O Tenenbaums

Nerd alert!

Today's Beatific Gonzette piece isn't to commemorate an overlong Facebook comment that I'm proud of OR to say something about an Associated Press article, or EVEN to wish over and over again that David Lynch and Mike Patton would do a musical comedy show together. (With Crispin Glover?!?! Oh, wish, wish, wish.)

Today's Beatific Gonzette piece is still completely self-indulgent, but in honor of it being Christmas Eve, my thoughts are of trees and carols, oh tenenbaum, oh Boo Boo Tenenbaum, oh Royal Tenenbaum, and just like that we're on the subject of J. D. Salinger and Wes Anderson.

Much like my "Oh shit! Ted Raimi?!?" moment of joy when going through Twin Peaks for the first time earlier this year (I paused the show and ran out of the room to locate and tell my husband), I had an "Oh shit! I'm reading a Wes Anderson movie?!?!" moment when reading my first Salinger this summer.

Which is a silly and backwards reaction to have, I know.

But also a holiday-appropriate subject to write about, as the short season of intensive gift-giving is a perfect time to meditate on how cool books and movies--inexpensive gifts but awesome gifts--are. Doubly appropriate because it's a holiday season for appreciating friends and family. Wes Anderson movies remind me of my sister and our mutual friends and J. D. Salinger books remind me of my luminescent friend Abigail, who loaned me three of his books while insisting that I actually read them. (If you're reading this, hi Abby!!!).

I haven't finished reading them.

But I did read most of Nine Stories before having such a strong "this is awwwwwesoooooome!!!" reaction that I had to put the book down and run around my little apartment. In my most personal life, I am a dork.

I know that I'm not the first person to want to write about the ties between the movie The Royal Tenenbaums and Nine Stories. But this is my blog, I have a bit of travel time to kill, and I'm going to write about it.

In the short story The Laughing Man, the singular female character Mary Hudson wears a trademark fur coat, even when committing acts of minor athleticism, just like Anderson's film character Margot Tenenbaum. (While Margot was seen escaping school in her coat, Mary played center field in hers.) Both Mary and Margot also made cigarette use into a full affectation. Both used presence and absence like a private Morse Code. And both existed in their respective stories during bittersweet relationships with men.

In the short story Down at the Dinghy, a woman named Boo Boo Tenembaum feigns idyllic military connections to impress her child enough to keep the little boy from running away from home in a tiny boat. I would normally love to go through this story point-by-point with good attention, "vocally" enjoying each direct or psychological connection that this story shares with Wes Anderson's Royal Tenenbaums. But tragically, I am nearly at my holiday destination and I am horribly carsick from road-blogging as a vehicular passenger, and I need to stop writing for the day.

I hope that your holidays freakin' rule, Dear Reader. (Also, I dare you to search for "Yule Goat" on Wikipedia today or tomorrow.)

Quick Response to "Who Holds Responsibility For Ills of the American School System?"

As I've been known to do on this blog, I'm reusing one of my overlong Facebook comments for blog content.

This is my response to a question posted by the Associated Press. "Who do you believe holds the most responsibility for low test scores, poor graduation rates and other ills of the American school system?"
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It's complicated!

1. The dominant American culture doesn't value or use academia enough to make education seem useful or "cool" to children. For one example, there is a huge anti-science movement among many American adults. To really pursue an education might feel disloyal and frightening to the children raised in anti-science American families. (I've actually seen this happen before.)

2. Uninteresting, condescending, boring textbooks are also part of the problem, because they often (unintentionally?) discourage the critical thinking skills that a quality education would need to foster. The book "Lies My Teacher Told Me" critiques American public school textbook content quite well.

3. A lack of interest in the world outside of the United States is another aspect of American adult culture that is very likely to reduce children's interest in academic learning. It encourages by example an attitude of "I only want to know the bare minimum of what I need to get by" and discourages healthy curiosity.

The closest thing I can think of to an easy solution would be to support funding for publicly available, immensely fascinating learning materials that children can find for themselves, without any reliance on adult assistance. Probably through television? I like the way that Mythbusters uses the basic language and methods of hypothesis testing in an accessible way. I like the way Alton Brown describes molecular structure. It would be nice to have similar programming prepared to cover a wider variety of academic subjects, so that viewers could absorb a decent basic education passively. Something that children and adults can enjoy together.

To successfully influence children, we need to influence everyone.

My Bittersweet Love of Automobiles

From an early age, travel by automobile has been one of my surest delights. Flying down a road, scenery blurring as it whips past like film speeding through a broken projector. Loud music in surround sound--four or more speakers!--synching up with this sensation of epic, unnatural movement. And to have my hands on the steering wheel? My feet on the pedals? Oh, it's beautiful. While other girls (and men, women and boys) may fantasize about horses, I dream almost exclusively of being at the sheltered helm of metal steeds. Few pleasures can match a road trip or long commute.

More than clothing, more than food, more than craft supplies or books, gasoline is frequently my largest financial indulgence--bordering on a vice or guilty pleasure.

But the guilt! I'm not without a geological education. It was one of the subjects I overindulged in, in college. Environmental geology. Even after my interest officially wandered into neuroscience and psychology, the possible AND certain consequences of environmental ne'er-do-welling weighed heavily on my mind. Does the bioaccumulation of PCBs and other industrial contaminants--passed from mother to child in utero--contribute to our higher rates of autism? Cancer?

This brings me back to the "guilt" part of guilty pleasure. I burn more gasoline than necessary.

It seems like whatever industry exhales or discards has a tendency to turn around to bite us medically, if often in ways too complicated and indirect to get the general public excited about.

Some products, some substances have only obscure, unclear consequences. Not so with my beloved gasoline.

The combustion that soothes my character degrades my lungs, spoils the natural sunscreen in the sky (no small concern for a ginger!), requires environmentally AND politically sketchy geological extraction, may encourage war, certainly fouls up the delicate and increasingly unstable systems responsible for the sort of weather our species requires, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I mean, our climate now acts like an alcoholic parent! Spoiling us and beating us--sometimes to death--with terrifying unpredictably.

But still, I return to the subject of my car. My modest little vehicle. My metallic pet. The charming metal box that hurls me from work to home, from home to friends' houses, and always to see my family.

The internet and telephone can help me see and talk with people too far to walk to and too obscurely located to bus or train to. But in-person visits are still much preferable to the telecommute, and time spent at the helm of a car is such a pleasure in itself, that I still fail to join my gasoline-free friends in their medically and morally superior lifestyle.

Woe is me, the sinner who does not bike to work. (Yet.) I dream of guilt free cars, of limitless, safe propulsion. No toxic batteries or airborne, particulate exhaust.

My fantasy is that the wretched and finite nature of fossil gasoline will not take the beauty of the automobile down with it.

A Moment of Neeeeerd Rage!!!

OK, there is NO WAY I'm the only comic book nerd out here who finds it massively creepy that at the end of Iron Man 2, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts hook up.

I'm sorry, but no. It is simply not OK.

In the first COMICS, Ms. Potts used to throw her little gold-digging self at her rich boss, but he would always snub her for whatever supermodels were already in his car. Largely because he was hiding a physical disability and secret robot habit and didn't want anybody too close to his personal life for longer than a weekend.

And in later comics, Ms. Potts wised up, realized that her boss was a flaky drunk and married the limo driver instead, as nature intended. Never once hooking up with her boss!

In IMMEDIATE comics, yeah, she did. After being widowed and after she thought Tony was going to die soon. But it was too brief to be much of an affair, and then he jumped straight into bed with his other primary female ally, because he thought he was dying and could burn a few bridges on the way out. Being a party boy and all.

Now, I love the Iron Man comics. The Iron Man Civil War collection is something I re-read frequently. I love the weird social and psychological dynamics of the title, the love-hate friendships that start to resemble family, the fantasy of wealth... It's even fun to imagine what the weight of the world must feel like when it's resting on mentally unstable, brilliant shoulders.

But dude! Hollywood should NOT have turned one of comics' best awkward male-female friendships into a "the guy gets the girl because main characters always hook up" scenario. Part of the fun is that he never really does.

OK, nerd moment over for now.

Like Water for Spouse

Weird side-effect of being in a long-term relationship: When I actually need sleep, my body thinks I need to track down my husband, because I'm unaccustomed to sleeping by myself.

Almost the same thing: When dehydrated, I used to crave food instead of water.

(Now, drinking water is a major pastime at work, so I do crave it when thirsty. Oh, the lone health benefit of long hours spent filing.)

The Best Lie I've Ever Told

This was originally written as a contest entry in the hopes of getting $20 in store credit to spend through Groupon Seattle. (PS: I love you, Groupon Seattle.)

I sleep in a centrifuge so I'm full of energy and violent confusion when I first wake up.

Instead of using an alarm clock, it just stops spinning at 6am every weekday. This launches me into a swimming pool full of foam rubber effigies of famous spokespersons. This helps psychologically prepare me for the day. Once I've figured out which direction is up, I use this knowledge to stand up, walk, get dressed and brush my teeth.

Next, I ultra-charge the day to the max by dressing a whole litter of kittens up like Batman and chasing them around the living room. Then, steak and eggs breakfast for everybody! Even for the kittens!

My Featured Comment on Qewz News About "Female Viagra"

My compulsive writing problem got me a little bit of positive attention this week!

An excerpt from my response to a Qewz News post on Facebook is today's featured quote on their main news website:

The whole response this line was taken from may have been overlong and brimming with potentially crackpot hypotheses (one of my specialties), but I think the part they took was alright. A little offensive perhaps ("dumb kids") but still OK.

Here is their original question:

Qewz News: A "little pink  pill" to solve women's sexual  problems probably won't be hitting  drugstore shelves anytime soon. But  that doesn't mean discussion of  the need for it, or lack thereof, is  likely to end. Is this a  legitimate public health concern, or is the  drug company  manufacturing a disorder?

Here is my original, gigantic response in its gorgeously, playfully unwieldy entirety:

What a fun question!

1. Until dumb kids start sneaking their parents meds and doing themselves serious medical harm (see Viagra), I like the idea of medical science trying to produce better aphrodisiacs. I'd also like to see science try to build a better roller coasters, too. Why not?

2. PTSD is a prime example of how an unsavory cultural experience CAN lead to legitimate medical problems. Stress-induced insomnia and constipation are other, perhaps more appropriate examples. Sometimes human bodies lock up and stop working properly when the external social conditions aren't psychologically healthy.

3. I've heard mainstream American culture referred to as "drenched in sexuality," but haven't seen convincing examples of this.

[Look out! From here out it kind of turns into an essay, but I couldn't figure out what to cut so I just posted an overlong response. Sorry everyone!]

It's true that American pop culture gives a lot of attention to the concept of the budding, sexually eager virginal teen who's finally ready to be looked at in his or her underwear, but that's not actually sex.

What sexually healthy adults do once they move past that fumbling, unskilled, virginal stage is too frequently kept a mystery in American pop culture.

Instead, adult sexuality is most frequently depicted in one of the following, rather asexual ways:

* Two lonely coworkers who try to repress their feelings of sexual tension by cracking wise and maybe kissing once, after years of chaste simmering.
* Asexual marriages.
* Marriages in which the couple initiates sex by hugging, making a wisecrack and chastely kissing just before the end credits roll.
* Single adults who don't spend enough time with any one sexual partner to really experiment or figure things out. This might be a lovelorn single adult character who rarely dates or this might be a promiscuous single adult character who specializes in one-night stands, and who doesn't have to learn how to keep things hot once the initial novelty of acquaintance has worn off.
* Sexually wise adults--whose experience often serves as a punchline--in which sexual references are delivered in such an absurd-sounding fashion that the "normal" adult characters in the scene are baffled, and little or no real wisdom is passed down.

This is all OK subject matter, but it doesn't really help to foster an environment in which adults who have long-term, frequent access to the same partner can work on refining their shared sex life.

Instead, American pop culture gives off the general impression that studying the idiosyncratic sexuality of oneself and one's long-term partner is just explicit, "icky" and something to be terribly, horribly afraid and ashamed of. Not something that anybody worthwhile would actually do.

That fear CAN'T be healthy. I'd be shocked if it DIDN'T contribute to sexual dysfunction!

Quick Paraphrase About China's New Energy Policy

Because I got that urge once again, here is a quick but reasonably thorough paraphrase of the updates in Chinese energy policy, as reported by Keith Bradsher in the New York Times today.

It looks like China's government is willing to keep using coal because coal can be mined in China. It looks like they're hesitant to become too dependent on imported oil because importing oil carries a lot of security risk. Like their current problem of frequent pirate attacks on incoming oil freighters on top of the more famous issues associated with depending too heavily on at-war countries.

Essentially, it looks like the immediate issues of becoming self-sufficient and autonomous as a developing country are more important to the Chinese government right now than are long-term, global concerns about global warming. (I'M still worried about global warming, for what that's worth.)

But China's not anti-green, in spite of this continued reliance on domestic Chinese coal. Chinese energy officials are also looking forward to the development of new clean energy technology, and hope to cherry-pick the best ideas as they're invented and tested in already-developed countries like the US.

That concludes the gist of what I learned from Bradsher's article. Here are my thoughts:

OK, America (and the rest of the developed world), it's time to invent some clean energy options that are SO efficient and SO cheap that even China's coal-dependent energy economy can't say no.

It's time for some Star Trek technology!

Can't Games Be Art? Can't Art Be Addictive?

This blog post is a slightly reworked version of a socially awkward, overlong response I wrote a few minutes ago to the recent Slate article Are Video Games a Massive Waste of Time? Tom Bissell's Extra Lives asks whether games are art or an addiction. Also posted as a Facebook note before I remembered I have this blog.

I feel a very weird mixture of pride and shame towards myself for writing so damn much in a socially frowned-upon context. (The ultra-long comment.)

But what the Hell. That's who I am, right? Someone who writes tooooooooooooooooooooooo damn much. Just an overstuffed bag of squirming words disguised as a girl.

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1. Video games are just as capable of being "art" as the rest of art is.

a. Interesting shapes, color and physical movement--PARTICULARLY in ways that challenge human reflexes--can still be legitimate art when used for something other than storytelling. What about non-narrative ballet?

b. The game Shadow of the Colossus has such powerfully effective emotional content that I can't stand to stay in the room when someone's playing it, let alone play it myself. To borrow an idea from the TV show Friends, I might hide the disk for this game in the freezer like it was an upsetting novel. Shadow of the Colossus elegantly, subtly and tortuously imparts a sense of madness, moral doubt and self-disgust that increases over the course of the game, right up to the conclusion of the storyline. I can comfortably lump it in with the play Titus as a masterwork that I am uncomfortable with. It's also gorgeously illustrated and animated, for what that's worth. Animation counts as art, doesn't it?

c. The first two games in the Fallout series had flawed, rather slow and buggy gameplay but clever writing and fun plots. They did well! I happily replay those games from time to time like I reread favorite books. They leave me with a Douglas Adams feeling and I love them for it.

d. The third Fallout (the recent game for the 360) is TOTALLY art. If nothing else, Malcolm McDowell's "patriotic" radio station was amusingly written and his deadpan delivery of those lines was perfect. I can still get a little laugh reminiscing about his performance. And the interactive, Rod Serling-style interlude towards the ending of the game's storyline? That was awesome! Better than plenty of movies. Fallout 3 is a gem.

2. Who's to say art is completely non-addictive?

a. I DO have an addiction-like problem with the TV series Twin Peaks. Some friends recommended it to me about a year ago and insisted on loaning me their DVD box set. I put it on a to-do list and forgot about it for a few months. But inevitably, I cracked it open and tried the first episode. And then another. And another. And another. I neglected chores and stayed up too late on work nights. Damn you, Twin Peaks!

Now that my husband and I have finished watching Lost, I have begged him to re-watch Twin Peaks with me so I can talk about it with him. I just finished watching this show about a month ago! I'm ready to watch it again? Overeager, even! I'm embarrassed with my own sense of "he HAS to see them all in order and then watch the last episode" urgency. But I'm in thrall. Maybe it's not a cocaine-sized problem, but it's certainly a Grand Theft Auto-sized problem.

b. My biggest addiction-like behavioral problem is creative writing. With an open schedule, I can sit down with an idea and lose whole days. Months. The better part of a year once. My senior year of college I decided to brainstorm an idea about comic books to relax when not being a science nerd. Five months later, I had over 220 pages of extremely detailed brainstorming.

This is still NOTHING compared to the project I adopted as a high school dropout just before college, to try to write down every thought I had as I had it. I pretty much just typed for a year and was definitely more bizarre (and meditative?) by the end of the project.

I am often so preoccupied with the desire to write down new ideas that it negatively affects my ability to function like a normal person. I once actually wrote amusing sentences in pen ON MY OWN LEG WHILE DRIVING so that I wouldn't forget them. While driving! Who does that?! It's creepy and inappropriate.

This might actually be a cocaine-sized problem, and the addictive substance in question is the production of work within a long-recognized art form.

3. In closing, I argue that video games CAN be art and art can have addictive properties.

Getting Weird Again: Aversion, Culture, Philosophy and Dancing in the Grocery Store

One of the most interesting things to me is playing with the flexible parts of aesthetic preference.

To borrow a few words from my favorite behavior theory textbook, the term aversive stimulus refers to any sensation that an organism will avoid. The term appetitive stimulus refers to any sensation that an organism will seek out. To borrow a little bit more, some sensations are intrinsically (from birth, without prior experience) aversive and appetitive and some have to be conditioned, taught.

The majority of cultural preferences are conditioned, and fashion particularly so. I’m not sure that what I’m thinking about this morning counts as fashion, though. I’m thinking about dancing in the grocery store.

I was raised by one of the most charismatic, rebellious people I can conceive of. Although I can’t approve of every decision my father has ever made and I certainly don’t agree with all of his politics, I am grateful for the sparkling, revolutionary brilliance in his personal philosophy. My dad is captivating. The fastest way to describe him is to say that although my dad looks and sounds like George Carlin, he behaves like a general amalgam of Bill Murray characters should such a meta-Murray be a lax survivalist, a one-time, sometime chef, a recovering New York Irish Catholic, a dedicated, freshly minted recreational sailboat captain and the doting father of two eccentric, young adult daughters. (My nearly retired and reasonably healthy father earned his captain’s license a few weeks ago and looks forward to finally getting to be Captain Ron when he grows up.)

That last paragraph might have been a small digression, but I want you to be able to really picture my dad when I explain to you that I was raised to dance in the grocery store. My father is very much of his generation. There is an important, neglected wisdom in the Summer of Love insistence that people think critically about the traditions and taboos they were raised with. More fulfilling, healthier lives can be mindfully created when we reject the unnecessary chains (the counterproductive culturally conditioned aversions and preferences) that weigh us down.

For example, the taboo against dancing in the grocery store should come to a swift end. It is a taboo that serves no positive function whatsoever. By replacing innocent whimsy with unnecessary shame, it reduces our capacity for true human connection. Shame isolates. Whimsy connects. Sharing joy and through it, unconditional acceptance on a regular basis is necessary for real love, strong families and lush and functional communities. I have tasted this life and know it to be true.

My sister and I make a point to dance in the grocery store when shopping together. Nothing fancy, nothing too appealing, but if nobody’s looking we may break into The Twist. I even bob from side to side musically when shopping by myself. Were a family a country, my fierce dedication to perpetuating light-as-a-cloud whimsy could be called patriotism.

On this anxious and incomplete Saturday morning, I sit and worry about my legacy. I am female, in my late 20s and I do not have children. I have a currently uncomfortable, opposites-attract marriage that is still sorting itself out. I am currently living too far away from my parents, sister and handful of supportive, resolutely bizarre friends to feel like I have the proper neighborhood or in-home community necessary to raise a child.

My biological clock is telling me to build a community based on my father’s best principles of whimsy. I want a tribe. I want a real home. I feel nostalgic and sad for the culture that I grew up in, because I don't find much of it in the big outside world. I feel like a salmon. Because I am in the late-middle of my short reproductive window, my body is telling me to "get back to where I once belonged."

It is a strange thing to be a 28-year-old woman and crave the constant presence of likeminded adults instead of just craving an infant.

Larry King Clip: Laura Bush in Favor of Gay Marriage & Abortion

If I wasn't already pretty familiar with riding out cognitive dissonance, I think this clip might have given me a nosebleed.

I feel like Freddy Kreuger just gave me a kiss on the cheek and $200 cash.

The ethical questions about her history of silence on these human rights issues aside, I have found myself in the intensely surreal position of suddenly identifying with one of the last people on Earth that I had expected to identify with. It's disorienting.

Poem: The Little Girl who Mistook Herself for Dennis Hopper

by Lindsay Meagher-Swanson
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There once was a girl who is otherwise proper
who can up and replace herself with Dennis Hopper.

Though peacefully friends with both puppies and snakes
this brave little spitfire has what it takes.

The apple of eye of her most-violent dad,
she goes all "Hulk crazy" whenever she's mad.

When in argument and she's ordered to yield,
she might put a TV right through your windshield!

Never mind all the expletives! Boy, how absurd.
"Go stuff your grandmother like Thanksgiving bird."

The Oversharing Generation

I belong to the Oversharing Generation.

Twitter, Facebook, *ahem* blogging.

For the first time, human beings are essentially telepathic. For a person with the right technology whose friends are similarly connected, almost any thought can be shared between friends, regardless of their location and almost regardless of their activity, often without needing to ask. Only a glance is needed to stay in touch, even over long distances. Only the thoughts that are offered are shared. How is this not beautiful?

There is always plenty of lament over the ugliness of every new technological innovation and cultural adaptation. "Jazz is going to corrupt our children." "Electrical appliances will make us weak." "The telegraph will kill the poetry of the written word."

Neophobia is so BORING!!!

The best journalistic idea that I may not act on

I had a lightning bolt of inspiration this afternoon that I'm most likely to just let fester and fade.

It looks like nobody yet has made an easily digested, readable, play-by-play breakdown of the new health care reform legislation. I'm talking about an attempt to read and congenially report on every single line of the huge document, a la David Plotz's hugely convenient Blogging the Bible project for Slate magazine. (BTW, thank you, David Plotz. I bought the hardcover version.)

If I were willing to commit the time and effort, I could do this! If I did it well, I could likely make a name for myself out of it. But I might not be hungry enough for success or glory. I'm mostly hungry for comfort. I would rather spend an afternoon in a park with my spouse and/or friends than do much in the way of hard work. Maybe curiosity would help propel me through it? I have a lot of curiosity, but I'm not sure if it will be enough.

Here it is, all 1990 pages. The bill Obama signed into law last month.

The first thing that I would need to do is print the damn thing. Like, on paper so I could write footnotes. This would require going to a print store or library.

Let's see what happens, folks. No promises.

Last-Episode-of-Twin-Peaks-Jitters and "King for a Day"

In addition to being sleep-deprived, I watched the last episodes of Twin Peaks last night. It was massively creepy in a horrible/wonderful way. I'm the sort of person who is easily unsettled by what others can dismiss as cheap or silly, particularly where special-effects are concerned and particularly when it comes to surrealism in the talkie-pictures. I kept one eye on the bathroom door during my entire shower this morning.

The good news is that my music collection on the computer is up to this challenge. It has just finished the most satisfying second half of King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime and has switched to Francoise Hardy's Greatest Hits. Ms. Hardy's extreme femininity is like a dream. I can feel fatalistic and passive while stuffing envelopes today, and let the weirdness wash over me like waves on a beach.

And now, a song lyric moment from the song What a Day from the King for a Day album, because I am self-indulgent and want to share a piece of what I like. I regard this song as being absolutely perfect for someone who's stuck with the day-after-the-last-episode-of-Twin-Peaks-jitters:


A piece of mail.
A letterhead.
A piece of hair from a human head.
They're saying to me, I should've killed it. I should've killed it before.
 You're right, you're right. 
"Kill the body and the head will die."
They're laughing at me, I should've learned it. I should've learned it before.
[...]

A wet sneeze and a no left turn.
A row of teeth and an encouraging word.
Beneath a mile of skin, I should've noticed it. Noticed it before.
[...]
What a day. 
What a day if you can look it in the face and hold your vomit.


I'm a sucker for this song. The words are spit out staccato, like something terribly important is taking place and we must share in the urgency. This is an emergency. It eventually dissolves into something like a rabid animal barking towards the end. The instrumentation is perfect for my tastes, too.


Mike Patton has hinted about wanting to compose for David Lynch and I really hope that this eventually gets to happen. They're made for each other.

Twin Peaks and The Venture Bros.--Molotov and Nadine

I haven't Googled this terribly thoroughly to double-check, but I think I might be the first person in the world to associate the character Nadine on Twin Peaks with the character Molotov Cocktease on The Venture Bros.

I don't get HOW I could be the first person to think of this. Super-strong, playful, highly sexual violent ginger women with approximately the same haircut and similar eyepatches. I think that Molotov may have been directly inspired by Nadine. This is awesome.

(For the less familiar viewer, Twin Peaks is the live-action program depicted below and The Venture Bros. is the animated program.)