If you haven’t been following the gubernatorial politics of the Sunshine State, here’s a look at Rick Scott, the Republican candidate: “Even by Florida’s shaky standards, Rick Scott stands out as one of the most outlandish characters ever to pop out of the woodwork. His presence makes this year’s governor’s race a momentous I.Q. test for voters. A man who couldn’t run an honest company now wants to run state government. Duh.”

The website Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews is brand-new and on a roll right now, what with coverage of books as diverse as Clive Cussler’s Raise the Titanic, a criticism of Janet Malcolm (heresy! I’m enraged!) and, most importantly, Susanna Kaysen The Camera My Mother Gave Me, a memoir in which the author “tells the terrible tale of her vagina.”

Excellent news: Four Lions, the “terrorist comedy” by godlike geniss Chris Morris that we’ve been banging on about for months, opens in New York on November 5th. Learn more here!

“Rimbaud was his passion, but we finally had to tell him — and this broke the heart of every member of the department, because you knew how bad he wanted it — that there was more security in pro football.”
 — Professor Ed Olshan, University of Southern Mississippi, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures chair 1985–1993

Okay, so the latest news in the Brett Favre penis portraiture story — and let’s be honest, this is a much more uplifting news event than what’s about to happen in the midterm elections — is that Favre “admitted to leaving voicemails wooing the stunning ex-model two years ago — but insisted he never texted her pictures of his penis, according to Fox Sports.” Deadspin, which has been riding the story of Favre’s wang up and down and in and out and sideways and has quite literally begged for more, notes that both the voicemails and the schlong snapshot originated from the same number. So is Favre lying? No. Here’s why.

Before he settled for a special ed degree at the University of Southern Mississippi, Favre was widely known about campus for his devotion to the classics and to French in particular. (It’s not surprising, given his French heritage.) Without intending to cast any aspersions on athletes in general or Southern Miss in particular, even instructors at the school were surprised.

“He’d show up for class, this big football player, and at first you’d think he was in the wrong place. You’d try to quietly make sure this was where he was supposed to be, and he’d nod his head and say, ‘Yes ma’am,’ real loud, so everyone could hear,” recalls one professor. “He was proud of it.”

“He’d come in to study film and he’d be lugging a bunch of that French crap around with him,” coach Jim Carmody told the AP in a 2003 interview. “I told him I didn’t give a rip what he did in his spare time so long as it didn’t affect how he played on Saturday, and he told me not to worry. I also tried to steer him away from Verlaine and all that faggy Symbolist bullshit, but you can only tell your players that they should read L’Avare ou L’École du mensonge so many times before you can see you’re not getting through. That boy hated Moliere something fierce. I never knew why.”

Edward P. Olshan, who headed the department during Favre’s time at the school, remembers the disappointment in Favre’s eyes when he sat him down and explained how competitive the field of French literature was.

“It was like I kicked his dog,” says Olshan, author of No Man Nose: Rostand, the Neo-Romantics, and the World They Made. “But I finally got it across to him that there was no way he was going to survive the pressure in this line. He needed something with job security, where there were no tenure requirements and a man could work for a good twenty years if he wanted to.”

And that’s why Olshan believes Favre’s story about the texts. Ruffling through his files, he pulls out a dog-eared paper from 1990. The name “Brett Favre” is clearly visible on the front.

“This is Brett’s paper on Edmond Rostand,” says Olshan. “Now, I’m considered the expert on the subject, but if you just look through this and see what a college boy was able to put together — and he told me later he was hungover at the time — it’s pretty clear that this is someone who could have been a Rostand expert.”

Your point, professor?

“Well, I would think it’s pretty obvious. Brett sent those texts, but he was insecure about the appearance of his cock. It’s sort of a reverse Cyrano situation. I imagine Brett went to a friend of his and asked him to let him use pictures of his dong instead of Brett’s own.”

But that’s the penis he chose?

“Well, Brett’s taken a lot of hits since college. I’m not saying the judgment’s totally solid. I myself would have used a bigger wang. Hell, I would have let Brett use mine if he needed. It’s got some gray hairs, sure, but so does his beard — “

The interview ended there (although not before Olshan yelled down the hall at the fleeing reporter, “How come no one mentions the fact that it’s absolutely disgusting in the 21st century that such a thing as ‘football hostesses’ even exist?” which is a completely irrelevant and frankly un-American question), but the evidence is fairly compelling: That is not Brett Favre’s penis in that picture. He was hoping to woo the young woman with the wand of another. Now let us all go back to enjoying concussions in peace.

We wanted to invite you personally — so, yes, you! — to visit our new sister site, run by the funny and bizarre Edith Zimmerman and friends, particularly the phenomenal Liz Colville. It is called The Hairpin. Of course it is. Please do go say hi! Sad to say, this means that all topics even remotely regarding women (such as politics, robots, carpentry and global finance) will now be permanently banned from The Awl, which will now exhibit an even more extreme and rigorous manliness than it already does.

While the election approached, like one of those slow, freaky zombies in a horror film, and some banks failed while a huge percentage of America’s foreclosures were put on hold, we turned to far more important topics, such as taking a pro-hipster stand and taking a pro-sleeping with hipsters stand. We also tried to appreciate the finale of “Mad Men” for what it was and found out what it was like to be berated by Gene Simmons for having lady parts, basically. We interviewed a mime and tried to make sense of American home-grown terrorism of the Cuban variety. Also, we observed the DVD release of the most disgusting, best branded film of the year, while trying to avoid cheap iPhone romanticism. (And if you’re looking for something to read this weekend, you can always dig into our stories tagged Long Reads, Fiction or The Poetry Section.) Next week: things are about go get spooky. For real.

by Mike Barthel

The guy from the White House advance team steps out of one of those crossover SUV things and at first I think he’s the sort of awful D.C. jerkface who had to get his dad to call in a favor to stop him from getting fired from his summer internship for looking at porn during business hours, but once he leads us inside the gym (which is where the rally will be the next day) and I get a good look at him, I realize how wrong I was. This man is dreamy. He looks like he used to smoke pot very neatly out of a one-hitter and was a camp counselor at a camp where all the girls had hopeless crushes on him, and nowadays to relax he likes to go into his rustic-chic kitchen and cook a wide-noodled pasta dish with some sort of hearty ragu and open up a nice bottle of red wine for someone who loves him very much. I don’t remember his name, but the volunteer who I hang out with the next day, Z, tells me his name is Brandon. “All the girls remembered,” she said. “I looked him up when I got home. He is all over the internet.”

Brandon tells us in a wry, self-effacing way that he took us inside because “the press likes to tape these meetings and make us look stupid,” and we all chuckle sympathetically. He also tells us the following things: not to climb up on the risers, because it will make the picture shake (rolling his eyes to let us know he knows this is stupid); not to wear jorts (“Whoa, a lot of questions after the jorts thing”); not to answer any questions we might get from the press; that “it’s all about Patty Murray” — the troubled Senator whose reelection campaign the Prez is coming to support — “that’s why people are coming, right?” and we chortle and guffaw in a knowing way because he is acknowledging the ridiculousness of the political process while also reasonably asking us to respect it; that he was also a communication major like us (that is how we got recruited to be volunteers at the speech) and if anyone knows where his college (St. Edwards) is, “you get to meet the President,” and we laugh, which is a nice way of telling us that we are not going to get to meet the President; and finally, if there are any other embarrassing questions. There are not. We laugh at this, too. It does not occur to me until later that none of these questions were as embarrassing as would be a question along the lines of, say, “cut or uncut?” I am mostly glad I did not think of this at the time.

We follow him outside like smitten little puppies and he gives us a perfunctory overview of our duties before drifting off to check his mobile phone, which has a label on it. I can’t see what the label says.

* * *

While walking across the quad to get to my bus, I see a reporter/cameraman pair blocking my path and swerve to avoid them but they have already intercepted someone else. Their target is, worryingly, a blonde boy wearing a white t-shirt and riding a skateboard and carrying a briefcase. I have no good explanation for why he has chosen this particular combination of characteristics other than one which is simultaneously meaningless and perfectly explanatory: he has done so because he is in college.

“Are you going to vote?” the reporter asked him.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I plan on registering very soon.”

* * *

At home that night, I think about how Brandon (squee!) told us that the White House press corps would be there, and that the White House press corps consists of 50 people who would be housed in a separate building from where the President was speaking, and I think about how absolutely Looney Tunes this is. I already know what the President is going to do: he is going to give the exact same speech he has given at every other campaign stop, except that he will say nice things about Patty Murray. The odds that he will not do this are so small that it hardly seems worth sending someone to cover it; whatever money you might miss out on from not covering the big unusual event that will happen once out of every thousand times can’t possibly be more than the amount of money an organization has to pay to send a correspondent and/or a camera crew and/or a photographer on Air Force One. It’s like if every single network had to film the Kardashians at every moment of the day, rather than just relying on E! to let us know when something particularly noteworthy happened. I guess it’s a sort of status thing, but geez.

Maybe it’s just that we, as Americans, feel better knowing that, in the middle of this wonderful clusterfuck of a country where who-knows-what is going on at any given moment, there is one human being whose every activity we know about with as fine a grain as possible. It doesn’t matter if those activities are repetitious or boring or pointless; all that matters is that we know they happened. It is as if only by engaging in a ritual recitation of one individual’s experience of reality are we able to continually assert that such shared reality does, in fact, exist; that there is more than just the pictures in our heads, dancing on their own.

* * *

On the bus to campus the next morning I sit down behind two first-year students and I resist putting my headphones in because I am reporting. And good thing, because I love them! They are a baby gay with a Beiber-flop and a fab straight girl with vanishing amber highlights and purple nail polish. He has a map because he wants to find places to explore and she keeps telling him to put it away because they will have an adventure. At one point she suggests starting a filmmaking collective (!) and when he demurs she calls him “Mr. Indecisive” before doubling back and explaining that her mother always called her bossy. (She also suggests they go camping, because we are in the Pacific Northwest. “Do you have any, like, camping clothes?” she asks him teasingly, and I am glad that she is making it all about the costume.) When they get out, I see that the girl is wearing all black with a blue plaid flannel shirt and the baby gay is wearing a slim-cut suit with a crewneck white t underneath, because he is going to a political speech, and holy shit, I want them to be literal BFFs. I hope it all works out for them.

I get there half an hour late but still half an hour before we’re actually going to do anything. Our hosts are now two people from the Murray campaign named Rhonda and Lars. Rhonda and Lars are nice, but look frazzled. (“Rhonda and Lars,” Rhonda said yesterday after Brandon introduced them. “It sounds like a power duo.”) After all the talk about security yesterday I am expecting a thorough screening but instead we are given laminated badges hung from white yarn, like we are a bunch of kindergarteners on a field trip to somewhere bright and sticky. Rhonda and Lars send us away, on vague missions to direct the press to their proper entrance. I position myself as close to a leanable surface as possible.

Eventually I need to pee and head over to the workout center. I see that there are people using the elliptical machines at 8 in the morning. I imagine they feel like I do when I am using the elliptical machines while people are going to a football game — something along the lines of “what the fuck is wrong with all these assholes?” — but mainly I think that anyone who works out at 8 in the morning can’t be very fun to hang out with, especially if they are doing so instead of attending an Obama speech.

This is one of the many times in my recent life I have been glad not to be young: while everyone else either sticks priggishly to their positions or kind of skulks away resentfully when they want a break, I just stride off purposefully when nature calls, because I am old enough to know that this is legitimate, and I don’t really care about being punished. But mainly I am just old. The other volunteers are all undergrads, which I think probably means I missed some sort of important social cue at some point in the process.

Here is what I wrote in my notebook about the experience of spending two hours outside, watching people go by:

• “This is like a parade of adorableness!”

• Elderly couples with one hand holding a sign and the other holding the other’s hand!

• Shy, excited girls in hijabs!

• Brassy middle-aged lesbian couples!

• Star-spangled hats!

• Nine-year-old girls with “OBAMA!” signs hand-drawn with magic marker on posterboard!

•Black ladies in their Sunday best!

• Four-year-old boys with slicked-down hair in full suits!

The day is young but we are all young, or feeling young, giddy and free. When one of the volunteers — the aforementioned Z — gets bored with her job and wanders over to hang out with me, she comments that “It’s funny his approval ratings are so low but people still come and camp out overnight.” I decline to debate the point on the approval-ratings thing, but she’s certainly right about the excitement level.

Z’s mom arrives, hoping Z will be able to get her in backstage. I assure her that at these sort of giant organizational gangbangs the best way to attain admission is to show up at the last minute, look non-threatening, and ask the most harried-looking person politely if you can come in. (Though not in so many words.) She strikes up a conversation with the campus cop guarding the nearby entrance. He is friendly enough that he has already shown Z pictures of his kids, and the two chatter away while Z and I discuss the perils of parents on Facebook. When Z’s mom comes back she has the cop’s phone number and gives it to Z with the suggestion that she give him a call “if you ever get into trouble.” This makes me miss my mom, and I end up calling her later. (She is fine.)

As it gets closer to start time the other volunteers congregate where Z and I are; we huddle together, warming ourselves. One girl, S, sees another girl approaching and they do that whole high-pitched “hiiiii!”-and-hug thing that girls do. S tells us later that this other girl is her sorority sister and the student body president. She is also the daughter of the state attorney general. “So it’s, like, in her blood. But they have very different views.” S was very excited for her friend after she saw her friend’s Facebook status indicating that her friend is going to introduce the president, and we all coo in appreciation of this achievement. “She’ll totally get to shake his hand,” one of the girls says. “Oh yeah,” says S.

As it will turn out, her friend is not introducing the president, but the county executive; I receive no follow-up report as to her hand-shaking activities. There is probably some message here about politics, but she seems like a nice enough girl and I wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavors.

* * *

Once we get inside, we are confined to the press pen, which is pen-like enough to have a wide-open grazing area in the back leading to a narrow chute that takes you to the side of the stage, where there is a platform for photographers. (I assume this is where the media ritualistically slaughtered a bald eagle before we were let in; certainly it is where I would have done so.) A guy is playing songs over the PA from an Apple laptop and I really want to offer him my iPod instead, because he is really leaning on some old dogs like “No Surrender” and “I Won’t Back Down.” When I get bored, I make a mix of songs that would be better, albeit extremely ill-advised.

A gospel choir gets up and sings “God Bless America” and “Stand By Me” and, oh God, “Amazing Grace.” Seattle usually does not like to admit that black people exist except as crime victims, so their presence here makes the whole thing seem like we’re trying too hard, like when you do too good a job cleaning up your apartment before your parents come over. You know they’re going to walk in and think “Oh, bullshit he dusts his wainscoting on a regular basis” and then smile and say “Oh honey, your place is so nice!” instead, and the wainscoting probably isn’t comfortable in this situation either, if you know what I mean, but in grand post-racial fashion, we’ve all decided to pretend like we don’t fundamentally distrust each other while dad’s around. Eventually the choir gets down and the crowd starts to do the wave, because they are bored. Two Pacific Islander girls are sleeping on each others’ shoulders.

I go to the bathroom which is through the basketball team’s locker room (UW stickers on the soap dispensers, in case they forget where they are, I guess), and when I come back, there are thousands of Patty Murray signs fluttering amongst the crowd, distributed from who-knows-where. The whole thing gets going in earnest: a Marine leads us in the Pledge, and the aforementioned student body president takes the stage. At one point she says something about how “the cynics” don’t think young people will vote, and a gay near me yells “boo cynics!” which I like for all sorts of reasons. She tries to lead us in a call-and-response chant of the candidate’s name, but while the first “Patty!” “Murray!” exchange goes fine, the crowd picks up a rhythm on its own and keeps chanting “Murray!” and the speaker has to scramble to keep up and interject some “Patty!”s at the right places. The crowd is beginning to become… self-aware.

She introduces the county executive, who tells us to update our Facebook status with something about voting, and then he introduces a Congressional candidate who says “I am also a Husky!” and my Tourette’s starts acting up; when she says “We need to make things better!” I have to tap my fingers to avoid yelling “Talk specifics!” She seems nice, though, and I do learn that apparently everyone wants to sell electric cars to China, judging by the crowd reaction to her proposal of this plan. She introduces a sitting Congressman named Norm Dix who my notes say is a “Shatner-looking motherfucker,” and he gives a pretty great speech in which he brings up Bush a lot. When he mentions that he took classes at UW from a Keynesian, me and the guy next to me chuckle knowingly, and I notice he is Twittering up a storm. This means we are both giant nerds. The crowd tries to get a “six more years!” chant going, but it fades away quickly, too self-conscious to self-sustain.

So then (whew) Norm introduces the governor, who gives an even better speech in which she leans hard on health care, gets cheers for “Our troops are coming home from Iraq,” boos for how the other side is “scooping up donations thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision,” and laughs for “Look at the candidates they’re putting forward!” She gets a very successful “Patty!” “Murray!” chant going. Then she leaves and the Secret Service sweeps the podium, and we all know what’s coming. The crowd can’t decide what to chant and eventually settles on the wave again, because who doesn’t like the wave? The White House press corps files in behind us in the pen’s chute, led by Brandon, and the excitement level generally ramps up. I see someone from the Washington Post, and want to talk to him about their coverage of the health care debate, but think better of it. The DJ plays either Amerie’s “Gotta Work” or the song it samples, Sam and Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin’” and it works like a charm. We are pumped up.

Then Obama comes in with Murray and the place goes nuts with flashbulbs all over and ladies rending their garments and grown men weeping and like that. Obama takes off his jacket and rolls up his sleeves very deliberately while people cheer, and he waves. Murray gives a good speech and gets a great call-and-response going where we get to yell “No!” which is always fun, but no one really cares. We can’t even hear her introduction to Obama; we know what’s coming, and we go insane. Someone yells “I love you!” and Obama says “I love you back,” which we really like. Squee!

The beginning of the speech is weird because the speech doesn’t really matter. Everyone in the place, no matter their role, is using it as a photo op. The photographers and camera guys are all jockeying for shots on the risers and trying to get different angles around the press pen, and everyone in the crowd is taking pictures of Obama, sure, but also everyone in the crowd is trying to get shots of themselves with Obama. Like the very attractive mixed-mixed-race couple in front of me, who take pictures of each other with their backs to Obama and then take pictures of themselves with their backs to Obama and then look at the pictures and comment on how attractive they look in these pictures of themselves with the President also in the frame, and everyone is doing this. They don’t just want to document that Obama was here, they want to document that they were here, seeing Obama. The crowd is now making its own rally, shouting different things both at Obama (“Repeal don’t ask don’t tell!”) and at each other; pockets of alliances form and disperse and small social gatherings sprout up in every section of the building.

And I realize that what matters isn’t Obama’s speech, but his mere presence. Despite the loudspeakers, it’s not his voice dominating the room. It’s the fact that he is here, with us. His presence makes this time special. We have made it special, taking time out of our days (it is around noon on a Thursday) by missing class or work to come here and wait for hours to get in and see this particular event. We have changed our routines. This is an abnormal event. Which means it’s like a festival, or a carnival; a celebration less of what we’re celebrating than of us, and the fact that we exist.

I am thinking profound thoughts along these lines when Obama looks directly at me and locks eyes and I realize that, in that moment, when I am face-to-face with the most powerful person on Earth, I have my index finger halfway up my right nostril. This is probably the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me.

Perhaps spurred by this rather disrespectful and also gross gesture, Obama brings it back. He uses his considerable gifts to distract us from the visual in favor of the word, rolling into his familiar metaphor of the car in the ditch with palpable glee. He has fun with it, diddling the details around rhetorically and playing with us, teasing us with the punchline we know is coming. And the crowd comes together in this moment, led on by our leader, focused suddenly on what he’s saying. The festival is harnessed to a practical purpose by this particular power of charisma, ritual, style. When he hits it — when he yells “You put the car in D!” — we go nuts all over again, responding this time not to his mere presence, but to what he has done to us.

When it’s all over, the DJ plays Brooks and Dunn’s “Only in America,” which was George W. Bush’s campaign song. I walk out the press entrance and back toward class, where we will discuss the particular authority bloggers have, and how it is constructed. I am walking side-by-side with a family.

“What did you like best?” the dad asks his son.

“I liked the wave!” the son says.

The dad tries to correct him. “Didn’t you like how he found accessible ways to talk about complex policy issues?” But no, the kid’s right: the wave was great. Who doesn’t like the wave?

Mike Barthel has written about pop music for a bunch of places, mostly Idolator and Flagpole, and is currently doing so for the Portland Mercury and Color magazine. He continues to have a Tumblr and be a grad student in Seattle.

All of your Twitter ranking articles are entirely wrong and please cease and desist.

by Sean McTiernan

Horror sequels are a lot less formulaic than the cast of Scream would have you believe. Sure, there’s a definite sense of having to re-bottle the lightning that made the first bottle so awesome. But because the hook of the movie is already in place, the residual weirdness can come to the fore along with the bits people liked the movie from the first movie. That’s why Pinhead isn’t that big of a deal until Hellraiser 2 and why Jason doesn’t get his mask till the second movie. Because horror plots are often so flimsy, sequels often allow for an evolution of ideas and a more refined pass. That’s why Evil Dead 2 is so genius” it’s Evil Dead but a hundred times more demented. You could even compare horror sequels’ repurposing of established tropes and other peoples’ ideas to the remix culture in music. (You’d be a pretentious windbag, but you could definitely try. That one’s for free, Chuck Klosterman.)

Return Of The Living Dead is a perfect zombie movie, unjustifiably underrated and sadly ignored in the last decade’s fervent obsession with the walking dead. Any time anyone mentions zombies nowadays it usually devolves into one of two conversations: “Hey zombies are played out and so are vampires, where’s all the teen-Frankenstein love stories, am I right ladies?” Or: “Oh fast ones are real scary but actually they’re not zombies like Romero zombies so I hate it… or do I hate it? I’m not sure.” This is a shame.

What should actually happen is everyone breaking into a choreographed dance number to sing an ode to how Return of The Living Dead pretty much has the whole zombie movie thing sewn up and down to a science. This dance number should have people in brain costumes holding signs that say “Eat Me!”

The only reason it seems that Return Of The Living Dead is revered is that it’s too funny. It’s not slyly satirical in a way that lets the audience go “Ah yes, Zombies in a shopping mall… I hear you brother… boo for capitalism.” It’s unapologeticly, bitterly hilarious, constantly finding new ways to sadistically punish everyone in the movie. But it also spends plenty of time being brutal. The Tarman in the basement is one of the best single zombies in movie history.

The film totally ignores most of the supposed rules for making a zombie movie. In fact, it establishes its own, which are far more fun. These zombies can think, they only want to eat brains and they can talk (and often display black humor: “Send More Paramedics”). They can also run… very fast. Zombies running in 1986? That puts a bit of a dampener on Simon Pegg’s much lauded alleged witticism concerning sprinting and zombie lore. Just another example of how unfairly Return Of The Living Dead got ignored in the last Hot Topic zombie revival. It’s even got a beautiful nude punk zombie named Trash in it, played by an actress who went on to film her own zombie-themed exercise video.

Seriously, I don’t think a movie could have more awesome things about it. It even inspired an awesome thrash punk band.

Now you know how great Return of the Living Dead is, you should also know how different Return of The Living Dead 3 is: it is almost completely different. While it keeps some of what made it great (better looking zombie, punk protagonists and its own excellent zombie ruleset), it takes these things in a whole other direction. Eschewing the pitch-black comedy and manic energy of its predecessors, RotLD 3 is the story of one girl slowly and painfully turning into a zombie.

Julie is the boyfriend of a proto-grunger called Curt. When Curt isn’t sitting around waiting to be an extra in Singles and planning to change the “C” in his name to a “K,” he and Julie are illegally sneaking into a high security military compound to watch Curt’s dad, Col. Reynolds, monitoring experiments to create zombies using a special ooze. This, I’m sure you’ll agree, is pretty gnarly. When Julie dies in a handjob-related motorbike accident (it happens, kids: arrive alive!), it only stands to reason Curt would inject her with the same stuff his dad was using and bring her back to life despite witnessing a re-animated person slaughter a couple of innocent scientists in a blind murderous rage. Curt’s not much of a planner. What follows is Curt and Julie’s attempts to deal with Julie’s inevitable transformation into a fully fledged zombie. Turns out, it’s not exactly an easy or painless process.

RotLD 3 is book-ended by scenes in government compounds built for experimenting on the undead. But for most of the movie the threat is decidedly human. It’s thrilling to see gang members doggedly pursue a woman knowing that she will eventually eat them. The Loved-One-Turning-Zombie trope is usually good for a subplot in some horror movies but, in focusing on it, RotLD 3 makes the processes a lot more compelling. Because Julie was a relatively fresh corpse, her transformation takes a lot longer than others. She describes in detail the horrible feeling of death, the insatiable hunger she feels and even her anger at Curt for trying to resurrect her.

Curt’s a bit rubbish though, so you get the feeling attempted resurrection is exactly the kind of useless bullshit Juile expected him to pull at some stage in the relationship. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ineffectually tried to resurrect all the girls he dates who die in handjob-related biking accidents. I bet when he resurrects them, he pisses and moans in the exact same way when they try to eat people’s brains and can’t love him cause they’re dead. It seems like a very “Curt” thing to do. He actually ruins the pathos in the scene where Julie tries to kill herself because she decides she can’t live as a zombie. Even though she is baring her soul and being genuinely heartbreaking, Curt just bitches over the whole speech about missing how things “used to be.” This has the hilarious effect of making it look like Julie tearfully jumped to her death just to get away from Curt’s childish complaining. I know I’d do the same.

One of the oddest touches is Juile’s constant need to self-harm which seems, in some odd way, to allay her desire to kill humans. Of course, this need and desire eventually collide in an impressively gorey section where Julie drives hundreds of pieces of broken glass and metal into herself. Then, looking like some sort of riot grrrl cenobite, she slaughters and eats the gang members that have been tormenting her and Curt (who sucks). And even though we don’t see many other zombies in this movie, when we do, they are something special. The filmmakers seem to have spent extra time making every zombie look uniquely horrific, far from the identikit hordes you get in most zombies sequels.

Return of the Living Dead is definitely in the top 8 horror movies of all time and if you haven’t watched it, you’re pretty ridiculous and people only invite you to parties cause they feel they have to. But please, you should also give a look to its second sequel. Though some have tried (hello, Colin) no other movie conveys exactly how hard it sucks to turn into a zombie. And how hard it sucks to go out with Curt. But mainly the changing-into-a-zombie bit.

Sean Mc Tiernan has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone, though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum. You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.

Damn you, Science! You’ve killed our dreams! “Halloween stories about the ghostly ‘chupacabra’ circulate every year, but now scientists have solved the mystery surrounding this legendary animal. Instead of being vicious, fanged creatures that supposedly drink the blood of livestock, chupacabras turn out to be wild dogs inflicted with a deadly form of mange, according to University of Michigan biologist Barry OConnor.”