Post-Marathon

Twin Peaks Marathon 2004 is officially oooooovah. While I didn't manage to sit through the entire thing, I absorbed the vast majority of the "good" parts of Twin Peaks.

I crashed and burned right about 3:30AM, hopped in my car and headed home to get some sleep in a real bed. Didn't manage to last through episode 16, so I didn't even hit my personal goal for the marathon. Man, I'm such a loser!

Basically, shortly after my final post last night, my brain shifted into GO TO SLEEP mode. I spent the entirety of episode 15 thinking of nothing but being home in bed, and how if I just left soon I could actually be in bed by 4:00 (it's like a 20-25 minute drive ot my house from downtown Austin...) and get at least 4-5 hours of sleep, and how nice that would feel, etc. If I had actually thought to bring a pillow to the event I might have been able to tough it out, but there was just no way I could get any sleep there otherwise.

So anyway, I was prepared to call it quits altogether at that point. Woke up at about 9:30, knowing full well that the Marathon was continuing through at least 1:00-2:00 or so. Curious to see how Mike and Bill fared, we rang up Lacey (Bill's long-suffering wife) to discover... he was currently en route back downtown to catch the remainder of the Marathon! Hmmmmmm.... 2 cell phone calls and a bit of hemming and hawing later, I was back in the car and heading South.

Managed to arrive in time for the final 3 episodes. Looked like about 40-50% of the crowd managed to persevere through the night, or at least lived nearby enough to go and grab a nap and then return.


Me, this morning -- 5 hours of sleep and a shower make ALL the difference.


Bill, this AM, looking slightly refreshed by the break.

Surprisingly, Phoebe Augustine lasted the entire night (I noticed that she left her seat and went out to the lobby/bathroom a LOT -- Too much beer? Or was it something less... wholesome? I'll leave you to make your own scurrilous conclusions), although Kimmy Robertson was nowhere to be seen after about midnight or so....

So anyway, I did manage to catch all of the David Lynch directed epsiodes, which was good. I also managed to miss some of the absolute worst parts of the Twin Peaks run, which was also good. If I had to sit through the whole "James' Affair" plot, when he leaves TP and winds up sleeping with some older chick, I would probably have slit my wrists. But I did miss the episode where Josie's face pops up in an end table, so that's a shame.

So, to sum up the experience, here are a few observations:

1. Twin Peaks isn't particularly suited to a marathon. Once you get out of the first 10-12 hours of the series, it becomes wildly uneven in terms of pacing, storyline, and quality. When viewed 1 or 2 episodes at a time, this isn't a big deal. But when you're on hour 13, 14, 15 in a row, the pacing and plotting problems really become difficult to ignore.

2. More than ever I am certain that Twin Peaks was the best 9-10 hour miniseries ever created. It's unfotunate, however, that those 9-10 hours are buried in about 16 hours of footage that aired over season 1 and part of season 2.

3. James is the single most irritating, annoying, pathetic character in the show. He's unbearable, and should have been jettisoned at the first possible opportunity. Remove him, and the entire series gets better.

4. In a parallel universe, Sherilynn Fenn is this millenium's Elizabeth Taylor. She is absoutely stunning and should be far more famous.

5. No one can really "do" Lynch but Lynch. In his hands, the odd events of his stories seem grounded in the real world, but just askew somehow. Like you were wandering through the regular world when, without realizing it, you took an odd left turn and wound up somewhere very LIKE the regular world, but yet... not really. Not the Black Lodge/Dancing Dwarf type stuff -- I mean, that shit is CRAZY. But the day-to-day world in which his characters exist. It feels self-contained and real on its own terms. But when other folks try to do Lynch, the goofy, trippy, weird stuff becomes the whole point, not a characteristic of a world with a deifnite sense of place. And it just don't work.

Well, that was fun. I need to get to bed by a decent hour tonight, though...

Mood: Chilled out, tirrrrrrred
Now Playing: Joss Stone, "The Soul Sessions"