So is ANYBODY actually buying such beyond boring
“pseudo – zombie -no ideas -no plot -must sell anyway”
“books” …Odd book that is “produced” , not sure that they
play from their fucking heart, very VERY strongly recommended by Bill Hicks .

They’re almost as bad as mediocre pupils of internet forums attempting, in bad form, to create a hackneyed composite of the Internet nerd’s doe-eyed bogeyman. How and at what point in time did “goons” and other sign-identifiers creep onto the Exile and wrap their slimy fingers along its neck.

Go away. “At the height of fashion,” in your “flame-decaled jorts,” along with the rest of your merciless “cheetoh-stained” cliches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N1_0SUGlDQ

Umm, not it’s not. “I Am Legend” (the book) is. By Richard Matheson. And any discussion of the subject that does not include it is lacking.

Matheson’s creatures were a hybrid Zombie/Vampire which makes it even cooler.

There have been at least three movies based on the novella. Starring: Vincent Price, Charles Heston, and Wll Smith.

The latest one sucked and ruined the story. But that’s what Will Smith does for a living. The other two were okay.

The book is overrated and certainly overhyped by the typical nerd who thinks paying $10 for Lowtax’s thousand dollar chair is alright and bacon with Cheetos and Red Alert Mountain Dew is the best food ever.

If it wasn’t for people who think cheap silk screen shirts with video game charecters were the height of fashion, the book wouldn’t have even been a blip on the radar.

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/diablo-cody-screenplay.php

Anyways, what in the hell is it with self-important agents of justice and equality that always try to make monsters into misunderstood victims? The True Blood books takes the bold stance that bigotry is BAD! The author honestly believes that she is writing ground breaking social commentary. “Sure, vampires drink our blood, are super powered, could kill us in the blink of an eye, and run a secret society that plots to make us their slaves, but other than that they’re people just like you and me and anyone who would treat them different is just MEAN!”

As far as Romero, the guy’s first 2 movies were movies were great for the time (Night of the Living Dead as horror, Dawn of the Dead as comedy), but they’ve aged horribly and only snooty film buffs will claim they hold any non-historical value today. The guy had zero social commentary in NotLD until people started calling his statement on racism “genius” when the black guy gets shot. He latched onto that and his movies got progressively more unbearable. This trend in zombie movies finally culminated with the godawful 28 Weeks Later (us Americans deserve a lot of shit for Iraq, but nothing as horrible as that movie).

FACT: The 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake was not only vastly superior to the original, it is the best zombie movie to date (precisely BECAUSE it dispenses with commentary). Don’t let any counter culture film majors tell you different.

Of course in the episode, Moulder (sic), had to say something oh so clever about zombies eating people because of some stupid metaphor.

Well, I turned to my brother, and I said, “Do you know why zombies eat people? Because it’s horrible. It’s horrible to have this shambling, stinking thing, ripping you apart and eating your flesh while you are still conscious. That’s why. No other explanation.”

Incidentally, the mall was an excellent place to wait out the apocalypse. In fact, that was the only problem with it, the biker gang wanted it too.

Anyway, if there is a zombie-comedy apocalypse coming, at least we have decades of great zombie fair to fall back on. Everything from Fulci’s Zombie 2, Serpent and the Rainbow, to 28 Days Later. I notice DVDs are going cheap on Amazon, and there is always the Internet. Do what a zombie movie survivor would do, stock up and wait it out!

Oh, and they are doing a The Goon CGI movie, that might be pretty good. I have hopes. Even the undead fear… The Goon. If not, well… there have been shockingly bad zombie movies before… and there will be again…

More importantly, I want to know what Eileen Jones thinks about dinner. Pick you up at 10?

See. Cornball humor gives you cancer. Anyone who laughed at that now has non-hodgkins lymphoma. Congratulations!

WWZ does that… it is a lengthy, detailed vision about the world -almost- ending (for us), and how does it look after that. Even if I disagree with certain outcomes (you can tell he is big into the whole “Israel is inherently good” scam), I devoured what Mr.Brooks served and asked for seconds.

I am not steeped in zombie lore, I find Romero entertaining, but not a god. His works are good and set an intelligent and well constructed foundation for the modern zombie mythology, but so long as the zombies are slow, his works are not a holy canon to which all other zombie works must aspire to copy.

WWZ does a good job constructing a realistic image of how a zombie apocalypse could happen and what would follow. It is not a horror novel by any stretch of the imagination but it is excellent speculative fiction.

It’s definitely more about the comic possibilities of zombie survival than anything else, but he does at least touch on the horror. (I’m not sure if it’s possible to write a truly scary zombie *book* anyway).

And yeah there’s a fair whack of obvious satire, but it’s deliberate and a little more clever than zombies lining up outside a USMC recruiting office.

Definitely part of the comedy sub-genre though – if the idea of an 80 y.o. blind Japanese monk living in the forest decapitating zombies with a staff appeals then give it a go… if you want apocalyptic terror stick to the (old) movies.

1. I agree with Ames that the sword is mightier than the pen. In fact, there’s such an availability of swords in this world that any pen, no matter how mighty, should not strut around acting deadly, if we take the paradigm seriously.

2. As for the supposedly ur-deadly pen, early punk rock, I’m deeply unimpressed by it, and I think its rapid cooptation speaks to its status as a paper tiger from the get-go.

3. Connected to this, the successive failure of supposedly dangerous, edgy art/music/literary/what have you movements to actually draw any literal or figurative blood has induced a quite sensible feeling of fatigue with the whole notion. People are sick of edge because it’s almost always so fake. Turning to schmaltz is a bad answer, and our generation’s turn towards schmaltz deserves castigation, but the castigation would have a better sting if it didn’t come from people who still think Sid Vicious can destroy the world.

It’s time the face the post-WWI art and/or thought as weapon paradigm is utterly spent. We’re flogging a dead horse at this point. It’d be better (though less cool-looking at parties, which I have an inkling is the point) to get behind work that’s perceptive, whether it has edge or no. There’s plenty of art and thought in this world hailed as genius that’s utterly blind, as Dolan points out, and when the Exile goes after that stuff, then it’s worth it. The rest is amusingly-written pointlessness.