An Open Letter to Brunch…

Dear Brunch,

Fuck you.

Every weekend you saunter in all beautiful and delicious looking, wooing all the customers into ordering you.  And every time someone says “I’ll have the Brunch…” I think Of course you will.

You, Brunch, are a slut.  Stop cozying up to the customers with your attractive array of fruit and flash of greens.  Stop luring them with your creamy scrambled eggs, telling them they can have what ever kind of scone they want. Just stop it.

You know why, Brunch? Because you’re high maintenance, that’s why.  We need three people to prepare you in a timely fashion, and even then when you strut around in-front of everyone the way that you do, we just can’t make you fast enough because everyone in the place has ordered you.

Then people get all up in my craw about how it’s taking too long.  We’re not fucking McDonald’s, okay? I’m not thawing an EggMcMuffin back here! What I’m doing takes time, and love, and as little rage as possible.  Because when I start making Brunches with RAGE NO ONE IS GONNA HAVE A GOOD TIME.

It’s always about you.  BRUNCH. You’re sooooooo special, aren’t you? Everyone shows up just for you, and nobody even thinks twice about who prepares you.  If I’m not making Brunch, who is? No one. That’s who.  You know what that means? It means I’ve never, ever, after making 10,000 brunches, EVER eaten one myself.  Sure I’ve snacked here and there, but I’ve NEVER experienced the pleasure of sitting down with a nice HOT NEVER BEEN RE-HEATED (6 times) IN THE MICROWAVE coffee on my nice Sunday-off.  Cause I’ve never had a Sunday off.  Nor a Saturday.  And those are the only days we serve you, Brunch.

So, yeah.  If you could stop whoring it up with the customers, that would be greatly appreciated.  Then maybe I wouldn’t have to scream about jamming forks in my eyes and the kitchen wouldn’t look like Cosovo when we’re done at the end of the day. That’d be great.  Or if you could even just help us clean up, that would be a step in the right direction.

Jerkstore.  You know what I mean, don’t pretend you don’t get it.

.megan.

P.S. I hate you.

P.P.S Since you have such a nice relationship with the customers, maybe you could suggest to them to calm the fuck down on their days off, and let them know that other people don’t get to spend Sunday at the cute little Cafe down the street, and that those people preparing their food probably haven’t had breakfast yet, and probably won’t eat for about six hours.  Remind them that that would be a really sucky position to be in, and that service people are a lot nicer when they have good blood-sugar levels and really nice, respectful customers around.

An Open Letter to Myself ?… set the mood: the sound of my own ignorance

Dear Dumbass,

Congrats! You’ve officially (and unwittingly) announced yourself pretty pretty pretty precharded — that’s the politically correct term for ‘pretty retarded’ at my place of work where there is an open kitchen and we must swear in code — right here on the internet, potentially for millions to see.

You often complain about others stating facts without doing proper preliminary research, and yet you’ve overstepped your bounds by assuming that something was not what it actually was — in a previous post you accused Elvis Radio of not playing Rhinestone Cowboy out of personal spite against you.

ELVIS NEVER PERFORMED RHINESTONE COWBOY, DUMBASS!

You need to tone down the sass and do some goddamn research before you write your open letters; it’s about the quality of the rant, not the quantity.

.megan.

P.S.  Elvis is rolling over in his grave at the thought of you confusing WAYNE NEWTON for THE KING!

An Open Letter to The Voice of the Voiceless aka Crazy Man… set the mood: Bad Moon Rising – CCR

Dear Mr. Harold C. Funk,

This morning, your most recent letter to the HEAD OF THE NATION has reminded me once again why living in the city is far more interesting then living in suburbia. No one in suburbia prints up hundreds of open letters to the government and sticks them on car windshields at the crack of dawn. Conspiracy theories first thing in the morning are much like a good cup of coffee or a can of Red Bull. So thanks for that.

As far as your presentation is concerned, I’d like to point out that typing everything in capitals, although it is clear that you’re trying to make a VERY LOUD POINT, defeats the purpose of using capitals in the first place. I suggest perhaps WRiTiNG LiKe THiS IN ThE fUTuRE bECauSe iT’s EfFEcT iS fAr MoRE JaRrInG.

Second, though you’ve got some interesting stuff in here (“Stop the mass murder” – note: I’m not actually referring to the context with which you wrote this, but it’s a good – however ‘Granola’ it may be – point to make), but there seems to be a bit of an issue with your spell check and grammar check on your computer. Perhaps it just underlines everything in red because YOU ALWAYS WRITE LIKE THIS AS THOUGH YOU ARE SHOUTING OVER THE READER’S SHOULDER.

You see, when people are ranting and saying things that are construed as crazy by others, it is best to use discretion with the presentation. If everything you write is in capitals with little to no respect for general grammar rules (not only of the language you are writing in, but of ANY language), no one will take you seriously, least of all the Government. They just think you’re a nut.

Example: “ROMONA HAS PUT VERY SUCCINCTLY THE “RIGHTS OF THE CHILD” IMMEDIATELY AFTER CONCEPTION THAT I SHALL EXPECT EACH NATION TO PROTECT IN LEGISLATION NOT ONLY THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD BUT THE “RIGHTS OF EACH CONCEPTION AFTER CONCEPTION. (There is no end-quote here on purpose, as you left it out of the final version)

Suggestion: Romona has clearly outlined the “Rights of the Child” immediately after conception. It is the duty of each nation to not only legislate protection of the rights of the child, but that said rights be valid from conception on rather then from birth. (Or something along those lines… I had to read this several times in order to understand your point)

See? Yours looks a little crazy, whereas mine like I did some research and clear-headed thinking before I sat down to write. And it’s only 8:57 am!

As far as your facts go… I’m not sure if claiming that children have a language called DNA is going to support anything; to me using language to equate the genetic makeup seems to compare children to computers, since computers have languages written for them to run. In my mind, this reduces the concept of the child to that of something mechanical and inhuman, and I thought that was going against what your rant is all about.

And appearing to yell about how abortions are HATE CRIMES doesn’t say anything but that you don’t know the general definition of the term hate crime. Abortions would be hate crimes if women were going out and getting pregnant on purpose, then aborting them because they hate children. Aborting a zygote because one doesn’t feel as though they could give a child a loving, supportive environment (for whatever reason: selfish, drug addict, soul-less, disinterest, against the continuous overpopulation of the planet…) isn’t hateful towards the child.

Additionally, I don’t understand what the follow means:

SOUL IN THE NEURAL TUBE WHICH MAKES A FORM OF SACRILEGE

FINGERS OUTLINES AT 33 DAYS

…UNBORN CHILD AND BRANDED IT AS A TERMINATION OF “EVIL”

Proof-reading is your friend. So are antipsychotics, but I certainly don’t want to tell you what to do with yourself, especially since you are entertaining just as you are. The downside is that when people see this kind of sloppy output, they start to think things like “Damn crazies, why can’t the government just get them some handlers?” or something along those lines, and all of a sudden not only are your rights as a mentally unstable person put into question, but the concept of “Freedom of Speech” is at stake. If I was to adjust my thought patterns to reflect yours, I’d say that you, Sir, can be solely responsible for putting the Canadian Constitution at risk of disembowelment!

Wishing you the very opposite of a good day,

.megan.

An Open Letter to Elvis Radio (Sirius Satellite channel 013)… Rhinestone Cowboy – the One and Only KING, BABY

Dear Graceland Inhabitors,

So I’ll admit that three weeks ago I couldn’t stand the thought of listening to your station for longer than a busy lunch hour. And yet this morning I found myself going for an all Elvis day, actually listening to the King from 7am until 4pm today. Wow. That’s a lot of King.

And while I spent many a moment saying “Awesome, this song!” I never once was able to proclaim such a thing when Rhinestone Cowboy was played. Know why? BECAUSE YOU WOULDN’T PLAY IT ALL DAY.

I heard Suspicious Minds played at 11:23, then again at 1:31, and yet again at 3:18.

And no Rhinestone Cowboy.

I remember hearing that song that sounds like Shake, Rattle, and Roll twice, the song that sounds like Great Balls of Fire twice, and at least a handful of other songs that were played more than once. And you know, I do give you some credit for playing multiple recordings, some of which aren’t available to the public (like the version of Ghost Riders in the Sky you played today, thanks for that), but these songs repeated today WERE THE SAME RECORDING DATES.

You bastards. Did you seriously think no one was going to notice? I know, you’re sitting there in Graceland thinking your hot shit because you control Elvis Radio. I could very easily go out and start a Johnny Cash radio station and control it from Folsom Prison and maybe I’ll even learn to cross the airways and take over your petty little station in an effort to help the world understand that simple black is a far stronger statement then sequins and capes.

Over and Out,

.megan.

An Open Letter to the “physician” I “poisoned”…

Dear Liar,

There are many things in this world that we don’t like. I don’t like ABBA. They make me want to shove screwdrivers in my ears until I puncture my temporal lobe by which time I might have dropped the screwdriver because the cerebrospinal fluid has made the Robertson handle too difficult to grasp and twist.

Other things that suck: missing out on getting tickets to see a show, getting an apartment right next to the airport, and having a 24h bug that has been going around.

And you.

That’s right, Sir. I said you. You suck because this morning you brought me down from my fabulous ‘Sunday Morning and I’m Working My Ass Off Again for Ingrates Who Don’t Appreciate Western Living’ self by calling me and informing me that baked goods I sell gave you, your wife, and your baby diarrhea.

First of all Sir, WHAT WERE YOU DOING FEEDING SCONES TO A BABY?

Second, WHY DID YOU EAT THREE IN ONE SITTING? Do you know how much fat that is? 75 grams of fat, you stupid fuck. 1500 calories. “Oh, I got diarrhea, poor me, feel bad for me, give me free scones.” You obviously don’t know how to maintain LIFE properly, because three scones isn’t a meal. It’s more like a binge, and that’s the sign of an emotional problem.

Third, you proudly informed me that you, your wife, and your baby know for sure that it was the scones because “that’s all we had to eat yesterday.” YOU BOUGHT THE SCONES AT 1:30 IN THE AFTERNOON. I should call the CSA on your ass if you haven’t fed your baby anything by 1:30 and even then all you gave it was a couple of pieces of scones.

I was nice to you. I kept my mouth shut about how absurd the whole idea was, all the time questioning if perhaps you and your wife and your baby have lactose intolerance, since there are few things that cause diarrhea other than a parasite or virus (neither of which are present in scones, as they are baked at 375 degrees and go from fridge to hot oven experiencing nothing in between like a toilet bowl or hospital sheets) and are handled with tongs. I don’t recall having rubbed your six cheddar scones on my ass before boxing them, but who knows. I’ve been known to do many a crazy thing at work on a busy Saturday.

I said that the whole thing was very interesting since I’ve never heard anything like this in all the years I’ve been working in the bakery, and that myself and my fellow coworkers, as well as our hundred or so regular customers who eat scones on a daily basis have never experienced anything like diarrhea.

Your response: “Oh I’m a PHYSICIAN, I’ve heard these things reported.”

Oh, so now you’re a Physician. That’s a vague term isn’t it?

A) I’ve since done some research on diarrhea and I’ve found nothing that could indicate that what we sell made you, your wife, and your baby sick.

B) Why is it a physician, his wife, and his baby had eaten nothing before 1:30 in the afternoon then chose to have a healthy scone binge? That doesn’t sound responsible at all.

C) I looked up your name in the white and yellow pages and there is no listing of you being a physician. And as I’ve come to learn, anyone who has paid six figures to obtain any sort of letters of importance will go out of their way to make sure they are clearly listed on everything they own.

D) I remember you; you weren’t over 27 and you looked kinda like a stoned bum jonesing for scones. I don’t believe you for a second when you say you’re a physician.

E) Go fuck yourself.

.megan.

I found this fact sheet on managing diarrhea which you might find interesting.

Gross Shoes… set the mood: Dancing Shoes – Arctic Monkeys

I am the slave of gross shoes.

It’s not my fault.  And I honestly don’t think they are all that gross; my knowledge of how gross they are comes from my family, my friends, and my embarrassment when I go into a shoe store to try on some cute little pink kitten heels (as though I need another pair…).

My gross shoes are great.  I haven’t replaced them or thrown them out altogether because they are comfortable.  And despite their grossosity, they are so versitile.  I can wear them with jeans, capris, shorts, skirts.  Yes, I actually will ruin a perfectly nice ensemble with my gross shoes, just because I know I’ll be walking a lot.  The myth most people believe of cute shoes is that they are ultra comfortable.  That’s not always true.  Regardless of how much they cost, how well they fit, and how broken in they are, you can’t wear them forever.  Forever  being 10 hours.  Most shoes will hurt after ten hours.  These shoes, not so much.

But, alas, they are “gross”.

So why will I not get rid of them?  If it’s gotten to the point where I’m saddened when people notice them and their weirdness (yeah, they are kinda funny looking too… I originally bought them because a friend found a pair in red, and they looked beautiful, like silk slippers, but I could only find ice blue, which apparently look like “future shoes”) and when people like, say, my mother, make fun of them.  Clearly I’ve taken them too far, but what can I do?

I went to the Diesel website in a vain attempt to find something comperable.  No such luck.  I’ve found a couple of pairs that don’t look too bad, but let’s face it I am picky and I’m rarely impulsive.  Mostly because I don’t like to be wasteful, and it seems silly to buy something just because it seems brilliant in the moment, then get home and try to find a place to shove it becaue it’s not at all practical or even me. 

I’m begining to think that perhaps my gross shoes are some sort of obvious metaphor for a bigger problem, but which one? The fact that I love my job even though it provides me with little intellectual fulfilment/is physically bad for me because I work long hours without breaks and become stressed out far too easily? Is it because I never really let go of people in my life because I like to let everyone impact me somehow (always positively, I don’t like to hang on to negative feelings because it’s an imroper use of energy)? In all honesty, I think of everyone I’ve been really close to at least once a week for no real reason other than I allow random things to revive these people in my mind.  Is that bad? Do other people do that? I’m weird, aren’t I?

Will throwing out my gross shoes make this stop?

An Open Letter to Fashion… set the mood: Big in Japan – Tom Waits

Dear Fashion,

First off, I’d like to fully support your existence from the late thirties through to the mid 1950s. Body-hugging pencil-skirted suits with 4 inch heels and a cute little hat and matching handbag? Brilliant. Full-circle skirt, crinoline, and 4 inch heels? Love it. Floor-length silk dresses with modestly-sexy necklines and plunging backs appropriately accompanied by 4 inch heels? Fabulous.

Hm. Perhaps I’m not fussy about the outfit, so long as 4 inch heels are involved.

Regardless, I’m a fan of the classy-yet-sexy period. Why can’t we do that again? I just don’t understand why it is that every season something has to come out that a) only looks good on someone with the body of an eleven year old boy and b) is either too revealing or too tent-like.

Example: Skinny Jeans. Why? Why brings these back? The average female is 5’4″ and a size 8. That’s me. I’m average on the outside, awesome on the inside. Putting me in skinny jeans would be… how could I word this? An exercise in mutilating the self-esteem, that’s what it would do. Why? Cause I have hips. That’s why. That’s okay, I’m supposed to have them, and I think they are all right. But skinny jeans… skinny jeans don’t like hips because they make the hippy (again, the majority of society) look like a giant inverted triangle. And that’s not what women are. We are regular triangles, and men are inverted triangles. Therefore, skinny jeans make women men.

Leggings. Leggings are useful for two things: to stay warm in the winter (under jeans, a long skirt), and for running in the winter because wearing shorts to jog in -20 degree weather is a sign of sociopathy. Aside from that, leggings are no good. They are not good under short skirts. Or dresses. Or baggy t-shirts. Or tight t-shirts. They are not good with lace trim. In fact, they are so bad with lace trim that other garmets, garmets that should be trimmed in lace such a silk slips and bras and the like, cringe in disgust, becoming intensely ashamed of their highly appropriate and alluring lace trim.

The Maternity Dress. These are bad. Bad bad bad. Why you ask? Because they MAKE EVERYONE WHO WEARS ONE LOOK PREGNANT. That’s why they are called the MATERNITY DRESS. The empire waist with the short but oddly full expanse of fabric that falls from just beneath the bust hides the highly distinguishing aspect of the female form: the hour glass (or close approximation). Take, oh, and hour glass. No, a watch won’t do. Just imagine it, you don’t have to have one in your hands. Now take a handkerchief (like a tissue or Kleenex but made from cloth) and mentally drape it over the top of the hour glass so that it is hanging down evenly on all sides. Now take a tube (tennis ball display box) about the same size as the hour glass and mentally drape the handkerchief over it similarly. Notice anything? Yeah, they look EXACTLY THE SAME. And that’s not a good thing.

What I’d like to know, Fashion, the reason I’m writing you in the first place, is why is it that you insist on pushing this kind of crap on us? And who the heck decides what is going to be ‘Hot’ this year anyway? It certainly isn’t me. I find it interesting how every store just so happens to always put the same styles and colours out on the racks every season. What sort of Fashion Getaway do you have for designers? Do you all sit around, wondering what colours you can convince us to buy this time? “Let’s try to get them into Lime this year. We’ll pair it with Coral and see if they go for it.” Then, after deciding that stirrup pants are the greatest thing since low-fat no-whip orange-mocha frappucinos, you have a short-lived pillow fight and then eat smores while having a contest to see who can make the most stylish dress from tinfoil and banana peels. That’s what you do, isn’t it?

Don’t lie. And for the record, I’m not falling for it.

.megan.

ZOMBIES – Pt. 3 “I don’t want to end up like THAT” It just keeps getting worse…set the mood: the theme from Halloween, since I wish I’d chosen to watch that film instead.

Flesh Eaters

This film isn’t even listed on imdb.com, which guarantees it will suck.

We open on a hayride. Sigh. There aren’t enough films that take place around Halloween, thank gods this one… I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought when the group of acid-washed denim clad teens decided to start dancing to the boom box. So much denim and bleach-blond hair. I’m mesmerized by the sheer 80s-ness. And there’s the boob shot, 10 minutes in.

11 minutes in, two of our denim loving “teens” played by actors in their late thirties, run off to a barn to fuck. The acting is so bad. So is the writing. I don’t even know what is going on here.

Girl: Why are you holding back? Don’t you want to be with me?

Dude: It’s not that, it’s just everything is going so fast. This is our first night out.

Girl: You saying I’m too pushy for you?

Dude: A little. It’s just I don’t think I’m ready to get serious with anyone right now.

Girl: Who said anything about getting serious? I just wanted to get together with you and have some fun, you know, fool around. The first time I met you at Julie’s party I wanted to be with you.

Dude: Maybe you don’t understand what I’m trying to say, but when Julie fixed us up to go on this hayride together, I was really excited about it. I mean, you are really cute, and I haven’t been out with a lot of girls, I just never had any girl treat me the way that you have.

Girl: Well, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to come on so strong, I just really like you and I want you to know it. Why don’t you come a little closer…

We all know what happens next. I don’t believe this dialogue for a second for two reasons: this guy isn’t too bad looking, and men rarely turn down women who are throwing themselves at them, second I was pretty sure she was a man until her top came off. This scene is great because as they are making out, her terrible studio recorded moaning is heard while he’s suckling, then immediately cut out when they kiss.

Of course, the zombie, who rose when a farmer dug up his tomb out of general curiosity, comes into the barn pre-fornication, stabs the dude with a pitchfork, then rips a hole in the girls upper abdomen and removes her heart and eats it.

A) hearts are usually located beneath the sternum, on the stage left side of the body, not in the upper abdomen, below the ribcage.

B) this movie is terrible.

So now the farmer is a zombie. And the slut will be a zombie and the horny dude also a zombie. The ten teens are down to eight.

This is great. This one teen is running through the woods and she sheds her jean jacket in order to better project herself through the air, as though the denim was keeping her from being aerodynamic. She’s bitten, the teens decided to bring her to the farm house they saw. That seems like a bad idea to me.

One thing I like about this ridiculous thing is the zombies. They are far more Romero-esq than the ones in Burial Ground, which means that the producers took this far less seriously. And there is little room for serious in a zombie flick. The gore is mid-range, the acting is D-level if that, the hair is big, and the denim and blue eyeshadow is plentiful. I never thought I’d support an American take on a genre over the Italians, but this one takes the cake.

What? Six of them are boarded up in the house, and are rejecting the two stragglers, saying “it’s too late, find your own place to hide.” That makes no sense, but it propels the story forward.

The tightness of the jeans in this movie is distracting me.

I just want Fido to come out on video so I can talk about something intelligent.

Um… 34 minutes in and everyone in the house is dead. The two rejects are hiding in the basement. I hate movies like this that start the action thirty seconds in and continues to progress so quickly that by an hour in, they are grasping at straws to keep the story going to the 85 minute mark.

Oh, I see. Naked woman showering in the house nearby. That’s what they are doing. Introducing new characters almost halfway into the story. New naked characters.

I don’t know how I feel about this kind of thing. Tarantino did it in Death Proof, and though I thoroughly enjoyed the film, I felt strange about being given these girls backstory and then taking them away in an eruption of body parts and soiled pavement. Now I understand the technique. It’s extremely jarring to invest a certain amount of emotion into the characters, have them killed horribly, then begin again. Perhaps the reason I didn’t like what was done in Death Proof was that the second set of characters were also given too much time to develop, and the film, rather than slowing to help the viewer retain composure after such a horrific car crash, actually halted while these girls sat around drinking soda and eating burgers.

Look at this, the old man (the original zombie) just ate the face off of a 7 year old girl. I’m both disturbed and impressed that the filmmakers killed off the kids. However, this was made in the 80s and Romero had already done it in Dawn of the Dead so I’m not that impressed.

Now there are just zombies everywhere because no one has figured out how to kill them yet, which seems lame because, you know, it’s the 80s and these kids should have seen Dawn of the Dead. This represents the very bold line between shit zombie flicks and fine art zombie films: cardboard characters who are killed because they are vacant abound poor slasher films. And it doesn’t matter because the star is the FX guy. Romero took this genre and improved it by creating characters people could relate to and care about. They weren’t just devoured because they actually did have brains. They could think for themselves. Rarely did they die due to simple ignorance, they died fighting to stay alive.

Girl: This is a really great party.

Dude: Yeah, and it’s getting better all the time.

Girl: That is a really great costume.

Dude: Thanks.

Girl: This is a really great song.

Dude: Yeah, let’s dance.

Can she not say anything else? Who wrote this dialogue?

Dude: Are you okay?

Girl: Yes. No. I’m scared to death. (pause) I guess I’m alright though.

They go to the Halloween party, and no one believes them, then a zombie comes and the host mistakes the zombie for someone in a great costume. No one is sad when the zombie eats his face. Everyone at the party is consumed. The scene had me thinking “thank gods the zombie found a meat hook, or she would have screamed indefinitely.”

1 hour 5 minutes in and I really don’t want to watch this anymore. I’m so glad I bought this box set instead of Arrested Development Season 3. This is much better.

The zombie film is a perfect American horror genre just because when the zombie apocalypse occurs, everyone already has a gun. It doesn’t seem at all strange that the police are rounding up the locals, who all happen to own many various firearms. It’s great because the authorities don’t have to worry about the legalities of handing out weapons to the general public.

Hm. I don’t think I’m watching this movie anymore. Which is probably good. Maybe I’ll go read some Dostoevsky before bed, you know, to make up for the neuropathways this film has severed. Oh look, it’s over anyway and nothing actually happened except everyone turned into a zombie. BOOOOO! *throws veggie chips at the tv*

^^^^^

ZOMBIES – Pt. 2 Braaiinnnnsss… set the mood: the sounds of Oktobre fest sausage eating contest

Burial Ground: The Night of Terror

This movie looks terrible. I almost scrapped the zombie theme altogether in favour of more complaints about alcoholism through a review of The Lost Weekend when I watched the trailer for this monstrosity. I only get one day off a week and I’m going to spend 1.5 hours with this?

I’m not sure what’s going on here. 4:15 minutes in, a man who is described as a “Professor” but who looks more like Rasputin meets Ted Kazinsky, ventures into a mausoleum or grave site of some sort, starts banging away with a pick axe, apparently waking the dead. He shrieks “But I’m your FRIEND!” as several decaying corpses inch towards him and proceed to feed. Lesson learned: be quiet in grave sites, for the dead sleep lightly.

Cut to happy Italian people dubbed with English as they venture to the countryside to have some kind of weekend away from whatever lives they lead. This film doesn’t concern itself with backstory. These people are tightly wound, since they are all over each other as soon as they arrive. “You look just like a whore. But I like that look on you.”

This one couple has brought their child with them, though I’m concerned that he’s not actually a child but a thin, short man in his 30s. This is Michael, and there is something bad about him because the score is weird and ‘terrifying’ when he is in the room.

20 minutes in, my favorite line is spoken “Oh, you’re getting a raise from me, but it has nothing to do with money.”

Huh, I have a feeling that zombies have some connection to Michael, because the zombie score is the same as Michael’s score. How odd…

The scene in the sculptor’s studio reveals that Michael has some kind of Oedipal complex, as he runs yelling “momma” when he catches Mummy’s new boyfriend coping a feel. Cut to sex in the yard. The two (unnamed?) friends make the mistake of banging behind some bushes near what I assume is an unmarked grave (oh, a burial ground? Probably). Now we wait 5 minutes for the zombie to slowly (very slowly) crawl towards them. After the zombie eventually gets close enough to grab at their ankles, they scream in terror at the decaying skull and its maggot accessories, but take a moment to question what it may be. They stare for a bit, then run when they are attacked by another creature of the dead.

Cut to weird music over a montage of all the zombies crossing the grounds of the mansion, stumbling slowly. I’m sure they’re mobility would have been better if they weren’t all wearing canvas dresses.

Back in the studio, Michael finds a cloth that “smells of death” just prior to being bombarded by the zombies. George, the boyfriend, shoots vainly at the corpses (corpsi?) while Michael and Mummy run away. After closeups of the brownish liquid that closely resembles baby poop which seeps from their wounds, George is consumed in a feeding frenzy.

Cut to the garden, or the burial ground, where the third couple are attempting to get fresh, but of course they are interrupted by some twelve zombies who just sort of stand there and do nothing. Probably because they don’t have any eyes.

Back to the first couple (the model who shouldn’t be a model, who didn’t and probably won’t get her raise from her photographer) gets her foot caught in a bear trap, which is far more realistic than if maybe she’d just fallen (that would imply women are the weaker species – this film is so pro-female). Her beau attacks a zombie with some kind of random gardening tool but the zombie overpowers him and strangles him until another couple saves him by smashing the skulls of the zombies with large rocks. All the while the model just screams and screams and I wish someone would just hit her with a rock so she’ll shut up.

Mummy tries setting a zombie on fire by dumping paint thinner on it and a match. Then she clutches Michael close to her bosom as they watch him burn. As she sets the others on fire, I wonder if this will backfire and the place will burn down with her and her rapidly aging son trapped inside. Also, I’m concerned by the look on her face which seems to indicate a love of burning flesh. This may be the perfect set up for a life long battle against pyromania. “But mummy, I just got a bad grade! Please don’t burn down my school! No, mummy, please!”

Minute 40 is when things start to become a little far fetched. The maid, who is wandering around alone with only a pillar candle for light, intends to close the shutters when a clever zombie throws some kind of railway nail (think Christ… for some reason) that just happens to hit her in the hand, keeping her from moving away as the sicle they’ve acquired is used to slice off her head.

This is the perfect set up for the zombies to create some kind of Home Depot army of rebellion, as they’ve broken into the gardening shed and taken all that they could in order to gain access to the delicious, if vacuous, brains inside the mansion. I’m getting a distinct Land of the Dead feel, in that they’ve clearly evolved enough over the first 35 minutes of the movie to take advantage of potential weapons. They are even climbing the walls of the mansion now.

And the model continues to moan, something that sounds like a disturbing mixture of pain and pleasure (this would be less disturbing if she were in some kind of s&m situation, rather than just sitting on the couch crying about the bruise the bear trap left on her leg).

Someone is cut from the broken glass of a window (yes, zombies were involved), death isn’t clear but it’s assumed. The model suddenly has nicer hair (her colour still needs work, but she’d gained control over the frizz during her fit of screams). A zombie gets into the house and she just stands there screaming and doing nothing with the harpoon she’s wielding. You’ve got a harpoon for Christ’s sake! A fucking harpoon! They move about as fast as meatloaf! If you aren’t going to do anything, at least run away or be dramatic and give yourself to them so I don’t have to hear you scream anymore!

Mummy and Michael hug some more.

Oh good god! HE’S PUTTING THE MOVES ON HIS MOTHER. And it took kissing, breast bearing, and fingers in cooch for her to slap him away. I told you he was a grown up, they could have never hired a 9 year old to do that! After she rejects him, he finds Leslie, the one who had been cut, who is now a zombie. Now all he has to do is have sex with her, and this movie will be the worst thing I’ve ever seen.*

The Model’s hair is bad again.

Even better. Mummy, now regretting her decision to not have sex with her son, finds Leslie eating Michael’s arm. Mummy freaks out and smashes Leslie’s head on the bathtub. A mixture of blood and milk runs from her head.

Since the garden tools failed, the zombies get a battering ram. Some how. That isn’t explained. I’m sure it’s not important.

This is so bad it’s not even all that funny anymore. So I opt to watch the rest in fast forward mode. It seems the professor makes another appearence, now as a zombie. The Model still can’t do anything but scream. The four stumble out to the road, leaving the house to the zombies. They find a Monastery. I’m sure the monastery is inhabited by zombies. OH, IT IS! OH MY. How shocking. How horrifying.

This film was given a 4.9/10 on imdb.com. I don’t know what was wrong with the people who cast that vote. I looked up Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, a film I saw years ago during my Bill Maher phase, and it was rated only 4.4/10. This movie is not better than Cannibal Women. Not by a long shot. At least it was clever in the dumbest sense of the word. The Men lived in fear of the Women, crocheting pot holders all day and acting as the servents to the Women, who would sacrifice ‘hot’ men (those tanned bulky blonde men who wear tiny pants to cover their privates – not my type).

Oh, the movie is still on. The Model is still screaming, though her hair is decent again. Actually, I’m starting to suspect that the Model with the nice hair is a different actress altogether, since she seems a bit prettier, though not at all less annoying. Michael reappears, of course. HE’S THE ZOMBIE GOD, ISN’T HE? And now Mummy’s letting him suckle, and is surprised that he tore her nipple off. Well now they can have hot incestuous zombie sex together. The zombie baby would be more interesting than what they’ve got working for them here.

Now the zombies are running the photographer’s head into the blade of a table saw. I don’t know where the table saw came from. Considering the setting, its appearance is very random, though consistent with the rest of the film. The Model screams as the zombies eat her.

The End.

Thank Gods. Watching that made me wish there was a zombie apocalypse outside, then I could go do that instead of watching this horrible waste of celluloid. Argh! Foiled again!

^^^^^^^^^… I don’t think any amount of hat hair could represent how terrible this was. I’d rather watch The Legend of Boggy Creek again.

* I looked up the actor who played Michael. He was 25 when this was made. Poor man.

ZOMBIES – Pt. 1 When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth… set the mood: the bells of hell – kevin quain

Zombies.

I’ve never written about them. After seeing Dawn of the Dead for the first time, I wrote a short story about myself and my friends and our attempt to escape a zombie appocalypse by hiding in a mall. Brilliant, I put a real spin on the story by making one friend some kind of supernatural zombie (if that makes any sense at all) who could hunt the rest of us methodically rather than through a mindless, animal instinct. One particularly gruesome scene involved an escalator. Brilliant.

Since then, I don’t write about zombies. Why would I decide to turn my talents towards something far less exciting and peckish? Honestly, the zombie genre has a canon that is far too clear and I don’t think that I could, without the help of someone who is well aquainted with comics and mythology, create something that I would consider original. In all honesty, until Planet Terror, I thought it was a dead genre.

Rather than go over the same old stuff, I’m going to just skim over my favorites with a brief description of why they are great, then get on to reviewing the crap…

1. Planet Terror – Yes, I actually list this as my favorite zombie film. It’s disgusting, clever, sexy, and somewhat nerve racking. It’s everything a zombie film should be and more. Rodriguez has done a service to amputees. I know I’d do Rose McGowan with a wooden leg.

2. Shaun of the Dead – Yes, I listed an homage as my second favorite. It’s because I could watch this again and again. It’s light, it’s quick, it’s funny, it’s british. I can’t resist.

3. Dawn of the Dead – There we go. This is third because as much as I love it, it’s quite long, and when I think “must have zombie fix” I think of Shaun. BUT this is a masterpiece in it’s own right, a fantastic social commentary, and excellently bloody for the time period. Gotta love that Nurse Zombie.

4. 28 Days Later – Brilliant. The visual of London completely deserted is eerie as hell. Not gonna lie, initially though Danny Boyle copped out by breeding Dawn with Lord of the Flies… Still think that’s what the film is, but at least it wasn’t Zombie II meets Porky’s…

5. Dead Alive – Man, I don’t have anything bad to say about LOTH except that they are too long, but that’s not Peter Jackson’s fault. I do miss that Jackson doesn’t make films like this one anymore. Greatest moment: Lawnmowing a zombie party. Guh-ross! OR the mother’s ear falling off her head into her soup.

6. Cemetery Man – I much prefer the original title Dellamorte Dellamore simply because it sounds far more beautiful. And who doesn’t want their zombie movie to have a little romance? I like this one because Rupert Everet plays this grumpy, misunderstood, sexually frustrated undertaker who sits up all night waiting for the dead to rise. Best moments: Grave sex and Gnaghi’s romance with a zombi head.

7. The Evil Dead – I actually don’t automatically categorize this film with the typical zombie film (hence its place at a solid 7), but it really is. Sort of. This was the only film I actually couldn’t watch straight through on the first run. I’m a hard-ass when it comes to scary movies; no clutching to anyone for me (cuddling is better anyway), but this one… I had to stop it half way through and finish it the next morning, in the kitchen, with my dad 😛

End of list (because 7 is the perfect number). Damn, I hope these zombie posts improve cause this one is a head-shaker…