Resident Eeeeeee-vil

The title of this particular blog entry, though only barely tangentially relevant to its contents, is more of an eye-catcher than, say, "While I sit on the couch on a Sunday night." Trevor is seated beside me, and he's playing the demo of the Resident Evil video game (Can we still call them video games? These slick and shiny, bloody and gory fantasies?). And while I watch him fight overly animated zombies, I find myself asking a very important question, which was not originally intended to be the focus of this entry (see where Resident Evil gets me?):

When was the last time you saw a fat zombie?

My creative writing class got on this topic during Wednesday's class workshop. One of the students used the phrase "zombie-like skin" to describe a chubby woman in a painting, and some of the readers/students had issue with the correlation between a zombie and chubbiness. And of course, being interested in zombies myself, I actually let them talk about this for a few minutes.

We don't see many overweight zombies, which is odd, and frankly, a misrepresentation of the human population. Since zombies rise from the grave (due to various reasons and according to various philosophies), there should be quite a number of heavy, thin, short, tall, male, female, old, young, one-legged, four-fingered zombies. Right? Once they're out of their graves, ambling around and picking off humans as fast as their zombie-legs can carry them, the white and gray matter of the brain might not be super nourishing, but do you know how long it would take a zombie to lose weight? Well, I don't really have an answer to that question, but I'd imagine much longer than it takes the average zombie survival team (gang of misfits fighting to survive the zombie apocalypse) to kill those zombies. So, why don't we see more size diversity in our undead?

Sooo, now let's talk about Macbeth. From zombies to Shakespeare...it makes complete sense. My friend Angie and I went to Chicago Shakespeare Theater for The Scottish Play. Both of us worked there for a while, but neither of us has been there in years, so we were excited to see both the show as well as the theater itself. We recognized a few familiar faces and had a beer in the pub before we took in the show, which was above average. As was expected, the production was superb and the acting was solid. There were a number of artistic choices that I really could have lived without (Mike Nussbaum was one of the 'weird sisters,' and I really [and I mean really] could have done without seeing him, all 85 years of him, dressed in S&M bondage gear. He was a great porter, though.), and I frankly preferred the performance of Ben Carlson, who did the Short Shakespeare! version and the last Macb. production I saw. This Thane of Cawdor was fine, but I want better than fine. The "Tomorrow," soliloquy was okay, but other than that speech, he yelled a lot. The fight choreography was great, though, and the set was super fun. The whole night was a huge hit for me and Angie, just getting to the theater again. Twelfth Night is playing in the spring, and we're going to go again, this time with Trevor.  

So it's now way passed my bedtime, and I want to finish my Agatha Christie novel tonight, so I'm off like an itchy pair of socks. Until next time, true believers!