggesting today that Eminem was not really annoyed and just acted angry as part of the gag. If Eminem was not actually disgusted, then he deserves an Oscar or at least an MTV Movie Award for his convincing performance.

Perez Hilton reports in Party Like a Vampire that convention booths are insufficient to entertain Twilight fans, so the series will be getting a large convention in Dallas dedicated to Twilight. The event is, perhaps not surprisingly, called TwiCon. It features a variety of comedy troupes who create respectfully humorous Twilight spoofs and a line-up of bands, most of which are inspired by the movie, but one of which, 100 Monkeys, is notable because it includes Jackson Rathbone who plays vampire Jasper Hale in the movie and its forthcoming sequel The Twilight Saga: New Moon later this year.

Popular Twilight fanfic site Twilighted is doing a fan fiction contest as part of TwiCon with a theme of romance 100 years in the vampire future. Would it be wrong if I mentioned that the only other individual fandoms which tend to receive dedicated conventions are Star Trek and Star Wars. And Star Trek really jumpstarted the erotic slashfic type of fanfic. I’m not sure whether it is technically accurate to refer to sexy fan fiction as a genre with a series of sub-niches, but it feels kinda accurate. Maybe if Star Trek is getting a sexy modern makeover, someone needs to write some threeway erotica fanfic involving Bella and Edward and Spock. Or not.

So Linda Holmes of MSNBC just posted an article where she called FOX’s American Idol front-runner Adam Lambert “self-indulgent and not particularly creative”. I know FOX and MSNBC are competitive with one another, but I just think Linda Holmes is way off-base. She goes on to say:

“But what, exactly, is the Adam Lambert constituency of the future? He would be popular with fans of … what? The judges seem to think that the answer is “Twilight,” but what kind of sense does that really make? . . . But before anyone goes anointing him some kind of highly marketable future star, take another look at that performance of “Ring Of Fire,” and ask yourself whether you’d hear that on the radio.”

First off, I feel like Twilight and Adam Lambert are two of the only major mainstream pop culture phenomenons of the new millennium which actually are made for an incredibly underserved demographic. When I look for Blue Blood appropriate subject matter which is new, Twilight and Adam Lambert are two of the only things on the radar there. The Twilight soundtrack has been in the Billboard top 10 for twenty-two weeks now. Carter Burwell’s freaking score for Twilight entered the Billboard charts five weeks ago and is still hanging in there. So, if MSNBC doesn’t see the relation between Adam Lambert and Twilight and what a lot of people would like to be entertained by, they need new pop culture analysts. (I’m expensive, but I invite them to get in touch.) American Idol winners also hold multiple spots in the current Billboard top 100 with Kelly Clarkson, David Cook, and Carrie Underwood all charting. So American Idol fans do buy music.

Secondly, turn on the radio or MTV and listen to the most recent Trent Reznor Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson David Bowie or Ministry or Combichrist or VNV Nation or Depeche Mode or Godhead or KMFDM or Marc Almond or Sisters or Mercy. Oh wait. You can’t. If you like either a goth-industrial and/or glam sound or a goth-industrial and/or glam look, you probably still don’t know which of those acts have new albums out. Because radio is not playing them. Yet many of those artists still movie significant units without radio airplay or MTV support.

Yet the MSNBC writer goes on to say:

“For all the discussion of Adam’s originality and freshness and relevance, his aesthetic is an inky-haired, nail-polished cliché — perhaps appealing and perhaps not, but certainly nothing you couldn’t see in New York, Seattle, or, for that matter, Akron. The sulky glower, the whimper-face, the moaning, the Sad Elvis sneer … there’s nothing wrong with it, per se, but to praise it as particularly creative screams, “I do not watch MTV.””

Does Linda Holmes watch MTV? I love music videos and I get multiple MTV channels, Music Choice downloads, and FUSE. And I’ve been publishing work with a dark glam gothic vampiric aesthetic for more than sixteen years and doing rock journalism, including covering the 80’s glam scene for a bunch of years on top of that. So I feel pretty qualified to say that MTV has very little to offer those who like inky-haired and nail-polished men. In point of fact, I must sorrowfully admit that the only options for that general taste are Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, and Rev Theory. Maybe Good Charlotte and Avenged Sevenfold if any of the video channels were currently playing them, which they are not. I would also include Queens of the Stone Age based on musical talent and approach. And that is about it. Not that the music and merch sales there are poor.

I don’t have an iTunes account at the moment, so I can’t confirm this, but I hear that Adam Lambert’s performance of the Tears for Fears song “Mad World” was a top download. The voting on American Idol this year breaks a new record every episode. And both Vegas bet-makers and internet data analysts are pretty sure Adam Lambert is going to win American Idol this year. So somebody is interested in Adam Lambert, beyond the average American Idol audience.

I didn’t really have a lot to say about Adam Lambert’s performance of “Mad World” last week on American Idol, but, in light of today’s MSNBC article, I’m going to comment on it now. The show ran a bit overtime, but I always set my TiVo to record a few minutes extra at the end of live shows like sporting events and at the end of shows on networks like Comedy Central, Showtime, HBO, and NBC who have trouble telling time. So, unlike a few million Americans whose TiVos were not set for extra time, I saw Adam Lambert’s stripped down “Mad World”. He did the song bathed in blue light, without costuming, and with very little motion, and it came off powerful. Personally, I like guyliner and swivel hips, but I understand entirely why sometimes it is necessary to demonstrate that the eyeliner and pelvic moves are sizzle on an excellent steak. Otherwise, a genuinely talented performer who employs costume and drama can be dismissed as all sizzle.

The “Mad World” ode to teenage depression and alienation was originally written and recorded by Tears for Fears in 1982. That’s a bit before my time, but I was still a bit surprised that I had not recognized it when Adam Lambert performed it. Apparently, the version he sang was one redone for the Donnie Darko movie. I’ve never seen Donnie Darko, but I understand it is an aesthetically pleasing and depressing update of the James Stewart vehicle Harvey. (Not really, but they both have big rabbit phookas advising the main character.) I’m entertained that Richard Kelly, the writer/director of Donnie Darko, is one of the producers for the upcoming Tucker Max movie, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. (If only Tucker Max wore eyeliner.) At any rate, Richard Kelly had wanted to use a U2 song for the closing credits, but U2 were too pricey to license, so he had a gent named Gary Jules cover the Tears for Fears song instead, in order to stay within budget. The spare and emotional Gary Jules version turned out to be very popular and successful and has been used in a number of sountracks since.

So technically, Adam Lambert was supposed to perform a song on American Idol from the year he was born, 1982, but he kinda sang a song from 2001ish when Donnie Darko was released. But it did sound and look nice. Tears for Fears bassist Curt Smith who sang the original synthpop version of “Mad World” tweeted on his Twitter:

“Morning tweeps, still spring break in the Smith household. Ton of twits and e’s about Adam Lambert’s Mad World, for the record I thought his vocal performance was pretty great bar a wobbly last note. Sobering that the original was released year he was born. I must officially be an old man ;)”

I guess Curt Smith did tweet from TweetDeck, instead of Spaz, which is what all the cool kids are using, but still:

From MTV, Tears for Fears “Mad World” lyrics by Roland Orzabal and originally sung by Curt Smith:

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow

No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It is a very, very

Mad world
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what is my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me

Twilight is out on DVD this week and, if you enjoy the tropes of cool sexy vampires, then Twilight is a fun watch. If you were just wondering whether or not to catch it on DVD or On Demand, then all you really need to know is that the movie has a pleasing cold color palette, nice-looking cast, interesting styling, creative quality directing, and a solid storyline with no plot holes and a satisfying ending. If vampires or lack of promiscuity or overwrought sexuality fill you with rage, then pass on Twilight, but otherwise it is enjoyable and hotter than I would have expected.

I admit that I would have enjoyed Twilight most between the ages of fourteen and fourteen. Yes, I know I said fourteen twice, but the target demographic for the movie is pretty specific. Realistically, the Twilight movie is probably aimed at girls aged twelve to nineteen, but it is just well enough done that it reaches beyond its core target demo. Not to put too fine a point on it, I think one of the reasons that vampires are so alluring to teen girls is that they are dangerously seductive, but they don’t put out particularly often. There is the aura of sexual excitement without the necessity to know precisely what to do with someone else’s private parts.

I wrote my thesis on Cross-cultural and Historical Vampire Legends as a Paradigm for Aggressive Human Sexuality. Keep in mind that I left home to go to school as a young jailbait teen. I found it startling that, all of a sudden, there were people around me who had this attitude that it was normal to have actual sex sex sexual intercourse with anyone they hooked up with. I was more of a go-getter than my peers in terms of acquiring the partners I wanted, but, even once I was entirely ready to have sex, I never got to the point where I wanted to have it immediately with someone I dated and I never got to the point where I wanted to have it with everyone I remotely liked. (This is inconvenient today, given that the circles I travel in include many people who treat fucking like a handshake i.e. a casual social interaction it is extremely rude and maybe even hostile to reject.) Heading off to university at sweet sixteen and being all hormonally hopped up, I was probably considered a bit of a menace to the people around me.

One of the aspects of Twilight which I think makes many adults respond in a viscerally negative way is its accurate portrayal of teenage female sexuality. I was more sure of what I did and did not want than the average teen, but sometimes the responsibility falls on the shoulders of the 100 plus year old vampire to say it is better to wait. One of the nicest scenes in the movie features Kristen Stewart’s Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson’s Edward Cullen making out in her bedroom. He pulls back saying he mustn’t lose control with her. She convinces him not to leave and they sit and talk and have an actual (if you will forgive the word choice) human interaction instead of just progressing to more physical intimacy.

Nonetheless, it is uncomfortable to realize that there are giant media corporations marketing sex to teenage girls. In the kickass opening episode for season 13 of South Park, episode 1311 “The Ring” brings up this issue to very comic effect. In particular, the Trey Parker-voiced Mr. Mouse who heads up Disney had me laughing out loud when he had to fly into Colorado to do damage control when the Jonas Brothers want to take off their purity rings. For those of you who, like me, had been blissfully unaware of the purity ring fad, the idea is to sell sexually stimulating media to young teens and then also sell them purity rings which are jewelry they can wear to remind themselves to be pure of heart and abstain from sex until marriage. In “The Ring”, when the Jonas Brothers want to take off their purity rings and make what they do just about their *cough* music, Mr. Mouse breaks it down for them, “You have to wear the purity rings because that’s how we can sell sex to little girls, ha, ha. See, if we make the posters with little girls reaching for your junk, then you have to wear purity rings or else Disney company looks baaaaaaaaad, ha, ha.” One of the many reasons the original Blue Blood magazine in print featured only real life couples doing what they would actually do on purpose in real life is that I think relationships are a good and desirable part of human sexual interaction. I hope there is some middle ground between romance-loathing, anti-relationship, indiscriminate swinging and the side-splittingly ridiculous drivel spewed on sites trying to sell teens cheap jewelry to be pure. So far my favorite comedy routine on a purity ring site is entitled, “The unimaginable consequences of Sexting”. Did I mention I’d love to see some common sense become more common?

Returning to the vampire motif in Twilight, why is this movie loathed by so many people who love them some True Blood, Interview with the Vampire, The Hunger, Near Dark, Lost Boys, and just about every other cinematic vampire ever created? South Park knows what is up once again. The brilliant season 12 finale of South Park, episode 1214 “The Ungroundable“, spoofed the pain of outsiders not being able to tell the difference between “goths” and “vampires”. I admit to knowing pretty much nobody, regardless of their actual subculture allegiance or tastes, who would claim self-described to be a goth or vampire, but South Park really did illustrate the issue there.

How does one react when something which felt like it was for you and your community suddenly become for other people? If a band you love becomes popular, do you stop listening to it when too many of its fans are people you feel could not understand the band’s message? Or say, if, for example, you and your friends have been having fabulous parties, reading obscure books, listening to obscure music, having creative sex, dressing flamboyantly, and producing media of your exploits, what do you do when a bunch of people with very different values start aping everything you do? Do you change and develop new interests or reject your own past? Do you reject the trendier portions of what is new? Do you examine which new media appears intended to destroy your culture and which new media is essentially a neighboring and perhaps friendly country?

The South Park answer is to burn Hot Topic down. Without inciting to riot, I’m comfortable with a rejection of Hot Topic because it seeks to destroy the very culture it serves; Hot Topic seeks to make the whole notion of enjoying gothic anything into some sort of teen fad that everyone is supposed to grow out of. Twilight just happens to be a teen fad and not one which its fans will necessarily all grow out of. Perhaps Twilight encourages abstinence, selectivity, or merely taking it slow, but I have trouble finding fault there, especially given the target demographic of teenage girls. I have not yet read the books by Stephenie Moyer which the Twilight movie is based on, but I do not believe that she or screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg from Dexter and The O.C. were trying to come up with a storyline which attacked gothic culture in general. (I reserve judgment until I’ve read the books and learned more about them.) I do not think director Catherine Hardwicke, whose previous directing credits include the controversial Thirteen, is hoping that having more people get into the whole vampire thing is going to be awesome for getting rid of gothic subculture. Prior to directing the edgy Thirteen, Catherine Hardwicke was primarily a production designer who worked on films from Tapeheads to Tank Girl. No surprise then that Twilight has such lovely aesthetics.

To recap:

– Twilight is entertaining if you like vampires.
– Teen girls do have discomfitting sexuality.
– Vampires are sexy, doubly so to teen girls.
– Purity rings are laughable, but abstinence and selectivity are not bad.
– South Park is sometimes very funny.
– Hot Topic sucks, seeking to make gothic culture juvenile and disempowered.
– Twilight invites everyone to enjoy a darker aesthetic.
– Twilight is out on DVD and On Demand now.

I’ll get back to y’all at such time as I develop a more complex opinion of Twilight.