Alright, you zombies. Recall, from a few months back, the glorious event when crowds of zombie fans heeded the call to dress up as a corpse and go stumble around a public place.
Come on, dammit, you want to tell me Jo’burg doesn’t have at least 100 zombie fans who’d be willing to meet at Sandton City or Rosebank Mall and stumble through it, causing fear and horror? Old clothes, a little bit of make-up and oodles of splattered fake blood, and we can make history here — and some great photographs.
Or are all you South Africans so scared, so repressed, so apathetic and so lacking any sense of fun, irony or the ridiculous that the idea of a mob of 100 or more walking scary corpses, staggering through a mall in Johannesburg, looking for “braaaaiiinns” doesn’t appeal to you? Think of the fun, the fear, the social commentary, the wonderful photographs, the confusion of the people (and the total horror of the security guards and shop assistants.)
If you like horror movies, then bring it home to Johannesburg. Let me show you what it looks like when a mob of 200 to 300 “zombies” invade a very upmarket Canadian Shopping Mall.
And here’s another collection of brilliant photographs, showing what it looks like when a Zombie Invasion Hits San Francisco Streets. Here’s a collection of pix (for all you iPod fans) of a Zombie Mob in an Apple Store. Here’s more Zombies Attacking the Apple iPod Store.
To see the zombies moving, here’s a 10-meg movie download of the Zombies Arriving at the Apple Store.
Taking the fear to where it is needed the most, read this great news article (which keeps telling the reader, reassuringly, that “zombies are not real”) when a small zombie infestation descended on the American Idols Auditions.
The zombie flash mobs concept is definitely spreading. Here’s the notice online for zombies to gather next weekend, in Seattle. And in Minneapolis, complete with make-up tips, there’s a Pub Crawl of the Undead. In Philadelphia, they’re preparing for a ‘Day of Mutilation on the Streets’.
In Calgary, they’ve just had the First Annual Calgary Zombie Walk. And New York this week is about to have a major zombie infestation at Zombie Con! San Francisco also just had its Graveyard Games.
Here are some more pix from July’s Zombie Infestation. And here’s a first-person account from one of the folks who had fun running ahead of the zombies, screaming and warning people on the streets that the zombies were coming — read Zombie Flash Mobs.
Requirements: a couple of willing make-up people (for those who haven’t the skillz to “zombify” themselves); some arb old clothes — perhaps torn or partially eaten when you were attacked in the first place; oodles of fake blood (red food colouring); a vehicle with refreshments that can be a central meeting point alongside the mall to be “attacked”; and a goodly hour or so to invade said mall, followed by a zombie invasion of a nearby bar to relax, laugh a lot and review the pix taken by friends of the whole event. I’d be curious to see how many zombie/horror fans there are locally who’d be keen to go look for brains and shuffle through Rosebank or Sandton City.
Forget the politics, the racism, the wah wah wah history of whatever — forget your age or how you’re “supposed” to behave. It’s time to have some fun. Or are you tens of thousands of horror fans out there so apathetic, scared and overwhelmed by the seriousness of being in this country that you can’t even muster the energy to gather up friends, meet online, set a date and go play zombies in Sandton?
Having been through Sandton Square recently, I saw that the entire area definitely needs a zombie infestation. This is a challenge. Pass it on to the horror geeks that you know.
What’s better than knitted dolls? Correct — knitted doll zombies that you can use to re-enact your favourite brains-eating scenes from zombie flix. Go look at knitted dolls that granny didn’t make, at Knitted Zombies.
At last, something that isn’t zombies … maybe. To see the mindset (and — ahem — “creativity”) at work in classified sections of the United States military, go look at its frankly frightening posters, used to remind soldiers in secret sections to shut up: US Military Warning Posters.
“More art and pix you can use” time. The Photoshop craze continues; this time it is the heady, chaotic and surreal result from taking any piece of modern art and “robotising” it — adding a “robotic” element. Go stare at some of the very beautiful and occasionally disturbing results at The Photoshop Contest.
To have a quick look into the living spaces of people in Shanghai — from paupers to billionaires — go through the 100 or so pix online at People Are Living There.
If, like me, you’ve been blessed with the lovely ability to find laughter and happiness in other people’s catastrophic unhappiness, then you’re going to love the sequence of photographs showing a rather Disastrous Mass Motorbike Crash. An alternative collection of the pix, can be found here.
Then, with no photographic tricks at all, just thousands of bones of dead people arranged nicely (Hollywood itself has made a couple of movies here), go stare at the goth-like beauty and excesses of The Bone Church. And here’s another link to more pix.
Religious zombies time. Christians aren’t the only ones to lose plot, subtlety, taste, perspective, decency and normality entirely when it comes to creating “art” that reflects their belief system. (Look at this page from a 1954 “Christian” colouring book, titled His God Cannot Help Him.) But on to the odd and bizarre technicolour excesses of the cult known as “Jehova’s Witnesses” — as an example, try this lovely poster you really want to hang in your kids’ room, to help them sleep peacefully at night.
Or, look at one of their posters showing the happy people not noticing the destruction behind them, titled Does God Care. For many more weird, kitsch and odd posters, browse the many online at Jehova’s Witness Posters.
Alternatively, just buy your congregation some of these great looking “religious” poker chips, and, hey, close the church and open a casino — stare at Faith Chips.
More art, to prove that “art” isn’t only the creakingly “past its sell-by date” local stuff. Look at Chinese Space Programme Propaganda Posters.
To see wearable art that is eye-catchingly stunning, and which looks like a cross between Terry Gilliam and Tretchikoff, stare at the incredible T-shirt designs from The Imaginary Foundation.
Food stuff. They said it couldn’t be done. They said everyone would be barfing. They said the damn things would just disintegrate. They were wrong — read about Fried Strawberries.
Cool stuff for sale. How about a “disappearing civil liberties” mug? Fill it up with hot liquid and watch your rights vanish, just like in the real world. See it here.
As Halloween is approaching, learn how to make something disgusting, repulsive and quite eerily interesting — like this great and creepy example of How to Make Your Own Head in a Jar.
If you want your furnishings to reflect your geekyness, try these great-looking Cushions Shaped in Chinese Characters.
Finally, to help those two or three people who have bought iPods do stuff that Apple won’t like and doesn’t cater for, firstly go learn How to Rip DVD Movies to Your iPod. Then, and this ought to get some interest given the recent release of the video iPod (I’ll post links to bypass the locking system as they emerge), here’s How to Put Porn on Your iPod!
Until the next time, if Sandton Square zombies don’t get me.