where art collides philosoperontap

17h32-18h45, 27-March-2013

Meant to head out to some writing perch or other today, however circumstance conspired to keep me from doing so. Thus, I am coming to you today via my usual keyboard from the desk in my home office, a cozy cave measuring roughly 12 meters square, surrounded by books and ever mindful of the dangers posed by various flotsam and whatsum that has found its way to the floor and into the corners over the 11+ years that have passed since La Famille Kessel first took up residence at 57BB.

On Monday the Internet rocked with the release of the first real trailer for World War Z, a tent-pole Summer 2013 sci-fi flick starring Brad Pitt. Having only clocked a scant awareness of the film, due most likely to having my “Blockbuster” RAM filled with the likes of Star Trek: Into Darkness and Iron Man 3“, I clicked through and soon found myself staring agape at some remarkable CGI.

Zombies. Again. And this time tuned up to the absolute nth degree of their power to stimulate the apocalypic imagination. Dozens, hundreds, thousand, millions, TENS OF MILLIONS of zombies! Zombies jumping from rooftops, zombies rolling over buses, zombies grasping helicopter undercarriages, zombies crawling over zombies with the intent and will to make more zombies. And these zombies aren’t your typical everyday run-of-the-mill zombies, aching through every shuffling footstep at roughly the rate of a speeding turtle. Oh no, these zombies have got game!

So being as much a sucker for a well-produced trailer as anyone, I finished my first run-through and immediately fired that puppy up for a second look. Zombies. YES!

Faithful readers already know that I have something of a jones for The Walking Dead (the serious comic book, not the comical TV series), and I have certainly enjoyed many a zombie film over the years, beginning (probably) with George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and moving through more recent ghoulish quality offerings such as 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and 2009’s utterly terrific Zombieland. Yup, I suppose it can be said that I draw significant entertainment from all-things-undead, a satisfaction that could be rooted in a deep fascination I have with Judgement Day scenarios or that perhaps ties to some penchant I have to always root for the underdog against forces deemed insurmountable (been a Chicago Cubs fan since birth, yes I have). This World War Z thing managed to scotch right by me, though, until the trailer hit the other day. And finding myself delighted and excited by it all, I began binging (googling, whatever) and instantly learned that I have a huge zombie-culture blind spot! World War Z is based on Max Brooks’s best-selling book? And that best-selling book was preceded by The Zombie Survival Guide, yet another best-selling book by Brooks (and the likely title of a WWZ sequel that is already in development)? How can I know about such zombie coolness as Colson Whitehead’s Zone One and the Jane Austen (yes, THAT Jane Austen)/Seth Grahame-Smith collaboration Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and yet be completely brain-dead on World War Z?

“Zombies on ice..that’s nice.”

17h04-17h51, 23-March-2013

** Scribbled down over the weekend and only now revealed to the Internet’s great light **

No new material here for more than a week, but who is out there to complain? Or is that an utterly shameless attempt to garner some comments? Wow, compelling stuff!

No idea, really, who first said it — it could’ve even been me — but one mark of a truly great coffee house is that from the moment you walk in you feel as though they have been waiting for you. Back at Black Market Café today, dropping in just as Talking Heads’s Psycho Killer began shimmying through the speakers.

Just learned what a “cowboy cookie” is and I can honestly say I am better for it. Oatmeal, pecans, chocolate chips, and coconut. Life doesn’t suck.

In 8 days I will put 47 in my rearview mirror. For writing’s sake I truly wish I could express some angst, hesitation or — heck! — just some need to contemplate over moving up a click, as anything would be a markedly more interesting than the indifference I feel towards my personal mark in time. I did manage, though, to parlay the imminent arrival of 31-March into a blue-sky discussion over what to do two years hence for my 50th (the spending of our 2015 Winter Holiday in New York with My Missus and The Boy…and anyone else who wants to float in/out while we are there), so it isn’t a total non-thing.

From “Psycho Killer” to Life During Wartime to Once in a Lifetime to Swamp to Burning Down the House to This Must be the Place (Naive Melody) to And She Was to Road to Nowhere to Wild Wild Life to (Nothing but) Flowers…chronological mixes are fine, but any Talking Heads fan worth his salt would rise up in loud protest over the absolute lack of anything from <More Songs About Buildings and Food! Imagine me at this very moment pouncing up from my chair, stepping onto the table — rattling the mugs, glasses and silverware but good in the process — and launching into Take Me to the River (and, yes, I am aware that the tune is an Al Green classic and not a Heads original…feh)! OK, got the image? Hold onto it and cherish it, because it didn’t happen. Never would. Can’t. That flavor of mad courage maintains a lonely existence in the deepest and darkest corners of my cerebrum.

My Missus has finished her art and gardening magazines and a dog chose just now to do his business on the street in front of BMC, framed perfectly in the plate glass window for my benefit and that of all of my fellow patrons. So, time to go. Ah, Paris.