Funny Friends, Fear The Walking Dead, and Dickens

Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby,

I hope you had a nice day today, perhaps enjoying the snowy weather or working on a project in one form or another. I did see a few of your posts - only available on "posts You like" - one of them had to do with James and his penchant for grilled cheese, lol, and another was a clip of an upcoming release from a band. It had a space motif. Maybe they are friends of yours, or you have an inter-band connection to them? I am guessing one of the two. I don't know how you got involved with Versus Me, but they seem to have a big following, so maybe you can connect with other bands through them.

Still super chilly in The 'Ridge. Tonight I watched a new series, "Fear The Walking Dead". It's like with "CSI" - they franchised it out, and with that show you got "CSI Miami" and a couple others. This one could be called "Walking Dead Los Angeles" because it takes place here, and the first couple episodes are actually quite scary because they show how disorienting and chaotic such a scenario would be, as it is unfolding. In regular "Walking Dead", which is the standard bearer, that series began with lone characters and their experience as the ordeal was already underway. It was pure reaction, dealing with hundreds of zombies immediately, and finding themselves in an instantly changed world. In the new series, the situation involves many people, family members in a city, and shows how the city dissolves into panic.

Yeah, cheery stuff, I know!  :)

But if you're a fan of the original "WD" like me, it's a pretty awesome and different take on the original (which is a classic and still the best).

On an entirely different score, I also finished watching a Charles Dickens mini-series called "The Old Curiosity Shop". This was a BBC version made in 1979. I found it at the library and figured that Dickens goes with Christmas, so I began watching it about a week ago.

I have gotta say that the English actors are just incredible in the way they can bring an old story to life. They really know their own history, and the language of that time is so interesting, everyone speaking in paragraphs full of self-reference and slang, yet formal all the same.

Shakespeare, at least from what I have seen, wrote all his characters to speak in very formal language for the most part, with slight variations of class-based slang or humor. Charles Dickens wrote his characters, as far as I can tell anyway, in "formal slang", i.e. everyday speech from the Victorian era. Everybody talks a blue streak and seems nervous......

But it's incredible writing, and use of the English language, and of characterization, and I think I'd have to put Dickens up there as possibly the equal of Shakespeare, if not in precision of language, then certainly in drama and creation of characters. "The Old Curiosity Shop" is an epic story, and this version blew me away at the end......

Now I will look for more Dickens productions on dvd.  :)

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and as usual I will keep things local and low key. It's of course a work night for me anyway, so we will watch the ball drop in Times Square and let the New Yorkers do the partying for us. It's always a fun night even vicariously, but if you are going out, have a blast!

I will see you in the morn at the usual time. Sweet Dreams until then....

I Love You.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)