I      L I K E      I T !

--Mark

Agghh, Peeps! My wife got some and forced me to eat one. It was like choking down the stuffing out of an old pillow. Agghh, Peeps!

--Mark

You name it, there was a Ross novel for it. Yes, there was a Barnabas, Quentin, and the Mummy's Curse. Take the generic Ross plot, plug in a mummy, a young and beautiful Collins cousin, and that's the gist of it.

--Mark

I had removed the html files from my site a while back because I was running low on space and needed to put up some other stuff. The current site is the Webbox file storage page, and these are back-ups of the original MS Word files.

http://public.webbox.com/628627

--Mark

It gave a strong impression of being a set-up -- like those wrestling shows.

WHAT?!?!

 

That's another thing. I've haven't watched any of these shows enough to judge very well, but I also have to wonder how much is real and how much is phony. Doesn't change much; in my book, it still fails as legitimate entertainment.

I will say this: I did watch the Jerry Springer movie, whatever it was called, a few years ago. Springer himself can be rather amusing, and the movie was pretty funny, being something of a satire of the whole business--although at the end, the preachy justification for his type of show was an absolute non-argument; all it did was point to "respectable" journalism as an example of the same type of pandering to people's voyeuristic tendencies. The examples he used no more apply to my way of thinking as his own program.

And no, I am not a fan of pro wrestling.

--Mark

On a side note, I've never understood the desperate desire so many people seem to have to "be on TV" -- people who will do whatever they can -- including betrayal of others, self-debasement, airing of dirty laundry, whatever -- to get on TV.

No kidding, Vlad. I absolutely cannot watch shows like Jerry Springer, Judge Judy, etc. etc. etc., in which colorful examples of anthropomorphic compost come on to spar with each other. Apparently there's a huge audience for this sort of thing, but I've never understood the desire to watch others grossly debase themselves; as long as people do, though, such idgits have a guaranteed forum. Sad thing is, I bet a lot of viewers who might run into some of that dreck in the street would actually look up to them for having been on THAT SHOW!

Oy vey.

--Mark

Possible spoilers below.

The Leviathans plot had more than its share of creative gaffes, but on the whole, I hold it in higher regard than most. For one thing, we weren't able to get DS where I lived until 1969, and when I was finally able to start watching the show regularly, the Leviathans episodes were just beginning. Having only seen DS sporadically up to that point, with no real sense of its continuity (such as it was), as far as I was concerned, the storyline was business as usual.

Personally I was thrilled to see Barnabas as a bad guy, and to this day, I still prefer to see his wicked side rear its ugly head. When he's just an out and out good guy, he's just this side of impotent, figuratively speaking. He's too powerful a character to be reduced to such infuriating indecisiveness and/or dependence on Julia. His presence as a formidable force seemed to decrease over the run of the show, as more and more we see him wringing his hands and wondering what the hell to do. I'm not saying he should be a total monster, as during his debut; but when he shows cunning, quick-wittedness, and the ability to act--even if it's evil or amoral--he's all that much more "heroic." Or anti-heroic, if one prefers.

There was a distinctly eerie quality about the mystery of the noisy thing in the antique shop. As a kid, the heavy breathing behind the door scared the hell out of me; even now, unknown noises are one of the things that can still give me a case of the creeps. At age ten, I was unaware of the (marginal) connection to Lovecraft, but the Leviathans did manage to touch some of the same nerves that Lovecraft did in later years. The emphasis on a distinctly supernatural threat worked well for me then and still does.

I've got a soft spot for evil zombies, too. So when Jeb summoned up a bunch of dead guys to walk around, that really fired up my youthful sense of dread. Watching it all these years later, it hardly has a similar effect, but I still enjoy seeing what really terrified me in those days. While it may have not come off all that well dramatically, in spirit, it was just the ticket.

I have always enjoyed the return of Paul Stoddard. Dennis Patrick was so damn good, even as a kid I was moved by his relationship with Carolyn and took his death as a real tragedy. Also, Barnabas and Angelique coming together again in the way they did was a stroke of brilliance. There was some honest-to-God DS excellence in this storyline.

Sadly, the Leviathans episodes were also marred by really terrible elements, too numerous to mention. I never thought Jeb Hawkes was much of a character. No self-respecting, murderous, half-human spawn of the Great Old Ones would turn into such a wuss. That's not to denigrate Chris Pennock's acting--he's one of my favorites--but the script they gave him was usually awful. And Sky Rumson... hoo boy. I need a Pepcid.

--Mark