Not your normal Sunday

Normally, I'd be calling this Dead Day, because it's the Season 8 finale of "The Walking Dead" and the Season 4 premiere of "Fear the Walking Dead."

But there is a little more going on today because it is officially the start of...

COMEY WEEK. [trumpets]

It started unofficially at the end of last week as excerpts from his book started to leak [snicker] to the press and his publishers lifted the media embargo. We got a few video snippets and learned pretty quickly that Comey is pulling no punches.

As much as I love the Dead Universe, there is no way I won't watch the Comey interview tonight. I'll miss the first ten minutes because "The Walking Dead" finale will go past 10 PM, but I'll catch the rest of it later.

It's been a weird fucking week and one of the weirdest things is that despite the serious things happening in the Middle East, the "president" seems to be more preoccupied with James Comey and his upcoming book. He lashed out on Twitter (of course) this morning and it's obvious that Comey has really gotten under his thin orange skin. If it weren't so disturbing and pathetic, it would be funny. (Okay, it's a little bit funny.)

I understand that people are conflicted about Comey. His legacy is a complicated one. I've seen people on CNN both defend him and denigrate him for what he is doing. (The Yamstooges at Fox are calling him a "dirty cop" and shit like that. No surprise there.) He is getting criticism for being too snarky and petty about the "president." I've made it clear that I like Comey and find him admirable, so I say, "You GO with your bad self!" Snark away!

Obviously, I don't know the man personally, but I've read enough about him and listened to enough of his lectures that my gut feeling is that he is a person of integrity. I can only imagine his visceral disgust as he encountered the Yam for the first time, but I can imagine it pretty well because I felt it, too. I've learned to spot bullshitters and I'm sure that Comey is better at spotting them than I am. I don't doubt that he knew from the moment he met him that this is a guy who goes against everything that Comey holds dear, whether it is justice, honesty, devotion to family, or the general concept of how no one should be or IS above the law.

I can't help but laugh as I think about how Comey's media blitz this week is going to drive the "president" absolutely nuts. You think the tweetstorm of the past few days was bad? Wait for this week. It's gonna be a wild ride.

We have tickets to see Comey in Chicago next Friday and I can hardly wait. The event is sold out and I could probably sell each ticket for a grand. I wouldn't dream of it! I will take notes and report back soon.

Buckle up!

It’s a long way from Cicero to Omaha

Although my TV obsession favorite continues to be The Walking Dead, I have come to love another AMC show, Better Call Saul.

Although most of you probably know this already, a brief synopsis of the show is that it chronicles the journey of Breaking Bad’s sleazy lawyer, Saul Goodman. We know at the conclusion of Breaking Bad that Saul ends up with a new identity far from Albuquerque. Better Call Saul addresses Jimmy McGill’s (Saul’s real name) early days as a scam artist in Cicero, Illinois to his efforts to get his law practice going in Albuquerque. (We also get to see his post-BB identity as Gene the Cinnabon manager in Omaha.)

Why has this show grabbed me? Well, I always enjoyed Saul on BB; he had a sort of insouciant charm. Learning more about his character and background has made me come to genuinely like him. This is a man who clawed his way into some sort of respectability but continues to struggle with his flaws. He gets off on scamming people and talking his way out of situations. This sometimes serves him well in his new career as a lawyer, but it also causes some major and dangerous problems for him. He has a genuine compassion for those who are wronged (like nursing home residents) and a sense of justice that urges him to do the right thing...even if the methods he uses to get to that point aren’t always on the up-and-up. (Just ask the Kettlemans.)

He also has great loyalty to his friend and semi-girlfriend Kim, but especially to his older brother, Chuck. This is the most compelling part of the show for me. I won’t go into details of their relationship because that would mean some major spoilers. But this is a complex relationship in which Jimmy looks up to his big brother and desperately wants his approval. I’ve come to believe after the dozen or so episodes so far that Jimmy’s relationship with Chuck is the major factor in Jimmy’s transformation from justice-minded Jimmy to sleazebag-with-a-good-heart Saul. The core of Jimmy is still there, but betrayal and disappointment lead him to utilize some decidedly shady tactics, perhaps as a way to flip Chuck the finger. This is still playing out, so we’ll see where it ends up.

Some have criticized the show for its slow pace. I completely disagree. The writers are crafting a masterful tale of the transformation of a man: scam artist to mailroom clerk to self-made lawyer (University of American Samoa—go Land Crabs!) to legal representative of drug dealers. I find this utterly fascinating and love every moment of Jimmy’s path.

This has become one of a scarce handful of shows that I want to watch multiple times in order to pick up on things I missed the first time and subtle nuances that might give me clues about what is to come. (Although you don’t need to have watched Breaking Bad to enjoy this show, there are also some great callbacks to that show.) I’ve come to love the show and characters enough to feel fully invested in them and have decided to start a Facebook thread about the show similar to my Dead Thread, in which some of us discuss the latest episode. Is it weird to get this involved in TV shows? Maybe. But I’m a pop culture junkie, and I love feeling that passion and connecting with others who share it.

It also has given us the term “squat-cobbler,” which will live on in infamy and will serve as a coolness test when meeting future friends. You get it? Okay, I automatically like you!

Who wants some pie?!

Beth’s Books: The Walking Dead Psychology

(Subtitled Psych of the Living Dead, edited by Travis Langley)

It’s been a while since I wrote about The Walking Dead, and with the midseason finale of Season 6 coming up, this seems like a good time!

Besides, I absolutely loved this book. It takes a serious look at the psychological aspects of the show, both why viewers watch and the toll the Zombie Apocalypse (or any other type of apocalypse) takes on survivors and affects their behaviors. Psychology has always been a casual hobby of mine, and of course, I am truly obsessed with the show, so this was right up my alley. The book is a collaborative effort of several Psychology professors and counselors, and they all offer interesting insights on varying aspects of the show.

So why do we watch? One of the authors posits that it is because we have a longing for a sense of community, deeper relationships, and connections. There are no cell phones or computers in the ZA. No television, no Internet, and none of the constant bombardment of stimuli that we are subjected to on a daily basis. The survivors have to rely on each other for everything and deep relationships are formed. When you place your life into the hands of others on a daily basis, forging such strong bonds is a major contribution to your survival.

There is also a strong sense of nostalgia for things lost. The survivors feel it as they make their way through the wasted land filled only with walkers; something as simple as the ice cubes in Andrea’s glass of lemonade at Woodbury are seen as a long-lost luxury. After Rick and Carl flee the prison and find refuge in an empty home, Carl looks at the video games in a kid’s room and the big screen TV with longing...then rips the cord off of the useless TV to use to secure the front door. The viewers feel it, too. Seeing abandoned homes and signs of the people who lived there, seeing rusted cars grown over with kudzu, seeing a world that has ended for the vast majority of human beings...how can you not feel a sense of longing for what has been lost? The premiere episode of the show is called “Days Gone Bye” for a good reason.

Another author believes that part of the show’s appeal to so many of us is that it causes us to reflect on existential questions such as the meaning of our lives and to what purpose we would continue in such a scenario. It may cause us to confront our fears and think about how we would react in the ZA. Would we retain our humanity? Would we grow hungry with power like the Governor, or would we do whatever it takes to protect our family, like Rick is trying (and not always succeeding) to do? The author draws an analogy between survival in the ZA and survival in the death camps of the Holocaust. It’s not a bad analogy because surviving both would take courage and the ability to confront the worst that humanity has to offer. How can anyone deal with such inhumanity (in the ZA, both from the walkers and from certain other survivors) and come through unscathed? It’s natural to question our own abilities to deal with such extreme circumstances.

As for the survivors’ response, they are all suffering in varying degrees from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They have all seen and done some incredibly horrible and brutal things and are under constant stress and constant fear. All of this can result in unpredictable behavior and bad decision-making, both of which can cost you your life or the lives of those who are looking to you for protection, resulting in further stress and survivor’s guilt. Many of the survivors have experienced psychotic breaks, such as Morgan after losing his son Duane, or Rick after Lori died. Michonne spent months by herself, talking to her dead boyfriend as if he were there. One of the big questions in the series has been, “Do you get to come back?” In other words, after all you’ve seen and done, do you get to survive with your humanity intact? It’s a question that is still being answered for many of our survivors.

The most interesting chapter to me was the one that considered Daryl Dixon’s transformation from angry redneck to reliable soldier, and even to transformative hero. The author looks at Daryl in the context of Joseph Campbell’s ‘hero arc,’ in which the character embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Daryl is compared to the classical hero Ulysses, who experiences hardships and tests in his travels and learns much about himself in the process. Daryl was an abused child, growing up in sad circumstances; he looks for Sophia with such dedication because he thinks about how he wished he could have been saved when he was a child. It has taken the ZA to make Daryl realize his potential as a human being with meaning to his life, and a valuable, trusted member of the group. As such, Daryl is a symbol of much-needed hope in the apocalyptic world. If Daryl can overcome what he did and grow into a position of trust and leadership, then there is hope for all of us. Daryl sets the bar high and challenges us to become our own “better angels.”

The book also does a few case studies of some of the characters to see if they fit the profile of a psychopath. Shane, the Governor, the Claimers, Negan, and others are examined using professional criteria.

The book concludes with the thought that zombies help us confront one of our biggest fears: our own mortality. We see that the zombies are simply bags of meat, without purpose or meaning other than finding their next meal (and hopefully it’s not us). We all have a desire to find meaning in our lives, to be more than another bag of meat. The book feels that The Walking Dead succeeds in showing the human struggle to find meaning in life, even knowing that our mortality is inevitable, and that our struggle matters.

So why do I love the show so much? Because it makes me think about all these things. Yes, you can say that it is “just a TV show,” but I’ve always felt that good TV can speak to us on a level that makes us address certain things in ourselves and also connects us with others who feel the same way. The best shows make you wonder how you would react in certain situations, whether it’s Walter White confronting a cancer diagnosis or Don Draper dealing with his past and the rapidly changing world around him. The Walking Dead makes us wonder what we would do in order to survive...or would we even want to? And why?

Highly recommended for anyone who is a fan of the show, comics, or novels.

The Return of the Dead

Walker heads! [insert walker noises here]

Most people know that I am unabashedly obsessed with the TV show “The Walking Dead.” As I’ve remarked before, it’s like they made a show just for me. I knew when I saw the trailer for this brand new show that it was something I wanted to try, and I was hooked from the very first episode. “Little girl? I’m a policeman.”

Zombie Zone!

I’ve also become a fan of the companion series, “Fear the Walking Dead,” but the original is still the big dog for me. “Fear” got me through the summer (along with all kinds of other fun stuff), but I was beyond excited for the Season 6 premiere of TOS. Which was last night!

These premieres and finales are such big deals to me that I try to do fun stuff. I had a couple of zombie signs to put up and I hung the strand of “walker lights” that Shane and Matt got me for my birthday. I told Ken, “Those are staying up year-round!” (I have them lit even as I type! They are so cool!) For dinner, I made a Head Loaf, a meatloaf that looked like a zombie head (garlic cloves for eyes and teeth). For dessert, I made my Slimeballs brain mold (recipe to follow), and while the premiere was airing, we drank Zombie Dust beer (also a birthday present, that one from my sister).

It was an enjoyable evening and I loved the season opener. I won’t go into any spoilers here, so no worries. It was an hour and a half long, so it was essentially a movie! It went back and forth in time a bit and they handled it really well. A few things got explained although there is plenty to deal with going forward. I’ve seen this episode referred to as ‘ambitious,’ and I think that’s a good word for it. Special effects guru and executive producer Greg Nicotero directed it, and the walkers were particularly gnarly. Keep in mind that we’re well into the zombie apocalypse on the show, so the walkers continue to decompose and fall apart. It makes for some gruesome (and totally fun!) moments.

Am I happy? Yes, I am happy. It’s back and they did a great job with it, setting up the season as we explore life—and death?—in the Alexandria Free Zone. I’m ready!

Slimeballs (double batch)

2 packages of lime Jell-O (I use sugar free)

2 cups boiling water

1 cup vodka

1 cup Midori melon liqueur

Make the Jell-O like you usually do. (I don’t need to explain that, do I?) I let it cool in the fridge for a little bit before I add the booze. If you’re just putting it in a pan, you can go ahead and do that. If you’re using a mold (you don’t have to use a mold, but a brain mold is really a lot of fun!), you’ll want to spray the mold with cooking spray and cool the slimeballs in the fridge for a bit before you put it into the mold. This results in an intact brain. An intact brain is very, very important in the zombie apocalypse.

I like to decorate it with red and black gel frosting. Serve with whipped cream and be careful! Slimeballs pack a punch!

Dead and Loving It

Sunday was a pretty happy day for me because it was a Dead day!

I think my obsession with love of “The Walking Dead” has been well-established here and on social media. I get into it like no other show I’ve watched before, and I’ve gotten into quite a few shows over the years.

The Season 5 marathon started early in the morning and I turned it on after I’d gotten up. We had it on all day in the background. (I didn’t sit and watch because I knew the DVD would be here today and we’ll watch the whole thing in depth over the next few weeks.) At 8 PM, it was a new “Talking Dead” episode with a Season 6 preview, and I have really missed Chris Hardwick and that show, too!

Then at 9 PM, it was the 90-minute preview of the new companion series, “Fear the Walking Dead.” If you’ve been under a rock or care nothing about this kind of show, this series takes place before the events we saw in the premiere of “The Walking Dead.” It also takes place in a very different environment: Los Angeles. Instead of the rural survival skills we see in the original series, we will get to see some urban survival skills!

I was impressed by the tone of this first episode. It had a slower pace than we’re used to on the original, but that stands to reason. These people are just going about their lives and have no idea what is happening. They just know that something is starting to seem rather odd in their city.

The standout to me was the character of Nick Clark, played by British actor Frank Dillane. I liked him immediately, and he portrays this junkie kid perfectly. He is a strange mixture of vulnerability, affability, and total fuck-up. He’s needy and emotionally damaged, but he somehow makes you root for him despite all that. He’s the only one in the family (at least initially) who witnesses a zombie chowing down firsthand (the zombie is his girlfriend, no less), but no one believes him because he’s a junkie. He doesn’t even believe himself and thinks that there was something in his drugs that gave him a horrible hallucination.

Although I’m not as emotionally invested in these characters as I am in those of the original series (yet), I thought that this was a strong start, and these are strong characters who are going to make this a great show. They got the tone exactly right. This would be an unbelievable situation and not everyone is going to be equipped to process it and adapt to this new world.

It seems as though there were quite a few others who were as excited about this show as I was. “Fear the Walking Dead” was the highest-rated series premiere on cable in history.

Today I choose optimism

I’ve got a lot of things percolating in my brain right now when it comes to politics (plus a few other things). There are things that are really bothering me in the political world and I briefly considered writing about them, but as we head into the weekend, I just feel the need to be more positive and less stabby. Besides, we’ve got all kinds of time between now and the election to write about that stuff, don’t we? Bwahaha!

I’m seeing a lot of negativity and anger from both sides right now and it is really harshing my mellow. So I shall set that aside. We have a baseball game tomorrow evening and it promises to be a beautiful day and evening. There will be fireworks! Potentially some rain on Sunday, but we might be able to grill some brats in there somewhere. Sunday is Dead Day at Casa Nutwood. There is a Walking Dead Season 5 Dead-A-Thon on AMC, followed by a new Talking Dead, followed by the premiere of the new companion series, “Fear the Walking Dead.” I’m psyched! I’m not doing any special foodstuffs like my Slimeball Brain, but I’ll have fun despite that. You know I will!

As always, music brings me much joy, and I listened to the CD that this song is on (2004’s “Astronaut”) while I worked out today. It makes me feel hopeful, optimistic, and generally happy.

Reach up for the sunrise

Put your hands into the big sky

You can touch the sunrise

Feel the new day enter your life

It’s the end, the end of the summer days

Well, hello, you little maniacs!

Did you miss me?!

I’m alive and kicking, but decided to take the summer off. No apologies this time for not updating sooner, because I made the decision to take a break and I don’t feel even a little bit bad about it! (Okay, maybe 5% bad. But that is within the margin of error.)

It’s been a busy and fun summer, and I just decided to go with that and not feel obligated to write about everything. Plenty of updates on Facebook and Twitter (you can find me @Luvrte66), but I think all of us who are still writing blogs know that the readers just aren’t there like they used to be. I’m okay with that, although I did get quite a thrill when my hits went through the roof when Duran Duran posted a link to my review of my friend Andy’s book Beautiful Colors on their Facebook page! I do still enjoy writing, so I’ll ease back into it as we head into the winter and things settle down.

Man, we’ve had some fun. We went down to Indianapolis with Shane and Matt to see Presidents of the United States of America and then Smash Mouth; we went to a couple of RiffTrax movies; we went to several local events like Art Beat and seeing my friend Jim’s band High Gravity play; got to see a couple of Silver Hawks games; we got to party with some of my former coworkers when our friend Aubrey got married. We had our annual vegecation in New Smyrna Beach in July, and on the drive back, stopped in Atlanta to do a Walking Dead filming location tour, which was so awesome. Then we spent a couple of days in Nashville, where we visited the Johnny Cash Museum (it was wonderful), went to Printer’s Alley, and went honky-tonkin’ on Honky Tonk Row. It was an unusual weekend when we didn’t have something going on! As much fun as we had with all of these things, we appreciated those downtime weekends so we could recharge our batteries.

Our latest projects are getting ready to have our friend Mark come out from Omaha to spend a long weekend with us. We’ll be taking an overnight trip up to Detroit so that he can see his family, and we’ll be meeting up with some friends while there. I’ve also been busy planning a house party at Shane and Matt’s for later in September, where Bob Walkenhorst of the Rainmakers will play an acoustic show for a small group of us. I’ve loved Bob and the Rainmakers for going on three decades, so it is going to be wonderful to meet him and hear him play in such an intimate setting!

I’ve also been working on setting up a big vacation in October in Vegas, baby! A bunch of family and friends are converging on Sin City for a long weekend of partying friendship and fun. We’ve got people coming from the Detroit area, Texas, and California, and will be meeting up with several friends who live in Vegas. The long weekend will culminate with a meet-up for all of us at the Hofbräuhaus, an exact replica of the Munich Hofbräuhaus. We have some other fun things planned, and Ken and I will meet with Shane and Matt a few days before in Phoenix. Ken has a business thing he needs to go to, but we will definitely be hitting Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West while we’re there.

We’ve also had some very positive things happen on a personal level, and I’ll just say that I am very happy for Ken. Reconnections are great...never give up! There were positive things on a professional level for him, too, with a change of duties and director status at the company where he works. I’m very happy for him about that, too!

I always feel a little blue this time of year, because I love summer. It is definitely my favorite season. I love the warmth, I love sunbathing on the deck while reading and listening to music, and I especially love wearing as few clothes as possible. I don’t look forward to wearing all those clothes in the winter! I’m a big fan of not wearing pants. It’s not officially the end of summer yet, but doesn’t the end of August always feel like the end? It does for me. It seemed official this past weekend when I had my birthday, then celebrated with 80,000 of my closest friends on Saturday as the Notre Dame football season kicked off with a win against Rice. Go Irish!

As much as I hate to see the summer wind down, we have ND football, basketball, and hockey games to look forward to this fall and winter. In fact, we just got hockey season tickets! There are many fun things to look forward to, including a visit from our nieces and their family from San Diego over the holidays and some fun shows at the Morris for the Broadway Theater League.

But it still makes me sad when I fill the hummingbird feeders for the last time of the season, using extra-sweet nectar as they prepare to make their long flight south. I did that yesterday.

Farewell, summer. I’ll miss you. I’ll see you next year, though!

Please enjoy this song from Green Day. This is the aural equivalent of my feelings about the bittersweet end of summer.

Beth’s Books: We’re All Infected

Every week or so, I browse our most excellent local library’s website for new ebooks to borrow. I really am trying to do better about borrowing books rather than buying them, and although success in that regard has been limited, I am trying, I swear! I got a pleasant surprise when I saw this book, We’re All Infected: Essays on AMC's The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human, edited by Dawn Keetley.

You all know how much I love the show, so this was right up my alley! I put a hold on it and got the notification a couple of days later that it was available. (Seriously...what a great feature of most libraries now!) 

Some might see the show and the zombie genre as mere pop culture fluff, but I’ve always felt that there was more to it than that. This collection of essays takes a scholarly look at zombies and the show in particular, looking at various sociological, psychological, and anthropological aspects. These aspects include the impact of violence and death, America’s cowboy mentality (Rick is basically a Western hero, isn’t he?), law enforcement, mourning or lack thereof, reliance on fossil fuels, the importance of language and communication (zombies can’t communicate beyond inarticulate growls), and a biomedical discussion of zombie function and breakdown.

There is a bit of history of zombies in pop culture, and that is fascinating in its own right. When zombies were first introduced to the U.S., it was as the Haitian voodoo zombies, and their portrayal in ‘30s and ‘40s-era movies was as a shambling slave under someone else’s control. Movies like “White Zombie” and “I Walked With A Zombie” reflected a fear of becoming a zombie and the loss of autonomy.

George Romero changed things in 1968 with “Night of the Living Dead,” with the zombies becoming something to fear, not just to fear becoming. This was seen as a metaphor for an increasingly violent world, and the zombie outbreak was said to be the result of some sort of massive radiation event, reflecting the fear of the Cold War. The zombies were still slow and shuffling, but overwhelming in their numbers.

This changed again in 2002 with “28 Days Later,” a movie in which the outbreak is a result of some type of viral infection. The outbreak moves quickly, and so do these zombies. This possibly reflects a fear of pandemics and terrorists, or a world moving rapidly out of control.

One of the most interesting essays to me was the one that focused on the question of time and the loss of it. The author of this essay, Gwyneth Peaty, showed how the show focuses on the lack of time. There is never enough time to mourn the dead, to process what is happening, to take a breath and focus on something other than mere survival. The one time everyone seems to relax a bit around the campfire while eating fish that Andrea and her sister Amy caught that afternoon, they all have a few laughs as Dale explains why he continues to wind his watch every day. This moment of relaxation and light-hearted camaraderie is taken away from the survivors—and from us—as the camp is attacked by zombies, and several people are brutally killed, including Amy. Andrea keeps vigil over her sister’s corpse, waiting for it to reanimate, and tells her she thought there would always be more time. Even at the end of Season 4, Hershel’s watch is still making an appearance and playing a big part. Time is important.

The zombies themselves are a constant reminder to the survivors that time is short and that humanity is lost. We mark our own mortality by the passage of time, with the inevitable outcome of death. We (hopefully) make the best of the time we have been granted. The reanimation of dead human beings into walking, cannibalistic zombies takes that outcome away from us. The zombies “live” in suspended time and take away our future. Without the prospect of a future, there is little hope to be found.

It’s a lot of fun to speculate and discuss what zombies say about our current state of mind as a society, but Romero himself is quick to point out that sometimes a zombie is just a zombie (paraphrased). He has said, “The zombies have always just been zombies...my stories are about humans and how they react, or fail to react...I’m pointing the finger at us, not at the zombies.”

I think this is an important thing to note in the context of “The Walking Dead.” I often see people freaking out online because the writers are focusing more on the people than on the zombies. Some people complain that there aren’t enough zombie kills, too much dialogue, and too much focus on the human survivors. It seems to me that they are missing the entire point of the show (and the graphic novels), as well as Romero’s point about his own groundbreaking movies.

In the TV show, it’s not really the walkers who are the walking dead...it is the human survivors. The show is ultimately about the breakdown of society and how those who remain deal with it: can they manage to form a new society? How? If so, what form will it take? Will they be able to keep their own sense of humanity? When the world goes to shit and almost everybody gets bit (from a scene with Daryl and Andrea), what will our individual and group reaction be? How will we deal with not just the zombies, but with the sometimes more dangerous human survivors?

These are fascinating questions to me, and it’s why I love the show so much. This book got a little bogged down in psychobabble in a few places (it’s okay to use regular words, folks...not everything needs to be couched in psychological terms), but I found it very thought-provoking, and it gave me some insights into the show that I had not thought of before. Because of these essays, I will watch it with a newly discerning eye when it returns in the fall.

Is it October yet?!

Stuff and Thangs

My, how time flies when you’re doin’ stuff and thangs like Rick Grimes! Here almost two weeks have gone by, and I haven’t written one word here.

Nothing major has been happening. I’ve been healing up from my abdominal hematoma and going through some blood work because my doctor wanted to check for any clotting disorders. I’m not overly worried about that; clotting disorders don’t run in my family, and I’m not a bleeder. It hasn’t been too much of a hassle, although I wasn’t real pleased with my service at my former place of employment. It was unpleasant enough (they had to stick me three times, and I have great veins) that I sent an email to the VP who runs lab operations, my former head honcho boss. I wasn’t mean about it, but it really was a quality issue, and I believe she’ll address the problem. I’ve gone back to working out, and I should be able to start lifting weights again...I’ll try that tomorrow.

As you can imagine, I was all wigged out and excited about the season finale of “The Walking Dead.” Some people seemed to be disappointed by it, but I loved it. Badass Rick is back, and I think he’s going to be more badass than he ever was. October seems like it’s a long way away!

I went to our local library with Cousin Shane and my sister Diana to do some research on a family tragedy from almost fifty years ago. One of our cousins was brutally murdered by a local cop, and although Diana remembers it well, Shane and I were quite young when it happened and we only know what little we’ve read in some saved newspaper clippings or have been told by family members. It was very sobering to page through the microfilm and see the story unfold as it happened. It was the frontpage headline the day after it happened, and we all got pretty quiet as we read through these stories. We also are thinking about contacting the county where the trial happened and seeing if we can get the trial records. We figure those are public record, so I wouldn’t think it would be a problem. I wonder if you can get that stuff digitally now? No idea, but we do want to learn more about it.

Ken was on a business trip for the latter half of the week, and I had lunch with Shane and Matt one day, and dinner with my friend Dan from college one evening. Sheeba has kept me good company at home, and I’m never lonely with books and movies.

Ahhh, books...mostly I’ve been lost in Bookland. I got through the third book in the Strain trilogy, although it was a struggle. I liked the first two books quite a bit, but was disappointed in the third one. But since it’s a trilogy, you kind of have to finish it, right? Just like you have to watch the third Godfather movie although it is nothing compared to the first two. Then I picked From Here to Eternity back up. It’s part of the Modern Library Top 100 list, and I got a little over halfway through it last year before I put it down for more fun, summer-type reads. It’s really a slog, but it’s good enough that I DO want to finish it. Interesting characters in interesting situations, if sometimes the writing gets excessively wordy. It’s almost 900 pages, so progress is slow. This will sound terrible, but I’m wishing that Pearl Harbor would hurry up and happen, because I want to see how these characters react to it. I also need to see the entire movie (I’ve only seen parts of it), because I see that Montgomery Clift plays one of the best characters, Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt, AKA Prew. I want to get through it soon, because I have lots of good books to read, including the next one on the ML List, Death Comes for the Archbishop.

Also speaking of books, I ordered a new Kindle, a Paperwhite. My Kindle Keyboard hasn’t crapped out, and I’m still using it and it’s been a good and faithful companion, but the battery is starting to drain much more quickly. Amazon was offering a deal where you could pay for it over about four months with no interest, so that was pretty much impossible to pass up, especially since I knew I was going to have to order one soon, anyway. I’ve had my eye on the Paperwhite for a while, so I went ahead and ordered it. It seems easy to navigate, and I love the slightly backlit screen. It’s still very legible in the sun, so I’m quite pleased with it. I’m looking forward to reading my first book on it!

Let’s see...we’ve got a couple of Broadway shows coming up at the Morris, tickets to see Presidents of the United States of America with Shane and Matt in Indy in June, and our annual Florida vegecation in July. We’ll fit some minor league baseball games in there, and just plan on enjoying the summer. One of the best things about it will be the warmth. Man, it’s been a long winter for so many of us. We’re usually greening up nicely by now, but all the snow just recently melted. I think it’s safe to say that we’re all more than ready for warm weather and some greenery!

I know this wasn’t a super exciting entry. Just wanted to catch up, and I’ll try to bring some fireworks next time. You know I’ve still got fireworks…! I just need to work up some good outrage about something. It’s only a matter of time.

Social identity

I continue to try to get caught up on the lectures for my online courses, and I continue to struggle! I’ll get there. That week in New Orleans really set me back, but ask me if I care! The good news is that my sleep schedule is getting back on track, I’m keeping up with my workouts (and I’m happy to have added weights back into the mix, after taking some time off because of a strained neck muscle), and I inexplicably managed to drop a few pounds over the past couple of weeks. I have no idea why, but I’ll take it!

Today I read the required articles for the Walking Dead course that I’m taking. This isn’t a course just about the show; it’s more like looking at a global disaster in terms of social, governmental, health, and ecological changes. They use the show as a backdrop and as examples, but it’s actually some pretty fascinating stuff. It’s also one reason I love the show so much, because it makes me think about how drastic the changes would be, in all aspects.

Anyway, this week's topic is about social identity, which is defined as a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s). I found a couple of quotes from the articles really interesting:

“It is, however, important to recognize that sometimes we perceive ourselves primarily in terms of our relevant group memberships rather than as differentiated, unique individuals.”

“Self-stereotyping is a cognitive shift from perceiving oneself as unique and differentiated to perceiving oneself in terms of the attributes that characterize the group.”

This is really making me think. Ow! Haha! But seriously, this dovetails nicely with my recent entry about my paradigm shift. I wrote that when we categorize others, it’s way too easy to demonize them. It leads inevitably to an Us vs Them mentality. Is it possible to do that with ourselves? I think it is!

In the course of my life, I’ve found myself having a hard time being a part of any sort of insular group, or identifying with one particular group very strongly. I’ve never been a “joiner.” There have been times that I tried, but I always end up resenting the commitment. This is not the same as resenting the people involved with the group; I’ve made some long-term friends through some of these associations, and I continue to value those friendships.

I think it always bothered me to be lumped into a group, or to feel obligated to a group. I’m not deluded enough to think that I’m some sort of a rare flower; I have too many like-minded friends to think that I’m something special. But I’ve always had a certain sense of individuality, and a tendency to not want to “conform,” whatever that means. There have been many times when I haven’t quite fit in with others. I’ve always been driven to be at least a little bit beyond the norm. I wouldn’t call myself a rebel, Dottie, because I’ve led a very traditional life of Birth, School, Work, Death (not the last one for me...not yet!), but I think it’s fair to say that I’ve always been a little different. I’m cool with that. In fact, I wouldn’t want it any other way!

I wonder how that would play in a disaster, though? Would I still be that way when the number of people has dwindled so much that you have to depend on others for survival? Going back to the show, although Michonne spent a lot of time on her own, she has willingly joined the group. Several characters, including Daryl, have mentioned that it’s impossible to survive alone. Would I be able to set my loner attitude aside and become a fully integrated member of a group? I’d like to think so.

That was good food for thought today. Then my brain started to hurt, so I stopped. Heh.

Outbreak!

No, not for real, and not the crappy movie, either. (I almost threw things at the TV when a lab tech stuck his hand inside a centrifuge in a Biosafety Level 4 lab. NO! That would never happen!) Incidentally, the picture is from a BSL4 lab. I never worked in BSL4. The highest I got was BSL3, which was our TB and fungus room. We also did some anthrax testing in there, when that scare happened right after 9/11. I would love to get a chance to go inside a BSL4 lab, though! There are only a few in the world.

This has to do with my latest online class, Epidemics. In addition to the course video, forums, and quizzes, they are doing a real time epidemic simulator using mobile devices. I don’t know exactly how they designed it, but apparently, they have designated a certain number of cases and places where they are occurring. When we scan our location, we find out if we’ve spotted the local cases, and they are considered to be isolated. I’ve found four in my area. Out of two million cases, some 3,000 have been found and isolated, so that should give anyone pause. People are often contagious but not symptomatic, so that guy sitting next to you on the subway could be shedding virus or bacteria ALL OVER YOU. Think about that on your morning commute tomorrow!

The truth is that if an agent is highly transmissible, it would spread like wildfire. (There is a reason Michael Crichton named his surveillance program and facility Project Wildfire in The Andromeda Strain.) With the ubiquitous presence of mobile devices and high level of travel today, I think this will give a fascinating look at how rapidly something like this can spread. I should have a big week coming up, because we’ll be going to the Notre Dame-USC game on Saturday (massive influx of people to the area, 80,000+ people in the stadium), and going to New Orleans on Sunday. I’ll be able to pick up a lot of infections at both. Not literal infections. Virtual ones. At least I hope!

This course, as well as the course connected with “The Walking Dead” out of UC-Irvine, promises to delve into various aspects of a pandemic and the epidemiology associated with it. There are also sociological and psychological implications that will be addressed. All of these things are some of the reasons I love the show, so I think it will be fun to go a little deeper and think about it a little more.

Stay safe out there!

A Dead night

I found myself a tiny bit bereft today, because the season premiere had come and gone!

I think it was one of those deals where you anticipate it so much that once it’s over, you’re like, “Aww, man.” There was a little bit of that involved with the Stones show back in May, too.

I won’t write about it here—I did that on Facebook—but suffice it to say that despite a rather bucolic start, I’m pretty sure that shit is gonna get real very quickly. I think my prediction might come true. I think some sort of infectious disease other than the zombie microorganism is happening. The visual of the zombies coming through the roof was just fantastic. The splats were super cool, as was the zombie hanging by his guts. Wow!

I was pretty pleased with how my “zombie nails” turned out. I texted the pic to my sister and she said they looked infected! Perfect! That’s exactly what I was going for. Pus-filled nails? Success!

The Slimeballs were also a success, and I think I might have to have some more tonight. Yum!

This week is going to be busy. I’m working on getting ready for New Orleans, and will have to start packing soon. This is also my busiest week with the online courses I’m taking. In addition to History of Rock and Vaccines, today the Walking Dead class started, and tomorrow, the Epidemics class starts. The latter two are kind of nice tie-ins.

The Walking Dead class looks like it’s going to be very interesting. I watched the intro lecture today, as well as a video where they talk to some cast members about the show (a nice feature). The Epidemics class will look at pandemic infections from a purely epidemiologic point, but the Walking Dead course is going to explore the sociological and psychological impacts. I think it’s going to be fascinating. My friend Lisa is taking it, too, so it will be fun to discuss with her!

If my online presence is down this week, this is why. Just a lot going on, but you can watch for New Orleans updates next week!

It’s almost here

As my buddy Daryl there says, just ONE MORE DAY!

I am so psyched to have my absolute favorite show back tomorrow evening that I can hardly stand it!

We’ll be heading down to my Mom’s tomorrow afternoon for a visit and to wish her a happy birthday (which is coming up on Tuesday). She says she’ll stop and get a pizza on her way home from church, so YUM!

Then we’ll head back here to take care of a few housey things, and the countdown will begin.

I’ve got a couple of things planned. Last year’s season premiere zombie finger cookies didn’t turn out too well (I wish I’d taken a picture...they still tasted good, but they just flattened out and looked like looked like long flat slabs of cookie with an almond stuck on the end. Talk about a Pinterest Fail!) so this year I decided to do a tried and true treat: Slimeballs!

I haven’t made them for years, and I don’t think I’ve ever made them for Ken.

Slimeballs

2 packages Lime Jell-o (or one large package...heh...large package)
2 cups boiling water
1 cup Midori melon liqueur
1 cup vodka

Dissolve the Jell-o in the boiling water, and let it cool for a few minutes, but not so much that it starts to set. Add the booze and let it set. Serve with whipped cream.

I can tell you that it’s some tasty stuff, but really packs a punch! There’s always room for boozy Jell-o!  I got some red gel stuff to drip on it, too. Slimeballs don’t really look like zombie guts or anything, but they’re almost fluorescent green, and the red stuff on the whipped cream will look cool and bloody. Fun!

I also plan on wearing my I ♥ Daryl t-shirt that I got in Senoia at The Woodbury Shoppe.

Finally, I bought some new nail polish today, with several different colors (one is a kind of bright yellow) and a black “crackle” glaze. That’s that thing where you put it on top of another color, and it dries and looks cracked. I was showing Ken, and it resulted in this conversation:

Me: So you put this on top of another color, and it looks crackly.
Him: [nodding] Okay.
Me: I was thinking maybe green underneath? [Then I show him the yellow polish.]
Him: That yellow would look cool underneath the black, too.
Me: Yeah! It would look like pus!

So we’ve got green slimy stuff with bloody whipped cream and fingernails oozing pus. [clapping hands] All right! We’re good to go! I thought about making a couple of these, but I think we’re good with just the slimeballs.

BOOM!

The Touring Dead

As many of you know, we usually try to take short sidetrips on our way back from Florida; one year it was Asheville, NC to see Biltmore House, one year it was Memphis, one year it was Raleigh to visit our friend Sheria. Many of you also know that this year’s sidetrip was Senoia, GA.

Why would we want to visit a small town south of Atlanta? Because they’ve filmed a lot of “The Walking Dead” there, that’s why! Senoia is the town that served as the fictional Woodbury. We stayed in Newnan, and there were a couple of places there that were also used in filming. There were other small towns in the area with buildings and places used in locations.

During the 20 or so miles from Newnan to Senoia, we listened to the Walking Dead soundtrack CD, and it was actually a pretty cool accompaniment to the drive. It was easy to imagine the two-lane road littered with abandoned vehicles, or to picture zombies wandering through the trees and fields. I’ve got a good imagination that way, and that’s part of the fun. Ken put up with me, even when I waved my hands in the air and said, “YAY!” when we saw the “Senoia City Limits” sign. Fangirl was geeking out with no apologies!

As we pulled up into downtown and onto Main Street—which was the Main Street of the town of Woodbury in the show—I was all “Agghhh!” and “Ohmahgah!” and “We’re in Woodbury, honey!” We spent a little time checking out the storefronts and just wandering down Main Street. We stopped in the Georgia Mercantile Co., and checked out what they had to offer. This was serendipitous, because they had a tour going on in about an hour and a half, and Sunday is the only day they do it! We debated whether we wanted to spend the money on this little bus tour or buy a map of locations and try to find them ourselves. We decided to take the tour (AND we bought the map) because they might have access to places we couldn’t get into, as well as maybe some “insider” information. That is exactly how it turned out, so I’m glad we decided to go for it!

We had a little time to kill before the tour, so we checked out Maguire’s Pub right around the corner. Great beer selection, and we enjoyed the place so much we had lunch there the following day. Good food and good beverages...a nice place to hang out!

Anyway, the tour was well worth it. A couple of the places we got to see are private property, but they got us in there. The main guide, Dan, has been a zombie extra in all three seasons, seventeen times in all. He hasn’t been called yet for Season 4, but hopes he will be. He had lots of interesting information for us, although certainly no spoilers for S4. One of the things he said was that they have increasingly locked down security and potential sources of leaks. The extras used to be able to bring cell phones in, but they have to relinquish them before they get to the set now; they used to be told where the filming was happening and be able to drive themselves there, but now they get an email the night before and meet at a place where they are bused in. All very hush-hush as they try to keep any leaks from happening. Any extra who leaks information and is found out is permanently blacklisted from the show (and probably doesn’t do themselves any favors for any other gigs they might try to get).

As for zombie extras, they’re all required to be quite small. Dan himself was unusually tall for a zombie extra, he said, but he’s also skinny as a rail. I wondered why, and he said, “Because we’re supposed to look dead and emaciated.” Makes sense! But if you want to be a zombie extra, you have a better chance if you’re small and skinny.

I’m including a few pictures in this entry, but if you want to see all of them, you can check out my Facebook album of Walking Dead Locations. I made it public, so even if we aren’t friends on Facebook, you will be able to see it. Probably one of the coolest locations was the factory (still in operation) that contains the courtyard that served as Woodbury’s “zombie arena.” That was just such an awful scenario, and made even worse when Daryl and Merle were supposed to fight to the death there.

When we were there, I was talking to Dan, and although I can’t recall exactly what my question was, it turned into a little talk about how they film things. I said that I’m almost always able to suspend disbelief, so I still enjoy entertainment. He said that that’s one bad thing about working in it and seeing how it’s filmed: it almost spoils it for you when watching it. To the group, he talked about how so much of it has to do with angles and camera shots, making things look bigger than they really are. When they were clearing the prison, they used the same couple of short hallways and just filmed it from different angles, so it looked like they were rushing through this large maze of prison hallways, but it was just a couple of corners shot from different directions! He said that Chandler Riggs, who plays Carl Grimes, is going through puberty right now, so he’s getting to be a big kid. They keep making Rick’s sheriff hat bigger and bigger, so it still looks small on Carl. (For some reason, that one just made me chuckle.)

A few other tidbits he had for us:

• Zombie teeth look black and gross due to a mixture of chocolate syrup and mouthwash. You swirl that stuff around in your mouth and spit...instant zombie teeth!
  
• The longest day he’s had, no matter what show or movie he was working in, was on “The Walking Dead.” I believe he said it was during the filming of when Hershel’s farm gets overrun and the barn burns down. The temperature was down in the 20s, and he said he worked over 20 hours that day. They were all freezing, and the zombie extras were huddling together for warmth between takes, zipped up in Snuggies. There’s a mental image for you!
  
• Speaking of Hershel’s farm, it is a private residence near Atlanta, and fans are constantly trying to jump the fence and get pictures of it. Don’t do that, people. Not only is it rude and creepy, they are prosecuting people to the fullest extent of the law. You will be thrown in jail and prosecuted (same goes for trying to crash the studio set). The owners of the farm are extremely religious and had two rules for the cast and crew there: No cussing, and No zombies can touch the house. If you watch that episode again, you’ll see that the zombies never get into the house, although they apparently overran the house in the graphic novel. It was such a hard and fast rule that the owners’ daughter, who played a zombie, had to get out of makeup and get cleaned up before entering the house at the end of filming.
  
• He talked about Merle a bit, and we all kind of mourned Merle. It was a sad ending for him, and somewhat noble. He tried to do the right thing. Dan said that other than Dale, all of the characters who die seem to do something out of character before their demise. I’ll have to ponder that a bit as we watch it again, but that was certainly true with Merle. Milton went against the Governor, and Andrea was trying to bring the Prison Gang and the Woodbury Gang together...something to think about.
  
• Andrew Lincoln (Rick Grimes) and David Morrissey (the Governor) stay in character throughout the entire day of filming. They are both British, and once they get into the Southern accent, they don’t want to get out of it. Although many of the cast has input into their characters and somewhat into the storyline, Andrew Lincoln does a lot to direct some of the action...like where the zombies should approach, how they should die, and so forth.
  
• The initial cast signed up for five years. Obviously, not all of them have made it that far, and I suspect there may be a couple of hard deaths in Season 4. One of the first rules of horror films is “anyone can die at anytime,” and “The Walking Dead” has held true to that rule. No one is safe.
  
• Even more ominously, during a “death discussion” about the survivors, Dan said, “Oh, they all die. Robert Kirkman [the creator of the comic book] has said exactly that. They all die.”
  

So there you have it. They’re going to make you love these great characters (even the bad guys are fascinating) and then they’re going to kill them all. Even Daryl Dixon isn’t safe in the Zombie Apocalypse.

I enjoyed this experience completely, and would recommend it to any fan of the show, if you get the opportunity. I can honestly say that I have never been into a show as much as this one...and this is coming from a “Star Trek” fan!