The Story of Josh Part Thirty One … “They’re coming to get you Barbara!”
My therapist is drinking what at first I thought was “frou-frou” coffee. It actually turns out to be hot chocolate made from real chocolate and cream. My kind of fat ass, I sit across from him and order the same thing with real whipped cream and cinnamon. We both laugh at the cream in our mustaches and then I notice the tattoo on his forearm. It’s of a little girl on a tricycle, his niece he tells me, but she is a zombie.
It’s a really fucking cool tattoo.
This leads to us talking about our mutual love of the zombie genre. And that conversation leads inevitably to the scariest night of my childhood and the repercussions that altered my destiny forever.
As always this is a therapy session and the doctor is in.
When I was 10 years old my father let me watch a movie. It was Halloween night and everyone was exhausted from trick or treating and gorged on candy. It was about ten at night and I was just about ready to doze off for the evening when my dad and my step brother came in and changed the channel.
“You going to love this,” my father said as he set down on the couch next to me.
As the black and white movie began to play on the small screen I was quickly becoming bored with it when I heard something emanating from the TV.
“They’re coming to get you Barbara!”
Immediately my attention was captured and for the next 2 hours, although it felt simultaneously like 2 minutes and 20 hours, I was a prisoner. I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Every shadow, every sound out in the windy Michigan night, and every creek in the house was one of the living dead coming to get me.
I was terrified.
My second exposure to the zombie genre was not from a movie but from the unholy portal that was MTV. This was when MTV still played music and long before the abomination that it has become. This time I was over at my cousin’s house and the video for Michael Jacksons Thriller came on. Some of you might laugh at the idea of dancing zombies being scary but back then that was a badass video. It was shot by John Landis (An American Werewolf in London) the effects were done by Rick Baker (also American Werewolf in London), with a voice over by the immortal Vincent Price (He’s Vincent Mother Fucking Price and no credits are necessary you just need to fucking respect him bitches). That sequence where the zombies are busting into the house is a terrifying sequence damnit, I fucking love it!
Both of those exposures were important but the moment where eternal love and terror of the zombie genre happened when my Great Uncle Jerry showed me the original Dawn of the Dead. To this day Dawn is my absolute favorite movie ever. From the plot, to the characters, to the fear and gore Dawn is the perfect Horror Movie. But when I first saw it and it got to the sequence where the Philadelphia SWAT Team is clearing out the projects I nearly shit myself with terror. To this day it is the movie that I have seen the most.
Over the years I have sought out Zombies in every medium that I could find them in Books (World War Z and Night of the Dead being my favorites at the moment), Video Games (Dead Rising my favorite), Comic Books (Deadworld and the Walking Dead rule that roost), and Role Playing Games (All Flesh Must Be Eaten is probably the best of that lot).
My zombie world was rocked in 2004. That was the year that Zack Snyder rebooted Dawn of the Dead. I went that movie wanting to hate that fucking thing. The zombies ran in that movie, taking the nod from the brilliant British infection movie 28 Days Later, and the zombie purist in me wanted to burn down every theater showing the flick and lock a naked Zack Snyder in a closet with a hungry Polar Bear. I went to see the movie on opening day with my mom, my oldest daughter, and my little brother. The movie started up and then that little girl jumped up like a fucking spider in the hallway. To this day that is still the scariest thing I have ever seen on the screen.
Ninety minutes later the movie was over and I was pissed off … I loved it.
As an interesting follow up to that experience. When I tried to sleep that night I found it impossible as I sat up all night watching cartoons and jumping at every sound outside. Also my daughter has never forgiven me for taking her as to this day she is still terrified of zombies.
Ah kids, you can teach them to fear what you fear.
I wrote a zombie role playing game for Palladium Books in 2007/2008. All I am going to say about that is that one of the great regrets of my life is signing away my intellectual property for chump change and then it is not even used. I can’t use it and the publisher will never use it. It’s a learning experience but it still pisses me off, more at myself than the publisher. I should have known better. But I moved beyond that and I have written a 175,000 word zombie trilogy that I am publishing through my own company Gorillas with Scissors Press.
One of the greatest days for nearly all zombie fans was October 31, 2010. That was the day that the Walking Dead Television Series premiered on AMC. That was the culmination of the hopes and dreams of the fans and acolytes of the genre since those words were first uttered in a Pennsylvania cemetery … “They’re coming to get you Barbara!”
Everything that I do is influenced in one way or another by my exposure to zombies as a child. When I enter a building I always scope out the ways out and make sure that there are no obstacles in my way. I always sit with my back to a wall. I always have access to a weapon in one form or another. There are disaster supplies in my car and in my home, I tell people that they are in case of natural disaster but in reality they are for when the dead rise.
I won’t seem so crazy when the dead are eating you and your children!
The bearded therapist laughs at that last bit and tells me that he can relate to my love of the zombies genre and he would like to read my books. I tell him five bucks per copy and he looks at me like I hit him with a dead fish.
I really like him.
It’s a really fucking cool tattoo.
This leads to us talking about our mutual love of the zombie genre. And that conversation leads inevitably to the scariest night of my childhood and the repercussions that altered my destiny forever.
As always this is a therapy session and the doctor is in.
When I was 10 years old my father let me watch a movie. It was Halloween night and everyone was exhausted from trick or treating and gorged on candy. It was about ten at night and I was just about ready to doze off for the evening when my dad and my step brother came in and changed the channel.
“You going to love this,” my father said as he set down on the couch next to me.
As the black and white movie began to play on the small screen I was quickly becoming bored with it when I heard something emanating from the TV.
“They’re coming to get you Barbara!”
Immediately my attention was captured and for the next 2 hours, although it felt simultaneously like 2 minutes and 20 hours, I was a prisoner. I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Every shadow, every sound out in the windy Michigan night, and every creek in the house was one of the living dead coming to get me.
I was terrified.
My second exposure to the zombie genre was not from a movie but from the unholy portal that was MTV. This was when MTV still played music and long before the abomination that it has become. This time I was over at my cousin’s house and the video for Michael Jacksons Thriller came on. Some of you might laugh at the idea of dancing zombies being scary but back then that was a badass video. It was shot by John Landis (An American Werewolf in London) the effects were done by Rick Baker (also American Werewolf in London), with a voice over by the immortal Vincent Price (He’s Vincent Mother Fucking Price and no credits are necessary you just need to fucking respect him bitches). That sequence where the zombies are busting into the house is a terrifying sequence damnit, I fucking love it!
Both of those exposures were important but the moment where eternal love and terror of the zombie genre happened when my Great Uncle Jerry showed me the original Dawn of the Dead. To this day Dawn is my absolute favorite movie ever. From the plot, to the characters, to the fear and gore Dawn is the perfect Horror Movie. But when I first saw it and it got to the sequence where the Philadelphia SWAT Team is clearing out the projects I nearly shit myself with terror. To this day it is the movie that I have seen the most.
Over the years I have sought out Zombies in every medium that I could find them in Books (World War Z and Night of the Dead being my favorites at the moment), Video Games (Dead Rising my favorite), Comic Books (Deadworld and the Walking Dead rule that roost), and Role Playing Games (All Flesh Must Be Eaten is probably the best of that lot).
My zombie world was rocked in 2004. That was the year that Zack Snyder rebooted Dawn of the Dead. I went that movie wanting to hate that fucking thing. The zombies ran in that movie, taking the nod from the brilliant British infection movie 28 Days Later, and the zombie purist in me wanted to burn down every theater showing the flick and lock a naked Zack Snyder in a closet with a hungry Polar Bear. I went to see the movie on opening day with my mom, my oldest daughter, and my little brother. The movie started up and then that little girl jumped up like a fucking spider in the hallway. To this day that is still the scariest thing I have ever seen on the screen.
Ninety minutes later the movie was over and I was pissed off … I loved it.
As an interesting follow up to that experience. When I tried to sleep that night I found it impossible as I sat up all night watching cartoons and jumping at every sound outside. Also my daughter has never forgiven me for taking her as to this day she is still terrified of zombies.
Ah kids, you can teach them to fear what you fear.
I wrote a zombie role playing game for Palladium Books in 2007/2008. All I am going to say about that is that one of the great regrets of my life is signing away my intellectual property for chump change and then it is not even used. I can’t use it and the publisher will never use it. It’s a learning experience but it still pisses me off, more at myself than the publisher. I should have known better. But I moved beyond that and I have written a 175,000 word zombie trilogy that I am publishing through my own company Gorillas with Scissors Press.
One of the greatest days for nearly all zombie fans was October 31, 2010. That was the day that the Walking Dead Television Series premiered on AMC. That was the culmination of the hopes and dreams of the fans and acolytes of the genre since those words were first uttered in a Pennsylvania cemetery … “They’re coming to get you Barbara!”
Everything that I do is influenced in one way or another by my exposure to zombies as a child. When I enter a building I always scope out the ways out and make sure that there are no obstacles in my way. I always sit with my back to a wall. I always have access to a weapon in one form or another. There are disaster supplies in my car and in my home, I tell people that they are in case of natural disaster but in reality they are for when the dead rise.
I won’t seem so crazy when the dead are eating you and your children!
The bearded therapist laughs at that last bit and tells me that he can relate to my love of the zombies genre and he would like to read my books. I tell him five bucks per copy and he looks at me like I hit him with a dead fish.
I really like him.
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