A Late (Or Is it Early?) Ramble About My Sister

By now, regular readers know that Uncle P's sister is a baker. She has a side business making custom cakes, cookies and cupcakes for weddings, birthdays and various celebrations that require baked sweets as part of their rituals. She's gotten quite good, though even she will admit she's no Buddy Valastro. Still, she makes some delightful desserts for special occasions and her clients and co-workers love what she does.

Cakes and cookies non-withstanding, Uncle P's sister is also his best friend and one of the very few (if not the only) people who actually 'gets' him. Growing up, even though we were six years apart, we actually shared a "language" which to this day, no one else understands. It's no secret that one of us can utter a word, phrase or a series of nonsense syllables that will have the other writhing in hysterics to the dismay and utter consternation of those around us. Her husband and our mother still roll their eyes at one another when we get going.

Many years ago, my sister and her husband moved to western Florida. Since then, I've tried to visit at least once a year. We take day trips to Disney or Universal (my personal favorite theme park); loll about in the Gulf Coast sun; hit the outlet malls or dine at unusual places and generally act like the kids we never grew out of being when together. Occasionally, my sister will venture north, though she loathes the weather here and would rather our mother and I come South. Last year, due to any number if circumstances (including the extensive renovations required on Uncle P's house), I didn't make my annual visit.

This week, my sister is making a rare northern excursion to attend her 25th High School Reunion, While I am thrilled that she and I will get to spend some time together, I am also secretly hoping that she will get to experience the surreal kind of event that Uncle P had last year at his 30th.

Needless to say, I doubt her experience will be anything like this:

My sister is actually a successful executive at a major corporation, so there! Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah! While I don't personally care what happens at the reunion, I'm just happy to be able to spend some time with my baby sister (and perhaps confound some folks with our unique relationship).

More, anon.

Prospero

P.S. Tonight, I actually realized how weird it is to refer to myself in the third person. I feel like a "Seinfeld" character... Is that a bad thing? Oh, and if you're wondering if she'll take offense at the pictures I've linked to my sister's references, I can assure you she'll say they just weren't weird enough....

P

Tell It To the Frogs

Warning: Here There Be Spoilers.

After 2 episodes of "The Walking Dead," Rick was finally reunited with his wife and son, both of whom had assumed he was dead.

When we last left our intrepid band of survivors, Rick and a group of scavengers from the camp outside of town had barely managed to escape Atlanta, leaving racist hothead Merle handcuffed atop the roof of the department store where they'd nearly met their demise. As episode 3, "Tell It To the Frogs" opens, Merle, severely sunburned and on the verge of insanity, vainly struggles to escape as the walkers (or 'geeks') try to force their way onto the roof and have their way with his delicious flesh.

Rick and company finally arrive at the camp, to the astonished joy of his wife Lori and son Carl (Chandler Riggs). Torn by Rick's return, his former partner Shane now finds himself bereft of the comfort he found in Lori's arms when they all assumed Rick was dead. Lori takes no time in ending things with Shane and when he takes Carl frog-hunting in the quarry, she tells him in no-uncertain terms to stay away from her family. We do find out that it was Shane who told Lori that Rick was dead in the first place, which leads me to believe there was nothing going on between them before the zombie uprising and that Shane simply took advantage of a woman whose marriage was shaky to begin with. Shane immediately lost points in my eyes, despite his taking down of wife-abusing Ed (Adam Minarovich) with a well-deserved if a bit over-zealous beating. Shane was obviously taking out a bit of his own frustrations on the neanderthal Ed. Poor Rick, of course, has no idea of what's gone on while he made his perilous way back to his wife and son.

Meanwhile, the appearance of a 'walker' devouring a deer close to camp means that the food supply in the city is dwindling and the zombies have begun to make their way into the woods in search of sustenance. It also means the deer that Merle's brother Daryl (Norman Reedus of The Boondock Saints) was stalking is no longer of any value as food. Of course, Daryl is none-too-pleased to learn that his racist cracker brother has been left behind and insists they attempt a rescue. Rick, Glenn, TDog and Daryl return to Atlanta, despite the others' protests, only to find that Merle has found a rather grisly solution to his captivity. Of course, Rick has an additional impetus to return to the city: the bag of weapons and ammo he was forced to leave behind when surrounded by zombies at the end of Episode 1.

As of yet, there have been no human fatalities in the series, though I am betting as we get closer to the series' first season finale, that will change. And that will also be a game changer. This comparatively less gory episode delved more into the personalities of the survivors; a rag-tag group of relative strangers who have been thrust together by circumstances in an effort to survive the unthinkable. The women reminisce ("I miss my Maytag;" "I miss my coffeemaker;" "I miss my vibrator.") and the men grow increasingly unhappy and resentful. Personally, I think it will be a living person who makes the first kill, rather than a zombie. And then all hell will truly break loose among these stressed-out and desperate survivors.

In other Zombie news that won't wait until Saturday's edition of The Zombie Zone, Deadline is reporting that writer/director and Zombieland restroom victim Mike White has officially signed to direct to the film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (via). The Chuck and Buck writer has just the right kind of twisted sensibility to make a perfect adaptation of the mashup novel, wherein Jane Austin's heroines must cope with both the ideals of Victorian romance and the Living Dead. Yum!

More, anon.

Prospero

Bill Clinton, Actor?

Yikes! People magazine is reporting that former President Bill Clinton (he of the scandalous cigar) will be making a cameo as himself in The Hangover 2. This comes after the announcement that Mel  "Sugartits" Gibson would -- and then wouldn't -- be doing the same.

Hey - if Nixon could do "Laugh-In" (remember kiddies, your Uncle P is old...), then why shouldn't Clinton appear in a raunchy sex-comedy? I can't think of a better genre for the man, can you? Of course, Nixon wasn't yet President when he appeared on the subversive NBC sketch comedy and Clinton is a former President. I mean, it's pretty unlikely that Mr. Obama is going to make a cameo in Porky's 3 anytime soon. 

I must admit, I am Clinton fan. Sure, he created the woefully inept DADT policy, but the US economy under his administration was the strongest it had been in a long time. "But, he had an affair!" I can hear some of you thinking (yes, Uncle P can indeed hear some of you thinking, so be careful what you think). So did many POTUSes. He was impeached because he lied about sex. Hell, most people in this country should be impeached, then. He didn't lie about WMDs, start an unnecessary war or authorize torture and other war-crimes. He didn't drive our economy into a tailspin by spending trillions killing thousands US soldiers and innocent Iraqis. He didn't steal an election by having a brother who was governor of the deciding state. He didn't authorize millions of illegal wiretaps or suspend habeus corpus. And I imagine that if 9/11 had happened on his watch, he wouldn't have sat dumbly staring out into space for almost a minute while trying to figure out what to do. And I never once heard Bill say anything like this:

So why shouldn't private citizen Clinton make an appearance in The Hangover 2? He has a right to do whatever he wants (within reason, of course), just as you and I do. Who knows, maybe he'll inhale this time. Personally, I don't care, just as long as Bradley Cooper spends most of the movie like this.

More, anon.
Prospero

Turkey Month Turkey of the Week: "Howard the Duck"

In 1986, George Star Wars Lucas was sure that his next hit would be the big-screen adaptation of the Marvel Comics undergound hit Howard the Duck. Casting Lea Thompson (hot off of Red Dawn and Space Camp); Jeffrey Jones (Ferris Beuller's Day Off) and Tim Robbins (Top Gun) in a story about an extraterrestrial avian brought to Earth via a mad scientist's laser beam, Lucas and company were sure they had a massive hit with this craptatstic adaptation.

While Steve Gerber's randy adult comic book was subversive and original, the adaptation directed by William Huyck (best known for directing the 1979 comedy French Postcards and writing Lucas' first hit American Graffiti) is quite simply a mess of excess. Everything about this movie is so over-the-top (including Thompson's ridiculously huge 80's "big hair"), there's no where to go. While Howard may have worked as a subversive pen-and-ink anti-hero,  but he flopped massively as a a celluloid action hero. And deservedly so, given the excessive effects budget and poorly written screenplay.

Featuring ridiculous performances; really bad special effects; icky inter-species sex and one of the most expensive puppets in film history, Howard the Duck is the one the 1980's worst big-budget movies and (until the later Star Wars films) the nadir of George Lucas' career.

Uncle P knows he saw this movie on VHS in the 80's, but his memories of it are buried deep in the vault of things he'd rather forget. Stupid, vapid and painfully unwatchable, Howard the Duck is perhaps the epitome of everything that was wrong about the 1980's (and that includes rat-tails; parachute pants and jellies).

I'd like to think that even though I was a "New Wave" kid in the 80's, I was still above this kind of lameness, though I'll bet if you ask any of my contemporaries, they'd be just as embarrassed by this crap as I am...

More, anon.

Prospero

The Bat-Sh*t Craziest Thing You'll See This Week

Did you know that our World Leaders are really part of a Reptilian and Draconian conspiracy to enslave the Human Race and take over Earth for their own nefarious purposes?  Neither did I. I mean, I thought that ABC's "V" was Science Fiction. Turns out, it's all true. How do I know? Because of people like Colleen Thomas, who in the first video below, has a perfectly rational explanation for the "mysterious" rocket plume seen in southern California, yesterday. 

I came across the video this morning on BoingBoing, and at first found it hilarious. Then I watched it twice more and suddenly found it sad and disturbing. Watch for yourself, and we'll discuss, afterward:

Colleen seems perfectly calm and rational at first (despite the leopard-print jacket and over-processed hair  color). And while she remains calm, all rationally flies out the window as she talks about the Plieadeans stopping the UN from trying to bomb Iran from Los Angeles. How the reporter on the other end of the phone kept from laughing hysterically, is beyond me. Perhaps he or she was just as fascinated/appalled as I am.

Sadly, Colleen is not alone in her delusions. There are plenty of people who believe this kind of nonsense. David Icke is one of the more popular proponents of these wacko conspiracy theories. Here's one his videos:

Icke has written best-selling books and speaks all over the world, spouting his bizarre message to anyone who will listen. What's scary to me is that people like Icke and Thomas are now on the Internet, spreading their mental disease to those fragile people out there who are more than willing to believe them. 

A few years ago, the CBS procedural "C.S.I." had a storyline that dealt with this very subject, and I honestly thought they'd made the whole thing up:

Art imitates life? Maybe. But when the life being imitated is so scarily effed up, it must make one take pause. Believers say these reptilian invaders are all around us, and have assumed positions of political power world-wide. Really? I mean, really? (OK - maybe that last link is right on the money). Still, when "hundreds of thousands of people" think that space geckos are plotting to annihilate the human race in 2012, it may well be time to prepare hundreds of thousands of padded cells. Or call in the space mongooses.

Until such a time, stay vigilant and keep your small pets away from your local council members:

 

More, anon.
Prospero

No Rules

My friend and fellow blogger Sean at Just a Jeep Guy recently posted his comparison between the British miniseries "Dead Set" and AMC's "The Walking Dead." To be fair, I have not seen "Dead Set," so I can't comment on it objectively. I know its premise - Participants in the BBC version of the so-called 'reality' show "Big Brother" find themselves the only survivors of the Zombie Holocaust. It starred the BBC version's real host and was a massive hit across the pond. It was run on IFC in it's entirety on Halloween, but my provider doesn't carry IFC, so I have to wait for the DVD version.

That having been said, Sean then goes on to list to the things he finds 'wrong' in Frank Darabont's groundbreaking "The Walking Dead." Needless to say, Uncle P had to take his friend to task for being just a bit closed-minded when it comes to the "Rules" of zombie fiction.

Among his objections (in red) and my responses to them:

"Zombies don't eat animals so the horse and rat should still be alive and well." - In George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, zombies are shown eating insects, which means they are not limited to dining on human flesh. And in my 2004 screenplay Army of the Dead, a character says he saw "a bunch of 'em take down a horse in Central Park."

"Zombies have heightened senses and so are attracted to noise and human smells which cannot be covered up by covering yourself in zombie blood and body parts." - Zombie's senses have never been really explored, except in 1985's Return of the Living Dead, written by Dan O'Bannon (Alien) and original Romero collaborator, John Russo. The only sense they express in that movie is pain, and they say (Romero's zombies had never spoken before) that eating brains eases the pain of being dead. This is also the movie that introduced the idea that zombies are primarily interested in brains. Before that, they were only interested in living flesh.

"Zombies, like these in TWD, do not have the ability to think and therefore would not use rocks to break windows. Also, they shouldn't have the ability to climb ladders or fences." - Romero first introduced the idea of a thinking zombie in 1985's Day of the Dead, in which the zombie Bub expresses rudimentary memory such as shaving, using a phone and saluting. And in Romero's 2005 movie Land of the Dead, the zombies figure out that the lights across lake mean people are present, so there is no reason they shouldn't be able to use tools or climb ladders.

"In the second episode, we are at least 5-6 weeks into the apocalypse - most cars would have dead batteries by now and that scene of Glen flying down the road leaving Atlanta? Not a single broken down/abandoned car, dead body on one side of the road while the other is jam packed?" - Car batteries don't die after a few weeks or a month. My mother uses her car once a month and the battery is just fine. As for the highway being jammed in only one direction? Of course people would be trying to leave a city overrun by ravenous zombies, rather than trying to get into it. See Stephen King's "The Stand," in which cars jam the outbound lanes of the Lincoln Tunnel as people desperately try to escape the 'Captain Trips' virus. This makes total sense to me.

"Who has sex in the woods with zombies lurking about just weeks after her/his husband/best friends dies? Even if they where having an affair before the zombies came? I think the guild (sic) in addition to fear, would kill my sex drive." - Who doesn't get the thrill of dangerous sex in the outdoors? Fear and lust are two very closely related emotions, and if (as I have intimated and suspected) Shane and Laurie had been carrying on an affair before the whole zombie thing went down, they would certainly continue it, especially if they both thought Rick was dead. Of course, Laurie's guilt does prompt her to remove the wedding band she wears on a chain. And their fevered, animalistic rutting is certainly consistent with people who have something they want to hide from others.

The point is, when it comes to fiction -- and especially genre fiction -- there are no hard and fast rules. Writers create their worlds according their own visions and specifications.  Is anyone about to tell Anne Rice that vampires can't be religious or Stephanie Meyer that they don't sparkle ?(OK - bad example - vampires do NOT sparkle). 

In Uncle P's 'zombie-verse,' zombies don't actually have senses, but are directed by chemical responses emitted by the bio-engineered virus that controls them. In every version of a fictional story, the actions of the characters are dictated by the parameters of the author's own reality, and there simply are no rules.

Sean, I know you're reading - and that you have read the mini-version of this I posted in your comments - but please know that I'm not faulting your logic, but rather trying to expand your thinking on what genre fiction should be. In the end, all good fiction (regardless of genre) should comment on the unchanging Human Condition, and I'd say "The Walking Dead" is doing a bang-up job of it, whether you agree with it's particular set of 'rules' or not.

And speaking of genre rules, here's an example of some extremely silly ones that work because the plot adheres to the parameters of the story's own reality. I give you the latest trailer for Tron: Legacy:

More, anon.
Prospero

Guts

The true test of a successful TV series isn't the splashy 90 minute premiere, but the regular 60 minute episodes that follow, and AMC's adaptation of Robert Kirkwood's The Walking Dead followed it's splashy premier with an episode that was just as intense and well-done. (SPOILERS ahead).

Last seen trapped in a tank surrounded by 'walkers,' our hero Rick Grimes is sort-of rescued by Glenn (Steven Yeun) who leads him through an alley to the department store where a group of survivors have been hiding. Of course, the commotion made by Rick's escape simply draws the zombies to the store, where they begin to smash their way through the glass doors. Meanwhile, Rick's wife continues her affair with her husband's former partner Shane in the woods outside Atlanta, where they have been encamped.

Among the Atlanta group is Andrea (Laurie Holden of The Mist and Silent Hill); racist redneck Merle (Slither's Michael Rooker); TDog (IronE Singleton) and Jacqui (The Skeleton Key's Jeryl Prescott). As Rick and Glenn plot their escape from the increasingly dangerous store, it soon becomes clear that the only way to escape the walkers is to become a walker and Rick hatches a plan in which he and Glenn must disguise themselves (at least scent-wise) as walkers. The episode's title becomes eminently clear as they prepare for their (admittedly disgusting) venture among the zombie horde, though a rainstorm brings a disturbingly dangerous end to their plan. Needless to say, the plan works but not without complications, the least of which involves Merle handcuffed on the department store's roof.

Based on the ratings of episode 2, AMC has already ordered a second season for "The Walking Dead," which is no surprise to the millions of zombie fans watching this exceptionally well-plotted and extremely well-acted tale of survival in a world gone mad.

This is how good the series is: Uncle P's mother, who normally eschews Horror as a 'silly' genre, is actually enjoying the show and and actively looking forward to upcoming episodes. As for myself, I cannot recommend this series highly enough. It is the best thing to happen to the sub-genre since George A. Romero's original Dawn of the Dead and quite possibly the best new series on TV this season (though I am already sad that NBC has decided to cancel J.J. Abrams' connubial spy series,"Undercovers" starring the exceptionally sexy Boris Kodjoe).

I dare you to watch "The Walking Dead." And I promise you won't be disappointed by it's its exceptionally human story,

More, anon.

Prospero