Suck It: Too Much 'True Blood'

Vampires exist and live amongst us in the city—at least that’s what a sorta new [viral marketing campaign] would have us believe, anyway. Those posters are everywhere—“vampires are immoral,” “friends don’t let friends drink friends,” et al—and are all just the tip of the viral marketing iceberg for a new Alan Ball-created show on HBO called [True Blood](http://www.hbo.com/events/trueblood/).

Websites abound to satisfy the curiosity piqued by passing those damn posters a dozen times a day: check out [fellowshipofthesun.org], [americanvampireleague.com](http://americanvampireleague.com) and [bloodcopy.com](http://bloodcopy.com). There’s also a Facebook group, a MySpace for a character named Blood and even an online dating site (for vampires and “fangbangers,” dontcha know).

If you haven't figured it all out by now, True Blood is based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries book series by Charlaine Harris, and is set in a small Louisiana town just after a synthetic-blood drink called TruBlood is released, allowing vampires to come “out of the coffin” and demand civil rights. Vampires were people, too!

True Blood’s pilot leaked online earlier this summer to mixed reviews, and to be perfectly honest, the premise sounds pretty dumb. Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) is a telepathic waitress sick and tired of reading people’s minds, which leads her to fall in love with a vampire because he has no brainwaves for her to read. Of course, knowing Ball, who also directed Six Feet Under, it’s probably all a big fat allegory for something much more existential than undead rednecks. But who has time to muddle through the crap to reach nirvana?

True Blood premiers Sept. 7 at 9 p.m. on HBO, but you can check out [previews here.]