Archive for Commentary
Stop it, Hollywood!
Recently Hollywood has tried to add new life to the traditional zombie movie. I imagine the zombies are all for this but they should not have a say.
Zombies shamble. They do NOT run, jump or climb, they shamble.
And that’s as it should be since running, jumping and climbing are not healthy activities for the undead. They are brittle creatures. Their skin doesn’t even stay on well. I expect that’s a result of their high protein diet since all they eat is living humans—when they can catch them.
Of course that’s Hollywood’s quandary. Back in the day when zombies were black and white and had people trapped in drafty old farmhouses survival was pretty much a fifty-fifty proposition. If you were a zombie you and your friends would try to get into the farmhouse and do lunch without getting your heads blown off by a shotgun. As we all know the zombie’s head is its control room. Blow the head off and the undead becomes a real dead. On the other side, if you were a living person inside that farmhouse you’d wield your double-barrel—The Decapitator—to repel unwanted guests and avoid having your throat ripped out by the jaws of a zombie. A little aside here: Alligators are credited with having the most powerful bite of any living creature. The zombie’s bite is even more powerful but isn’t credited due to its life status.
I digress, though that’s what asides are for. In the years since black and white farmhouses, Hollywood has given living celluloid humans all sorts of flight-or-fight technology—automatic rifles, hand grenades, flame throwers, crotch rocket motorcycles, muscle cars, mountain bikes…yes, even a pedalled bicycle can easily outdistance a shambling zombie. Thus the Hollywood dilemma: advantage, living human. Imagine you’re a member of the walking dead looking for a snack, you shamble up behind an unsuspecting farmer, desperate to stifle that moaning groaning noise your kind can’t help, you lurch toward his neck and the bleepin’ guy leaps on a tractor and trundles away to the south forty. On a tractor. That does maybe 10 mph wide open. You’d want to flop down on a rock and quit.
Movie makers recently have tried to even the score by creating zombies that are able to run…ok, they aren’t Olympic sprinters, but still…and not only run but climb fences and ladders and jump down from modest elevations. Here’s where I say “Stop it, Hollywood.” If you’re going to have running jumping zombies you’re going to have to improve their diets with some citrus, bananas, greens, whole grains—see the food pyramid. Otherwise you still have the traditional fragile zombie, let’s say a female—she attempts to run, the impact of foot upon ground drives the tibia through the skin of her lower leg and mobility is lost. She can still drag herself along the ground by her fingers, destroying her nails, but that’s really just a form of shamble. Imagine trying to climb a chain link fence and your own weight pulls your fingers off. Or you jump down from a large shipping crate and the blow of the landing drives your thigh bones up and into your control center to render you for real dead. Better off shambling.
So here’s the message, film makers: if you want us to continue to believe that zombies are real, and that we should leave a night light on, either stick to the shamble or come up with a semi-healthy creature—the partly dead, the walking half-dead, the 35% dead, whatever–something that eats right and is only partly dead and therefore able to chase us and climb our fire escapes. Please keep the involuntary moaning and groaning though.
The Wheels, I love them
If I’d been born a boy, I would’ve been a total gearhead, and am happiest behind the wheel driving anything, anywhere. I don’t know if it’s the driving or the going that’s most satisfying, but both at once? Oy, heaven. When I was young I generally always drove a little too fast and imprudently, and got a ticket for that once, Failure to be Reasonable and Prudent, that was the actual charge. The cop informed me that was what they hand out when the offense isn’t quite bad enough for the Reckless Driving jackpot.
The first car I was allowed to drive didn’t exactly set the road on fire, though. My dad’s beloved ’66 Corvair had all the torque of a sewing machine.
So, 14 years old, Saturday afternoon with best friend Nancy, driving by the house where the absolutely most cutest boy in class lived and just happened to be in the yard with his friend, the other most cutest boy in class. We didn’t exist in their world which was pretty liberating actually, permitting us to indulge in dunderhead behavior trying to get their attention without all the risk of actually getting it.
By this time I knew I was ultra talented with the clutch and hardly ever killed the engine when the light turned green. Of course this allowed us to drive ultra fast past his house with Deep Purple on 11 and hair streaming out the open windows looking ultra sexy. My extra smooth driving skills at their peak, I missed second gear and hit fourth and we drove by lugging the engine at 15 mph with no hope of going any faster, at which point I dropped it back to first and we bunny hopped by his house, teeny tiny Corvair engine screaming pain and humiliation along with Nancy.
It’s probably a good thing Dad garaged the fragile little Corvair because I would’ve killed it, but that meant I inherited the vast 1970 Ford Sturdywagon with its very own snotty Republican bumper sticker. However, it also had an 8-track, which made up for some; the fact you could pack 15 people and a pony keg in it made up for the rest. And it taught me an incredibly valuable life lesson I’ve used a lot: knowing your ground clearance is a good thing.
Coffee Ramble
Caffeine junkies, break room drinkers, morning gulpers or aficionados we like our coffee. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was fifteen and worked at an A&W root beer joint where I added enough cream to my first cup of coffee that I invented the latte. Since then I’ve run the gamut, or maybe gauntlet, of everything that coffee has to offer—black coffee, coffee with cream, with cream and sugar, with cream and various artificial sweeteners banned because they cause cancer in California, twelve to thirteen cups per day of vending machine urine with artificial cream wannabe, homemade battery acid from a French press, homemade espresso battery acid from one of those little aluminum one-cuppers, new and improved battery acid using a cheap counter top espresso machine and a tiny stick-your-pinky out espresso cup, the same battery acid in a grown ups cup with steamed milk reminiscent of A&W latte, espresso cum latte cum cappuccino from a counter top DeLonghi machine that actually produced a layer of crema and tasted enough like true espresso that in two years my love affair fatally injured the lining of my stomach and returned me to regular coffee with cream ala A&W but on speed dial via a Bunn coffee maker clocked at zero to twelve cups in sixty seconds. Then I retired. Visited Louisiana. Discovered café au lait from Café DuMonde — coffee with chicory served with hot milk. Bought a Kuerig one cup coffee maker, put the other machines in the rummage sale, now start the morning with a single always exactly the same strength and quality cup of–Emeril’s Big Easy Intense, Coffee People’s Doughnut Shop Coffee, or Newman’s Own Extra Bold. The next and final two cups of coffee later in the day are hand made café au laits built from a can of Café DuMonde Coffee with Chicory. Then I switch to Scotch.
Wait, I forgot about the John Wayne battery acid, cowboy coffee brewed in one of those classic blue enameled pots sans basket burned black on the outside and grossly funky on the inside. Fill with water, pour coffee in and boil directly on the hot coals of a campfire. Lastly add a raw egg when the coffee is ready to cut some of the acidity, plus as the egg sinks it pulls a lot of the suspended grounds to the bottom of the pot. Never ever wash that pot and the coffee gets smoother and more palatable as the years pile on. Then I switch to Scotch.
New Collaborators
Starting this month, I’m excited to have three new collaborators joining me on my blog: Robyn Williams, Jim Luce, and Margaret Loyer. These three people are dear friends and have been part of my writing career from the beginning. Without them, their encouragement, their (sometimes harsh but true) critiques, and their steadfast belief I could do this, I wouldn’t be still writing.
I met Robyn Williams and Jim Luce on an online writing laboratory called Writelab more than ten–or is it fifteen?–years ago. The lab had a great premise. Every week, we would get a writing assignment, say writing in the omniscient point of view, and we would post it to the group. People then critiqued the piece and gave you feedback. Most of it was either of the rose-colored glasses or the “you’re an idiot” kind, but Robyn, Jim and I connected and, as they say in the movies, it was the start of a beautiful friendship. Robyn lives in Boisie, Idahoe and Jim lives near a lake in Wisconsin. We have never physically met but have stayed in contact ever since.
I met Margaret at Algonquin Community College in Ottawa where we both took the same writing class. We hit it off and, with a few others from the class, started a writing group. Little by little, the group dwindled and only Margaret and I were left. She decided writing novels wasn’t her thing but she’s a crack copy editor and has corrected and commented on every one of my books. She’s the one who helpedd polish and clean my English, which is often deficient.
So, there you have it. Once a month, each of them will drop by my blog and talk about something that tickles their fancy. It should be eclectic. And, hopefully, it should be fun.
Welcome, you guys.
Cranky Christmas
I don’t mind receiving an ecard. We send paper cards every year, but it’s a matter of choice. I’m as pleased to get an ecard as I am of receiving a paper one, although the ecard is more difficult to display on the mantle. What I really, really hate, is to receive a plain email with wishes. As I mentioned, many ecards sites offer free cards, so obviously it’s not the cost that came into play. I received three emails this year, and from family to boot. What, you were too lazy to pick a free card? You felt obligated to send me something because I sent you a card, but you don’t really care? Well, please, don’t bother.
It’s the same for off-the-cuff, ridiculously wrapped gift. For the past three years, a friend I’ve known for over twenty years has been giving me what I’d call afterthought gifts. Something she’s had in her house, wrapped loosely in torn tissue paper, and shoved in a wine bottle bag. Another, with the same kind of wrapping, gave me a Costco plastic salt shaker and a mushroom brush. For Christmas. It was obvious she’d gone through her house to find something she could give me because we were coming to visit. If I went by the type of presents to determine how much these friends value me, I’d be depressed.
Instead, I blame it on how friendships and relationships have become superficial. With Twitter and Facebook, we live “social moments” with hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, often on the run or while doing something else. We talk at people and don’t get responses–and we don’t necessarily want them. There’s not as much time left to sit down and talk, families are often dispersed across one or more continents, and there’s a sense of alienation that lodges itself into the way we interact with people. Today, it’s all about numbers rather than quality. We value ourselves by the number of “friends” we have but could never have a conversation with half of them.
I’m not saying that Twitter and Facebook, or any other social network, are bad. In fact, none of the people I talked about above use a social network. What I’ve been observing, rather, is the pervasiveness of isolation we seem to surround ourselves with, and this translates into a casual attitude to interacting, and to giving. It’s especially glaring in times like Christmas, because of the messages of love and giving we get battered with.
So, this Christmas, make an effort. If you decide to reach to someone, do it with heart and meaning and sincerity. Otherwise, don’t bother.
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