The wedding ring was in my pocket, but she’ll never know. Two months ago she looked at me with love and tears in her eyes as she said that she would do anything for me, marry me, have my children, you get the drift. She was the love of my life, well… “was” being the operative word. Before going further she needed some time to get out of a bad place, and so I gave her that time. Several weeks later, which were an eternity for me, we went on one date, and I was happy as a clam. But she was holding something back, and I didn’t push it. Best to leave sleeping dogs lie, right? Then two weeks of silence. A bad sign. Finally another date, but on this one you didn’t need to be a fortune teller to see it was one of those “we need to chat” situations – but without the chat. We saw Dawn of the Dead, the 2004 remake, and although it was a pristine 35mm print (thanks Universal!) it was still, in retrospect, a bad choice. I’m an idiot that way. The next day I got the “Dear John” letter. Geez, was the movie that bad? “As much as I like you, and love you, I don’t want to be with you.” Suddenly I’m that guy on the roof of the gun store, surrounded by zombies, and running out of food, but at least in those scant few weeks leading up to that night, the wedding ring never left my pocket.

So, yeah, I don’t really feel like blogging – but here goes (and please excuse me if I’m distracted); the topic for today is zombies. But let’s start with clams. Specifically, the expression “happy as a clam.” Clams. A small glob of filter feeding organs with no eyes or head and “kidneys, a heart, a mouth, and an anus. For more information see bivalve and pseudofeces.” Thanks Wikipedia. A blind, headless, ass that lives underwater. I was happy as a clam alright. Buried in sediment and days away from the buffet.

In Dawn of the Dead it’s the thinking humans that turn into a zombie buffet. Lord, that’s a crappy segue, oh well… stumbling right along I’ll lurch into my next beef with the Dawn of the Dead remake: fast zombies. I’ve touched on my preference for slow zombies before. The next woman I meet gets that question first: do you prefer slow zombies or fast zombies? If she votes for fast zombies, I get the check and we call it a day. … Nah, who am I fooling? Anyone who will watch a zombie film with me, or any horror film for that matter, has me completely wrapped around their finger.

Dead people. They should have problems with Rigor mortis. But in the remake it doesn’t just bug me that they’re running like track stars; it bugs me that they also leap into zombie action within seconds of receiving their infectious bites. Where’s the middle ground? In an early scene Sarah Polley’s husband gets bit by the girl next door and immediately turns into a brain-munching zombie. I find it more terrifying to see someone you love go through a slow transformation. With lots of tortured waiting in between. The quiet moments stretching out. You really don’t want to end it while there’s still a pulse, so you hang on, and hang on, but then – suddenly – they’re gone. This gives more weight to that moment when this person you were in love with is suddenly no longer the person you loved at all. They are something completely different. And the crazy thing is that I still love her even as she rips past my ribcage and squirrels her hand deep inside my chest to tear out my heart. I see it in her hand. She squeezes it so hard it drips through her knuckles. Then she’s at it like a hungry dog on juicy Steak tartar. I stop breathing. She stumbles away and is gone. Now I’m left walking around with this huge ol’ cavity in my chest. My turn to stumble around, feeling empty.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, on the subject of waiting for your loved one to turn into a zombie… These things still exist in the remake, but the time elements are condensed. Time. It’s all about time. It creeps up on you slowly. In Romero’s original the survivors are given lots of time to wallow in and indulge in all their consumer-based fantasies. They are safe and comfortable for longer chunks of time. Chunks of time that really allow you to see how the monotony creeps in just before the bubble bursts. I guess she had just enough time for her big revelation that “My vision was clouded by confusion and the-grass-is-greener syndrome. But now I see it.” Those words knock around what’s left of my brain and now I see it too, thanks to her. Here, from the rooftop, I can see the grass just fine. It’s dead and brown, trampled by zombies.