We do a weekly column in the Guide, the local print arts & entertainment tabloid. It's a sort of "PopPulse recommends" thing. We're going to start printing those columns in the blog on Mondays for those of you who don't subscribe to the print edition. This week's installment:

That gum you like’s coming back in style

If you haven’t seen an episode of “Twin Peaks” in a decade, you should. You probably have vague memories of a wacky show with dancing dwarves and silly plots and a drug-fueled loopy directionlessness that helped it burn out quickly. But what you’re forgetting is how AWESOME it was. Seriously.



Before there was “Lost” there was “Twin Peaks.” Fans analyzed each show like it was the Zapruder film, looking for clues and hints to the central mystery. The new “Twin Peaks — The Definitive Gold Box Edition (Complete Series)” will remind you who Laura Palmer was and why her murder was really, really great.



The 10-disk set features both the first and second season, the European version of the pilot, interviews, featurettes and more. After locking yourself into a room and watching this for 30 hours straight you will certainly come to these conclusions:

1. David Lynch knows how to build suspense and terror. The first season of “Twin Peaks” builds and builds and builds. (Unfortunately, with season two, the suspense kind of crescendos and you’re left with “only” a perfectly enjoyable show about quirky people living in a dark town.)

2. The music is incredible. It’s moody and eerie and beautiful. When was the last time you cared about a soundtrack to a TV show?

3. Agent Dale Cooper, played by Kyle MacLachlan, is one of the top 10 greatest characters ever to appear on screen. A precursor to “The X-Files’” Mulder, MacLachlan infused Cooper with a child-like sense of earnestness and an open-minded approach to the surreal. He made nerdy cool.

4. The show was sexy. Like, really. The women. The men. The murder. Pie was a metaphor for sex. Coffee was a metaphor for sex. Actually, the whole show might have been a metaphor for sex.

5. While the second season is not nearly as good as the first, the show still had a lot left. Of course it was canned. “Family Matters,” on the other hand, lasted nine years. You can find the new set at amazon.com.

Weekend Box Officer

Here’s a look at this weekend’s box office:
1. “American Gangster,” $46.3 million.
2. “Bee Movie,” $39.1 million.
3. “Saw IV,” $11 million.
4. “Dan in Real Life,” $8.1 million.
5. “30 Days of Night,” $4 million.
6. “The Game Plan,” $3.85 million.
7. “Martian Child,” $3.65 million.
8. “Michael Clayton,” $2.9 million.
9. “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?”, $2.7 million.
10. “Gone Baby Gone,” $2.4 million.

Although we will probably see Bee Movie, it pains us to see that Jerry Seinfeld has become so annoying. Is it just us?

Seinfeld, the show, doesn’t just make the short list of best sitcoms of all time, it tops it. It’s the best. Seriously. And we love him because of it. But after two weeks of NBC promos and Oprah appearances and Letterman guest shots (where he ridiculed a woman who dared say (not sue, mind you, say) that she wrote the same cook book as Ms. Seinfeld) we’re really, really sick of him.


We want to remember the guy from the TV show. Not this guy. This guy who is everywhere, kissing up to Oprah. Begging people to buy his lame kid’s movie. Stop it. You’re embarrassing yourself. That’s a Costanza move.

And the more we see him — with the wife and the baby – being sold as the all-American guy, the more we’re reminded that, you know, when he was in his mid-30s he dated a girl in HIGH SCHOOL. And his current wife, Ms. Suzie Homemaker, cut her HONEYMOON short to come back and be with Jerry. And we’re OK with that. We like our comedians a little dark. But let’s not reinvent Seinfeld as Mr. Clean.

It’s like how Bill Cosby is invited on these shows to talk about violence and rap music in black culture and NO ONE ever asks him, “Wait, are you the guy who tried to convince us you were the world’s greatest dad only to admit you fathered kids in an adulturous relationship? And weren’t you accused of, you know, date rape? And didn’t you star in Leonard Pt. VI?”

All we’re saying is, we’d like less Jerry. Thank you.