"Shake Me Up, Judy!"

So I watched Bleak House on PBS a couple months ago. Superbly entertaining, masterfully filmed, incredibly depicted characters - every week kept me coming back to see the end, even after I read the synopsis of the remaining four episodes online. (Why did I do that?! I am not a gift shaker, peaker or requester. I love surprises, and yet I went ahead and read ahead. Completely out of character for me. But I digress.) I was so excited about Bleak House that David got excited about it, too, and he watched the last couple weeks with me, then bought it for me on DVD for Valentine's Day.

Anyway, there is one character, the ruthless and mean Smallweed, an extremely cranky invalid who is carried around on his chair to various devious moneylending confrontations and repossessions. Immediately after his arrival anywhere and sometimes more than once in a given conversation, Smallweed bellows, "Shake me up, Judy!" and his granddaughter Judy summarily walks behind him, reaches under his armpits, and fiercely jerks him up and down several times as he continues his dialogue. The thing about it is, it cracks me up! Every time. And not just while watching the movie; I think of that one line and in my mind it begs for a blog because it amuses me so.

Maybe it's that I know the feeling: I could really use someone to shake me up regularly, too. How funny if, every time I'm in a rut of some sort, like feeling suddenly overwhelmed by the futility of sweeping under Henry's highchair, I could holler out gruffly, "Shake me up, Judy!" and it would help me get it done. I bet it would at least get a laugh out of Calvin, or prompt him to ask his favorite latest, "What in the world?!"

As I write this, I am realizing that it may just be one of those things you have to see to know how surprising and funny it is. So I highly recommend watching Bleak House, for great literature and drama, and for Smallweed, too, unworthy as he is. I also recommend bellering whenever you need shooken.

The next thing on my to-do list is get the novel and read it through, both for the Dickensian commentary that seriously thrills me, AND to see if "Shake me up, Judy!" is Dickens' creation or the screenplay writer's. If Dickens wrote it, is the literary world aware that it owes him for so much more than Miss Havisham's spidery, decaying wedding feast and, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times?"

I'll keep you posted on what I find out. And I'll let you know if it's as funny in the book as it is on screen and in the recesses of my mind.