Is this your monster?

For a while last night I wondered if we had goofed and that the trick-or-treaters had been out the night before. When I was young, living in eastern Canada, if Halloween was on a Sunday, trick-or-treating was done on Saturday instead. But the first little ghouls and goblins started showing up by about 6:30. It was a light turnout, maybe 10 or 12 sets of visitors in total. We saw no one after 8:30 and I turned the light off at 9:00.

We’re supposed to get rain over the next few days. The first we’ve seen in over a month. It’s also back up to the high eighties today after a fairly crisp weekend.

My first-ever iPod died on Saturday. I was in the midst of transferring a few songs to it when iTunes generated a “failed to sync” message. I can’t remember how long I’ve had it, but it has definitely lived a useful and productive life. It’s an older model, “only” 30 GB, and it had it full to the brim with almost every CD I own. After the error message, the disc drive started clicking and seeking, and my computer failed to recognize it as an iPod any more. I think even the iPod was no longer recognizing itself as an iPod (which is the same fate that befell the travelers at the beginning of Mostly Harmless, which I started reading to my wife last night). I suppose I could send it off for repair, but I figure I might as well upgrade to a new model, so a 160 GB 7th gen is on its way to me. I can’t see myself ever filling that up, but then again I never thought I’d use more than half of my 30 GB model.

There are two tracks from Elton John and Leon Russell’s new album, The Union, that are only available via iTunes or the Deluxe Edition. One of them, Mandalay Again, is quickly becoming my favorite. I can’t figure why it wasn’t included on the general album. Great tune, nice lyrics, and the best example of Elton and Leon singing together (instead of alternating, which they also do).

We watched The Affair of the Necklace on Friday night. French Revolution, Marie Antoinette, Hilary Swank, Jonathan Pryce, Adrian Brody, Christopher Walken as a mystic, a very young Hayden Panettiere, and, to my surprise Simon Baker as…the Mentalist. Well, no, not really, but he was playing a roguish character who wasn’t a huge leap from Patrick Jane. Okay, he was a gigolo, but he was also a scoundrel who took part in a pretty serious con.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched Dead Set, the BBC series that aired last week on IFC. It’s a zombie movie that takes place mostly in and around the set (the dead set, get it?) of the UK version of Big Brother (logo above). It’s standard zombie fare: zombies suddenly start appearing, no explanation, and they overrun humanity. These are particularly fast zombies, running down their victims, but they’re just as stupid as any other reanimated dead creatures. The spin here is that the main survivors are contestants who were locked in Big Brother House when the outbreak happened. I’ve never seen the British version before, but it seems raunchier and less controlled than the US edition. Among the other characters are the show’s executive producer, a right bastard of a twerp, one of the show’s assistants, and a recently evicted contestant named Pippa who would drive just about anyone to drink. Most of her dialog consisted of “I don’t like that,” which was used to describe just about every nasty situation she encountered, including being trapped in the green room with the bastard pig of a producer. As visceral as the zombie chowing down scenes were, I think the scenes in that room were worse. Regular BBC viewers would know that the real Big Brother host played herself, as did some former contestants. The show was funny at times, part social commentary (one contestant wanted to know if the zombie outbreak meant that no one was watching her on the live feeds any more) and part extreme horror. It had nowhere to go at the end, but the trip was fun.

I think the situation Dexter ended up in this week was among the closest calls ever. Definitely the tensest situation this season. He’s got too many bodies on his hands. Well, potential bodies: the two men are both alive at the point of his crisis. Lumen took matters into her own hands and tracked down one of her alleged attackers. For a while, I thought it was going to be like that Twilight Zone episode where a wife points out her attacker to her husband, who kills the guy only to have the wife point out someone else. She botches the killing, though, and calls Dexter to clean up her mess. Only problem is, Dexter was in the midst of killing someone else, so he dumps the trussed up, drugged guy in the back of his SUV and heads off to the warehouse, where Lumen’s intended victim has gotten away. To make matters worse, someone reported the shooting, so Deb and the homicide department are on their way. And, to make matters even worse, Dexter’s captive escapes. So here’s Dex, in an alley chasing down his prey while Lumen tries to clean up the mess in the warehouse while Deb and Masuka converge on the scene. High points to Dex for his very creative solution to the problem. And LOL at Masuka’s immediate interpretation of the situation (two words: autoerotic mummification) and the way he acted it out for Deb and the others.

Lumen is a terrific addition to the Dexter universe. (Lumen — luminol. Coincidence? I don’t think so). They understand each other. They might even be starting to like each other. Dexter’s back in his old apartment, everything is back in its rightful place, including his little box of slides in the A/C unit, but there’s this new stuff, too, including a son who has started talking (first words: Die! Die! or Bye Bye, depending on your point of view), and this fragile but determined young woman. Some experiences are so big they change your DNA, Dexter observes.

Question: has someone like this ever survived a season of Dexter? Will she ultimately be sacrificed? Or will she just go home at the end of their reign of terror? Or, perhaps, a love interest?

The Angel/La Guerta plot took a funny turn, with Angel presenting his new wife with the gift of a witness instead of flowers or a puppy dog. When asked what happened to the honeymoon phase of his marriage, he responded, “I blinked.”