The Walking Dead--a rant...

This is an image from AMC's "The Walking Dead" and they have all the copyrights, etc. etc.  I am just using this to have a relevant image for this post.

Anyhow, I forgot the magic word—or shortened word (Decaf, in case you are wondering) when I picked up my Starbucks at 1:45 yesterday afternoon, so I am wide awake and it’s the middle of the night and I’m too jittery to pick up a paintbrush (although I have SOLVED the “trampoline for the eyes” problem of my last post!)…

But my typing speed is SPECTACULAR.

And, typically for me after watching TV last night, I am thinking about zombies.

(Just a sideline; did you ever wonder about how many HUGE real-world problems might be solved if people actually spent their time solving real-world problems instead of fanwanking about zombies?  Probably a lot.  Clearly zombie fiction is the cause of current societal downfall.  Or maybe it’s vampire fiction.  If you ask me, there is NOTHING MORE TERRIFYING and telling about our current low standards for literacy and storytelling and expectations for boyfriends than the “Twilight” series’ success..)

But again, I digress.

SPOILER WARNING!  

If you haven’t watched the 11/13 episode of TWD, I am going to spill the beans.  So go elsewhere or suck it up.

I started out LOVING TWD. And what I LOVED about the show really has to do with WHO THE REAL MONSTERS ARE.

Hint:  They’re not always the undead.

In fact, they’re USUALLY NOT.

But lately, it’s been getting on my last nerve.  Here are the reasons:

Reason #1:

The pace of the writing is GLACIAL. 

Our Gang of Zombie Survivors has been looking for that idiotic child, Sophia, for what seems like YEARS now. Dale should have died OF OLD AGE in the space of time these people have been hanging out and sponging off of Veterinarian Hershel, using up his antibiotics, losing his horses, screwing his daughter, and SOMEHOW TOTALLY MISSING THE FACT  (until last night) THAT HE HAS A BARN FULL OF ZOMBIES.

Which kind of makes me hate the show more.  Just as I’m about to un-DVR it, SOMETHING KIND OF MIND-BLOWING happens like that and I’m sucked in for another few weeks of nothing happening except for extremely idiotic characters getting pregnant, arguments about the presence of God, etc.  And a few zombies for window dressing.

It’s almost as bad as “Ringer,” which I only started watching because I was a “Buffy” fan and now I’m realizing why Joss Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar never talk much about each other.  

They clearly have REALLY DIFFERENT IDEAS of what’s GOOD.

Sigh.  At least with TWD, the zombies LOOK like zombies.  In “Ringer,” they’re just very pretty people all ACTING like zombies.

Anyhow, back to TWD.  I could get all Doc Jensen-y here and ramble on for PAGES about the metaphorical significance of Sophia, “Sophia” being the Greek word for wisdom.  And the show is a big MESSAGE, possibly about our lifelong search for wisdom, blah blah blah, until death comes for us, probably in the form of a lot of rotting, staggering things who catch us and gnaw us to death because someone we THOUGHT WAS OUR ALLY used his last bullet to SHOOT US IN THE LEG so he could get away.

But I’ll leave that to Doc Jensen.

Which leads to…

Reason #2:

I HATE EVERYBODY ON THE SHOW WHO IS STILL ALIVE, with one exception.

Darryl.

It’s been bothering me ALL WEEK that the ONLY character that I even remotely want to survive TWD’s zombie apocalypse is a bigoted, crossbow-toting redneck.  Then I watched last night’s episode, and, in addition to being bigoted, here are some of Darryl’s OTHER qualities:

• Darryl EATS RAW SQUIRRELS. 
• AND HE MADE A NECKLACE OUT OF ZOMBIE EARS.
• HE PULLED A WHOLE ARROW THROUGH HIS BODY WITH NO ANESTHETIC.
• AND HE’S STARTING TO GET VISITED BY HIS PSYCHOTIC (and presumably dead) BROTHER MERLE, who cut off his own HAND last season to escape the zombies, kind of like Gaius Baltar’s visits from HeadSix on Battlestar Galactica.
• RAW.  SQUIRRELS.  Because it BEARS REPEATING.

All this makes Darryl EVEN MORE AWESOME TO ME.

Maybe I’ll keep watching it, just to check out Darryl and HeadMerle.

Because everyone else is an IDIOT.  And I don't CARE about them.

Shane is a self-serving, friend-shooting, best-friend’s-wife-screwing hothead whom I suspect is carrying a stash of steroids (which would explain some of his behavior).  The wife in question is both vapid and opinionated (although she is NOT, contrary to typical Hollywood casting, blonde), and she’s a package deal with the kid, who would be much more interesting if he got zombified. 

There IS a blonde who used to be interesting but is now mainly a compelling argument for gun control, since she is always yelling about her Second Amendment rights but could not pass a Hunter Safety course even if she slept with the instructor, and who, in fact, once she GOT her gun and learned how to point it, shot DARRYL instead of one of the undead. 

Glen, whom I used to like, got very uninteresting once he discovered sex (lost his virginity?) with the vet’s daughter, although he did just discover the secret barnload full of zombies…and then there are other characters that I resent too much even to list.

Although—GREAT LINES OF DIALOGUE between Glen and the vet’s daughter:

GLEN:  “What would you say if I told you we had 11 condoms left?”

DAUGHTER:  “I’d say that was 11 more minutes of my life I’d never get back.”

Unfortunately, examples of this type of dialogue are few and far between. 

And Rick, the main character, went from being a real person to an allegorical mouthpiece for hope (as well as… atheism???) in about TWO EPISODES FLAT.  Let’s get real.  We could kill him off and SOME OTHER CHARACTER could say those lines, and we probably wouldn’t notice the difference.  After all, Rick has already given his sheriff’s hat to Carl, along with whatever personality he had.

It’s interesting though.  It makes me wonder if that’s the point of the show—to bring out the viewers’ intolerances of others.  After all, I don’t TYPICALLY dislike people.  Real people, that is.  But this show is bringing out the monster in me – which is a horror theme at LEAST as old as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”

Or maybe it’s just too much caffeine.

Painting as an act of faith...oh, and zombies

There's a good part and a bad part to this, and they're connected, at least in my mind. My painting here, called "Dappled Night," is part of the good part.

But to get there, you have to start with the bad part. Here it is.

What I remember of my morning started at dusk.

I found myself rushing down a dark alley searching out a hiding place. At last, I located an unlocked door and dashed in, to find I was in a supermarket. Sure, it was a burnt-out, Third-World-looking supermarket with a lot of empty shelves, and there were a bunch of other, raggedly-dressed people in there with the same idea I had.

But compared to getting eaten by zombies in the streets, this was AWESOME! We could just hole up, grab the remaining twinkies and a pint and wait for this whole thing to blow over. How's THAT for a slice of fried gold?

Then I realized the walls and all the shelves were made out of CORRUGATED CARDBOARD, old bend-y cardboard that's been left out in the rain and almost the consistency of porridge.

I don't know what your zombie apocalypse nightmares are like, but mine SUCK.

They usually go like this:

I've FINALLY found a place to hide, but it's ALREADY occupied, usually by some scary little-girl zombie that looks like a cross between the Olsen Twins and Gollum.

So I bar the door. And I look around for something to take off the zombie's head. And, MIRACLE OF MIRACLES, there's a GIANT BATTLE AXE. With a really long handle. I grab it and feel the comforting heft of it in my hand. It's SO much better than I had expected.

Maybe there is a kind, loving God after all!

I feel hope and joy and regain my faith that life is full of promise!

It's EXCELLENT!

Of course, during the split-second that all of this takes, Mary-Kate/Ashley/Gollum/Smeagol easily shoves aside the giant bureau that I used to bar the door and pounds into the room. I notice, as I shift the battle axe from hand to hand, getting ready to swing, that she's also five feet taller and three hundred pounds heavier than she was when I last saw her.

Then I realize that my battle axe has turned into a Twizzler.

Yes, you read that right. A TWIZZLER. Or a Red Vine. Really, does it matter which? Can you get any LESS threatening than a Twizzler? You can't even poke someone's EYE out with it. Plus, although they are very tasty and chewy and red, Twizzlers are likely to be less appetizing for zombies than my intestines. As I'm about to find out.

So that's usually where I wake up.

This is NOT a happy start to the day. How can I trust ANYTHING? My battle axe turned into a FREAKING TWIZZLER on me!

But there was a point to this (besides the rather obvious conclusion that you should NOT eat an entire box of Twizzlers all by yourself late at night while watching "The Walking Dead"). And it has to do with the artistic process.

At some point in the past, I lost my faith in my ability to create artistic beauty. When I started a painting or a sculpture or a written piece, I would be fine for awhile, all caught up in the initial excitement of making it. Then, somewhere in the middle of the process, I would look at it and it seemed UGLY. POINTLESS. USELESS.

Like a Twizzler, when what you needed was a battle axe.

So I'd stop making whatever creative thing I was working on. And, in the nature of inanimate things (and something which I HATE about them), the piece did NOT finish itself. It stayed ugly, pointless, and useless, until I tossed it out or stuffed it under the crawl space (incidentally cluttering up the ONLY zombie-proof room in our house).

Sometime in the past year, I got my faith back. And I did it by painting. Just by painting through the OHMYGOD WHAT THE HELL IS THIS MISBEGOTTEN SORRY-ASS HIDEOUS IDEA, LET'S GO AWAY AND DRINK OURSELVES INTO OBLIVION AND FORGET IT stage. And amazingly, I came out on the other side, with images that even exceed my imagination.

It happens every single time.

It's not always easy, but there is an unasked-for grace that emerges through the artistic process. I know that, if I put in the time and what my brother calls "pencil mileage," I will come out the other side with a thing of beauty.

It's nice to be awake!