Yeah, but nobody’d come out if the flyer read “Hipsters Invade Memphis 2009.”

Eh, you’re giving them too much credit.

The flyers would read “People Who Think Rob Zombie is a Good Director Invade Memphis 2009″

Maybe it’s an ironic counterpoint to the COGIC convention.

Bonus: Zombies are generally better tippers!

I saw this and thought of you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4FNGsNY3nI&feature=player_embedded

Make of that what you will.

Ahahahahaha. Randal is on a roll today.

And for the record, I never claimed to be anything but an overly extroverted monkey throwing shit at the rest of the world.

(Ok, a few times I have claimed to be God, but you people have yet to disprove me of that notion.)

you know, i get your point. i’m inclined to agree with you, even. but i like to argue. and so it is in that spirt that i say i think you’re reading too much into it. yes, the zombie thing HAS been beaten into the ground, but i don’t think a bunch of kids covering themselves in fake blood and stumbling down beale is any more “conformist” than if that same group of kids went to see a band play or something. anyway, sorry my first comment on your blog is a negative one. honestly, i just like to make counter-points. have a nice day.

I see what you’re saying, but when I read this post I imagine you as an old man, standing in your yard, shaky old man fist aloft, yelling at kids to stay off your lawn. Let the kiddos have their fun, Gramps.

Love, me

@ Amanda. He takes his zombie philosophy very seriously.

I can totally picture him as the Gramps.

Zach has always been that Gramps. Except he’d chuck a half-full bottle of whiskey at the kids as they scamper away.

I’m not throwing good whiskey at anyone.

yes you are. and then you’ll sob at the realization and chase the bottle, trying to suck the spilled liquor out of the dirt.

What is this? The lashing out stage of grief?

Hey Zach… how’s the zombie march? I read on your Twitter account that you’re there… so… how’s that conformity treatin’ ya?

By the way, I’ve got some rotting zombie bones to pick with you re: why they’re scary. Next time I see you, we’ll bite into it…

Hey Zach. I know we’ve already had this conversation, but let me elaborate and immortalize it in e-print.

While it is true that a group of people staggering down the street imitating the Romero “zombie” could be construed as a sort of nightmare scenario of conformity run amok, I think that when one considers the circumstances of the march in today’s world this flippant dismissal misses the mark entirely.

It is true that very little of the rebelliousness of humanity remains unadulterated. “Punk” is a demographic to be marketed to, Sprite controls mainstream Hip Hop, and I can buy a sweatshop-made pre-stressed “trucker hat” featuring the likeness of Che Guevera at any number of suburban box stores.

So, in a world where anti-chic is chic, what can a sane person do to stand up against the tsunami-like onslaught of Information Age meme warfare? How about soaking oneself head to toe in fake blood, and staggering around the streets of a major metropolitan area with hundreds of other groaning freaks?

What could possibly compel so many people to behave in such a way? Do the participants epitomize simpleton conformity? In this age when so many aspects of interpersonal relationships are commercially arbitrated, when the stranglehold of marketing extends it’s tendrils into the most intimate facets of life, when the expression of natural impulses has been reduced to corporate brand consumption (Feeling hungry? Think outside the bun. Feeling tired? Red Bull give you Wings. Feeling down? Zoloft works to correct this imbalance. Feeling lonely? Experience the eHarmony difference.), are folks that want to wander the streets confronting the benefactors of urban gentrification with the threat of a mock undead pandemic really the ones guilty of conformity?

In a civilization where the idolatry of omnipresent screen media has reduced an entire generation into comatoids, where there is scarcely time between emails, IMs, blog postings, Tweets, TiVo updates, Apple apps, Hulu, NetFlix, MMORPGs, RSS feeds, Rock Band and “The Game” in HD to live a life at all, how can people who have opted to devote an entire afternoon to the spirit of a nameless undead prankster god be lumped in with those who don’t even have enough perspective to realize that they are never actually awake?

It is apparent that the real “zombies” as Romero saw them are those who can’t tear themselves away from the intoxicating glow of the television and the computer and the PED long enough to experience a single moment of the sheer joy of living; those of us who go from bed to screen to work to screen to home to screen to bottle to screen to bed.

Just because the folks trudging along downtown, leaving a trail of blood and bewildered onlookers didn’t release an artist statement, just because they might not have the same deliberate ideological aims as Shepard Fairey’s public art campaigns, or any other phenomenologist, the result is the same. These things scream “WAKE UP!” to a sedated world.

Calling the zombie march an act of conformity is like calling a Kappa Alpha keg party a revolution. The reasoning is totally upside-down.

“Brains.”

Listen homunculus, I am coming after you, as fast as I can shuffle, to feast on that huge brain of yours. In the meantime, check out Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which concerns itself with McCarthy-era “total uniformity of humanity”, as you put it, without resorting to the Romero-eqse depiction of zombies.

@A.Zombie True enough, but I prefer Heinlein’s Puppet Masters.