Finally!!! Greetings blog-citizens. Once again, I must apologise profusely for my non-appearance in the blogosphere this past.... (just checked)...30 freakin'days??!!! Blimey, I've gotta get a lap-top, there's nothing else for it. I need to get mobile with this thing.

At the beginning of the month I reluctantly re-entered that dark, inhospitable, arcane subculture known to us Bohemians as the World of the Workers. Let me tell you, it ain't so Wild. Higher forces forbid me from revealing the true nature of said work, but I can say that I wake up in the dark, work in the dark, and come home in the dark. All in all, it's pretty dark.
Ringing any bells out there?
Anyhoo, one way or another, The Man gets his money's-worth out of me ... and we're talking 12 hour days-plus here.

It's for this very reason that, this year, I can't enter into the spirit of Halloween with quite the same gusto that I normally do. Quaffing wine, eating salted snacks, watching The Wolfman and Race With the Devil on DVD whilst dressed as a famous monster of Film-Land - surely no finer way to spend an evening. Sadly, not this year.
That said, last night was Halloween-Lite here at Chez Sonique. No dressing-up, but plenty of refreshments and no shortage of onscreen schlock horror in the form of Flesh Feast, I Eat Your Eyes, and Basket Case 4: The Reckoning.
Check out Sonic Halloween Avenger above, created by yours truly with a hastily-selected ASDA pumpkin, a blunt knife and a vision.
More later my sonic-lovelies ....and a Sonic Halloween to one and all.

One highlight of the week here at Chéz Sonique is The Sopranos on TV, Thursday nights. Season 5 was, for me at least, the best so far, so Season 6 has a lot to live up to.

It got off to a slow start it must be said. In episode 1, Tony got shot by an increasingly confused and paranoid Uncle Junior and ends up in hospital, comatose. He dreams of a parallel-life in stark contrast to his own, where he is Kevin Finnerty (infinity... geddit?) a sales-rep living the archetypal button-down American life.

This aspect is as inventive as previous Sopranos fantasy/dream sequences, but it just goes on too long, takes up too much viewing-space, and the pace is lost. On the upside, Paulie Walnuts (probably my favourite Sopranos character) is thrown into the spotlight when he gets kicked where it hurts most during a botched robbery, then learns that his mother is really his aunt, and vice-versa.

Outside in the real world, Silvio deputises for Tony, and quickly finds that he's not up to the job, himself being hospitalised through the stress of it all. With both Tony and Silvio out for the count, Vito Spatafore ponders stepping into the top slot, while all the other crew-members are quietly contemplating a move up the mob-ladder should the Big Boss not make it out of Coma-land.
By the close of episode 3 however, with a (slightly) more spiritualised worldview, he does. Thus we leave the hospital and Kevin Finnerty behind, allowing the pace to pick up once more.

In 5, the action revolves around the wedding of (New York boss) Johnny Sac's daughter Allegra, and is the first real gem of an episode this season. Later, the aforementioned Vito's double-life as a Village-Person is accidentally discovered by two wiseguys, and at the close of the episode he retires to a motel room with a hand-gun to consider his narrowing life-options. This can only be a huge relief for Meadow's boyfriend Finn, who Vito is not-so-quietly keen on. This is currently where we're up to here in the UK.
Peripheral characters come and go in The Sopranos, but if there's one I'd love to see return it's Valery, the crazed ex-Russian Army commando that escaped the clutches of Paulie and Christopher in season 3's (Steve Buschemi-directed) Pine Barrens.
It was left open-ended (Valery escaped into the woods with a head wound) so I live in hope.

Is The Sopranos as good as television gets?
I'd previously thought it impossible for anyone to get a fresh take on Mob drama post-Scorsese, but The Sopranos proved me wrong.
Whilst it certainly owes a debt to Scorsese's epic Goodfellas - David Chase (Sopranos creator) has referred to that movie as his 'Koran' - it has equal parallels with I Claudius.
Brutal, funny, ironic, surreal, ground-breaking, socially aware and morally complex, with a stunning use of music, I'd say that yes, this is as good as TV can hope to get.