A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 

ecovillage of the dead

You can't turn around without hearing that someone cranked out another sequel to a blockbuster movie of yesteryear. Friday the 13th went into how many overtimes with the dude in the hockey mask killing successive generation after generation of dewey young teenagers, all parked in the same lover's lane or otherwise sneaking love in all the wrong places. You'd think that after a while there wouldn't be any teenagers left in town to get hacked into little pieces.

Ez doesn't want to trade movie chit chat. He has something better in mind. He wants to resurrect the movie industry in Ithaca. This is not as off the wall as it seems if you consider that Ithaca used to be the movie capital of the Finger Lakes. Mary Pickford and other greats shot films in and around Cayugawood back in the days before talkies and before the need for sequels.

Actually Ez started thinking about how he could accomplish this when he heard that a studio was releasing Dawn of the Dead, yet another sequel to the gore classic Night of the Living Dead. George Romero, the original director, died so you might even see him in this flick. According to the publicity blurbs, Dawn brings the familiar cast of loveable zombies into the present day by introducing them to the joys of shopping at the mall.

Now that may be fine and well for some zombies. But not all zombies are braindead, jingle-whistling shopaholics. There are progressive zombies, Green zombies, zombies with a social conscience. Zombies who want to make a difference for the environment.

So Ez came up with the idea for yet another Dead sequence. Ecovillage of the Dead. Bring the suckers to Ithaca where they can plant organic vegetables, get their limbs caught in the blades of solar power windmills, drive rusted out Volvos, shop at the Farmer's market, play hackeysack on the Commons, listen to blue grass and sip wine coolers on the great lawn at Taughanock Park.

That's what's wrong with America. Some folks are sitting around a restaurant in Hollywood, throwing around ideas about a movie sequel. Hey, let's do a sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Great idea! What do you want the zombies to do? Oh, I don't know. Why don't we put them on a Carnival Cruise Line? No, that's been done. Hey, how about sending them to Congress? No, too political. Let's do a shopping mall. Great idea!

Wrong. They're targeting some imaginary blob of humanity in the middle, feeding a monolthic mass zeitgeist and missing all the fun on the fringes. People want alternatives. Zombies want alternatives. Ithaca is all about alternatives. Besides it's got gorges. You can throw in these great shots of zombies falling off gorges. In addition, zombies can pump up the dwindling numbers at anti-war demonstrations. They can even vote for Ralph Nader and help to defeat George Bush. Hey, the dead used to be able to vote. That was called the graveyard vote. Really, all the dead want to do is to be useful again. Let's put them work, filling the potholes, planting the veggies, making the bagels, pouring the Gimme. We don't even have to pay them a living wage.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 2:46 PM