At last, here is a short blog. After all, how much does anyone really know about zombies? Or teens? Or how texting became a zombie plot?
First, a confession: I’ve tried over and over to watch the AMC television series about zombies in an apocalyptic world. The Walking Dead is, as I recall, the most popular series on cable television. Friends who watch it assure me that the program is great. So why can I never get through the pilot show? Why can I never get beyond the first little girl wandering around with her zombie stare?
The answer I’ve come up with is texting. Teenage texting zombies, that’s what stops me from watching The Walking Dead. I only realized this recently, when I was in Los Angeles over Thanksgiving and the weeks leading up to Christmas. While in Los Angeles I stay on 4th Street, a few blocks from the famed Farmer’s Market, my home away from home, and The Grove (an homage to the fakery of Las Vegas). Actually, I like The Grove. There is a great bar there called The Whisper Lounge, numerous restaurants (try the fries with mayo at Morel’s French Steakhouse), a wonderful Apple store, a giant bookstore, a multiplex cinema, and other shops that I frequent. There also are teenagers – all of them walking blindly, usually three or four across, eyes downcast at their smart phones, thumbs twitching. It is up to us, the non-texting pedestrians with our ‘oh so silent thumbs,’ to dodge around the texting zombies to avoid a collision.
The texting teenage zombies are (I admit) a big reason I have resisted getting a smart phone, although my family members, texting Missourians, but not yet zombies, make fun of me. Hey, I am not a Luddite (look it up). I’m writing on my 27” iMac, own a laptop, iPod, Kindle, and will soon purchase an iPad. But I am fearful of turning into Clint Eastwood’s grumpy old man (the only character he plays anymore), so I’ve finally decided, here in the new year, to give in. I’m getting an iPhone. Like, really soon, although this transformation scares me. What if my brain deteriorates to single letter usage? What if I turn into a you-know-what?
As for the TV show, I’m going to try watching the pilot again, before dark, and with a glass of Bushmills (Irish whiskey) in hand. OMG!!!