Left to my own devices

When the finale for Twin Peaks The Return (ostensibly the third season of the program) was over this past Sunday night, I immediately felt ripped-off, unsatisfied, and that the time spent watching the show over the summer had been a waste. Thankfully, during the intervening days, and after lots of conversations about it with the spouse and in online forums, I have come to better appreciate the way things ended. I'm still not on board with it 100%, though. Without getting into the weeds as to everything that happened during the finale, the show managed to wrap-up several plot threads during the first-half (Part 17), then turned around and launched things in a different direction during the second-half (Part 18). While tangentially related to what had come before, Part 18 could almost stand alone as its own show, with a different look and feel than the previous 17 episodes, and about a third of the cast. It was, upon first viewing, quite jarring. It was also, most definitely...

Last night's episode of Twin Peaks , the ninth in the revival series, was without a doubt my least favorite since its return. There are many reasons for this, which I'll touch upon shortly. I want to be clear, however, that I didn't hate the episode, just that it frustrated me to no end. That's a mark of how good the show has been so far. Too bad last night's entry dropped the ball.

Episode five of the new season of Twin Peaks was overall another good entry for the revived program. We were treated to a progression (albeit a slow one) of the plot lines previously dangled before us in episodes one through four, as well as some new elements that were introduced to keep us guessing. I could have done without the sadistic violence and profanity, but am resigned to expecting such things with David Lynch, especially when he's unshackled from the constraints of network television. It is pretty well-known that David Lynch's works don't always make a lot of sense. To this day, almost two decades after its release, people are still debating what the heck his movie Mulholland Drive is about. Lynch was also reticent to reveal the killer of Laura Palmer which, you know, is kinda the reason millions of people initially watched the original series of Twin Peaks . With that, I was a bit apprehensive going into this new season, as devoting several hours of one...

Last night I watched the first four new episodes of Twin Peaks since 1991. A show whose influence still echoes in modern day television, I was curious to see how it would perform a quarter-century after it left the airwaves. Overall, it did not disappoint. The first thing to know is that I am not a devout Twin Peaks fan. It was a phenomenon difficult to escape in the early '90s, and I'd tune-in every now and then to see what the denizens of the 51,000 populace 'small town' were up to. It wasn't until years later that I gave it more attention, as my spouse is a huge fan of the original program. So, last night, with our newly-minted Showtime access via streaming in place, we watched the first four episodes of the new show. Some spoilers follow from here onward, so turn away now if you don't want to know anything about the new version.

Well, folks, it's been....  a year. Music-wise, I can't say that 2011 has been a sterling effort, but it's been ok (certainly no 1993 or 1997, the two best years for music during the past 20 years). While I'm still trying to determine whether there are even five consistently solid albums for my 'Top 5 Albums' list, I do have a fair amount of songs that were in the running for 'Top 10 Songs of the Year.' And here they are: