Forked: Part 2 - Dazzled (by Twilight)

It's time we address the elephant in the room. Stephanie Meyer. She is the elephant in any room, at any time. Now I'm not saying she's particularly elephantine, but just that she looms over us all, whether we realize it or not. She is part of the fabric of existence. She's out there, right now, and there's nothing we can do about it.

I have a strange relationship with the Twilight books. I first became aware of them on August 4th, 2007. I know this because I wrote a blog about it here. Well, I wrote a blog about going to a bookstore to buy a copy of Trainspotting (in which their personal brand of heroin is actually heroin). I remember walking into that bookstore and seeing a huge display for the Twilight books, and thinking "what the crap is this?" I gathered that they were written by a local author of some sort and that the books were a publishing sensation. (research tells me that this happened only days before the release of the third book, hence the display).

I used to have co-workers, back when I had a job. Middle-aged ladies mostly. I remember overhearing them talk about Twilight and debating the casting choices for the movie. It was still barely on my radar. Then someone, probably Elin, had the bright idea to get a group of funsters together to go see the movie. So on Tuesday, November 25, 2008 I saw it and it was the most fun I've ever had in a movie theater (in the top three anyway, along with Wanted and Godzilla).

That movie is ridiculous. If you haven't seen it, you really need to, with a group of your finest smartasses. It was 2008, Lolcats were all the rage, so I whipped this up, and it got some polite chuckles from my friends and a few blog strangers who happened upon it.

Twilight.

A year later the next movie came out, so I did a Lolcat re-enactment for the sequel too.

New Moon.

It was up for about a week, and then it started to grow in popularity. One day my blog got over 300 hits! Then the next day it got 6,000. Then 13,000. Then over 125,000 in one day. It was all over Facebook and Twitter and comedy blogs and Twilight message boards. Currently it stands at about 800,000 unique views, and comments still come in and I still get letters from strangers telling me how funny it was. Wild! I went viral.

Here's the third movie if you need it.

Eclipse.

There's a point to all of this. The Twilight books take place in a real-life town called Forks, about a two hour drive from the Seattle area. Stephanie Meyer set the books there because a google search revealed it to be the rainiest city in the country. I like driving around, I like small towns, and I like doing ridiculous things, so a day trip to Forks seems like the best idea anyone has ever had (again, I think it was Elin's idea).

The drive up there is pretty.



Cars were lined up behind us to get a picture of the sign.

Bear in mind, none of the movies are even filmed here. But upon entering the town we discovered that the economy is almost completely Twilight based. There are four stores on one corner that all deal exclusively in Twilight merchandise, and they were all packed.

Of course everyone knows that the best of these stores is Dazzled by Twilight.

The inside has astroturf on the ground and is made up to look like the woods!

And Taylor Lautner just hangs out there all the time!

I bought this.


A comic-book biography of Stephanie Meyer. You can listen to my review of it here! Go to the 14:05 mark. "I'm still sore from all the brooding..." ha!

We walked around a bit. Here's Forks High School WHERE BELLA AND EDWARD TOTALLY WENT!

I don't know if Bella ever went bowling but this was a neat bowling alley and I would have loved to rolled a few lines there.

Outside of town is the Indian Reservation which sports a sign reading "No Vampires Beyond This Point" and a vacation rental property done up to look like Jacob's house.


First Beach at La Push. Great beach.

Such a striking image, that ocean knob there.

I love throwing rocks into bodies of water, and Nathaniel got in on the action too.


The beach is covered in Twilight graffito.



I marveled at all the Twilight messages written into the sand, but then discovered Elin was behind them all.


There was an enormous piece of driftwood on the beach.

So naturally Amy just up and climbed the thing.

She disappeared and I worried that she had perished but then she just came walking up like it was no big deal.

Here's all of us, just so you get a sense of the size of that thing.

Ah, the beach.

Went to Port Angeles in search of food and stumbled upon this restaurant, which claims to be the restaurant that Bella and Edward (two fictional characters) went on their first date.

Nothing suited us in Port Angeles so we skipped. I caught some neon on the way out.

Finally landed in Sequim (pronounced "skwim"), the driest city in Washington. Went to a Mexican place where this watches you eat...

and this watches you pee...


Here's the restaurant from the outside. I think that's a burrito tower?


Yeah. Forks.