DVDs

Sunday evening I was walking back from buying a soda in the laundry room and I heard a small voice somewhere behind me. I turned around and saw a woman walking in the opposite direction with her two young daughters. The youngest girl--maybe 4 years old--kept using a singsong voice to repeat the words hung over. It was weird and awesome.

Amazon has been having some ridiculous DVD sales. Carnivale is now going for $20 a season as opposed to its former $50-$60 a season. You can get all 3 seasons of Deadwood for about $165. I, Claudius and Band of Brothers are both around $35. (Christ, I wish I had some money.) And yesterday I saw Buffy for $95. Unfortunately for anyone that's interested, the Buffy sale was apparently one day only.

The shipping for some things is considerably slower. They said it could take 2-5 weeks for Carnivale to ship but what the hell do I care? I ordered both seasons and figured it'd be a gift to me from my mom.

I called my mom and told her that my Christmas gift from her was ordered and she could just send me a check to pay for it. That's how we do things. My mom says to pick something out that's around $50 and she'll send me the money. Sometimes she wants me to bring it home so that she can wrap it and I can have the lackluster experience of opening it. This year that won't happen. Since the shipping takes so long, I told her I was having it sent to my apartment. That way, if it arrives after Christmas I won't have to have her ship it up to me or go to WV to get it. And if it arrives before Christmas, then I'll tell her it didn't so I can open it and watch them again.

If you haven't seen Carnivale, you should. It was a seriously good show that had an unfortunately slowish narrative pacing. This led to people getting bored quickly and not hanging around for the major payoff that was season 2.

Daniel Knauf, the show's creator, had originally written the show as a movie but then rewrote it as a series that would play out in 3 books, each book spanning 2 seasons. So 6 seasons total. Season 1 was nominated for 7 emmys and won 5, while season 2 was nominated form 8 emmys. Apparently, HBO had no plans to cancel the show but once they reviewed the ratings to season 2 they pulled the plug anyway.

In addition to impressive costuming and gorgeous cinematography, the mythology of the show is engaging to the point of frustration. The wikipedia page helps a lot. You just have to remember a few key things. There are two houses (light and dark), the mantle of the house is passed patrilineally to the first born son (called an avatar), a new avatar is born into each house in each generation, and the female children with the blood of the house are called vectori and they cannot carry the mantle. The oldest generational avatar of a house is called the prophet and he has the blue blood or vitae divina. The next in line is the ascendant prince. If the ascendent prince kills the prophet, then he gets the blue blood and a boon (the previous prophet's full measure of power). If the prophet dies in some other way, the ascendent prince will get the blue blood and be raised to prophet but not the boon.

The only exception to the patrilineal rule is the Usher and the Omega. Both the Usher and the Omega can be of either sex. Generally speaking, the Usher and the Omega are pretty confusing dudes and babes...maybe totally evil...maybe not.

Also, each house is mixed. An avatar that is evil may have a son (the next generational avatar) that is good. So if you're an ascendent prince, the dude you have to kill to get your boon and the blue blood may be someone unrelated to you...then again, it might be your dad. Just depends on the luck of the draw.

So yeah...totally nuts. Totally awesome. And totally left unfinished.