Who's license plate is this ?

post you answer in the comments ...

The answer is Eric

from bk 8
“A-hum,” I said, and Eric cursed in a language that probably hadn’t been
spoken out loud in centuries. But even the sheriff of Area Five has to obey
human laws these days, or at least he has to pretend to. Eric pulled over to
the shoulder.
“With a vanity plate like BLDSKR, what do you expect?” I asked, not so
secretly enjoying the moment. I saw the dark shape of the trooper
emerging from the car behind us, walking up with something in his hand—
clipboard, flashlight?

Carrie Preston ( Arlene) on acting in True Blood

true Blood"

Nathan Barr - True Blood Composer

Visit Nathan Barr's myspace page to listen to his beautiful and haunting True Blood themes.

You can hear:
Bill and Sookie's Love Theme
Bills Entrance
Bill and Sookie Come Together

http://www.myspace.com/nathanbarrmusic

(from his page )
About Nathan Barr
Nathan Barr began studying music in Tokyo, Japan at the age of four. He grew up surrounded by eclectic music ranging from Kabuki Theater, to the sounds of his mother performing on the koto and piano, to his father playing the banjo, guitar, and shakuhachi. His interest in music was further influenced by extensive travels around the world, where he experienced music ranging from Bali's Kecak Orchestras to China's Beijing Opera. During the summer of 1993, he toured Italy and Switzerland with the Julliard Cello Ensemble. Upon graduating from college, he joined the industrial alternative rock group V.A.S.T. (Elektra Records) for a brief stint, playing guitar and electric cello. Looking to explore a career in film music, he moved to Los Angeles in 1996, where he met Academy Award-winning film composer Hans Zimmer, who invited him to join him as his assistant. After just eight months with Hans, Nathan landed his first feature and struck out on his own and has been working constantly ever since. He is currently writing the score for Hostel Part 2 and will be traveling to Prague and London to record and mix the score with an orchestra at the end of March.

A blast from Anna's past

Why More TV Viewers Love to Have the Life Scared Out of Them

By R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 12/7/2008

As a young woman walks alone in the damp, dark woods, a hand suddenly comes up from the ground and grabs her ankles. She frantically tries to escape before realizing that the nemesis is actually her vampire love interest, who eventually seals the loving reunion by sinking his fangs into her shoulder.

Romantic, eh? The scene is straight from HBO’s hit drama series True Blood, one of several cable shows that is pushing its own twist on the horror genre to bring in the eyeballs.

Besides HBO’s True Blood series — a love story between a strong but vulnerable young woman and a 100-year-old vampire, which has averaged 7 million cumulative weekly viewers during its just-ended freshman run — even general-entertainment networks are finding that hair-raising shows can sell.

AMC posted double-digit viewership increases this year for its annual eight-day October “Fearfest” horror-movie marathon, formerly “Monsterfest.”

VH1 is currently airing Scream Queens, a reality-show competition in which 10 actresses vie for a role in next year’s Saw VI horror flick. And NBC Universal’s Chiller channel is gaining traction with more than 20 million subscribers.

Read on here

True Blood Music Video of the Day: Talking in your sleep by the Romantics

Recommended by anonymous
Talking in your sleep by the Romantics

**Post your favorite in the comments or send me a link truebloodindallas@gmail.com

A Bit Long in the Tooth

Hollywood found new blood with 'Twilight,' but the vampire metaphor is positively deathless.

By Jennie Yabroff | NEWSWEEK
Published Dec 6, 2008
Midway through the HBO series "True Blood," a man returns home after being sexually humiliated by his vampire-preferring girlfriend. He turns on the TV—a classic vampire movie. He changes the channel—an evangelical chat show about the crusade against vampires. He hits the remote once more—a nature special on vampire bats. Disgusted, he switches off the set, and who can blame him? For creatures that supposedly crave the darkness, vampires seem to be getting more than their fair share of the spotlight.

In addition to "True Blood," which recently ended its first season, the film "Twilight," based on Stephenie Meyer's bestselling novel about a teen vampire and his chaste love for a human girl, topped the box office its first week out and is still going strong. "All I Want for Christmas Is a Vampire," by Kerrelyn Sparks, just entered the bestseller list, and the Swedish film "Let the Right One In," about a young vampire girl and the lonely boy who loves her, is a stealth hit among the indie crowd. "South Park" even spoofed the vampire craze in its season ender, in which the kids were initiated into a vampire cult by drinking Clamato.

read on HERE
Newsweek

The real Fangatsia - Alex's bar in Long Beach

, epiHave You Been to the Vampire Bar in Long Beach?

If you faithfully watched the first season of "True Blood" on HBO this Fall, then you'll remember Fangtasia, the vampire bar set in Shreveport, Louisiana. The true setting of the bar isn't too far off from reality, in alternative theme at least. It's actually Alex's Bar in Long Beach which is one of the top venues for punk music in the Los Angeles area. LAist has visited them a number of times for shows and is happy to see the great venue used for a great show (also a candy-crack easy-to-read addicting book series by Charlaine Harris).

True Blood Paley Center LA event was postponed

*** no date announced
Dec 9th
Dear Paley Center True Blood ticket holder,

Though we had anticipated we would be able to announce the rescheduled date for our True Blood seminar tomorrow, December 10 -- we unfortunately have not as of yet been able to secure a new date for this program. Please rest assured the event will indeed be rescheduled for the early months of 2009 and your current ticket will be honored on the new date.

We are working tirelessly to schedule the event at a time when the principle cast and creative team will all be available to participate; doing this is regrettably taking a little longer than we first anticipated.

Again, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you?re encountering due to this scheduling issue. We appreciate your continued understanding and look forward to announcing the new date to you via email in the very near future.

If you need further information, please don?t hesitate to contact me directly via email at rreyes@paleycenter.org

Appreciatively,

Rene Reyes
Producer

Public Programs & Festivals
The Paley Center for Media
P.S. Those of you who purchased Closed-Circuit Viewing Room tickets will get the opportunity to upgrade. -- Gary
Gary W. Browning

The Paley Center for Media

465 N Beverly Dr

Beverly Hills, CA 90210

T: (310) 786-1046

F: (310) 786-1086

gbrowning@paleycenter.org Visionary Drama

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

True Blood
Thursday, December 4, 2008 ( rescheduled!!)
7:00 pm PT
Los Angeles

This event has been postponed. We regret any inconvenience. Ticket holders can redeem their tickets on the new date which will be announced shortly.
Ticket holders requesting a refund should contact then for further information. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Forsaking the suburban world of American Beauty and the mortuary of Six Feet Under, creator Alan Ball now reveals the presence of vampires in a small Louisiana town, the setting for his scary and sexy new HBO series, True Blood. Ball and his creative team will unveil a new episode of the series that he pitched as "popcorn for smart people."
** you can post a comment and have it submitted as a question Send us a question you would like asked of our panelists.

http://www.paleycenter.org/true-blood/

* you will after the program is rescheduled be able to buy a dvd of the event as well as download the audio from itunes

Buy Paley Center DVDs
Select evenings from the 2005 William S. Paley Television Festival in Los Angeles-with the spirited discussion and banter presented in their entirety-are available on DVD for $19.95 each (plus tax & shipping). All proceeds benefit the Paley Center. Pick your favorite one below-or buy all three!

Download Paley Center Programs
You can download your favorite Paley Center programs on iTunes and Audible.com.
http://www.paleycenter.org/shop

Vampire weakened- Guardian UK

No throat-ripping bogeymen, the blood-suckers of Twilight are, like, totally emo.
It's all meta-phwoar, says fang fiction expert Anne Billson

"What if I'm not the hero? What if I'm the bad guy?" asks Edward Cullen, the brooding vampire boyfriend in Twilight, the new film version of Stephenie Meyer's bestselling supernatural romance for young adults. Edward needn't worry; he's no bloodsucking fiend. Gone are the days when Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee violated the quivering throats of their female victims. Now it's the females who are calling the shots. Instead of screaming, getting bitten and being turned into passive playthings, they're reaching out to their erstwhile ravishers and — horror of horrors! — having relationships with them.

It didn't happen overnight. Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Hotel Transylvania novels emphasised the Byronic romance of vampires, while films like Fright Night and The Lost Boys played up the teen angle. But it wasn't until 1997 — when Joss Whedon spun Buffy into a TV phenomenon — that girls really got to grips with the bloodsuckers. Whedon conceived his heroine as the revenge of every "little blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed in every horror movie. The point of Buffy was to subvert that idea, and create someone who was a hero where she'd always been a victim."

It wasn't just Buffy's vampire-slaying that made her so influential; it was her relationships with two of the vampires. Metaphors for the agonies of teenage love were bountiful: transgressive sex, forced abstinence, viruses, physical transformation and personality change were all part of the vampire subtext. And in Buffy's wake came a flood of fang fiction aimed at a female readership hungering for worthy successors to Heathcliff, Mr Rochester and Darcy. Typically, these stories are narrated by a plain Jane Eyre type — usually a virgin — who considers herself nothing special (though she may be gifted with paranormal abilities) but who, to her amazement, finds herself acting like catnip on a seductive male vampire who in centuries of existence has never encountered a young woman as beguiling as she. It's the love that lasts for ever. Wishful thinking, or what?

Early box office for Twilight, the movie, has been huge: a sequel has already been announced. Which suggests that Edward Cullen is indeed what an entire generation of young (and maybe not so young) women has been waiting for. As Bella, the lovestruck narrator of the books, sums him up, "He had the most beautiful soul, more beautiful than his brilliant mind or his incomparable face or his glorious body." In the film, it's British actor Robert Pattinson (who played Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter) who has the unenviable task of incarnating this indescribable paragon. But the hysterical screaming currently greeting his red-carpet appearances suggests he's successfully slotted into the boyband breach as prime object of tween desire, a good-looking blank slate on to which young fans can project their emo fantasies.

The film wisely sticks to the winning formula of Meyer's novel: 17-year-old Bella moves in with her divorced dad, sheriff of a sunless small town in Washington state, and starts at a new school where she notices a clique of extra-pale pupils who don't eat. In fact, they're a coven of vampires who are trying to blend into human society and drink the blood of animals rather than people. Bella and Edward fall in love, but their relationship never gets beyond first base because he's frightened of losing control and tucking into her. And maybe also because writer Meyer is a Mormon who attended Brigham Young University and is more into holding hands than anything hot'n'heavy. Time magazine has dubbed it "the erotics of abstinence".

Not all vamp fiction is this discreet. In Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake novels, the heroine enjoys six novels' worth of foreplay with a vampire called Jean-Claude until they finally get it on ("He plunged inside me faster, harder"). Cassie Palmer, clairvoyant heroine of Karen Chance's Touch The Dark, also gets plunged into by a sexy vampire, while in Charlaine Harris's Dead Until Dark, mind-reading cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse loses her virginity to an undead American civil war vet called Bill.

Alan Ball, creator of Six Feet Under, has adapted the Stackhouse novels into the HBO series True Blood. Since Ball is openly gay, some critics have concluded he is proposing vampirism as an allegory of homosexuality, but this would be to oversimplify matters. The reason vampires are so durable in zeitgeist terms is that they have always offered a multiplicity of metaphors, some of them overlapping and not all of them so obvious.

Which is also why there's no need to worry about vampires being defanged by swoony female fang fiction. Sure, women have responded to the traditional threat of metaphorical rape by refusing to play the victim; they've tamed the bogeyman, to a degree, by transforming him into an object of desire. But this in itself suggests there's something darker about that desire than perhaps they'd care to admit. Whether he's ripping throats out or limiting himself to chaste hand-holding, the vampire will always be mad, bad and dangerous to know

• Anne Billson's vampire novel Suckers is out now. Twilight is out Dec 19
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/dec/06/twilight-stephenie-meyer-vampires

True Blood Music Video of the Day: Je T'aime by Kelly Sweet

Je T'aime by Kelly Sweet
suggested by sunshineonmyshoulder
thanks sun!

True Blood's Nelsan Ellis On Sexy Season Two & His Dad Hating His Character

We've all fallen in love with a drug-dealing, vampire-loving, burger frying, flamboyantly gay man. Or at least someone who plays one on TV. Nelsan Ellis, Lafayette on the HBO hit True Blood, is speaking up about the shaky future of his outspoken character.

Before heading inside to attend the Junior Hollywood Radio & Television Society holiday party Wednesday night in Hollywood, Ellis chatted about True Blood and his character's possible departure.

Will we see Lafayette on Season Two? "Naturally I love working on the show, so I want to come back," he said. "But it's up to the powers that be. So we'll see."

Ellis is referring to show creator and all-around genius Alan Ball, who has based the show on a popular book series. Spoiler alert: Lafayette dies in the first book. Ball has taken a few liberties and strayed from the books at times to fit with his vision. But with so many people rooting for a return on Lafayette, will Ball listen? Ellis said he feels proud to work on the show, which he promises is going to be much sexier in Season Two. As if that's even possible! He admits that his eccentric character is fun to play because it's such a departure from himself.

"It's fun. To be a heterosexual man and wear the lipstick and the makeup—I love it."

[Watch clips of True Blood on Fancast]

One thing we do know for sure is that Ellis plays one of the most popular new characters on TV. Surprisingly, he had no idea.

"Tell my father that," he joked, "because he hates my character! I didn’t know it, so it makes me blush a little bit."

If you need further proof about the popularity of this scene stealer, check out this online petition to save the character.

http://thebiz.fancast.com/2008/12/nelsan_ellis_story.html

Perfect holiday gift for your Stephen Moyer Fan ?

NAME a BRICK for them at BRENTWOOD THEATRE!

Who needs another sweater? For £50 (appx USD $80) you can name a brick for your True Blood / Bill Compton fan! Each Brick will be placed on the theatre’s Donor Wall — Plus your gift recipient will receive a thank-you certificate signed by Stephen Moyer himself! One or two lines (16 total spaces/letters per line) http://www.brentwood-theatre.org/donations.htm

NOW For a limited time for the holidays – Two individual donors who wish to share a Brick together – Only £29.5 (appx $45) per person, and each will get a signed certificate of their own!!

The ultimate gift for the ultimate fan also helps the final phase of construction at Brentwood Theatre – Essex, UK’s professional community theatre serving dozens of local non-professional performance groups – where Stephen Moyer is Patron.

Please contact Mark at mark @ brentwood-theatre.org or Jean at LaProv @ optonline.net for more information.

All contributions are voluntary; citizens of the USA and other countries are aware by this notice that any gifts will not be tax deductible in their own countries by law.

True Blood or Vampire inspired Christmas cards

Maybe you don't want to send out the same old Nativity scene or Santa Claus Christmas cards this year. You can really make your family think you've gone over the deep end by sending everyone one of these cards this year

Garrison Keillor once said "A lovely thing ab out Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together."


I found these here: SHOP


But you can also create your own
http://cards.cafepress.com
or
http://www.zazzle.com
clrobertson on the wiki has already done one(above) ...hahahah
Wait, I mean ho- ho- ho

A Fatal Attraction

.....

But the vampire legend hardly needs substitutes. It is strong enough to sustain itself for a while yet. While Shales was correct to warn against unthinking exploitations, he also admitted that the True Blood series was reason enough to go back to the haunted well. Funny, addictive and at times horrifically violent, in a very funny and addictive way, True Blood is proof that Russell T. Davies, the executive producer of the latest and hippest incarnation of Dr Who, wasn't blowing smoke up our collective fundament when he said that "writing monsters and demons and end-of-the world is not hack work. Joss Whedon [Buffy] raised the bar for every writer - not just genre-niche writers, but every single one of us."

In True Blood, set in the deep-south backwater of Bon Temps, the bloodsuckers are the least of the grotesqueries. Freed from the need to snack on humans by the invention of synthetic blood, they now move among us, "living" their alternative lifestyle surrounded by caricatures of Red State America, knuckle-draggin', tobacco-chewin', Lynyrd Skynyrd wannabes with pick-ups full of weapons, watermelon and moonshine. The same humming aura of sexual threat and promise surrounds the vampires but an acute sense of identity politics is also prominent as America's culture war is reprocessed through the story of their "coming out of the coffin".

"I love the fact that these creatures are struggling for assimilation. I can relate to that in certain ways," the show's creator, Alan Ball, told The New York Times. Ball's work, including Six Feet Under and the screenplay for American Beauty, has often dealt with the notion that people are not always what they seem.

"It's very easy to look at the vampires as metaphors for gays and lesbians but it's very easy to see them as metaphors for all kinds of things. If this story had been done 50 years ago, it would be a metaphor for racial equality. But I can also look at the vampires and see them as a kind of terrifying shadow organisation that is going to do what they want to do, whether they have to break the law or not. And if you get in the way, they'll just get rid of you. So it's a very fluid metaphor."

The genre might be getting a little, ahem, long in the tooth but the creatures themselves remain so versatile that a new variation on the theme is never far away. Witness author Charlie Huston's bringing life back into the oldest and tiredest of genre tropes, the private detective story, by the simple trick of making his tough-talking, two-fisted shamus one of the living dead. The gothic setting of Manhattan is more than well suited to a crossover between the two noirs - crime and horror - and Huston has the writing chops to pull off the stunt where others don't.

When perceiving the growing hordes of vampires crawling towards us across the landscape of pop culture, I suppose the question must arise: why?

In part there is a simple element of reinforcing success. As Russell Davies pointed out, Joss Whedon set a challenge that a lot of creatives found impossible to ignore. More importantly, he also reminded studio executives that the undead do pay, sometimes handsomely.

Beyond the pragmatic, however, there is always something else working. The 1950s obsession with UFOs and alien invasion movies almost certainly had its roots in Cold War fears and the Russians' early lead in the space race. So why vampires, rather than, say, ghosts or werewolves or man-made monsters in the style of Frankenstein?

"When I pitched the show to HBO, they asked me what it was about," says Ball of True Blood, "and I said, it's about what it really means to be disenfranchised, to be feared, to be misunderstood. It's a metaphor for the terrors of intimacy. That's one of the reasons vampires have been such a potent metaphor and mythological motif for centuries. They show up in pretty much all cultures. It's the notion of separating that part which keeps us safe and separate from another person, both emotionally and physically. And how there is a certain loss of self that takes place when there is true intimacy. And I think that's really healthy. But it doesn't mean it's not scary."

The sexual power of our toothsome predators is undoubtedly a factor. "We did a focus group," Ball says, "and it was great because the women loved the romance and the relationships and the men loved the sex and violence. And I thought, well, that's kind of a cliche but I'm glad. There's something in there for everybody."

Beyond the merely prurient, however, lies the terrible attraction of the vampire, the feeling that while it would be awful to lose one's soul upon rebirth as one of the nosferatu, it would also be, well, kinda cool. You'd "live" forever, with superpowers and unnatural beauty, and your nightlife would really kick up a gear. The mundane concerns and frustrations of mortal life would no longer be yours. Of all the monster archetypes, none remain as intellectually appealing as the vampire. They seem to gain so much and give up only their immortal souls, and in a secular, materialist world that hardly seems to be any kind of loss at all.

Twilight opens on Thursday. True Blood screens on Showcase from February 10.

From the article A Fatal Attraction Sydney Morning Herald Australia

http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/film/a-fatal-attraction/2008/12/04/1228257208366.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

We love Pam's safari look dress from the tribunal/Jessica episodes

...and you just gotta love a vampire wearing sunglasses


DIANE VON FURSTENBERG
Trinia shirt dress
Was $398 Now $278.60

Colonial-chic is a classic day wear look which exudes sophistication. This shirt dress is perfect for a luxe take on the safari look and works as a chic foundation layer. Go ethnic with wooden embellishments and tribal accessories or think polished perfection and trim with metallics. . 100% cotton. Dry clean. US sizing.

To see more from the line go here : http://www.net-a-porter.com/Shop/Designers/Diane_von_Furstenberg

Make Babies: what your baby would look like with a celebrity?

Nope, I'm not kidding ...this person tried it it with a photo of Eric/Alex
Enjoy

MakeMeBabies' unique technology will show you exactly (well... almost exactly...) what your future child with another person will look like!
We take both your photos, do some magic calculations, and congratulations! You have a new baby!

they brag that they have "made" over 6 million babies http://www.makemebabies.com/