“WE ARE ENTIRELY SURROUNDED BY VUGS.”
– Philip K. Dick, The Game Players of Titan
In 2015, CBS premiered a James Patterson miniseries called ZOO. It was advertised as a near future, apocalyptic, Earth gone mad show, in which the planet’s animals revolt. The animals fight back. I don’t know anything about James Patterson, except he’s huge, and one of those authors whose paperbacks fill up airport newsstands. The series was a bit meh but okay. Some fun, with incredible imagery thrown in from the CGI people. Rhinos walking down city streets. Bears knocking at the doors of suburban dwellings. Kristen Connolly, the actress famous for her role as Dana in The Cabin in the Woods, plays your intrepid reporter on the catastrophe. Eventually, as the plot coagulates and complicates, Connolly’s character is lost in the North Woods, hiding and running from the bads. She steps on a nail. It goes through the bottom of her shoe, then through the big toe of her right foot. The toe gets infected. She’s forced to cut it off to survive.
Where did it go? Who has it? Did mice eat it? A wolf? Did it end up in a bar in Wyoming as part of a drinking ritual?
It was a good toe, a small sculpture of a lovely young woman, on a small foot. She cared for that toe until it was set free. She had pretty feet, muscular, arched. A strong toe, evenly balanced, perhaps the most naked part of her. That toe was carefully enunciated in the puff of its undertow, its underside’s pillow, then the nail and perfect hello of the toe’s top.
Toes are always saying hello.
Toes are always laughing at us.
And we want to know where Kristen’s toe went.
As a sidebar here in toe paradise, why is it that Kristen Connolly has eyes like Danielle Panabaker? She plays Killer Frost on Flash, another TV show. Still, in this wide, wide world, how is it that two young women, who end up in questionable science fiction series, have such similar eyes? They look like they’re about to start crying. They have those eyes that break men’s hearts. It’s not that they are drop dead gorgeous or sex bots, it’s the odd familiarity, as though their eyes are accessories.
Pop culture iconography is always fun. Maybe next, I can look into other critical areas of contention. For example, why do so many TV science fiction series star tall white women, with exceedingly white skin and white hair? Another aspect of peripheral palpitation, is, sure, we all are in favor of diversity–no problem! Why is it that some science fiction TV has gorgeous lesbians who they show kissing in close ups? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
KRUDZO 