christmas time at casa de lopez/bronson and things have got to a frenetic pace.  okay, not so frenetic as i spent the weekend really doing very little but hanging with nick and anna.  we've become fans of two TV shows, top gear, a car show broadcast by the BBC featuring three middle aged goofballs who really know their cars and are clever and witty enough to make fun of themselves. 

the second TV show is a french zombie series called, les revenants, or the returned.  anna's mom recommended the show and anna and i did what is common practice nowadays in the age of on-demand entertainment, we watched all five episodes, one after the other, yesterday. 

man, les revenants is very unlike anything on american TV right now.  the only equivalent i can make is to david lynch's noir surrealist twin peaks from the early 1990s.  the french show has the same tone and vibe as lynch's program.  les revenents begins slow and takes its time to show us complicated, wounded, flawed characters.  the opening images of the first episode shows a bus full of schoolchildren driving off a mountain road.  then a girl, first shown on the bus, climbs up over the railing and onto the road.  she walks home.  her mother finds the girl in the kitchen.  the girl behaves like she's been away only a few hours.  she's been dead four years.

thus begins one of the more original programs i've seen in a while.  smartly written, beautifully photographed and superbly acted les revenents has my attention and i can't wait for the second season.

and but for life gets back to reasonable normality after christmas.  whether i'm stuck singing the blues or i am happy to be alive i do my best to practice gratitude in and for my life.  yeah, i know, christmas is for peace on earth and good will but fuck that.  i say peace and kindness are ways of living.  every day and every year.  i am a sentimental SOB who can cry like the worst of them at any cheesy tearjerker.  so what!?  have each and every one of you a very merry christmas! 

tomorrow night i am eating tons of fondue and saffron buns and tracking santa's world journey at the norad santa tracker. 

merry christmas, brothers and sisters, PEACE!