Tag: dante’s cove

Noticeable One

Saturday morning, although all day yesterday I kept thinking it was Saturday. I much prefer Monday holidays, for that very reason, over Friday ones. We didn’t go see the movie yesterday, because my sinuses (sinii?) refused to cooperate and were kind of a pain in my ass all day; making me tired and a little grumpy and giving me the occasional headache. This was highly annoying, needless to say, and so I spent the day (other than doing chores) reading and watching television. I am almost finished with Summerhouse–there was a delightful twist two-thirds of the way through that I didn’t see coming, and it’s changed almost everything about the book–and should finish the remaining thirty or so pages this morning. We might go see the movie today–I’m not sure what Paul’s doing; he may be seeing his trainer. I may order some groceries for delivery (again, depends on what Paul is doing) and I was thinking about washing and cleaning out the car today if it’s not super miserable outside.

We watched a gay show through Prime last night, Single Out, which was adorable and cute. There are two more seasons, but alas, we need to either rent them or subscribe to Here–which might not be a bad thing for a little while; get some good gay content to watch–and then we watched Sinners, which is now streaming on MAX. I really enjoyed it, and thought it was excellent. If it weren’t for the fact that it’s a horror film, I’d say it would get a lot of Oscar nominations, but the voting members of the Academy generally don’t take horror very seriously as art, and there’s also some racism there, too. I may be pleasantly surprised, but the production values–set design, costume design, cinematography, screenplay–were all exceptional, and of course, the acting was stellar as well. I highly recommend Sinners, and I may watch it again to catch things I may have missed the first time around.

I feel better this morning than I did yesterday morning, which is nice. I was kind of worn down by the week, and of course the sinus revolt wasn’t much help in that regard, either. But I did make progress on the house, which is always a good thing, even if I didn’t get everything done. I should be able to get everything under control today. My coffee is hitting perfectly, I’m enjoying my breakfast, and his Majesty Sparky Lord of the Apartment isn’t demanding my desk chair for his morning nap, so…that’s a pretty good thing. In fact, when I finish and post this, I may go finish Summerhouse, and read some more of my other two current reads before getting cleaned up and back to work on the house. The dishwasher needs unloading, and there are some other dishes from last night that need to be cleaned–but at least all the laundry is done. Huzzah!

Okay, I was looking at Here’s website, and maybe a few months of paying for a subscription might be worth it (they have Dante’s Cove, which I would love to write about), so maybe we can finish Single Out (the best way to describe it is Heartstopper only with sex and teenagers being horny all the time, yet incredibly sweet and charming at the same time) and watch some classic queer movies, and try out some of their original queer series. Could be fun.

I was also looking through the drafts for my newsletter and sheesh, there’s a LOT I’ve started and not finished, as well as any number of finished entries I didn’t want to publish because it was Pride Month. As for the newsletter’s “identity crisis” I was experiencing last week, well, I think I am going to keep it as is; primarily focusing on queer rights (or the queer American experience), while also doing longer reviews of art (books, movies, TV shows) and perhaps, just perhaps, about writing and publishing. I have a shit ton of columns about writing (and fitness, for that matter) that I could republish in the newsletter (actually, now that I am thinking about it, that was the intent behind this blog in the first place; giving me a place to write about things no one would pay me to write about), and that could also be helpful.

It also occurred to me yesterday that I often shy away from writing more in depth about art because I feel like I am not educated enough to delve more deeply into them–and I also worry that anything I might come up with along those lines might not be original and may have been written about extensively already. But…it’s all opinion in the first place, isn’t it, and yes, maybe I haven’t read all the “classics” or the “modern literary writers,” but do I really need to do that in order to express what my takeaway from experiencing art is? No, I don’t. My takeaway might be better informed if I were more trained in criticism and had I read all those books, but the truth is, I didn’t. Most literary fiction, whether classic or modern, is like any other genre of literature–some is excellent, some is okay, and some is just fucking garbage. I really need to let go of my imposter syndrome once and for all, don’t I?

And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee and head to my easy chair. Have a lovely Saturday, and I may be back later. One can never be entirely certain, can one?

Ruby Red Dress (Leave Me Alone)

Twelve days left to Halloween.

I’ve talked about Dark Shadows already, and I’ve also talked about soap operas before. But a lot of what we see now on television is technically serials; most series now are serials, where the action of each episode is picked up from where it left off in the previous one; continuity is important; and what happens in each episode has a causal effect on the characters for many episodes (and seasons) to come. I can remember, while True Blood was airing, and I was describing it to a friend who didn’t watch…and finally, I said, “It’s kind of like Dark Shadows with nudity, sex, and a lot of blood.” (I intend to talk about True Blood before Halloween, but this is not the entry.) It was kind of true, and I intend to draw those comparisons when I talk about True Blood –but today I am going to talk about another serial television show involving the supernatural (I don’t know that I can call it, fairly, horror) that Paul and I enjoyed watching: Dante’s Cove.

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I probably would have never known about Dante’s Cove if I hadn’t been working as an editor for Harrington Park Press at the time. Here TV was doing those adaptations of the Richard Stevenson/Don Strachey novels, and were also developing a series called <I>Dante’s Cove</i>. HPP was bringing the Strachey books back into print with tie-in editions, and Here was interested in having Dante’s Cove be novelized with tie-in editions. I thought it sounded interesting (it was pitched to us as “gay Dark Shadows“), and was interested in doing the novelizations myself, so Here sent me the pilot and the first season on DVD to watch.

The story was, actually, rather similar to the Dark Shadows opening: a young person comes to Dante’s Cove/Collinwood at the same time as a centuries old supernatural creature arrives, released from being imprisoned apparently for all time. Dark Shadows had Victoria Winters and Barnabas Collins the vampire; Dante’s Cove had Kevin and Ambrosius “Bro” Vallin. While Barnabas spurned the love of the witch Angelique, who cursed him and turned him into a vampire, leading his family to chain him up in his coffin; Ambrosius was a practitioner of magic called Tresum, and was engaged to a high priestess of the religion, Grace Neville. Grace caught Ambrosius literally being fucked in the ass by another man, whom she killed with magic, and she, too, cast a spell that locked him up for all eternity. Except Kevin, who comes to Dante’s Cove after being thrown out by his homophobic family to be with his lover Toby, unknowingly releases Ambrosius from his prison–which also triggers Grace to return.

Grace was played by Tracy Scoggins, best known for playing Monica Colby on first The Colbys, and then later on Dynasty.

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There were various characters, lesbians, gay men, straight boys, and varying storylines. Toby, the male lead, was played by Charlie David.

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Kevin was played by Gregory Michael, who also later turned up on the show Greek.

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Arrow’s Stephen Amell was in the first season as an asshole straight boy who was recast in Season 2.

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There was lots of male nudity–including full frontal–and the men always looked like they were covered in oil. Reichen Leimkuhl, who won The Amazing Race and was later on the terrible rip-off of Real Housewives type shows The A List–New York, joined the cast in Season 3. And Thea Gill from Queer as Folk, also joined in Season 2 as Grace’s sister and mortal enemy, Diana.

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Like I said, lots of pretty shirtless men, bare male asses, and the occasional male full frontal.

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The primary problem with Dante’s Cove, I felt, was bad writing and bad directing, as well as some serious continuity problems. The actors did their best with what they were given, but they just weren’t given enough, and it seemed like it was trying to be too serious. But a supernatural-themed soap opera with gay and lesbian characters that could get away with nudity shouldn’t have taken itself quite so seriously; it should have gone for humor and camp, and I bet it would have really caught on. (As I’ve said about other shows, “it wants to be Tennessee Williams when it should be going for Melrose Place.”) We were entertained, and we enjoyed watching it, but there was always such a sense of what it could have been. In the third season, the show went more along a campy route, giving the characters great bitchy quips, and it looked liked it had found its way…but alas, it wasn’t to be. It was cancelled. There was a spin-off show about a lair of vampires who lived in a sex club called The Lair that was also fun, and looked like it was hitting its stride at the end of its first season…but there wasn’t a second season, alas.

The novelizations, alas, never happened, which was also incredibly disappointing. I really thought I could make it a lot of fun…but alas, it is another one of those ‘wasn’t meant to be’ things.’

It would be kind of fun to rewatch…

And now back to the spice mines.