You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
TRUE BLOOD
“I want to do bad things with you.”
It’s a wildly successful show on HBO.
It’s about Vampires living in the bayous of Louisiana.
Like millions of Americans, I’m hooked on this vamp-drama.
So why do I bring this up?
I’m on the airplane flying back from Lost-Wages. I’m wrecked. I haven’t slept for 3 days. My synaptic membranes are fried from too much of every-damn-thing.
I have lime green ear plugs in my skull, the kind that DOT workers wear, the kind that you can spot from outer space. These ear plugs quietly say leave me the F*** alone!
In addition to this auditory keep out sign, I’m wearing sunglasses and I’m snoring by the window seat.
The roar of the jets is hypnotic and I am dreaming of a craps table in a universe far far away.
“Yo Eleven” a dream angel screams from somewhere inside my skull.
Suddenly the trance is broken, like a dream where you are falling and you wake up right before you hit the concrete.
“Hey do you watch True Blood?”
I think I’m dreaming as the sentence ricochets back and forth inside my cranium.
True Blood?
What the hell is True blood?
I force open my right eye. I can tell my eye is pissed. It’s looking at my other eye with an incredulous stare.
“Wake up,” the right eye shouts at the left eye.
The left eye yawns sleepily. The right eye is blurry as it focuses on the distorted image before it.
Sitting 3 inches from me is a massive blob of white skin and spandex orange.
WTF?
“Do you watch True Blood?” the voice chimes again.
The image of the passenger next to me comes into focus. It’s a large Tennessee woman with a thick country drawl, the kind that makes her sound less sexy and more stupid.
The woman is filling up the center seat like a hippo occupies a watering hole.
I look at her with a raised eye brow from behind my sunglasses. If I could slap her in the face with my eye lashes I would.
Really lady? I’m working on the rem cycle of a humming bird and you need to start grilling me like your CIA and I’m Al Quaida at Gitmo?
What’s next? Waterboarding?
The left eye is now pissed and opens as well.
Huh? I seemingly stutter in multiple syllables.
“Do you know who the red head waitress is?,” she says again.
The red head waitress?
I want to take a bag of honey roasted peanuts and scratch her forehead.
“ahhhhh?”
She notices that I am still groggy, half asleep.
“Oh i’m sorry,” she says not really sorry.
She turns to her equally country ass boyfriend and babbles something incoherent. It sounds like she’s gargling with grits.
My eyes are pissed. My eye brows are pissed. I’m pissed.
“Arlene,” I snarl.
She swings her massive mastodon shaped head toward me again. Her chin arrives first, followed by her elastic jowls.
“What?” she says staring at me from an inch away.
My eyes cannot focus. I lean my head back as far as it will go.
My hair is touching the wall of the plane. I squint trying to focus. It’s like standing on the platform of a billboard and trying to read the writing.
I just cannot see her billboard sized face.
“Arlene,” I say again in a low growl that mixes with the jet just outside my window.
The southern mastodon of flesh explodes in a tidal wave of giddiness.
“THAT’S RIGHT! ARLENE”
She turns to her boyfriend wearing a bright orange UT hat.
“Arlene,” she squeals. “That’s right.”
Her boyfriend claps his hands as if they have just won Jeopardy or found the Holy Grail.
Suddenly the boyfriend interrupts the passenger across the aisle and begins talking to her. Then I see what has started all this. That passenger is watching season 1 on her lap top.
The show is R rated and I wonder if any children are seated around us. If there are, it could be cause for child abuse at 38,000 feet.
Yeah I watch True Blood. It is compelling and it is crazy.
It is a story about fang bangers and creatures that walk the night. It’s about shape shifting and drinking blood.
True Blood is about demonic sex and unsavory acts so unholy they make you wince.
True Blood is vampires and werewolves and shape shifters who transform into panthers and alligators.
It’s about witches and fairies and southern accents so thick you need a foreign language translator.
There’s a vampire with a melting face. There are shamans and black magic and new Orleans decadence.
Sprinkle in an exorcism – some praise Jesus – and some bad ju ju and that just about sums it up.
It airs Sunday night on HBO. I recommend it, but makes sure the kids are in bed or the child in seat 11 B can’t see your portable dvd player.
As for the country bumpkins seated next to me. My eyes think they need a course on airplane etiquette.
Me, I’m dreaming of a craps table where every roll is 7 and 11.
YO.
And that’s crazy.™