Although, truly, Sookie's constant need to be rescued can be overlooked, when you have the following:

• Daphne telling Sam, "I know what you are."
• Lafayette sucking from Eric's wrist.
• Lafayette humping the furniture and saying, "I just want to fucking dance." (Eric replying, "How nice for you.")
• The orgiastic party at the Stackhouse place, complete with sploshing and the sculpted, naked buttocks of Eggs.
• "Evil is making the premedicated choice to be a dick." — Jason Stackhouse.

With A Little ‘True Blood,' HBO Is Reviving Its Fortunes [NY Times]

Ruth La Ferla references True Blood and Let The Right One In and writes:

What began with the Twilight Saga, the luridly romantic young-adult series by Stephenie Meyer, followed by Twilight, the movie, has become a pandemic of unholy proportions.

For Spike's sake: Vampire lust did not "begin" with Twilight. While La Ferla acknowledges the 1983 film The Hunger, the Sookie Stackhouse books penned by Charlaine Harris, and upcoming "supernatural action film" Blood: The Last Vampire (which looks awesome) — her underlying question is: Why? Why the pop culture obsession with vampires? La Ferla gets this:

The vampire's attraction is "all about the titillation of imagining the monsters we could be if we just let ourselves go," suggested Rick Owens, a fashion bellwether whose goth-tinged collections sometimes evoke the undead. "We're all fascinated with corruption, the more glamorous the better" and, he added, with the idea of "devouring, consuming, possessing someone we desire."

But in a new interview with True Blood series creator Alan Ball, he says: "Vampires are sex. Vampires basically arose in our time as a metaphor for sex. I mean, vampires are sort of the ultimate Romantic rock star, bad boy or girl fantasy." And: "I can't really talk that much about Twilight because I haven't read any of the books and I didn't see the movie. I personally don't really understand why you would have vampires in a something that is basically about abstinence."

Okay, sure, vampires are about unleashing your inner monster, sex and desire. But most famous vampire stories involve bloodsucking males preying on females. In this chart illustrating the "basics" of being a vampire, there's Bill from True Blood; Edward from Twilight and Angel from Buffy. Bloodsucking is a boy's world. Maybe that's why that the epic clip of Buffy prevailing over Edward Cullen is such refreshing turn of events. Jonathan McIntosh, who created the clip, says:

More than just a showdown between The Slayer and the Sparkly Vampire, it's also a humorous visualization of the metaphorical battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century […] In the end the only reasonable response was to have Buffy stake Edward – not because she didn't find him sexy, not because he was too sensitive or too eager to share his feelings – but simply because he was possessive, manipulative, and stalkery.

Although there are many vampire books written by women, and a few fierce female vamps — Buffy's Drusilla, Underworld's Selene, Let The Right One In's Eli, Queen Of The Damned's Akasha. But none of these women have achieved the fame and notoriety male vampires enjoy. A woman's role in vampire mythology is to get bitten, become enthralled, or both; the undead dudes are the ones with all the power.

A Trend With Teeth [NY Times]
In Vampire World, The Rules Keep Changing [USA Today]
From Dusk Til Dawn: Talking With Alan Ball About "True Blood" Season Two [Televisionary]
What Would Buffy Do? Notes On Dusting Edward Cullen [Women In Media & News]

Earlier: Buffy Shuts Down Edward Cullen In The Best Clip Ever

• Being on vacation with Amy Winehouse must be relentlessly entertaining:

She was apparently told she couldn't sunbathe au naturale, so she whipped off her bikini top and streaked through the resort in St. Lucia, waving her arms in the air. She told you she was trouble! [Daily Mail]

• The family of Mercy James, the Malawian child Madonna would like to adopt, are on Madonna's side. Mercy's uncle says the guy who claims to be Mercy's biological dad "didn't care about his girlfriend, Mercy's mother, when she needed him most. He didn't even come to see his baby." [The Sun]
• Madonna was overheard telling people: I can't believe I'm leaving my beautiful baby behind. It's not right. I love that baby girl. She's my little girl - she needs to be with me." A judge disagrees, your Madgesty! [MSNBC]
• Chris Brown was in court yesterday, and he pleaded not guilty to two felony counts. His next court date is a preliminary hearing on April 29. [Rolling Stone]
• Some are "surprised" that Chris Brown pleaded not guilty? Really? [MSNBC Scoop]
• Rihanna was not in court, but her lawyer was, and he said her feelings about the case are that she would be happy if "it were over quickly." [TMZ]
• The latest on Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson, according to LL: "We are taking a brief break so I can focus on myself." But, uh, she banned you from her party and changed the locks, right? [E!]
• Sam Ronson's family is hoping that Sam will not get back together with Lindsay. Ouch! [People]
• Courtney Love is about to sue a whole mess of people: She finally realized that whomever had been handling Kurt Cobain's estate lost millions of dollars. It's not her fault she didn't look into this sooner, she was high, okay? [Page Six]
• Cops in Costa Rica are investigating the security team hired by Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen since they, you know, open fired on photographers, which doesn't seem very legal. [NY Post]
• Gisele wore Galliano, by the by. [People]
• Howard K. Stern will not cut a deal with the D.A. in the Anna Nicole Smith drug case and is expected to plead not guilty. He'll be in court today. [TMZ]
• Do what you must to prepare yourself: Britney Spears might take her Circus tour to Australia. [E!]
• Of the items being moved out of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's London home, the mattress is not surprising; the dinosaur, the large horse and surfboard are. Gwynnie's moving to NYC; Chris is going on tour. [Daily Mail]
• Speaking of Chris Martin, Coldplay is denying that it copied Joe Satriani's music for "Viva La Vida." [Breitbart]
• Oh dear: Scarlett Johansson has reportedly been working out with Gwyneth's trainer, Tracy Anderson. She's already lost 14 pounds and now she's off carbs. Is she prepping for Iron Man 2 or just joining the brigade of stick thin stars? [The Sun]
• Did a reporter set up a fake charity and trick Heather Mills into dishing dirt on Paul McCartney? [ABC News]
• Zac Efron's mom stuffed hi stocking with condoms last Christmas and his dad gave him some speech about protection at some point so maybe the point is you won't see Zac as a young baby daddy any day soon. [E!]
• The woman who was saved from committing suicide by Demi Moore and "the Twitter community" says "I'm eternally grateful to her for helping me." [RadarOnline]
• Why aren't people donating to Prince Harry's African charity? Donations have dropped a whopping 84%. [Telegraph]
• Jennifer Garner will star in Butter, a flick that's a political satire set in the small-town world of competitive butter-sculpting. Yeah. Butter. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Ru-roh: Pamela Anderson's boyfriend was in a kite-surfing accident in Hawaii. Luckily, he escaped serious injury and didn't need C.J. to run into the water with a red floaty thing. [Daily Express]
• Kylie Minogue took her new man to meet her parents and they found him to be "charming and witty." Good sign. [Daily Express]
• Buddhist and friend of the Dalai Lama Richard Gere attended a "Mind and Life" conference in Dharamsala, India on Monday. [Hindustan Times]
• Dennis Rodman was thrown out of a West Hollywood hotel after "slapping and groping" female guests. He needs to learn how to ask nicely when he wants to borrow a dress. [TMZ]
• The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation received a gift from the estate of the late Luther Vandross; the amount of the gift was not disclosed. [UPI]
• Blind item! "Which Grammy-winning rapper can't get enough weed? She orders from a NYC delivery service non-stop, then tries to sweet-talk the courier into giving her free bags of ganja." [Gatecrasher]
• "He's certainly not the buffoon he looks like. This is the most amazing thing I found out about him. I was once staying at a hotel, and I was in the room directly under his. He is an amazing fuck — and you can quote me on this. The screams coming from the woman were some of the purest sounds of pleasure I'd ever heard." — Rupert Everett on Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. [Page Six via The Daily Beast]
• "Casey grew up in one of the richest families in New York, and she grew up without any responsibilities or any boundaries. And so, for her, it was very important to do something where there were laws and where your morals counted. I was very much into the idea of doing something I hadn't done before. This is a show about cops. Our show is very grounded in the sense of the crappy things that happen to you are funny. That's how you deal with them and get through life." — Amber Tamblyn, on her character in new show The Unusuals. [USA Today]
• "I don't know Ethan Hawke. Ethan Hawke wanted to do some kind of superficial Rolling Stone article. And he did everything he could to make his story the greatest story ever in Rolling Stone. And it was a fictitious (expletive) lie. O.K? He didn't even call me by my name. ... He called Norah Jones, Ray Charles, everybody else by name. Willie (Nelson), Kris (Kristofferson). Why didn't he call my name? Why didn't he say Toby Keith walked through and said this (expletive)? Right? You know why. You know why. You know as good as anybody why. He didn't want to (expletive) deal with the aftermath." — Toby Keith. [Yahoo News via AP]
• "The pilot script showed up, and I stalked [producer Alan Ball] until he said yes. The morning I showed up for work after going blonde, everyone was very relieved." — Anna Paquin on playing Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood. [Vanity Fair]
• "We were on the set, and the two firefighters that work here, I overheard them talking about, 'Yeah, you know, if I'd known I could measure from the pubic bone… And they were talking about a cock-measuring contest.' And I go, 'That's going in the show.'" — Denis Leary on Rescue Me. [The Daily Beast]
• "I'm crying for two and a half hours straight. And then you leave the stage door and people are like, 'Can we take your picture?' And I'm thinking, 'I've never looked worse.' I need a lot of eye cream." — Lauren Ambrose, on her role in the play Exit The King. [WWD]
• "Combs have been on the scene ever since humans had hair on his head. which is quite sometime? The date perhaps goes beyond the time of the old stone age. Man being man and not a lion would
  not be content to let his mane run wild and free. So he had to find some ways to tame it. First on the list of combing operations must have been the use of fingers. So in a way the fingers are the first combs of history. Today, combs are universal and no corner of the globe is without it." — Your friend Kanye West. [Jossip]