The light and the dark - Big Bird and Zombies

Big Bird is forty and he's having a big birthday party - Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal will be among those playing pass the parcel with the Cookie Monster and eating trifle. The fortieth season, this coming winter, is set to include some treats that will do good to those of us who grew up with Sesame Street: 'Celebrities such as Cameron Diaz, Kobe Bryant, Jason Mraz, Jimmy Fallon and siblings Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal' will pop up. I'm also hoping for a repeat of Desperate Houseplants.


Probably, Jake and Maggie also had an attachment to Sesame Street as children - their mother Naomi was there right at the beginning as a producer: 'I was a producer at Sesame Street. And then The Electric Company. And then I spent a year in the UK researching an American version of Upstairs Downstairs.' Note how I'm not drawing attention to the fact that Naomi was involved in a dastardly plot to redo the finest British drama series of the Seventies and beyond.


The Electric Company, which is also getting a revamp, featured a recurring sketch 'Love of Chair'. This included the not entirely comprehensible tagline of 'What about Naomi?'. Who'd have thought that this Naomi would turn out to be the mother of the Prince of Persia?


And now for the dark side...

There's been some interest in vampires of late, so much so that some writers of horror have rather taken against the pale-skinned vein suckers and are trying to get equal airtime for other uglies - the flesh eating undead or Zombies. Zombies were on the menu at Comic-Com and Scott Browne, the author of 'Breathers: A Zombie Lament' was at hand to discuss his dark comedy, which has been optioned.


Scott has pretty firm ideas about who he'd choose to play his 'hero' Andy and his unfortunate love interest: 'I see Jake Gyllenhaal as Andy and Anne Hathaway as Rita, his love interest. And, well, Christopher Walken would have to be in the movie somewhere.' As much as I'm enjoying the idea of Jake and Anne acting together in Love and Other Drugs and possibly in Damn Yankees, Zombies may be taking it a putrifying limp too far. More plot here.


But Jake hasn't quite escaped the vampire craze. One novel, reviewed here, has consigned a whole bunch of famous figures to endless night, including Jake Gyllenhaal. Makes a change from Robert Pattinson, I suppose.

Talking of spooky, someone is going around the Kent town of Maidstone sticking up posters of a rather manic and crazed looking rabbit as a 'social experiment'. The poster sticker's name is Jonny Darko.


Includes pictures from IHJ.