Bad Zombies vs. Worse Zombies

I rose from the recliner in my friends' living room and said goodnight. Before I left, Cal handed me a copy of Return of the Living Dead. For a beat I studied the back of the DVD. Zombies devouring teenagers seemed likely. “Resurrection Cemetery” struck me as a conspicuous name for a burial site. I faked a frown and pointed to a tiny graphic at the bottom corner of the case.

“I don't know if I should watch this one. It's rated-R.”

“Hell, it should be NC-17,” Cal chuckled.

Somehow, his wife and couch-partner Ophelia managed to nod in agreement and shake her head ruefully in the same gesture.

“We watched it with our daughter. I had to cover her eyes for roughly a third of the movie.”

Feeling satisfied, I nodded and brought the case to my forehead and flicked it to mime a salute.

“Still glad I've never reproduced,” I said. “Bye.”

###

Released in 1984, it's a wonder Return of the Living Dead dodged that NC-17 rating. In addition to so much gory brain-eating (for the Returned zombies gorge not human flesh, instead they hunger only for the pink goo inside our skulls), a redheaded vixen strips bare at Resurrection Cemetery, gyrates and poses atop a concrete crypt, and remains nude throughout most of her remaining scenes—most notably after she returns as a zombie hellbent on destroying a cart-toting hobo. Her name is Trash. Her boyfriend's name is Suicide.

Here's the deal with Trash: she's trashy (except when terrified and/or getting killed). The deal with Suicide is that he's suicidal (and he's a whiny jerk about it).

Other mayhem worth relaying includes a bevy of cops getting tricked, ambushed, and decimated. Later, when it becomes clear that he is doomed, a man tearfully musters the will to crawl into a cremation-oven before he can turn into an undead psychopath.

Along with the twisted appeal (assuming you care to behold such atrocities in a movie), Return adds a vexing wrinkle to the zombie formula popularized in 1968's Night of the Living Dead: the zombies of the Reagan-age are almost indestructible. They are impervious to pickaxe impalings of the brain. They rage undauntedly after their heads have been sawed from their bodies. Their dismembered and diced body parts can somehow still gyrate with bad intentions. The only way to destroy the '80s zombies is to burn and incinerate them, to reduce them to ash that can no longer put up a fight.

Upon watching the scene in which gruesome things are done to the head of a zombie by two terrified workers at an army surplus store (one that, yes, handles skeletons,the occasional corpse, and dog specimens that have been split in half), I was nonplussed by the monster's perseverance. In fact, for a while I felt dismayed. Betrayed. I truly thought I understood zombies—which is a strange conviction to have about a ghoul that doesn't exist—and I was loath to see the laws of zombie-hood so utterly defied.

I had grown accustomed to watching the undead get re-killed when their noggins get skewered. At the age of 29, I was startled to learn that, unlike the zombies featured in everything from Night of the Living Dead to Shaun of the Dead to Resident Evil (which surprisingly doesn't include “Dead” in its title), someone had conceived a different brand of zombies: one that could kill you after you had just blown its head off.

In an hour and a half of Return, a single zombie is destroyed by the survivors. The humans don't stand a chance in the battle of Louisville. All they can do is board windows and doors shut to keep the relentless monsters at bay. Their attacks, whether with sledgehammers or guns, only serve to knock zombies down or make them reel backward temporarily. When they flail and hack with lead pipes at arms groping through windows, it's in vain.

A second mockery of the rules of zombiehood gives the damn Reagan-zombies another advantage: These monsters are smart and articulate. Freshly undead cops and paramedics manage to respond to calls on CB radios to order backup (which is later ambushed and eaten). The top half of a cadaverous old woman delivers a poignant speech to explain why her lot craves for brains. Zombiehood in Return of the Living Dead does not entail the dumb yet determined zombies featured in everything from Dawn of the Dead to The Walking Dead to Zombieland. If anything, Returning as a zombie can do wonders for one's IQ, as is the case with Freddy, a rare punk/jock hybrid whose life and tender disposition fade to black in the arms of his high school sweetheart. When Freddy returns and attacks her inside the mortician's chapel, rampaging like a linebacker at a Black Flag show, he speaks with the psychological malice of Hannibal Lector.

The name of that eBook? Why, it's More Stories, and Additional Stories. 

Phony Write-in Candidates are No Joke

                                             ^ My former guidance counselor, Mr. Dinkle. Wink.^

 As much as I hate to admit it, once every four years, in November, politics become a more relevant topic than Thanksgiving and its hallmarks of gorging, bloating, self-loathing aftermath, and watching football. The presidential election is a pretty big deal. In 2012, when I wrote this story for a now-defunct newspaper, incumbent Barack Obama ran against Republican Mitt Romney. I did not tell anyone who to vote for, but I did remind everyone that, either way, they'd be voting for a man with a ridiculous name. Barack vs. Mitt? Spellcheck systems everywhere were overhauled because of those two. Holy shit, we went from George vs. John to Barack vs. Mitt in the span of eight years. Crazy.

Anyway, without overdoing the vigor, I'm a proponent of voting—if only because apathy doesn't mean a whole lot and choice at least counts for something. The other bit of advice I have on voting is to avoid writing-in a candidate whose name is fake and crude. The first time I voted, as I peered down at the ballot, I came across an unopposed candidate for Assistant to the County Treasurer's Make-up Lady or whatever the hell it was, and I opted to vote for my own candidate: Hugh Jass.

In retrospect, that was immature. I made a mockery of a hallowed right of democracy. Plus, Hugh Jass didn't even win. So I threw my vote away on that one!

In an effort to combat write-in candidate shenanigans, I reestablished contact with my high school guidance counselor, Mr. Dinkle, whose outrage on the issue I recalled from my senior class election. (I found Mr. Dinkle on LinkedIn. As a side note, he also sells defective bobbleheads during the summer.) I told Mr. D that he was right when he spoke out against phony write-ins at that assembly all those years ago. Then I asked him to offer his thoughts on prank-voting. Mr. D agreed. Here's his take on the “Hugh Jass Menace.”

###

Mr. Dinkle:

Thank you, readers of Fond du Lac's Nite Life Ink. Whether you've been drawn to the pictures of attractive young bartenders or you nearsightedly mistook this paper for a copy of Maturity Times, I implore you to read my plea.

As Nicholas alluded, the 2001 election for school government was a sordid ordeal. Initially, the vice presidency was won by “The Dude,” a hippie long-hair and bad influence from the film The Big Lebowski. “The Dude” was to serve under president “Party Boy.” The look of disappointment I gave that particular student body was nothing compared to the frowns I have expressed to senior classes in recent years. Standards have indeed fallen.

In my time as guidance counselor and overseer of student government, I have seen phony write-in candidates sully many elections. The fake names keep getting filthier and more difficult to understand, too. Why, the 2004 class wanted to elect “LeBong James” as their class treasurer. Three years later, the majority determined that the person most qualified to be class secretary was “Nellie Fartado.” Last year, “Anderson Pooper” was an unstoppable force on ballots until I started threatening to expel kids.

Student government functions as a microcosm of governing the world at large, and it's no laughing matter to taunt the virtues of free elections. There is NOTHING funny about voting for a made-up guy named “Bob Unghole,” or a fraudulent floozy named “Ho Malone.” Why, when I was a senior, we'd have tarred and feathered a youth if we caught him casting his vote for “Jimmy Farter.” But nowadays, when I tell a gym filled with hundreds of teenagers that “'George W. Bush-Muncher' has been disqualified from the running,” the fools hoot and squeal with glee.

My fellow citizens of this wondrous republic, we must prevent our elections from being corrupted by what Nicholas has boorishly referred to as the “Hugh Jass Menace.” I have lingering nightmares about the announcement I made onstage after the results had been tallied from the class of 2012's election.

“The search for a new president to lead the student body by example is vital to the success of our school. And whom did you elect by popular vote? 'Mike Hawk.' We asked you to elect a beacon of integrity and your answer was 'Mike Hawk.' Unacceptable. 'Mike Hawk' is an embarrassment!”

I tried to get through to them, but for some unconscionable reason, they only laughed harder.

Well, let me tell you something that's not funny at all: I'm tired of telling kids I'm embarrassed by “Mike Hawk.” Whether you're a student at my high school or one of millions whose intent is to help decide the future of our country, I beg you not to entrust your faith in the likes of “Harry Wang,” “Turd Kennedy,” and “Dick Stainy.”

Consider me a man on a journey to get relief from phony write-in candidates. The journey is much longer than a mere 50 yards. You're probably wondering, “Willy Make-It?” If Nicholas and I get enough support from readers like you, then yes, I will make it. We all will.

If we work together, regardless of whether a Republican or a Democrat becomes our next president, Americans can feel proud to keep “Governor Gonads” out of their voting booths.

Patriotically yours,

Mr. Dinkle

Replacement Ref Fires Back

All right, you football-freaks, if you all could stop bickering about how scab-referees cost your favorite team a win, pretty-pretty-please with sugar on top allow me to defend myself and my colleagues. Yes, earlier this year I worked as a replacement ref in the NFL while the real officials were on strike. And I'd like to point out that I'm pretty sure I correctly nailed an Eagles' lineman for a false start, and meanwhile, that Ed Hochuli ref you people suddenly wanna hug did nothing but bench-press a treadmill in his basement. I guess that's gratitude for ya.

          Our best efforts to succeed at the highest level of the reffing trade, under intense pressure and in a very short window of time, may have been criticized, but we weren't as incompetent as some of you ingrates think. While my associates had built their resumes by reffing everything from the Lingerie League to dog shows to pie-eating contests, I'd been busting my hump for decades as an official for a different sport that may cause brain damage: professional wrestling.

          Shortly after I damn-near graduated from high-school, I began my career as an amateur wrestling referee. When I made the jump from amateur to pro-wrestling, it was for two reasons: 1.) When you watch sweaty young men straddle and pin each other enough times, it starts seemin' fruity. 2.) Plus I got fired for “gross ineptitude.”

          Thankfully, the WWF came calling shortly thereafter. Apparently they were impressed by my reputation as a hapless referee and simply blown away by the awful score I got on that IQ test they gave me. My life was transformed in that magical moment when the owner of the company handed me a contract outside of a strip club and groaned, “Shit or get off the pot.” In a matter of weeks I was warning Jake “The Snake” Roberts to put his damn pet snake back in its bag and barking at Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake to stop scaring bad guys with those humongous scissors of his, and the jeers I got from Albuquerque to Tallahassee only toughened my skin. For all officials, our job entails making unpopular calls, and if that means sending young fans of The Undertaker or the Packers home with tears in their eyes while we refs rejoice in their sorrow, then so be it.

          Death-threats don't scare me anymore. I wasn't fazed when I got bundles of hate mail after I reffed that match between Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania V or X or whatever the hell it was. Sure, my critics still insist I had my back turned while Andre hit Hulk in the head with a steel chair (which was an illegal foreign object) because I got distracted by Andre the Giant's evil manager, that I wrongly counted the Hulkster down for the three-count and awarded the match and the championship belt to Andre the Giant. And to those naysayers, here's my rebuttal: My ruling stands. Get over it. Maybe Hulk did get knocked out by that illegal chair as the tape clearly shows and maybe he didn't, but I'm the ref and I didn't see it. So fuck you.

          I didn't become a referee for the approval of my fellow man, or the trophy wives or the money. Hell, I gave up on trophy wives years ago. I earn just enough scratch to shack up with prostitutes once in a while while I'm on the road. And I really don't give a shit if my fellow man disapproves of that.

          Not long after the story broke about the real refs going on strike, I was contacted by the NFL. Once a league official assured me that the gig—however temporary--would pay better than working this year's Summerslam, I was happy to hop aboard the football express. My God, they even held the contract-signing inside an office in New York City! I had to put on a fancy suit and shake hands with big shots and put on deodorant and everything. It felt far more legit than pressing a contract against the back of Bam Bam Bigelow outside of Titty-Titty-Bang-Bang's in Knoxville and signing it with a stripper's eyeliner as I had done to join the WWF.

          Lord knows my first few weeks jobbing as an NFL weren't perfect. On one occasion, I made a series of shadow-puppet gestures 'cause I forgot how to hand-signal a false-start penalty. Some football know-it-all on ESPN called me “substandard,”  but at least the paychecks kept coming. In spite of the bickering from the media and the fans, I finally got the cash to buy that pinball machine I'd had my eye on for so long.

More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook.

Vampire Fight (edit)

^ I still love this picture even though bears don't factor into this column at all. Why is the bear fighting the vampire in the first place? Who cares--sick him, bear!^

I revised this one recently for the October issue of a local paper that I contribute to.

Since the month of October climaxes with Halloween, I decided to write something about ghouls—vampires, in particular. Unlike zombie lore, vampire lore doesn't appeal to me, and so I didn't bother to watch a minute of True Blood or Twilight for an answer to the confounding question about vampires I'll soon be posing. The vampire flick that really sent my mind motoring in circles was the TNT original movie The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice.


The Librarian is awful, but that hardly matters. It depicts the sci-fi adventures of a witty scholar who vacations in New Orleans, where he encounters a plot-line that's basically Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code. The main character shares the wry cleverness of Indiana Jones, but unlike Indy, he lacks prowess in both hand-to-hand and whip-to-sword combat. The librarian relies on a French vampire chick to save him from the attacks of the ex-KGB henchmen who factored into the plot somehow.

The film climaxed with an airborne tussle between Mademoiselle Vampire and Russian Dracula in a New Orleans bayou, and all the while, the librarian just bit his fingernails, shin-deep in a hurricane-ravaged puddle of his own urine. As the vampires grappled with each other, vanishing and reappearing twenty feet aboveground and exchanging punches, I became baffled by the nature of a vampire fight.

When two vampires duke it out, are they determined to sink their teeth into their rival's throat, or do they try to plunge a stake into the heart of the other one? Vampires kill by chomping throats, but they are killed by a stake through the heart. The paradoxical question is: When vampires fight, are they driven by their instinct for killing, or driven by the instinct to kill their opponent? Are they concerned with the only way they know how to slay, or are they concerned with the only way to slay their opponent? For my money, a vampire fight is a real mind-fuck of a stalemate.

It seems fruitless for a vampire to gorge on the jugular of another vampire because the ultimate goal of jugular-gorging is to convert a human into a vampire. A vampire on the hunt is basically an active recruiter for his own kind. There is no point in trying to convert somebody who has already been converted. That's why Jehovah's witnesses leave each other alone, choosing instead to pester all the rational heathens in their neighborhood.

Hypothetically, had Russian Dracula succeeded in turning his enemy's jugular into a geyser of Hawaiian-Punch, his victorious smack talk would've went something like this...

“Yeah, I sucked on that, bitch! Hope you enjoyed those centuries of devilry because I have delivered you from the eternal life of a vampire to...more of the eternal life of a vampire. Dammit, could we just arm-wrestle or something to settle this whole thing? Because I'm CONFUSED.”

Even zombies, the inept brethren of vampires, are smart enough to realize there is no sense in neck-gobbling one of your own. These vampires craning for each other's throats are just tracing the check-mark in a box that has already been checked.

Since I've provided reasons why a vampire biting another vampire's neck is preposterous, you might suspect that, by default, those Transylvanian terrors must break out the wooden stakes when they've got a score to settle among themselves. But that idea, too, can be refuted.

In simplest terms, do you know what sort of a vampire keeps a wooden stake handy at all times, stashed away in a pocket inside his cape or tucked into her lacy garter belt? A SUICIDAL vampire! A vampire brandishing a wooden stake is not a threat to innocent people; it's a monster's cry for help. Next to overdosing on bulbs of garlic, self-inflicted heart-staking has got to be the most common way vampires say goodbye to the cruel underworld.

If a vampire with a wooden stake is not suicidal, the alternative is that he's really stupid. When you've got superhuman powers, it's senseless to always lug around the thing you're vulnerable to. Underneath his red Speedo, Superman does not wear a nut-cup made of Kryptonite. The Wolfman is not equipped with holsters to hold revolvers loaded with silver bullets. The hero and villain in question value self-preservation, unlike a vampire with a wooden stake tucked behind his ear like a pencil.

It seems absurd to have a serious debate about non-existent creatures, but I vaguely recall that I once did that. A devout fan of True Blood and Twilight and probably the Eddie Murphy flick where he plays a vampire in Brooklyn told me that vampires can be killed by decapitation, too. She added that vampire fights typically end in this ghastly fashion.

The notion of killing a vampire by beheading it is nonsense. All make-believe ghouls should have but one fatal vulnerability, and decapitation is the hallmarked method of (re-)killing zombies. The creator of the vampire mythology screwed up when he declared that a bloodsucker can be killed by both a stake through the heart AND decapitation.

The vampire's susceptibility to beheading is worse than just unoriginal; it's also damaging to their stature. As the number of ways a monster can be destroyed goes up, the power of said monster decreases. The main reason why the expression “Life is fragile” is so profound is because death is caused in a multitude of ways for humans. From faulty parachutes to diabetes to backyard wrestling to jerking-off with a noose around your neck like that dude from INXS, we're a very eclectic and creative species when it comes to dying.

Monsters are special because they are so much more elusive of the Grim Reaper than we are. When we hear the somber news that someone we know has unexpectedly passed away, the first question we ask is, “How did it happen?” When a zombie is informed of the (second) death of a fellow zombie, there is no reason to ask this question because they already know how it happened: Decapitation, or obliteration of the brain, if you want to nitpick. When you double the number of ways a creature can be snuffed out, the creature becomes less frightening, more human-like, and more inclined to bitch about how fragile life is.

All this is to say that although beheading one's opponent is probably the ultimate goal in a vampire fight, and even though I'm disappointed in that conclusion, I'm happy to offer some evidence that vampires rank below zombies when it comes to fragility. Vampire lovers, if you insist that your favorite ghoul is also vulnerable to beheading, you're tacitly admitting that zombies—who are typically regarded as dumb and inferior monsters—are in fact tougher and more resilient than vampires.

So, the next time you read about Bram's Dracula, stick THAT in your heart and Stoker it. Logic rules. Zombies drool. And vampires suck.