I WATCH TWILIGHT SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO: AN INTRODUCTION

Or, “The Things I Do To Entertain You People”.

One of the interesting things about being married is that yr film-watching habits don’t so much change as evolve into a barter system of sorts. The scope of this evolution depends on how much yr film tastes overlap, but it essentially comes down to “I’ll go watch this sappy romcom with you if you go watch this hyperviolent sexploitation grindhouse film with me.”

This generally isn’t much of an issue with The Bride and me, as we both tend to agree that films are worth trying when they have monsters, vampires, aliens, spaceships, magic and heavy violence in them.

Unfortunately for me, that also includes the Twilight franchise, which technically has vampires and werewolves in it, and The Bride does not possess the pop-cultural barriers that make me cringe at the very thought of seeing any of those films, and her reasoning has been, “It’s got vampires and werewolves, how bad can it be?”

We found out.

They recently showed the first two films on free-to-air TV, and we ended up getting very cheap copies of the remaining three movies, because The Bride wanted to see how the saga ended.

And I figured, if I have to watch these, I might as well get some blog material out of it.

Besides, I suppose if I’m going to be critical of Stephanie Meyer’s Sparkly Vampire franchise, I might as well be an informed critic.

What that means for you is Twilight film reviews for the next few days. They won’t necessarily be serious, but they will be sincere and (hopefully) mildly entertaining.

It’s twilight time,

This is dF

THE WHIG COMEBACK BEGINS HERE

Yr I-Thought-You-Were-Dead lede of the day:



You remember the Whigs, of course. They were the original American “third party” and were a significant political force until they pretty much disbanded in the mid-19th century. 

Evidently they're still around, and attracting independents like Bucholz who are tired of two-party polarization, says SF Gate:

Previously an independent, Bucholz said he joined the Whigs three years ago because of their fiscally conservative but socially liberal views. They represent a sensible "middle path" between Democrats and Republicans, especially in light of the recent government shutdown, he said.

"That pretty much told us we can't trust either party and the system is broken," Bucholz said Thursday.

Granted, Bucholz was campaigning for the office of election judge in the Rhawnhurst section of Philadelphia (which pays $100 a year, incidentally). So it’s not like control of Congress hangs in the balance or anything.

And it’s true that most independent parties already tout themselves as an alternative to the broken two-party system. But most of them tend to take one side of the spectrum to extremes, not carve a middle ground like the Whigs – which on paper makes them more appealing to me than any indie party I can name.

So more power to ‘em, Jim.

Whigging out,

This is dF