Vampires for Guys-Dedicated to the manly appreciation of vampire fiction

If I resurrect the radio show this summer ( pun intented !) I'd like to have on Vampire guy!

I just reviewed a book in the “Thrall” series by Adams and Clamp. You can read it here. It really raised the question of what is meant by “vampire”. The bad guys in the Thrall series are vampire parasites. They attach themselves to the nervous systems of human hosts and take over. The concept reminds me of the aliens in Robert Heinlein’s “The Puppet Masters” which I enjoyed many years ago. They also remind me of “The Borg” in Star Trek: Next Generation.
So what’s the problem? The concept is based on other things that I’ve liked. And yet, are we still talking about “vampires”? The authors like to refer to the bad guys as vampire parasites and they get transferred to the hosts by biting. But I get the feeling that the authors are trying to trick me. Vampire fiction is hot, parasite fiction isn’t.

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Prince Charles related to Vlad the Impaler, aka 'Dracula' ... and Robert Pattinson

Thanks Lady Jane !

Prince Charles, the first in line to the UK throne, and Robert Pattinson of the "Twilight" vampire films have more in common besides their British heritage.

They're both related to Vlad the Impaler, a 15th-Century Romanian warlord said to have inspired Bram Stoker's iconic 1897 vampire novel, "Dracula."
Charles, 62, talks abouts his heritage in the UK series "Wild Carpathia," which is set to air in on the international Travel Channel in several European countries on October 30. The program promotes the preservation of forests in the Transylvania region of Romania.

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Was Nicolas Cage a vampire during the Civil War? This $1,000,000 photograph holds the answers

Are you an unhinged billionaire? Are you a sucker for impulse buys? Do you sit around wondering if the fellow née Nicolas Kim Coppola is an immortal Confederate soldier who feasts on human blood? Then have I got an eBay purchase for you, pilgrim!
Behold this recent auction titled "Nicolas Cage is a Vampire / Photo from 1870 / Tennessee"

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Vamps at Sea – Finally a Cruise That Sucks in a Good Way

Now Ol' Dallas wouldn't kid you , would she ?


Vampire fans from around the world will converge upon Alaska next June for Vamps At Sea: a Vampire Convention at Sea – June 23-30, 2012. Special guests include Dracula author Bram Stoker’s great grand-nephew, Dacre Stoker, author of Dracula The Undead the sequel to Dracula: Bram’s relation will present powerful new insight into Dracula and the vampire mystique that has been sinking its teeth into vampire fans worldwide for nearly 100 years. Joining Dacre will be PhD candidate and vampire scholar John Edgar Browning. John’s expertise is vampires in film, television and literature. He will be hosting a vampire film festival on board and his presentations will feature his research on “Real Vampires in New Orleans.”

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Beyond 'Twilight': Vampires Around the World

It seems that vampires are everywhere, from Harry Potter to True Blood, Twilight to the new Fright Night movie.
Everybody knows more or less what vampires are like: Handsome, brooding, tortured humans who crave blood and have a variety of strange abilities (such as turning into bats or not casting reflections) and weaknesses (such as being killed by sunlight or stakes to the heart).
Of course there are many variation of the vampire story; it's been retold and repackaged thousands of times since Bram Stoker's 1897 classic "Dracula."
But that's only part of the story -- and arguably not even the most interesting part.

In the West, when most people think of vampires, either historical (such as, supposedly, Romanian prince Vlad Tepes) or literary (creations by Stoker, Anne Rice, Stephen King, Stephenie Meyer, etc.), the vampire they are familiar with has Slavic origins.

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Did fascination with vampire books and True Blood influence the Texas "vampire" ?

I've been ignoring this story becasue its unsettling,  but when True Blood and vampire books get blamed - we need to know about it.

The arrest of a Texas man who broke into a woman's house, threw her against a wall and tried to suck her blood over the weekend has sparked discussion over the impact of vampire books and movies on U.S. youth culture.

Whether pop culture played a role in the attack remains to be seen, as 19-year-old Lyle Monroe Bensley awaits a psychiatric evaluation in jail on burglary charges in Galveston, Texas, southeast of Houston.
Found growling and hissing in a parking lot and wearing only boxer shorts, the pierced and tattooed Bensley claimed he was a 500-year-old vampire who needed to "feed," Galveston Police Capt. Jeff Heyse said.
Vampires have been a focal point of literature since Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, "Dracula". But fascination, particularly among young people, has peaked in recent years with the popularity of the "Twilight" books about teenage vampires and the HBO series, "True Blood."
"I think the vampire is a metaphor for the outsider and the predator in all of us," said author Anne Rice, whose Vampire Chronicles series has captured the imaginations of horror fans since the 1970s.
"We're all conscious at times of being alone, of being alienated, of being a secret self that fears exposure to the judgments of others. So we feel like vampires," she told Reuters.
Bensley is now being held in the Galveston County Jail on a $40,000 bond for home burglary with intent to commit a felony.
The woman, who lived about two miles from Bensley and did not know him, escaped the attack unharmed, Heyse said.
Kevin Petroff, chief of the Galveston County District Attorney's office, told Reuters no defense attorney has been appointed to date, and if Bensley had hired a lawyer privately, no notice had been filed.
YOUTHFUL FOR ETERNITY
Dr. Thomas Garza, who teaches a course in vampire lore at the University of Texas, said young people might aspire to be like vampires because they cheat death and are able to stay beautiful, powerful, and youthful for eternity.
The modern vampire in popular culture is more attractive, suave, and fashionably dressed than the Old World Slavic vampires, adding to the resurgence of their appeal, he added.
"I would say that it is the Twilight saga in particular that has brought out the younger teen fans. In that connection, Edward is a very 'safe' vampire, a kind of 'starter vamp' for beginners, if you will," Garza said.
"He's pretty, yes, so the seduction's there, but he's more than reluctant to act on his and Bella's sexual desires. He can go out in daylight - and even 'sparkles' in the sun, giving him a completely non-threatening character. He drives a Volvo, for goodness sake."

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Monroe Vamp house in Louisiana on the market ?

Wow looks like somehwere Liam, Malcolm and Diane might have lived.



This listing, first spotted on blog Hooked on Houses, seems less a modest four-bedroom in West Monroe, La., than source of inspiration for Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries all at once. With sumptuous velvets cladding what has to be—please, dear lord, let it be—custom furniture, it's just the sort of place for someone with an extra $629K lying around to indulge all their vampire/vampiress fantasies. Let's just hope there's no garlic dangling anywhere in that extremely lavish chef's kitchen.

see more snaps here

Stephen Colbert Chastises Don Lemon For Not Calling Out ‘Vampire’

Haha

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Why Don Draper Is a Far Better Vampire Than Any of Twilight’s or True Blood’s

** I posted this too so you guy could read the original post ..the comments are the best . My fav:

"a young female protagonist, and a vampire love interest who does not even try to eat her." Have you actually seen True Blood? 

 Guest blogger and screenwriter Brian McGreevy is upset about the post-Twilight emasculation of vampires and is currently professionally working to re-masculate them: He is adapting Bram Stoker's Dracula for Warner Bros. and Leonardo DiCaprio. Additionally, his vampire-themed novel Hemlock Grove is coming out in winter 2012 from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and he is working on the film adaptation with director Eli Roth.

The old-fashioned, iconic vampire is in many ways the ideal man. Let's call him the Romantic vampire, famously modeled on Lord Byron and best associated with Bram Stoker’s Dracula later in the century. (As opposed to the traditional vampire from Slavic folklore, a dumb and socially ungraceful specimen of peasant stock that more closely resembles the present-day zombie and whose origins could be found in plague anxiety and an impressive misgrasp of forensic science.) The Romantic vampire is a real customer, with looks, charm, style, wealth, and insatiable demonic appetite. Imagine the first bite of a perfectly seared piece of meat — to him you are that meat. Eros and Thanatos join forces in this vampire; no one else can make a woman feel this wanted or alive (for the moment).

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The emasculation of the modern vampire?

Would Don Draper really be a better vampire than the men of "True Blood" and "Twilight"? Madness

Screenwriter Brian McGreevy did a guest stint on Vulture today with a diatribe on the emasculation of vampires in modern media, specifically in "True Blood" and "Twilight." "True Blood," at least, began with McGreevy's ideal sexy/dangerous vampire -- if not in Bill Compton, than in Eric Northman. Of course, now that Eric has lost his memory and Bill is playing at being a prissy little king, it's totally reasonable for McGreevy to assert that these characters "have taken the Romantic vampire and cut off his balls, leaving a pallid emo pansy with the gaseous pretentiousness of a perfume commercial. We are now left with the Castrati vampire."
Unfortunately, this argument smacks of chauvinism. McGreevy (currently adapting Bram Stoker's "Dracula" for the big screen) blames this on a new, dangerous "female gaze" -- as opposed to the misogynistic "male gaze" as defined by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." The female gaze, he suggests, makes these non-threatening vampires "pornography for tweens." When he asserts that "Mad Men's" Don Draper is actually more of a vampire than any of the "True Blood" or "Twilight" characters, what he's saying is that Draper is more of a man.

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A new discovery about mosquitoes reveals why vampires will never exist

 Scientists have found a type of bacteria that kills off the mosquito that carries malaria. That's good news. The way the bacteria works means it could also be used to make sure there is never a plague of vampires. That's even more good news. Anopheles gambiae, the blood-sucking, malaria-carrying mosquito has been a deadly adversary to humanity for a long time. Malaria kills almost a million people per year. Researchers have come up with hundreds of potential ways to combat the disease, from engineering a malaria-proof mosquito to shooting the mosquitos that carry malaria out of the sky with lasers. This latest effort might also fight more mythical foes of humanity.

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Funny or Die : Grampires "when Sharon bit Harry"

When Harry Met Sally 2 with Billy Crystal & Helen Mirren from Billy Crystal

10 Hottest Vampires of 2010 These bloodsuckers can sink their teeth into us any day.

2010 should go down in history as the year the vampires took over. Twilight, True Blood and Vampire Diaries have commandeered our bookshelves, televisions and movie theaters. Not that we’re complaining. With the emergence of every new vampire tome and flick comes an onslaught of stunning actors who portray these bloodthirsty undead creatures of the night made for our viewing (and fantasizing) pleasure.
Our culture’s latest obsession with these mysterious and alluring vampires may not be healthy for some girls, but it we’d be remiss if we didn’t stop and admit that we can’t help ourselves!
A dream of walking through a moonlit heavily wooded area where a gorgeous (and preferably shirtless) vampire is headed toward us makes our temperatures rise oh-so high. We are mercilessly onboard the bloodsucker bandwagon.
And with that brazen admission, we now bring you the 10 hottest vampires of 2010.

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‘Dracula’ Will Rise Off Broadway, With a Count by Way of Italy Michel Altieri

New York theater’s last major attempts at vampire shows — the Elton John musical “Lestat” in 2006, “Dracula, the Musical” in 2004, and the musical “Dance of the Vampires” in 2002 — were among the biggest Broadway flops of that decade. But the monster success of the “Twilight” book and film series — about young love between a well-coiffed vampire and a pretty, sulky human — since 2008 has led to a host of movies, television series, and books featuring vampires.
Now Off Broadway is giving vampires a go. “Dracula,” the 1927 Hamilton Deane-John L. Balderston play based on Bram Stoker’s novel, which had a hit revival on Broadway in 1977 starring Frank Langella, will have a 13-week run at the Little Shubert Theater starting Dec. 14, with an opening night scheduled for Jan. 5, 2011.
George Hearn, a Tony Award winner for “Sunset Boulevard” and “La Cage aux Folles,” will play the vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing, and film actress Thora Birch (“American Beauty,” “Ghost World”) has been cast as Count Dracula’s love interest, Lucy Seward.

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The Bloody Indulgent, A Sexy Vampire Musical Is Coming

Former Backstreet Boy and Frank Zappa's daughter to star...
Veteran stage director Ken Roht is making his debut as a writer-director with The Bloody Indulgent, A Sexy Vampire Musical

Ex-Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson will star as a vampire with a substance-abuse problem with an arch-enemy strip-club owner (played by Brian Gaskill). Diva Zappa, youngest daughter of Frank Zappa, will play a dancer. Producer Kenneth Hughes says it will be out in Summer of 2011.

Check it out http://www.thebloodyindulgent.com/

Christ’s evil twin? The vampire’s religious roots

It takes more than a theological stake to the heart to kill the vampire legend.

Stories of dark-eyed seducers who prey on unsuspecting victims to suck their blood have persisted for more than five centuries. They have haunted our dreams and films, moving from place to place. And they are reborn in every generation. Today these parasites-on-the-living seemingly are everywhere.

From the television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books and films to the current HBO saga, “True Blood,” fascination with these so-called creatures of the night permeates contemporary life, albeit in modern forms. Thousands of living Americans even consider themselves vampires.

So why is this mythic figure so long-lived and potent?

Sigmund Freud said vampires represent our repressed sexuality and aggression, while Carl Jung argued that they are a universal type of “shadow,” or dark side of the human personality. They embody aspects of ourselves that we reject, hide or are ashamed to confront.

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Vampire Expert Ian Holt: ‘Vampires Do Exist. I Have Met Them.’

Author Ian Holt wrote a sequel to Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Dracula the Un-Dead) alongside Stoker’s great-grand nephew, Dacre Stoker. Holt also serves as writer and producer for the supernatural thriller film, Episode 50. We caught up with this vampire expert just in time for Halloween.

Q: Why are vampires portrayed as sexy monsters?

A: That was just a happy accident. As written, Bram’s character of Count Dracula was old, he smelled like the grave, he had hair on his palms and the facial features of a rodent. Bram’s Count Dracula was not at all sexy.

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Vampire Sex !

Ladies and gentlemen of consenting age, an announcement: Traditional forms of lovemaking are out. Vampire sex is in.

From television (HBO's "True Blood," The CW's "Vampire Diaries," ABC's "The Gates") and movies (the oh-so-profitable "Twilight" series) to literature (Google "vampire books," get approximately 44,900,000 results), vampires and their signature form of sex have sunk their teeth into pop culture (apologies) in a major way.

It's even bled into (sorry, again) entities outside the vampire oeuvre. Ted Danson's character dabbled in vampire role-play in a recent episode of HBO's "Bored to Death;" Kanye West raps "I've gotta feel you, bite your neck to get

The List: Famous vampires

Perhaps because they don't die easily, vampires seem to be everywhere these days. Popular culture has an undying appetite for these bloodsucking demons. From HBO's hit series "True Blood" to the blockbuster "Twilight" movies, vampires are back and as popular as ever. With Halloween coming up, we dig in our fangs and list some of the great actors and undead personalities who have given us nightmares over the years.

* Nosferatu — In this 1922 German expressionist film, Max Schreck, in his role as Count Orlok, sets the standard for all vampires and Count Draculas to follow. The film was ranked 21st in Empire magazine's 100 Best Films of World Cinema in 2010.
* Christopher Lee — Long before he was Sauronfixed in the "Lord of The Rings" trilogy and Count Dooku in Star Wars, Mr. Lee was the quintessential Dracula, making his first of seven films as Dracula for Hammer Horror films in 1958.

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The vampire gun at the National Firearms Museum

Let's say you need to kill a vampire -- and heaven knows, they're everywhere these days. The National Firearms Museum has just the thing: the Vampire Hunter's Colt Detective Special. The revolver has a cross engraved on the muzzle, presumably to keep vampires at bay while the vampire hunter takes aim. It spits silver .38-caliber bullets, each of which is sculpted in the form of a vampire's head. And its coffin-shaped box, lined with sanguinary-red velvet, comes with a helpful vial marked "Holy Water."
The Vampire Hunter's Colt Detective Special, which is a silver-plated version of the snub-nosed handgun once prized by Mafia hit men and pulp fiction's world-weary private eyes, is one of the newest additions to the collection of 5,000 firearms. It goes on display Oct. 8 along with 400 newly acquired firearms in the new Robert E. Petersen wing of the museum at the National Rifle Association's headquarters in Fairfax County.

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