SFU

Alan Ball, the genius creator/writer/whatever he was for the show Six Feet Under is at it again with the new vampire show True Blood. Having watched the first episode of TB I can say that it was a letdown and I won't be watching any future episodes. I guess it could be like SFU, in that it's just starting out weak but soon the momentum will build. But even if that were the case, SFU, even the first one or two episodes (in my opinion, the weakest of the series), was never as bad as the first episode of TB was. In any case, the folks at the Washington Post are writing about Ball and TB and had this to say, which must've been a lot of fun to write considering, as I imagine, Ball must have a pretty huge following in the gay community and TB is said to incorporate a lot of allegorical themes about cultural oppression of gays:

September lays out a full-on feast for Ball fans, with his independent
movie "Towelhead" opening tomorrow, fast on the heels of his quirky HBO vampire
drama "True Blood."

(Emphasis mine). Well. Sounds, uh, filling? It'll be a virtual nativity calendar of Johnsons! Riding high on Ball, his fans will no doubt be in for quite the Cocktober surprise. [SS: See, you too can write for the WP!] [FP: by the way, this "dictionary" definition of cocktober surprise doesn't credit or reference Wonkette that I can see. That's a shame, cause Wonkette's (I believe) coining of the term and contemporaneous coverage of the Mark Foley scandal was hilarious and classic. See here for archival coverage.]