"This Is Really Weird."

As a kid, I saw a movie called Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. I don't remember anything about it, except an instant near the middle where I turned to my brother and said, "This is really weird."

Not long after watching it, I mentioned how strange it had been to my parents and found out the movie was a prequel to a short-running 90s TV drama. From what I was told, it spawned quite the cult following with it's two season run (of which my dad is apparently part of).

A few days ago, something jogged my memory and made me bring it up again. Somewhere between Daddy's enthusiastic recounts of how "if you missed a week, you were just screwed" and Mom's constant groaning (she, on the other hand, couldn't stand it), I decided I wanted to watch the show for myself.

Now, I'm about four episodes in (that's a 94 minute run-time for the pilot episode, and 45 minutes for the ones that follow) and, once again, I find myself turning to the person beside me (it's my boyfriend this time) and saying "This is really weird."

Déjà vu, right?

Seriously though...

There's a dream sequence that deals with a dwarf in a red suit who does a little dance and his cousin that looks like the murdered girl, but isn't (maybe?), and they both talk funny, like someone is playing their dialogue backwards. The murdered girl's mom sees flashes of what I can only describe as "ominous possibly psychic stuff." There are multiple subplots that involve a local factory, and some waitress with a wife-beating, drug-dealing, truck driver husband with a blood-stained shirt that may or may not be related to the murder, and pretty much everyone in town having sex with everyone else.

That's not even half of it, either. I could keep going.

It's like only being a few chapters into a book and already having all this stuff thrown in your face, but all you know for sure is some beloved/troubled girl got murdered, the other people in town are about as fecked up as they come, and the FBI agent investigating the case really loves pie and black coffee.

And everything else is just...weird.

I think what was the most jarring was how it came off as a normal murder drama until the very end of the pilot episode with the first ominous possibly psychic vision. Things go back to being semi-normal through episode two, then there's that dream sequence and from there, everything goes completely wacko. It really came out of left field for me. All I could do was sit there with my head cocked and my jaw ever-so-slightly slack.

Here's the thing though--I'm so confused, I'm going to keep watching, just to see if I can figure it out. But if I were reading it instead, I would've set the book down a while ago. (Probably the first time they sprang a possibly psychic vision on me out of nowhere with no explanation.)

I dunno--maybe it's because a book actually requires some brain work, whereas all I have to do is gawk at the TV for the needed information to enter my brain. (Or maybe it's because I can always get a few cheap lulz off the actors' bad 90s melodrama.) Whatever the case, there's only so much random weirdness I can take from a book before I give up on caring about the outcome.

I mean, think about it.

A new book has come out and you're interested in checking it out. Your friend is a few chapters in, so you ask them what it's about. They respond with, "Well...it's a murder mystery, but there's also a love octangle and a mill that might be getting closed and an FBI agent that loves pie who has a dream about a backwards-talking dwarf and a chick who tells him the murderer's identity, but he forgets. Oh, and I think the murder victim's mom might be psychic...I'm not sure yet."

That sounds like a mess, doesn't it?

That's not to say I don't enjoy a good amount of weirdness from the stuff I read--I totally do. It just can't show up halfway through chapter three and yell, "SURPRISE! This is what we're doing from now on!" I'd much rather know up front that I'm in for an odd trip.

Or maybe I'm the only one who finds surprise weirdness way too jarring where books are concerned.

Where do you stand on weirdness--spring it on me or let me know up front?

Have you ever read something that started out normal, but ended up being a barrel of bizarre?

Have you ever seen Twin Peaks?

Did you like it or hate it?

Do you think it would work as a book?

HAPPY WRITING, LOVELIES!