THE WALKING DEAD

I watched the first part of the first episode over on amctv.com.  It glitched up during the first sponsor break, and I wasn’t particularly disappointed with that.  It’s a really well-made show, with great performances and wonderful zombie effects, but here’s the deal:

I am sick to death with watching people learn to deal with the zombie apocalypse.  In fact, I’m sick to death with apocalypse scenarios of every stripe.  Is there anything new that can be said about the human condition, the collapse of society, etc., in these apocalyptic stories?  Even as well-made as the show was, it was treading material we’ve seen time and time again.  Plus, to be honest…everything Frank Darabont does seems like a Stephen King adaptation, even in those rare instances when it actually isn’t.

So, yeah…I know the Internet is really excited about this show and everything, but you can count me out, because I find the whole thing terribly boring, especially when the inventor of the modern zombie genre is desperately trying to do something new with it (Survival of the Dead).

At the end of the day, I’ll take George A. Romero’s near-genius misfires over a slick and competent same-old any time.

A Mighty Adventure Was Had (But Not Really)

I walked to the bank by a different route than usual, which is all the better to have adventures and see strange and unfamiliar sights (though there are unusual sights to be seen on my usual path, such as a house that is literally buried halfway in the ground for some reason).

Here’s the one unusual thing I saw: a scarecrow, no doubt built for Halloween, with a jack-o-lantern for a head.  It was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, making it a cowboy-themed scarecrow, and for some reason it also had on a yellow rain-slicker.  In its “hand” it was holding either a very, very small lariat (the total circumference of which was barely 18”) or a noose for lynching miniature Negroes*.  I was unable to determine the racial attitudes of this particular scarecrow during our short association.

——-

*“Negroes”, yeah, I know.  But when choosing between the two “n-words” most commonly associated with lynching parties, I went for the less incendiary of the two.  So sue me.

I Just Know...

…that in five years I’m going to regret liking Die Antwoord as much as I do now, the same way I regret liking Lady Sovereign, The Crystal Method, The Lo-Fidelity All-Stars, etc…I really have a problem with falling for these gimmicky hip-hop/funk weirdos.  But for now, I’m rockin’ it like a ninja.

Wrong Target Text

I recently got a new telephone number, which I assume was somebody’s old number, because I got this text today (spelling errors preserved):

How are things with thw new job?

I don’t have a new job.  I was working in a different position than usual today, and though that maybe somebody who had my number but I didn’t have theirs was referring to this.  I answered, “You are not currently stored in my phone. ?”

I thought this was clear, but then I got these texts:

Do you know if anything is open up where you are?  Losing my job because I said the wrong thing today and then i overheard his conversation with HR and it

comes down to resignation or fire

I had an inkling who this might be, but I couldn’t be sure, so I responded with, “Once again, unsure of who this is.”

This then came:

Sorry my bad [REDACTED]

My reply: “You may have the wrong number; I do not know a [REDACTED].  However this is a new # for me.”

No response.  This is not the first time I have received texts meant for somebody else.  Once, a random dude sent me several anguished texts while under the misapprehension that I was some person who had terribly broken his heart or something.  When I tried to tell him I wasn’t the name he kept mentioning, he assumed I was still that person being cruel to him.  That guy worried me.

Anyway, I sort of wanted to add, at the end of my final text to [REDACTED], “Sorry about your job,” because it sucks to reach out for somebody and have it be the wrong person, but in the end, as ever, I opted to stay out of it.  This [REDACTED] could be a psycho, after all.

And that’s something that happened to me today.

Let's Talk Batman

The third of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, The Dark Knight Rises (terrible title) is in pre-production, and one of the few clues we’ve been given to its contents are that The Riddler will not be the villain, which is fine: Riddler’s just a third-tier Joker wannabe.

Who does that leave us for what will surely be the final Batman film of the Christopher Nolan era?

Well:

The return of Ra’s al Ghul?  Ra’s’s whole shtick is that he returns from the dead.  Would be interesting to see a revived Ra’s pulling the strings again.

Catwoman?  A possibility.  It would be nice to see Selina Kyle’s actual backstory get some love in a major Batman movie, but I doubt Nolan would want to go down that well-travelled Bat-romance path again.

Mad Hatter?  Tone down the overt Carroll references and you have a great villain.  Mind control is a great gimmick that would play into a lot of Nolan’s pet themes.  Think about it.

Clayface?  Again, a man who can look like anybody?  Nolan would have a field day with this concept, though he would of course play down the cartoony nature of Clayface’s “true” form.

Nolan proved his willingness to go obscure for the first movie (only the most die-hard Batfans even know who Ra’s al Ghul is).  Now that the big guy (Joker) is out of the way, he’s free to dig deep into the rogues’ gallery to find somebody who will really mess with Batman’s head.  I would love to see a quick montage: Batman cleaning the streets of the new costumed menace: Scarface, Poison Ivy, a Harley Quinn appearance for the fans…just some quick snippets of Batman filling the cells of Arkham Asylum.

But who for the main baddie?  My suggestion: reach deep back into Batman’s history to pluck out Professor Hugo Strange.  Read his Wikipedia page.  This guy’s insane, a psychological mastermind, and possesses exactly the skills necessary to wreck Batman’s mind.  I can see him working excellently in a Nolan movie, perhaps moving around some other villains (Mad Hatter goes here) to destroy our hero’s sanity.

There’s my two cents, anyway.

We’ll see who we get in a couple years.