let’s rock

Watching the Twin Peaks first season box set. Yes, I know Lynch is a reactionary fetishist, but it plays out very nicely, don’t you think? The nostalgia in Twin Peaks for an imaginary age of National Innocence — implied by a kind of pre-’60s portrait of American town life — isn’t simply a pat nostalgia. But neither does the show’s knowing invocation of this in order to deal with an assumed “underside” of corruption somehow exempt it from challenge, since all this playing with binary caricatures really does tend to reinforce them, rather than subvert. Which is the horrible problem with most of Lynch’s work — there seems to be no escape from these tacky symbols of good and evil. But at its best, this flavour of troubled innocence recalls the bittersweet Americana that the Beach Boys mined in the late ’60s and early ’70s. It’s no wonder, then, that Van Dyke Parks (the Beach Boys’ lyricist for the unfinished Smile album, which gave us the Americana epic “Heroes and Villains”) plays Leo Johnson’s lawyer in the second season! Also: the DVD commentaries are all couched within the techniques of working within an ensemble, which I found really interesting, since most DVD commentaries seem to be auterist musings. And Audrey Horne rocks. And what is it about sassy headgear? Lara Flynn Boyle in a cap is almost as good as Sarah Michelle Gellar’s beanie in Season 3 of Buffy!

Real Life Tie-In: Amber-from-Microsoft’s dad owns the Roadhouse from Twin Peaks! It’s just north of Seattle — makes sense. (And speaking of Strange Microsoft Women, Jyoti-from-Microsoft is in a band! She gonna send me some MP3s!)

In the meantime, I feel like I’m really running on empty in terms of anything that could possibly Mean Something. Am I bored, or stuck in a well? Perhaps it’s time to panic.

Well, this is at least interesting: more violent dreams. A couple of nights ago, a World War II historical thriller: I’m torn apart by a bunch of refugees on a boat for being a Nazi collaborator. And I think I was! And last night, it’s open season in a huge mansion. Guns, planks of wood, you name it. And again, I’m mortally wounded by a team of people… for some kind of revenge.