Undead reading

Well, so far this year, I've managed to read 20 books out of a goal of 30. Of course, my co-worker who started keeping track of the books she's read this year (actually since January 11) is at almost 60. At the rate I'm going, I'll have to increase my goal and get comfortable with the fact that I won't catch up with my co-worker. In the last few months, I read a couple of books dealing with the undead - the first being my beloved zombies and the other being one of the original vampire novels.

The Walking Dead: Compendium One was a gift I bought for my friend Matt last Christmas this year based upon the fact that I joined him and his wife almost every Sunday night last fall to watch AMC's adaptation of Robert Kirkman's graphic novel. After he finished it, he offered it to me to read. At 1,088 pages, the compendium collates the first 48 issues and provided a good companion to the TV series. I found it entertaining to compare and contrast the two. Not only is the graphic novel much darker than the series, it takes no prisoners and makes no promises as far as the survival or lack thereof of major characters. There are many MANY scenes that I hope end up in the series. Their side trip through the suburban development and the Governor storyline all seem like they would translate well. What it boils down to is whether or not AMC has the cojones to go that dark. Matt and I are not convinced that they are, but they surprised me a couple times last year in the 6 episodes that comprised the first season of The Walking Dead.

The book took me a long time to read. I'll admit, I started with great fervor and then put it down for several months. My Goodreads progress on the book tells me that I started it on January 29th and finally finished it on April 28th. It was not a book that I found I could read in little bits. I either consumed it or didn't touch it. Once I got to about the half-way point, there was really no other option than to consume it. I'm not a big reader of graphic novels, but based on this one, I'm eager for the second compendium to come out.

The Heretics & Spirituality group, fresh from having read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein decided to dive into another classic of Gothic horror - Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was a free, preloaded book on my Nook Color, so I was more than happy to go along with it. I had started to read Dracula in college, but I never finished it. I remember getting to right about the point where Lucy is transformed into a vampire by the Count and then, for whatever reason, I abandoned it. The story is told in the form of letters and journal entries, starting with Jonathan Harker's trip to Transylvania and Castle Dracula to help the vampiric Count acquire property in England. These opening pages are riveting and well told. Stoker sets up a sense of place rather adeptly as well as a definite sense of foreboding. When the action shifts to England, the plot slows down substantially and I felt contributed to the middle of the book dragging a lot. It's no wonder I gave up on it in 1990.

I was also bogged down by the language used in the writing of the book, which is certainly not the fault of Stoker as he was just writing in the way that people wrote in the 1800s. Many of the characters all kind of blended together in my brain and the protracted climax of the book left me a bit unsatisfied, as if all the action built to an event that was followed by 1 page of wrap up.

And although I already knew it, the Francis Ford Coppola directed Bram Stoker's Dracula really should have had the tag line "loosely inspired by Bram Stoker's novel." a la Demi Moore's film version of The Scarlet Letter.

Frozen Nazi zombies

Is it possible to make zombies even less sympathetic than they already are? Well, by golly, the makers of the Norwegian horror film Dead Snow found a way - turn them into undead Nazis. If the Indiana Jones films taught us nothing else, it's that Nazis are the perfect bad guys. I mean, how can you sympathize with them? It's not possible. So with zombie Nazis, you have what is quite possible a beyond perfect bad guy.

The set up of Dead Snow is one horror fans have seen a million times before. College students, a secluded cabin (this time on the Norwegian fjord), hormones in overdrive and no cell phone service. One of the characters even mentions "how many movies start out with friends going to a cabin in the woods with no cell phone service?" At least what's about to happen doesn't take them by complete surprise.

Soon, a mysterious stranger shows up to infodump the back story. The area where they are staying was, during WWII, occupied by a particularly nasty group of Nazis. They tortured and stole from the villagers until one night, toward the end of the war, the Nazis and their leader were chased into the woods, never to be seen again. An evil lurks in these mountains, the stranger says, and you won't like it when you're holding your own intestines.

It doesn't take long for zombie mayhem to ensue, although I will say that for about the first half, until the first really good zombie attack, the movie felt more like a slasher film. I chalk that up to the fact that we don't get a good look at the zombies - they hide in the trees and under the cover of darkness. But once they attack a la Night of the Living Dead, with zombie hands coming through the windows, it feels every little bit like a zombie movie.

These are fast zombies and don't seem to subscribe to the "kill the brain, kill the ghoul" law of zombies, but the movie more than makes up for it. I didn't find it so much scary as I did gory and as I so frequently say, the scariness of the movie for me is so often inversely proportional to the amount of gore. There are some pretty gruesome deaths, one of which was followed by a line that made me laugh out loud.

This movie owes a huge debt to other movies, most specifically Evil Dead. Apart from the obvious cabin in the woods, there's even a chainsaw and an amputation. But more than that, it pays homage to zombie movies that came before it, mostly a little bit tongue in cheek. There's even a cockamamie secondary storyline that wasn't really referenced all that much until toward the end that seemed lifted straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

One final note about this movie - it contains the least likely sex scene I have ever witnessed in all my years of watching movies. It took place in an outhouse, on the seat, after the guy had just taken care of business. The woman came in all hot and horny and even though he hadn't even wiped, he was ready to go. I'm sorry, if that were me, I don't care how good looking you are. No. OUTHOUSES STINK and are decidedly unsexy.

Dead Snow is cheesy and gory and was a very enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes on my day off. Beware - it is the first zombie movie that I have ever seen that had subtitles. It did not detract from the experience so don't let it deter you from watching..

Your zombies are in my classic literature

I'm going to say right here and right now that I'm officially DONE with books that take a classic piece of literature and suppose that the simple insertion of hot zombie action will somehow generate something worth reading. I say this after an ill-advised attempt to read Alice in Zombieland. As one reviewer on Amazon put it, Alice in Plagiarism Land would be a more appropriate description.

The funny thing is that this book has pretty much everything that would make for a quick, fun, undead read. It's only 130ish pages, and not only does Alice meet all sorts of undead characters after she follows the Black Rat into a seemingly bottomless grave into zombieland, but Alice herself starts turning into a zombie. You can't go wrong, right?

WRONG. Heidi and I were talking about this and clearly, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is in the public domain now so rubbish like this can be made without any repercussions. All this book did was take Lewis Carroll's original text and change words. At least Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (which I didn't much care for either) had the decency to write some new parts and change things - i.e. instead of telling Mr. Darcy off after his marriage proposal, Elizabeth Bennet kicks his ass and basically leaves him for dead. This kind of stuff you see in Alice in Zombieland is just plain and simple lazy writing. It's almost a Mad Libs way of writing except I've read Mad Libs that make more sense and are more entertaining than this book.

So I'm doing the e-book equivalent of throwing the book across the room. And I won't ever fall for this genre again - it's going to have to work really hard to make me interested again. This is kind of sad because as someone who consumes pretty much any and all zombie content, I feel like turning my back on it just seems wrong. Plus it'll mean I never get to read this, but it looks like it's by the same publisher that put out the dreck that is Alice in Zombieland, so perhaps it's for the best.

And of course, all this talk about Alice in Zombieland just made me think about Alice in Pornoland which I wanted to link to but didn't because I couldn't find a SFW link. This is still a family friendly blog!

Kings of the Dead

The UU Church we attend has a small group that meets Wednesday nights that, if memory serves, used to be called "The Gospel Group." Looking to revamp itself for the New Year, they rechristened themselves the "Heretics & Spirituality Group." One of the co-leaders is my friend on Facebook and she encouraged me to attend based on my zombie interest as they were going to be discussing zombies and spirituality. Only if you threw in a trashy 90s Eurodance beat could you have something better suited for me. We have two books we're working from right now and one of them is the book I just finished today, Tony Faville's Kings of the Dead.

Kings of the Dead is the story of the zombie apocalypse. Yes, I know. You're thinking "Dan, how many stories of the zombie apocalypse can you possibly read?" My answer to that question is "how high can you count?" The thing is, despite the fact that all the zombie novels and movies tell more or less the same story, it's how they tell it and the specifics that matter. The source of the zombie apocalypse this time around was the H1N1 vaccine. I'll admit that when I stood in line for mine in the fall of 2009, I couldn't help but think "This is how the end of the world in the movie I Am Legend came about! The cancer vaccine turned everyone into zombies!" The use of H1N1 was both effective and timely and clearly Faville is not the only one with that idea as a book called Mad Swine is on my to-be-read list for the year. Most of the normal zombie rules apply. These are reanimated dead people that shamble around slowly. A bite will infect you and they can only be killed with a shot to the head. As everyone knows, that's the cardinal zombie rule - kill the brain, you kill the ghoul.

The story is told in the form of 91 journal entries by a guy named Tony. It was an interesting way to tell the story but was ultimately rather limiting. Apart from a few journal entries made by others in the group, Tony's is the only head we're allowed inside of. And he's not a terribly sympathetic character - at least not initially. Also, the journal entry way of telling the story made it hard to fit in what I lovingly refer to as "hot zombie action." The zombie encounters were necessarily told in the past tense and lacked the immediacy of a third person omniscient that most of the zombie novels I've read up to this point have adopted. I also found that it made it hard to really flesh out the characters. These are people we were supposed to care about but it was hard for me to care about them when I didn't really feel like I knew them that well.

There was also a tremendous amount of time spent on the weaponry used to fight the zombies. Whenever we got to the parts that involved detailed descriptions of weapons that were being plundered, be it from an abandoned military base, a sporting goods store or wherever, I found myself going "blah blah blah blah guns blah grenades blah blah bazooka." That's certainly not the fault of the author. Tony was a gun guy, so it was only natural that he would be interested in and have a great deal of knowledge regarding firearms and other weapons. I just didn't find it that interesting and certainly not essential to my enjoyment of the story. But do remember that this is coming from a guy that has never even held a gun and has a hard time keeping track of who frequently feels like the most clueless person watching a James Bond film.

Kings of the Dead was written as a NaNoWriMo book (hey, I know another book that was written as a NaNoWriMo book that ultimately got published!) and was self-published by Faville, although it has recently been picked up by Permuted Press which is apparently a house that specializes in allowing you to read about the end of the world to your heart's content. Apparently, Faville has taken a lot of heat for being self-published but you know what? This is a changing world and it looks to me like publishing is changing as fast as the music business has and clearly, the old rules of distribution really no longer apply. I applaud him for writing a book and getting it out there, which is more than most of us will do in our lifetime.

Kings of the Dead had a great beginning and end, but the middle was a bit of a struggle for me. I had a hard time staying engaged with the book and I'm not sure I would have finished it had it not been for the Heretics & Spirituality. But to be fair, I might not have even heard of it had it not been for them either. So I guess it's a three-star book for me. A fairly decent entry into the large amounts of zombie fiction that is out there now but not one that I will be rereading. That said, I'd be open to reading another of his books. Recommended for zombie fans only.

So Now You're A Zombie

It's January 17th and I've already read three books! If this were the 2010 Book Challenge, I'd be off to a great start. At this time last year, I was still mired in Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, a book I thought I would like but ultimately didn't care for much.

Admittedly, the third book of the year was pretty lightweight, but hey, it still counts. So Now You're A Zombie: A Handbook for the Newly Undead is kind of the zombie counterpart to Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide. Rather than serving as a manual for surviving the zombie apocalypse, this book guides reanimated corpses through some lessons on how to maximize carnage

As you might expect, it only took me a couple days to read and it only took that long because I was juggling another book along with and trying not to lose it - a distinct possibility any time I have more than one book going. But just because it was as light as a feather doesn't mean that it was bad. For zombie fans, it's more than an adequate read. The text is funny and informative and also kind of gross. The illustrations are also pretty cool and the pages have faux blood splatter on many of them, as if the book you're holding a manuscript rescued from a zombie-human skirmish.

The method of zombification in this book is the "z-virus" which is not only responsible for reanimation but also for the unquenchable desire for human flesh (especially brains) that zombies have. This is pretty in line with many current zombie films and books - infection seems to be the most popular way to make a zombie these days. There were also chapters about how the zombie's gastrointestinal tract still functioned so as to "feed" the z-virus which I scoffed at. Everyone knows that the major organ systems of a zombie are completely non-functional. However, using this book's theory, it would answer the question "does a zombie have to eat?" This was also the first time I had ever heard of zombies projectile vomiting as a means of spreading infection.

Also included were many lessons on human buildings, vehicles and strategies for killing and/or infecting. It was a good read that I'd recommend for any zombie fan. It'll take hardly any time to read at all and the last page was worth the price tag alone. I totally didn't expect it and provided a good laugh at the end of what was a very tongue-in-cheek book to start with.

Thanks for the present Mary! It's taking its place on my bookshelf next to the other zombie books.

Torment

I just finished Jeremy Bishop's debut novel, Torment and even before I was done reading it, I knew that it would be a blog post. I can't remember exactly how I stumbled across it. I think I followed a link to another book that was in the bargain bin for Kindle books and this was one of the "similar books." I downloaded the sample and was so hooked that I didn't hesitate coughing up $2.99 for the whole thing. Not since the last Brian Keene book have I been so enthralled by a piece of horror fiction.

I'm finding that it's really hard to write about Torment without spoiling it, but I'll do my best. Nuclear war between Russia and the US breaks out and a handful of people including the President, Secret Service people, White House staff and some visitors to the White House for a Medal of Honor ceremony manage to escape the carnage by being launched into space in nuclear powered space ships in the vein of Project Orion. From there, they watch the destruction of Earth. The onboard computers monitor the conditions on Earth and are programmed to bring them back down when radiation has reached a safe level and the atmosphere is breathable. Imagine their surprise when a few hours after the whole thing starts, the escape ships start their descent back to Earth.

What they return to is a scorched Earth filled with the living dead. These are not Romero zombies (or even Boyle zombies.) In fact, I hesitate to call them zombies at all - too many of the canonical zombie rules are broken. But like the zombies of Keene's The Rising and City of the Dead, they really do work despite all the rule breaking even though they couldn't be more different.

Saying any more about the plot really would spoil it, so I'll stop there. The subtitle for Torment is "a novel of dark horror" and they are NOT kidding. The body count is high and the gore factor, while not off the charts, is quite elevated as well. Reading this book was like peeling back layers on an onion. Just when you thought you had it all figured out, the book would take a hard right turn and confound your expectations yet again. This is a good thing. While many zombie story cliches are present, the most prominent being the constant running from danger, the people, places and things encountered during the running more than make up for it.

While being sold as a zombie novel, I think it's more accurately qualifies as post-apocalyptic fiction that happens to feature undead people of sorts. While I am as serious as a heart attack about zombie rules for the most part, I am not so anal that I can't appreciate different takes on my most beloved of all monsters. What Torment delivers on is scares and that's good enough for me.

One thing I found kind of funny in reading reviews of Torment on both Amazon and Goodreads was that many people declared the book "fundamentalist" and "too Christian." I didn't get this vibe at all. While there is definitely a spiritual component of the novel (to say one little bit more will completely spoil it), I didn't find it to be heavy-handed at all.

Bishop is a writer to watch. I've said before that novels involving any form of the undead are a tough nut to crack because the visuals are so important. Bishop, like Keene before him, makes up for the lack of visuals in a crisp writing style and compelling narrative. In a world in which horror novels are 90% less-than-satisfying, I am happy to report that Torment is more than worth any horror (or zombie) fan's time.

Buy it here - you won't regret it. And to quote the book, you're ready.

Zombies of a different color

Lance tweeted to me tonight that he was watching the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead which, for those that don't know, features a zombie baby. This got me to thinking - most zombies in zombie movies are interchangeable. They're slow (or fast, depending on the movie), decomposing, bloody and looking for human flesh to consume. It's not like them to stand out in the zombie horde. But there are some that have - zombie baby being one of them. Here's some other ones I thought of.

1) Nurse Zombie (Dawn of the Dead, 1978)
Nurse Zombie is easily the most memorable zombie from the original Dawn of the Dead. However, I've never been able to figure out what a nurse was doing at the mall in full uniform. Did she do the zombie shuffle from a nearby hospital? Was she at the uniform shop? The world may never know.

2) Zombie Dixieland Band (Land of the Dead, 2004)
Dawn of the Dead may feature the only zombie pie-fight in cinematic history, but 2004's Land of the Dead does it one better by having what, to my knowledge, is the only zombie Dixieland band. In the opening moments of the movie, you see zombies in a park gazebo with a trumpet, a trombone and a saxaphone all trying to play the instruments as if they were still living. I don't remember tons about that movie, but the zombie Dixieland band really stuck with me.

3) Hare Krishna Zombie (Dawn of the Dead, 1978)
Another rather unforgettable member of the undead mall walking club in Dawn of the Dead, Hare Krishna zombie helps us to remember that yes, this movie was made in the 70s. The only thing that gives away his zombie nature is his shuffling gate and faint blue skin. And although it's been a while since I've seen the movie, I'm pretty sure that he's the one that first finds the heroes' hiding place although he ultimately does no harm. There is an action figure of this that would go quite well with my Fly Boy Zombie and Plaid Shirt Zombie from the same movie, but alas, I have not yet purchased it.

4) Half-a-girl Zombie (The Walking Dead, 2010)
One of the first real zombies we see in the pilot of The Walking Dead, I was amazed to find out that this zombie, who is nothing but head, arms and torso was pretty much entirely done with CG. There is an actress there, made up and snarling and what not, but the bottom half of her has been green-screened out a la Lt. Dan's legs in Forrest Gump. When we originally watched it, we weren't sure if that was an amputee or if it was CG or if somehow they had cleverly disguised her lower half so as to give the image of a legless zombie. It showed that the best kind of CG is the CG you don't know is there.

5) Corpse Bride (Corpse Bride, 2005)
If you really think about it, Corpse Bride is a zombie movie. It's not one in the traditional sense, but the Corpse Bride is a reanimated corpse, right? And Scraps, the all bones dog - is that a zombie dog? Animals are usually immune to zombification, but as Brian Keene has pointed out, anything's possible when it comes to living things being zombified. The Corpse Bride makes this list if, for no other reason, than because she is the best looking zombie I've ever seen.

Did I miss any?

Look who's evil now!

Horror and comedy frequently go hand in hand. The Nightmare on Elm Street sequels prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt. But the combination of horror, comedy and musical theater is a little bit rarer of a bird. Over the weekend I got a chance to finally see Evil Dead: The Musical at Kansas City's Off Center Theater with my friend Jason who had traveled from Boston to Kansas City for a conference. I'm not really sure where to start with this musical except that it was funny and campy as well as being a complete gross-out. So in other words, it was a total win.

Evil Dead: The Musical is based on the Sam Raimi films Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn. Both films deal with the summoning of demons by reading from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis or The Book of the Dead. The musical cherry picks the best parts from each of the movies and creates its own plot line, punctuated by Broadway style show tunes that are as funny as they are profane. The five college students on their way to an old abandoned cabin in the woods have NO idea what what awaits them.

In addition to singing and dancing and very bad puns, there is a shit-ton of fake stage blood that gets used during this show. And not content to just let the players participate in the fun of being covered in blood and gore, each production of Evil Dead: The Musical designates the first several rows of the audience as the "splatter zone." Sit there at your own peril, because as the program said, they will do everything in their power to make sure that they get the blood on you. For the show we went to, there was a row of folding chairs right up by the stage and then the first 2 rows of permanent seating were covered in trash bags. I had heard about this and Jason and I both decided it would be better to NOT sit in the splatter zone. Unfortunately, I heard about the splatter zone AFTER I had ordered the tickets, so our seat in row B was clearly going to be splattered. I called the ticket office mid-September and got our seats changed to row C which they assured me would not be in the splatter zone. Well, imagine our surprise when we got there and there were trash bags over our seats. It all worked out - we talked to a manager and they seated us in house seats clear of the splatter zone (and also free of seats in front of us which is nice for two 6 foot tall people.) And it was a good thing - the people in the splatter zone were covered in blood. It looked like people had been murdered.

The cast was good and the songs were well sung. What I wasn't expecting was how much dancing there actually was! I'd have dropped over dead after the first number had I been in that cast. No wonder they were all in terrific shape. I was especially impressed with Sam Wright's performance as Ash - the physical stamina it must have taken for that role is a bit mind boggling. He is in virtually every scene of the show and sings in most of the songs. I was not as impressed with the guy who played Scott, which made the performance of what has always been my favorite song from the musical "What the Fuck Was That?" a bit of an anticlimax. He didn't sing it as much as he shouted it and after having listened to the cast recording of that song for the last 2 years, I was a bit let down.

We also found it very odd that the theater was in what was basically a mall, but it all worked out because we basically just hung out around Crown Center for most of the day while we waited for the show to start. It was a good venue for the show and the audience really ate it up.

The next morning, I e-mailed my friend Matt and told him that if there is ever another semi-local performance of this show, we must go. I would totally go again but this time, I think I want to sit in the splatter zone. They even had "I survived the Splatter Zone" t-shirts! I did buy a T-shirt at the show - my one souvenir from my trip to Kansas City this weekend. Here it is:


The one I really wanted had the hand making an "L" in the Evil Dead logo a la the Glee logo. The tag line was "Like Glee, only dead." The other one said "Evil Dead: The Musical - a fucking good time!" which I just didn't feel comfortable buying.

The show is not going to win Tonys but who says it has to. It was a bloody (pardon the pun) good time and really, what more can you wish for from something called Evil Dead: The Musical?

Year of 25 Books: #13 - City of the Dead

I am three books behind in blogging which puts my grand total for the year up to 15. Only 10 more to go in the last 12 weeks of the year. This seems like a tall order and truthfully, it is. But if I read everything else as fast as I read Brian Keene's City of the Dead, it should be a snap. I started this book Saturday night, read 280 pages on Sunday and finished it after work on Monday. It was that good.

City of the Dead is the sequel to Brian Keene's Bram Stoker Award winning novel The Rising. I read The Rising a couple of years back after I picked it up at a used bookstore here in town. I knew that it was a zombie book, but I was hesitant. Zombie fiction is a notoriously tough nut to crack. Most of what little I have bothered to read has been dreadfully boring. Even World War Z didn't really do it for me, which is really saying something. But The Rising, simply put, rocked. It was gory and scary and intriguing and had a killer opening scene. It had zombified animals as well as humans. And these zombies were not your typical slow, lumbering Romero zombies, but they also weren't the Danny Boyle 28 Days Later fast zombies either. These zombies were smart. They could talk. They could drive cars. They could shoot guns. They broke ALL the cardinal zombie rules according to Dan. It was a recipe for failure that instead, served up something so delectable that I could hardly believe it.

City of the Dead picks up right where The Rising left off, and because it had been so long since I had read The Rising, I had to go read the plot recap at Wikipedia. With it all coming back to me now, I dove into City of the Dead. A group of survivors of the zombie apocalypse has made their way from West Virginia to New Jersey in search of Jim Thurmond's young son. By the time City of the Dead opens, the undead population outnumbers the living by a staggering proportion. However, these zombies are not what they seem. As it turns out, a particle acceleration experiment has ripped an interdimensional hole in the universe which has allowed a demon race known as the Siqqusim to enter our world and possess the dead. The fact that the reanimated dead are possessed by demons is a cool idea and goes a long way toward explaining the intelligence that the zombie hordes possess.

Surrounded on all sides in the suburban New Jersey home where they find Thurmond's son, Danny, they make a narrow escape (an absolutely thrilling series of scenes) that eventually leads them to lower Manhattan and Ramsey Tower. It's designer, billionaire Darren Ramsey, declares it to be completely impregnable and therefore, the perfect fortress against the 99.9% of the Big Apple that is now rotting and possessed by Siqqusim. Clearly, Ramsey has never heard of the unsinkable Titanic because the building is not quite as sealed off as it might appear, especially once the leader of the Siqqusim, Ob, starts rallying heavy artillery and tanks.

The chain of events in a novel like City of the Dead is completely predictable, but you're not there to be surprised by the plot. In the hands of a lesser writer, it'd be a tosser. But Keene has mastered this kind of writing. Instead of being bored by the predictable plot and characters that veer a little too hard into cliche at times, I was intrigued not so much by what-happens-next as by how what-happens-next happens. The smart zombies really work even though for me, they really shouldn't. Their intentions are clear (kill all humans by whatever means possible) and they really are pure and unadulterated evil. The writing is graphic and bloody and gory. So vivid are the descriptions of what's taking place in the novel that what's usually necessary to really seal the deal with zombies - the visuals - are rendered superfluous. You can see it in your head. And that is why good zombie fiction is so hard to find. Usually, you need the visuals. With Keene's zombie novels, you simply don't.

It's been a long time since I read a book this quickly - it really held my attention and interest. It's not great literature or anything, but who says a good book has to be? Fans of zombies and horror fiction in general will certainly enjoy both The Rising and City of the Dead. They are leaps and bounds better than some of the other mid-level horror fiction I've read and the best zombie fiction I've read. Of note, Keene has also written another unrelated zombie novel, Dead Sea, which features more traditional slow zombies which is a hell of a read as well.

I was originally supposed to read this book last summer when we were on vacation, but it disappeared part way through the trip and I couldn't find it. I found it under the driver's side seat when I was looking for my sunglasses. Clearly, we need to clean the car more frequently.

A quandary

As many know, I am a huge zombie fan. As many also know, I don't really identify as Christian. Still, I really do find the renaming of Easter "Zombie Jesus Day" mildly offensive. I don't know if that's 30+ years of Lutheranism getting me or what the deal is. Mostly, I just think it's pretty tactless.

Here ends the rant, if you can call it that. Mostly, I don't feel well enough to rant about much of anything!

Plants vs. Zombies vs. Anna

So as previously discussed, we all trekked down to Des Moines late this morning and picked up our iPad. Heidi loves it - it's just the kind of eReader that she wanted. She's already loaded a bunch of eBooks she's been meaning to read into the iBook library and there they sit, complete with covers and the whole nine yards. I've been sitting here tonight using it to beta-read a novella she just finished writing which she describes as "the smutty Snow White."

When we were at the Apple Store today, I picked up one of the demo iPads and was messing around with it and played a little Plants vs. Zombies, which released an HD iPad edition today. For those that don't know, PvZ is exactly what it claims to be - a game in which you defend your home against hordes of undead zombies with nothing more than garden plants. The plants range from simple sunflowers that generate sun to help you plant more seeds, to "pea" shooters and "cherry bombs." It's actually quite a clever game, so I blew $9.99 on it in the app store. It looks a little something like this.



The minute I fired it up, Anna scrambled over to the chair to see what I was up to. She was immediately in love with it, always eager to see which seed pack we would get at the end of each level. Before too long, we were taking turns - she'd play a level, then I'd play a level - until we got to one that we couldn't pass so we called it quits and watched The Muppets Take Manhattan on the Netflix box. When I went out to the kitchen to find some food, she followed me and I knew something was up. I asked her if she was spooked by something to which she immediately replied "NO!" but as I pressed her, asking her if that game had freaked her out, she confessed that it had. She wanted to play it, but was torn between her desire to play it and her general level of discomfort with anything remotely scary. She declared that she didn't want to play the game anymore, which I will admit was a bummer, but one that I was not really going to push knowing how she reacts to things like that.

I was worried about bedtime because for Anna, that's when everything that scares her comes out. But as she was getting ready for bed, we were talking about the game again, and she said "Dad, let me see that game again." to which I replied "Are you sure? I thought that game scared you." She insisted, and we looked at it and when she saw all the plants we still had to unlock and remembered how much fun we had she made a declaration: "Dad, I'm not scared of that game. It's just a cartoon and it was fun. We're going to keep on playing it." We then talked about how ridiculous zombies are because, without a brain to tell your muscles what to do, there's no way movement is possible.

This makes me happy on two levels - the first and most important being that my daughter, who really does get scared of a lot of things like that, faced her fears instead of giving into them. And secondly, this means we get to keep on playing because honestly, it was a hell of a good time. The game paid for itself in the hour or so we played it tonight, and I think we have many more hours ahead of us.

That is, if we can wrestle the iPad away from Heidi.

Year of 25 Books: #1 - Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

You might recall that about a month ago I was bemoaning the fact that I just don't read as much as I used to. It was at that time that I laid down the challenge (mostly to myself) to read 25 books this year, allowing only 5 of those to be rereads. I also pledged to blog about each book. In so doing, I managed to rope my friends P. Viktor and Bess into the act as well. P. Viktor (whose blog I have been reading since I randomly stumbled across it at the time of the release of "Hung Up" in 2005) has already managed to read and blog about two. I know that Bess has read several in January, but I have yet to see any blogging proof to substantiate this claim. ;)

I only read one book in January, which puts me behind right out of the gate. The book I chose was a Christmas gift - one I had asked for - Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith. When I first heard of this book, I thought that there was absolutely no way that they could screw this up. Zombie mayhem set in Jane Austen's classic story? I've been fond of Pride & Prejudice ever since Heidi and I watched the famous BBC miniseries on DVD nearly 8 years ago. I even liked the updated Keira Knightley version that was released in theaters in 2005. Considering my love all things zombie, surely the changes could only make it that much better.

Surely, I couldn't have been more mistaken. P&P&Z starts out strong. Much remains of Austen's original story, but many things have been turned on their head. Subtle dialogue changes and the insertion of zombies into Regency England seemed clever. Making Elizabeth Bennet, one of the most beloved heroines of British literature into a slayer of the undead was an interesting turn.

Sadly, the novelty wore off very quickly. As one of my friends who tried to read it and abandoned it said, the book is like an extended joke, one that remains long after it has worn out its welcome. The longer the story goes on, the more cracks in the story telling begin to appear. It became very obvious to me where Grahame-Smith was tacking on zombie references to Austen's original passages. As the story progressed, I found that I didn't really buy Elizabeth Bennet as a zombie killer and just kind of wished I was reading the original Pride & Prejudice. It suffered a fate worse than death (or undeath) for a book: the simple act of reading it became like doing homework. I just wanted it to be done. The book felt lazy which was not what I was expecting at all.

There were parts that worked. One of my favorite parts of the original Pride & Prejudice is the appearance of Mr. Collins and his eventual marriage to Charlotte Lucas. I enjoyed the zombie take on Charlotte's "marriage of convenience" to Mr. Collins and was one of the few points at which I laughed at the turn of events. I also liked the transformation of Lady Catherine DeBourgh into a zombie killer. For some reason, that played as more believable than Elizabeth Bennet.

As I finished the book, I realized that this book really is the literary equivalent of a Weird Al song. It's clever at first, only to become annoying and make you want to listen to the original song instead. I definitely was skimming in the last 50 pages. As a fan of both zombies and the original story of Pride & Prejudice, I felt like this book barfed all over both genres in the name of making a quick buck. Zombie fans will not find enough brain-eating to be satisfied, and Austen fans will find the alteration of their beloved story abhorrent.

So yeah, I can't imagine I'll be reading the to-be-published prequel coming out in March. I might see the upcoming movie, but only at the dollar theater.

Not sleeping

I'm getting ready to work the overnight shift over the weekend and consequently, I'm up in the middle of the night with the hopes that I will sleep well into the morning tomorrow. I have turned off Gmail notifier so that it doesn't bother me, as well as the phone. I find it funny that Gmail notifier was my primary concern vs. the phone, even though the phone is much more likely to wake me up.

Anyway, I usually worry about not being able to stay awake on the night before I start the overnight shifts, but tonight, no worries, because I just got done watching the movie Quarantine, which was, from what I understand, pretty much a frame-by-frame remake of the Spanish horror movie REC which had been released about 6 months before Quarantine.

Holy. Crap.

I know that the movie was out last year, but I never saw it until just tonight. Here's the trailer but be warned, it gives away all the best bits. (Heidi, not that you would, but don't watch this trailer.)



The basic gist of the story is that news reporter Angela Vidal and her cameraman are doing a segment on the night shift of the L.A. fire department. They end up on a call to an apartment complex in which they are inexplicably sealed in by the police department. Through a turn of events I won't spoil here, much zombie carnage ensues. As I was watching this movie, I was kind of silently (and sometimes not so silently) mocking it for not being particularly scary and having characters that are, as my wife would refer to them, too stupid to live. You don't really get to know them all that well - some of them I never did learn their name - but that's hardly the point as they are pretty much Bantha zombie pudu and you know it.

Very Blair Witch-ish in nature, I found myself liking the movie in spite of its paper thin plot and idiotic characters. And then, in the last 20 minutes, it gets VERY scary. It doesn't hurt that the lights go out, and that everything is seen in shadows. Even the light on the camera is broken (in one of the movie's best scares) and then the rest of the movie is shot in night vision. It's these last 20 minutes that really redeem the film and keep it from being just another forgettable scary movie.

It's a pretty capable zombie flick, even though one could argue that they aren't really zombies. Rather, they are much more in the vein of the 28 Days Later zombies - infected rather than reanimated dead. These distinctions matter, especially to people like me.

So now that it's 2:30AM, I need to try to sleep. But every time I close my eyes, I see those images in the night vision camera and, well, hopefully I can get SOME sleep.

Watch it - it's streaming on Netflix for those of you that do the Netflix thing.

First person

Boing Boing posted this, and Heidi sent it to me without even watching it. She didn't know if it would be any good, and really, it's pretty good. Not orgasmically fantastic or anything, but still. It is Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World" over the top of video from the first-person shooter zombie game Left 4 Dead.



I do not, nor have I really ever, gotten into first person shooter games. It's not that I'm opposed to the bloody gore and violence that is rampant in pretty much all of them - I'm not. My biggest beef with them is that I SUCK AT THEM. My brother Ryan is the undisputed first-person shooter champion in our family. There was not a single one of those kinds of games that he did not try out and eventually beat.

My dad says that the reason Ryan is so good at those games is that he is very spatial and has the map of each level in his head. I would agree with that statement, but I also just think his interest level in them is higher than mine. I am kind of interested in games like Doom and Halo in the abstract, but the execution of the game is infinitely less satisfying than I think it will be. I'm impatient with the controls and for they always seem so poorly lit that gameplay is just not what it should be. Mostly, I play for 5 minutes, fumbling around in the dark and then get shot to smithereens by some unseen enemy. Not so much fun if you ask me.Even Alien vs. Predator failed to get me into FPS games.

Well, when we were in California, the friends we were staying with had Left 4 Dead. I watched Stephen play the game one night, and believe me, if any game is going to get me to play a FPS game, it will be Left 4 Dead. The basic premise is to shoot the hell out of zombies and get to a designated "safe zone" in each level. What is really cool about the game is that it is NOT just mindless shooting. There's a back story and incredible attention to detail. It also has a level of AI that controls the difficulty and events, so that it's not just the same game over and over again. The zombies just keep coming and keep coming. They are relentless, which is what they should be. They're zombies after all (or, more accurately, infected. But they did die so they are techincally zombies.)

Alas, no matter how much I want to try this game, it is not to be. My computer doesn't even meet the minimum processor speed for it - something which I presumed while watching Stephen play it on his state-of-the-art gaming system.

So if I seem down on FPS games, I guess I am a little bit. But I did manage to play one FPS game all the way through - and that was Wolfenstein 3D. It is incredibly lame by today's standards, but I sure had a hell of a good time with it back in the summer of 1994 when I played it through to the end, with my sister sitting with me in my bedroom while we listened to Olivia Newton-John's Soul Kiss and Basia's The Sweetest Illusion. Whenever I listen to The Sweetest Illusion, I always think of Wolfenstein 3D.

If I only had a brain

I seriously WANT this shirt.

28 Smurfs Later

Smurfs episode in which angry Smurfs are created by biting + score from 28 Days Later = (near) classic.



(via BuyZombie.com)

Finally...

...a book Heidi and I can both get into.

The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! Or so says the tag line. Although I will admit that it could be absolutely terrible, you know I'll read it!

You provide the monster

My friend Matt gave me what is probably the least expected of Christmas gifts this year. To those who followed Nerdery Week, it's no secret that I have quite the collection of horror action figures. Aliens, zombies, spiders - the monsters are there in great number. Matt found the missing element that complemented the monsters perfectly.

Horrified B-Movie Victims!

The back of the box actually says "We provide the screaming hordes! You provide the monster!"

I got them set up yesterday, and they fit in just as well as I expected they would. Behold.

Perfection.

Best. Wife. Ever.

Would you look at this? Ask, and I received.

(I am also pretty sure my hair has never been longer. And I love it.)

And as if that were not enough, she got me something for Christmas that 1) I didn't know I wanted and 2) I didn't even know existed!


It's the Region 2 DVD of the KylieX 2008 World Tour! We watched the lion's share of it this afternoon and say what you will about Kylie, she knows how to put on a show. It is so detailed and intricate that it is nearly in league with a Madonna show. Too bad she will probably never tour the States (talk about a show I would travel ANYWHERE in the continental US to see), and if she did, she wouldn't be able to fill an arena bigger than C.Y. Stephens save in the most metropolitan areas. Not exactly the best place for a spectacle such as what is contained on that DVD.

Here's one of my faves - "LoveBoat" - even incorporating some of the theme from "The Love Boat." When Kylie emerges after the lengthy intro, Anna says, "Dad, she has Dolly Parton hair!" WTF?



A really great Christmas around our house. I hope everyone else had a good one! I also wanted to take a moment to stop and thank everyone who stops by this blog and reads my words. And I want to especially thank everyone who arrives here looking for a picture of Mbwun. That is by far my most popular post thanks to a Google Image Search.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

You Are Screwed

I totally want this shirt. Heidi, are you listening?

(a closer look at the design)

My favorite part is the "You Are Screwed" at the center of the shirt.

Real blogging soon, I promise. I have a bunch of stuff I want to write, but neither the time nor the brains to actually do it.