Birthday

Day was nicely low key. ( Read more... )

Wales took me out for dinner. ( Read more... )

Showed Wales - photos of my watercolors which she loved. She particularly loved the girl on the train. And various photos I posted on Instagram. (Wales has a BA in Art History, worked in various galleries, and has excellent taste in art - she's also taken art courses. For a while she had an internship at the Nelson Art Museum in Kansas City, and was writing up information on Dali. Going to art museums and galleries with Wales can be interesting.) So, Wales liking my art is a compliment. She told me that I was really talented and should consider putting together a show of my art. I could maybe get a coffee shop or restaurant to display it.

She liked the photo posted below, as well (which I also posted to Instagram and FB):



Oh and here's the ducks..which are harder to photograph, because they refuse to stay still for any length of time.



***

Television...Favorite and not so favorite tropes (among other things)

1. Television has finally decided to do my favorite romance/action trope:

The Spy Romance

YAY! It took them long enough. I've been more than patient. I'd actually finally given up, and voila, it appears. I think the Universe took pity on me after the last three years?

( the spy romance is back with a vengeance! )

2. The Last of Us and alas, my not-so-favorite television trope, otherwise known as the nihilistic dystopia - or zombie trope.

After reading a recap of Episode 8 of The Last of Us posted on my correspondence list, I've decided to just quit while I'm ahead and not go past Episode 3. ( why, I've chosen to quit, in case you are at all curious )

Let's see - innovative takes on the Zombie Dystopian Trope are:

* Warm Bodies starring Nicolas Hoult, it's basically a zombie romance.

* Anna and the Apocalypse - think Shaun of the Dead as a Christmas themed musical, except with a teenage female lead.

* Shaun of the Dead - basically a satire/parody of zombie movies starring Simon Pegg.

* In the Flesh (British series) - "A full-fledged zombie apocalypse has long since been prevented by armed resistance from the living, especially from armed local militias who patrolled their communities and actively hunted the re-animated. Meanwhile, a scientific solution for the zombie phenomenon has been found, with the development of a medication to restore consciousness to the undead, allowing them to remember their time alive and who they once were. The surviving undead, not killed by the militias, have been rounded up, forcibly medicated, and entered in a government rehabilitation programme in a plan to reintroduce them to society. They are provided with contact lenses and cosmetics, to help them conceal their deceased status, and maintenance injections of medication to keep them from relapsing into a dangerous or "rabid" state. They are officially referred to as sufferers of Partially Deceased Syndrome (PDS), though anti-zombie hardliners prefer the pejorative term "rotters". Many of the risen are haunted by memories of the atrocities they committed while rabid. In the village of Roarton, PDS sufferers face prejudice from the villagers upon their return. "

[Weirdly the British are better at zombie series than the US appears to be, or at least more innovative in their approach.]

*Dead Set is a British zombie horror miniseries written and created by Charlie Brooker and directed by Yann Demange. The show takes place primarily on the set of a fictional series of the real television show Big Brother.

* iZombie - It follows the adventures of a doctor-turned-zombie named Olivia "Liv" Moore (Rose McIver), a Seattle Police medical examiner who helps solve murders after eating the victims' brains and temporarily absorbing their memories and personalities.

So, like I said, it's kind of been done to death by now. You can't say anything new about the zombie trope. They've said it all already.


3. Jenny Ortega of Wednesday... Told Everyone She was Fixing Lines on the Fly in the Series

She got into trouble with all the professional television script writers over this - no surprise there.
( Read more... )

Off to bed.