A Canadian zombie blog has awarded my newest book, Z.E.O., 4-out-of-5 severed zombie heads.  How nice of them.  Click here to read their entire review.

Over the weekend, I went to Donnie Dirk’s Zombie Den, a zombie-themed bar in Minneapolis (and, to my knowledge, one of the only zombie-themed bars in the country).  It was totally excellent, and I had a wonderful time!

There were zombie-themed drinks for sale, and zombie movies playing on flatscreen TVs.  Zombie-killing weapons adorned the walls, along with growling zombie heads (and deer heads).  The male staff all dressed like Simon Pegg’s character in Shaun of the Dead, and the female staff wore sequined gowns.   The decor was really neat too, from the reflective trim on the walls to the retro vinyl booths to the leopard-print carpet.

My friend Brian, who was my host in Mpls., explained that the neighborhood containing Donnie Dirk’s is a little dodgy, but that felt right to me.  This is definitely a place you feel rewarded for having hunted-for in a forbidding part of town.

Here are some pictures I took.  (I took these when we first got there at 5pm, right after they opened, so it looks pretty empty.  But by 6:30, the place was totally hoppin’.)

Last night I watched the 2008 documentary Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown.  H.P. Lovecraft is my favorite writer ever, and I was excited to see what this film would reveal about him. (I wouldn’t call Lovecraft a “zombie author” precisely [he is most-prominently known for creating gibbering tentacled monstrosities], but he sometimes wrote stories with creatures that were very zombielike.  I also think his emphasis on cults, disturbing figurines, and “native rituals” is directly influenced by Voodoo and the traditions of “classical” Haitian zombies.)  

As of last night, I had yet to see a really, really good documentary about HPL.  I hoped this would be it. 

It almost was. 

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown uses narration, illustrations, and interviews with experts to tell the story of Lovecraft’s life and the evolution of his thoughts and writing.  What this documentary gets 100% right is its panel of HPL experts, which is formidible:  Ramsey Campbell, John Carpenter, Guillermo Del Toro, Neil Gaiman, Stuart Gordon, S.T. Joshi, Caitlin Kiernan, Robert Price, and Peter Straub.  (I met Peter Straub in New York City back in 2001 and tried to get him talking about Lovecraft.  I failed utterly.)  This is most of the All-Star Team of contemporary Lovecraft experts, and, overwhelimingly, their commentary is insightful, interesting, and sometimes very personal. 

Unfortunately, it’s clear from the tone of the production that someone involved in Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown said to himself at the outset: “Okay, Lovecraft wrote stories that were scary…  Therefore… my documentary about Lovecraft must, itself, be scary!”  Maybe this notion sounded reasonable in the planning phase, but in execution it’s asinine. 

The insightful comments of the many Lovecraft experts are interrupted again and again by boring slow-pans over illustrations of Cthulhu whilst horror-movie music plays in the background.  Excerpts from Lovecraft’s stories are read aloud by a hammy actor who tries too hard to sound spooky (with the pops and crackle of an ancient phonograph inserted behind him).  Photographs of Lovecraft and his friends are shown but then sometimes warped or digitally manipulated to make them “more frightening.”  All of which tells the viewer nothing new about H. P. Lovecraft.

I mean, the Marx Brothers were funny, right?  But when you watch a documentary about the Marx Brothers, you don’t expect the documentary itself to be a comedy.  You expect the documentary to tell you about the Marx Brothers.  The narrator isn’t there to throw pies and have a greasepaint mustache and improvise harp solos every ten minutes.  The narrator is there to tell you about the Marx Brothers. 

Same thing here.  Lovecraft’s stories were scary, but that doesn’t mean a documentary about him needs to be.

Anyhow, I’ve made my point.  “Scary” tone aside, this is still the best documentary made so far about H. P. Lovecraft because it features about the best team of Lovecraftian experts you could ask for, and gives a clear, coherent account of his life and work.  If you are a fan of HPL, I advise you to check it out.  (Just try to ignore the “spooky” atmosphere.)

A friend of mine just alerted me to the existence of a parody band called The Zombeatles.  Apparently, they are playing a venue near my house in the coming months.  I may have to go check it out…

Here are some pictures I took at the Zombie Outbreak Film Festival at the Portage Theater in Chicago last month.  It was a really fun event.  I got to introduce the Z.E.O. trailer, sold and signed books, and met lots of nice people. 

And zombies.

Famous Chicago-area zombie "Kitty Zombie" buys a book (and appears appropriately enthused)!

One of the costume contests. (I think zombie-cop is totally checking out zombie-Red Riding Hood...)

Here’s what the cover of my next book, The Art of Zombie Warfare–which will come out around August, 2010–will look like.  Whilst there are many manuals on the market about fighting against zombies, this tome instead presumes to enumerate the benefits of fighting like a zombie. 

Anyhow, I think it looks pretty cool.

I’ll be signing copies of Z.E.O. (and maybe doing some zombie trivia) at the Zombie Outbreak Film Festival this Saturday (Nov. 14) at the Portage Theater in Chicago.  It looks to be a great event.  They’re showing a bazillion awesome zombie movies, including my favorite of all time: Return of the Living Dead.  There’ll be a zombie makeup contest, vendors, raffles/giveaways, and similar festive stuff. 

Also appearing will be Ron Fitzgerald (co-star of Tales from the Script), Claire Fluff Ryan (Director of Tales from the Script), Kitty Zombie, The Undead Comic, Justin Johnson (Director of Zombie Girl the Movie), Mac Eldridge (Director of Chemical 12-D), Walter J. Walsh (Director of The Basement), and Sam the Zombie Hunter. 

It’s just $12 to get in, or $10 if you buy your tickets in advance on the interwebs.

Here’s the film schedule:

Does anyone even get my Raymond Carver sub-references?

Anyhow, Rue Morgue called Z.E.O. “fun and insightful” in a nice little review in their November 2009 issue.  It’s not online anywhere yet, but here’s a scan I made. 

The current cover

As someone who has been commissioned by his publisher to write a book about “zombie pirates,” I have resolved to read all I can on the topic.  (It has not been exhaustively explored.)  So imagine what a pleasure it was for me to learn that one of the only prominent books containing zombie pirates was a book by one of my most favorite novelists… that I had yet to read!

The book, On Stranger Tides by the great Tim Powers, is a shrewd combination of history, science-fiction, and horror.  Tides imagines the Caribbean of the early 1700’s as a place where pirates like Blackbeard use magic and wizardry to forge relationships with New World spirits and empower themselves. 

Remarkably, Tides seems to include “both kinds” of zombie.  That is to say, there are traditional Voodoo zombies who act like spooky automatons and serve their masters like robots, and there are also Romero-style zombies who rise from the deep to attack humans (with teeth, yes, but also with cutlasses).  Here is my favorite description from a scene in which the protagonist finds his ship and crew attacked by a boatload of undead pirates:

“Then one of the lively corpses danced ponderously up to him and whirled a green cutlass at his head… Its body smelled like unfresh fish and felt like chains and jelly in a wet leather bag.”

The original, first-edition cover

Ha!  What a great description!  I love it.

If you are unfamiliar with Powers–but you like zombies–then I think Tides is an excellent way to discover one of the greatest living Sci-Fi/Horror authors.  I should warn you that it’s a slow build–zombies don’t appear for the first 100 or so pages of the book, but when they do, hold on to your freakin hat!

Final Thought: How is this book “Print on Demand”?  (This means that if you order it from BN.com or Amazon, or special order it at a brick-and-mortar bookstore, the publisher will print one copy and mail it to you, but it is not regularly stocked on bookstore shelves.)  Seriously, I’m mystified.  Powers is one of those authors like John C. Gardner who are so good and so important that I have trouble believing that everything they wrote is not constantly in print.

This may, in Powers’ case, change soon, however. 

Many years ago, Tides was optioned by Walt Disney, which promptly sat on it and did nothing with the rights.  However, this year it was announced that the next installment in the Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean franchise would be titled Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.  Probably, this means they plan to import the plot of Powers’ book to the world of the film-series.  It’s unsure if the film will get made (reports on film websites say that Depp is having “second thoughts”), but if it is made, then hopefully a long-overdue Powers renaissance will occur.   

This post is not about zombies, but instead about a weird discovery I made in my neighborhood. 

The other day I was buying a bicycle pump at Wastyn Cycles near my house, when I espied an unusual cornerstone on a building at the corner of Fullerton Ave. and Talman Ave.  It was engraved to read: “ALL BELGIANS ARE EQUAL 1921″

And I thought: “Okaaaaaaaay…”

But then I did a little research, and according to the Chicago History Museum, my neighborhood was an epicenter of Belgian immigration to Chicago in the early 1900’s.  Then as now, there was French-speaking-Belgian vs. Flemish-Speaking-Belgian tension.  So to smooth things over, a group of them founded something called the All Belgians Are Equal Club, which, in 1921, erected the building at Fullerton and Talman as a kind of clubhouse for the Belgian community.

Here are some pictures I took:

The cornerstone

The building

ABE = All Belgians Equal

I wonder if the project worked, and if the Chicago-area Belgians learned to coexist peacefully.

When I was younger, I lived in Belgium for 3 years, in a French-speaking area.  I’d hear about the intra-Belgian tension, and think to myself, man, these guys should really bond together instead of fighting.  It’s not like there’s that much Belgium to go around.  Why do you need to divide it up and make it even smaller?

I get the same feeling when my poet-friends criticize other contemporary poets.  It’s like, dude, you guys are already only half-a-shelf in the bookstore as it stands.  I think you need to work together to help poety get a wider audience instead of fighting over that half-a-shelf.