Contest Winners & Living in the Wild, Wild West

The contest for a copy of Patricia Altner's Vampire Readings is over and the winner is:

SARAH

Congratulations, Sarah! Sarah's blog is Sarah's Book Reviews, so I'm sure Patricia's guide to vampire fiction will be especially helpful. Sarah, please send me an email with your mailing address and I'll forward it on to Patricia.

Thanks, too, to Patricia for talking to me and for answering our questions. I recommend that fans of the genre sign up for Patricia's Vampire Notes newsletter for news about books, reviews, interviews and contests. It's a must-read email in my inbox.

A New Contest Winner: I have been waiting and waiting for the final winner of my Carrie Vaughn/Kitty Norville contest to send her mailing address to me. (To those who are waiting for their prizes, sorry for the delay.) So I've drawn another winner for the contest.

Congratulations, Amanda Leigh! You've won a copy of Kitty's House of Horrors! Send me your mailing address so I can give the winners' info to Hachette Books. Hachette is always great about remembering online fans of fiction.

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"Lost" Season Premiere


Okay, all I've got to say is fricking Mark Pellegrino. Why is it when directors are thinking, "Hmm, I want to cast a guy who is supernaturally powerful and totally awesome and can cause the apocalypse and lives eternally and can make islands move," they cast Mark Pellegrino?

How do these directors have Mark Pellegrino play these awesome roles? Like some sensitive, Dockers wearing, mini-van driving, golden retriever owning, yuppie father of two. Case in point: he plays Satan in "Supernatural," who sits on the bed and chats about the end of the world and can't take over your body without your permission. Wow, that's some powerful devil. I mean, powerfully polite! (I blame Eric Kripke for writing Satan this way.)

Then the actor plays Jacob in "Lost" in exactly the same "I'm watching my carbs and taking yoga and I've got just the right amount of three-day beard to make me edgy!" low-key way.

I'm sure he's fabulous in other roles. But as the ultimate evil or some ancient powerful god? I think not.

I tried to watch the premiere of "Lost" since this is the final season. But I just could not care. It is a hot mess and I seriously doubt the writers actually have control of the plot. (What plot?) Also, when there are parallel universes, it doesn't matter if a character dies, since he or she will just be brought back again five minutes later. This is a genius way to suck all emotional impact right out of the story.

It doesn't seem to matter when the mysterious yuppie beachcomber ancient god gets stabbed and dies. Because you get really bored of all the elliptical and cryptic dialog. You're like, "Would someone stab this guy already and throw his Dockers-wearing ass in the temple fire pit?"

I'm not saying you have to be violent to be scary. I saw Kurt Fuller on "Psych" the other day, and he was quite funny as a quirky mortician. "Supernatural" fans will know Fuller as scary, bad-news Zachariah. And the thing is, Fuller can wear a suit, speak calmly and be scary as hell as he tries to bribe your soul away with icy-cold beer and really great hamburgers. Hell should be scary. The devil should be scary.

What was I saying anyway? Oh, yeah, I am so over "Lost." Unless they bring back Jacob yet again as played by Kurt Fuller. Then I'd watch.

Here's the "Supernatural" trailer for tonight's episode.




GRATUITOUS VIDEOS OF THE DAY

This has to be one of the worst music videos I've ever seen. But I mentioned that this song came up on my iTunes yesterday and a bunch of people told me how much they loved it. If you're sensitive, you may want to avert your eyes.



And now we return to our regular programming.





Tell me what you think of this. I object to the line, "When you kiss me I want to die," because how bad can one person kiss anyway? Luckily the clip of Spike's speech counteracts some of the corn-factor.