a whole nother level

Okay, everybody in the whole world scooped me on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I'll give you that... but have you heard about Pride and PREDATOR?!?? Awww yeah! I didn't think so!

So would anyone care to enlighten me as to why literary spoofs have hit such a stride lately? Or why Elton John is involved in them? OR why anyone would be interested in an animated spoof called Gnomeo and Juliet, when they could instead come over to my house and watch the amazing live-action Tromeo and Juliet, featuring Lemmy himself in a narrative role?

Finally, could there possibly be a better vehicle for the resurrection of Jesse "The Body" Ventura's acting career than the role of Mr. Bennet in Pride and Predator? "I ain't got time to raise all these daughters." Or something like that. I suppose Ahnuld would have to be Darcy, but maybe Carl Weathers could play Mr. Collins? Ok, now I'm just getting needlessly excited about this.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

How could I resist?

Incongruously enough, I happen to love zombies and Jane Austen in approximately equal measure.

It's being billed as "The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!" and the Chronicle Books description notes that it "features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action."

I like to think that this will be amazing, because how could a comedy of manners NOT be made better with zombies, right? I also tend to love works of fiction that play off of literary classics, most notably Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series and its playful interpretations of Jane Eyre. But I'm definitely nervous that I might find it awful, as I did with The Illustrated Jane Eyre, which set me back decades in my attempt to "get" and appreciate graphic novels.

Yes, I am an uber-geek.

Big props to my friends who hounded me until I posted this, notably Poppy and Sonya. Also mentioned on the LibraryThing blog (where I am referenced and misquoted, haha), Send More Cops, and many others.

Zombies Road Signs!

Huzzah for hackers in Austin, TX who changed area road signs to warn of a zombie attack.

Apparently it is ridiculously easy to hack road signs, which doesn't actually bother me in the slightest because I have never found their messages to be particularly helpful in dealing with traffic issues.

I remember this happened a few years ago and the hacker programmed in "Klaatu Barada Nikto," which made me happy because to me it's an Army of Darkness reference.

Thanks to Laurie, Stacey, and Scott for sending along the link to this story. You guys rule!!!

Link: Zombie Road Signs

hello kitty zombie cake

Simply incredible! I occasionally catch Debbie's cake designs in the Bake & Destroy Flickr group, which I adore. But this was news to me, and represents a-whole-nother level of awesomeness in cakery. Sent to me by my gorgeous and talented sister. Love it!

Link: Hello Kitty Zombie Cake

catching up

In my lengthy absence from blogging, a TON of great items have been piling up in my inbox. I have no excuse whatsoever because my amazing friends are always sending me fantastic stuff to post, and I am generally just too lazy to do it.

HOWEVER! I now find myself with some serious free time ahead of me, so I intend to work on catching up with awesome zombie news. Stay tuned for multiple posts and keep those updates coming!

Zombies on Ice!

Gaaaaaaaaaah! El Chipps let me know about this event but I just opened the email now, and zombie ice skating starts in a little over an hour!!! As a result, sadly, it looks like I'm going to miss it. This just goes to show why I need to take this blog a little more seriously these days, now that I'm back in the big city and there are actual zombie events to attend. If I just bother to pay a little attention to Chicagoist and Time Out every now and then, I could be out there ice skating with the zombie horde! But noooooo, instead I'll be spending the afternoon cleaning my apartment and working on gifts and holiday letters and stuff. Sigh.

MUST HAVE

Via BoingBoing... I have seriously got to get this wall decal for my bedroom.

The eBay listing for "HUGE LIVING DEAD ZOMBIE ATTACK WALL ART VINYL DECAL!" makes it particularly irresistible.

This listing will go through the roof with bids, methinks, so maybe I'll hold out and try again after the Cory Doctorow-inspired rage fizzles out a bit.

"it's all good clean fun until there's a real zombie attack"

Mmmwahahaha! In this bit, Stephen Colbert insists:

"We must stop these college jerks from trivializing the threat of the undead."

Lots of gems here... zombie threat starts around 3:15 into the clip.

The Straight Dope weighs in

Via BoingBoing, The Straight Dope's Cecil Adams tackles the question of how the U.S. military would realistically fight off a zombie infestation.

I particularly liked his emphasis on the use of fire as a weapon, which you don't hear about too much these days, so that was nice.

But I did have one beef with his mention of nuclear weapons in dealing with an entire city that's infected. While Cecil details the obvious downside of having radioactive zombies roaming the streets after a nuclear attack, he totally neglects to emphasize that such an attack would naturally send clouds of infectious dust into the air, seeding clouds that would eventually (sooner rather than later, in all likelihood) rain down and zombify any survivors. Which, you know... not so good.

Aaaaand, now I have the theme music from Return of the Living Dead stuck in my head. Wooo!

Link

The Signal

We enjoyed watching The Signal last night. It's divided into three parts, which they call transmissions, and I thought that form worked well with the movie's content. The second segment definitely stood out as the most distinct -- it used a level of humor that was entirely missing from the other two, and which really appealed to my sense of good horror.

The opening scene looked almost like it was straight out of Wolf Creek or something, but ended up being just a movie-within-a-movie thing (meta!), which wasn't my cup of tea in this case.

I also appreciated that The Signal went pretty easy on the social commentary. I'm sure the filmmakers were tempted to drive home some high-level social message (hang up the cell phone! your tv is turning you into a monster! etc...) but that theme was mercifully not beaten to death. The music and a number of scene settings reminded me VERY much of 28 Weeks Later. I'd say, if you liked that one, you're quite likely to enjoy The Signal, too.