S.G. Browne

Rolling in a little late with the post Comic-Con update, so let’s just hit the high points and get out of here so I can go grab some dinner and watch Adaptation on DVD.

This being my inaugural trip to Comic-Con, it was definitely a unique experience.  The entire convention center looked like Disney vomited upLooney Tunes.

In addition to all of the Predators and Storm Troopers and medieval knight sword skirmishes, I had a great time being graciously hosted by the Random House / Crown Publishing booth, meeting marketing manager Jay Sones on Thursday, who helped to shamelessly plug Breathers with promotional buttons, stickers, bookmarks, and postcards.  He also happened to have an extra copy of Breathers that I signed and personalized to Max Brooks, who was in the house signing advanced preview copies of his upcoming graphic novel The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks.  It was the first chance I’d had to meet Max and it was a pleasure.  Even if he does think zombies are the bad guys.

I also had the good fortune of meeting Seth Grahame-Smith, author of the Jane Austen mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, at his Saturday signing and played fanboy.  We even had a photo taken together.  Unfortunately, it was with his camera, not mine, so I don’t have any proof it happened.  You’ll just have to take my word for it.  And look for Seth and I to double-team the zombie fans at the August 15th outdoor screening of Shaun of the Dead in Los Angeles, as well as at the October 4th West Hollywood Book Fair.  We’ll be on a zombie/vampire panel at 1:30pm, followed by a signing hosted by Dark Delicacies.

Okay, well, most of that had nothing to do with Comic-Con, so back to it.

On Saturday, I shared an enjoyable little panel on zombies, shapeshifters, and other assorted monsters called Monster Mash with Amber Benson, Alice Henderson, Walter Greatshell, Marlene Perez, and Rob Thurman.  The panel was hosted by the incomparable Maryelizabeth Hart of Mysterious Galaxy Books in San Diego.  It was my second official panel, so I guess I am now officially no longer a virgin.

Finally, Kyle with Suvudu, also affiliated with Random House, did four short video interviews that showcase just how much I need to cut down on my caffeine.  Either that or I need to tie my hands behind my back.

Overall, it was a great and exhausting experience.  Given the opportunity, I will definitely attend Comic-Con in San Diego in 2010.

First of all, you have to understand that I’m a SportsCenter junkie. I love watching highlights on ESPN during every SportsCenter broadcast. And when the NFL season comes along, you might as well just hook up an IV to my television and leave me on the couch.

Which is why I don’t have a regular cable TV package.

I have what is called Basic Limited Cable at a cost of about $20 per month, which provides me with about 40 channels — including FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, Golf Channel, FX, and the Sci-Fi Channel (which is now the SyFy Channel – a separate blog if there ever was a need for one).  But no TNT, TBS, USA, CNN, MSNBC, Comedy Central, or ESPN.  That’s how I cured my addiction.  I took it away.  Made it impossible for me to get my fix.  Which is probably why I spend all of my time on Facebook and Twitter now.

So I don’t have On Demand movies.  I don’t have HBO or Showtime.  I’ve never seen an episode of Weeds.

I don’t have TiVo.  A DVR.  A Blue Ray.  Or a Wii.

I don’t own an iPhone or a Blackberry.  My cell phone is an LG ENV.  I have texting.  But I don’t have e-mail capabilities.

While I do own an iPod and a laptop and have my entire library of music on iTunes, I still enjoy buying CDs.  I even own a turntable and I love vinyl.  It sounds better than digital music.  Maybe not as convenient, but it’s much richer and warmer.  Go out and get Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon or the Beatles’ Abbey Road on 180 gram vinyl and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

While not a complete Luddite, I’m definitely averse to getting sucked into becoming dependent upon all of the modern technological amenities.

Which brings me to Kindle and e-books.

While I understand the convenience and economy of using e-readers and realize, as someone who loves trees, that e-books reduce the need to chop trees down, I still enjoy the tactile feel of a book in my hands.  And, I have to admit, I enjoy seeing my novel sitting on my bookshelf amid all of my favorite authors and books.  It’s the narcissist in me.

My issue with the deletion of the Orwell novels in the recent fiasco involving Amazon and Kindle isn’t so much that the books were removed from the Kindle library.  I understand that.  They were bootlegged copies uploaded using the Kindle stores’ self-publishing system, so the publisher of 1984 and Animal Farm asked for them to be removed.  Fine.  But the customers who had already purchased the novels should have been able to keep them. Yes, I know Amazon admitted it made a mistake by deleting the customers’ copies, but apparently they did the same thing previously with books by Ayn Rand and J.K. Rowling.  So why didn’t they learn their lesson then?

Reaching into your Kindle electronically and replacing your book with a credit is not only unacceptable but it raises questions as to the ownership of electronic book and music collections.  Apparently, because of the Kindle terms of service, you don’t actually have full ownership of the books you purchase.  Amazon can delete anything it wants from your e-reader.  The justification on the basis of intellectual property is beside the point.  The power to be able to do this at all is, while not exactly Big Brother, definitely disconcerting. And another example of why I’d rather have to dog-ear a page to mark my place.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go listen to Van Halen’s first album on my turntable.

You wake up on Wednesday morning after a restless night with a cold inflating your head and dripping down the back of your throat.  You pump yourself full ofEmergen -C and Day-Quil, then catch the 6:30AM Super Shuttle to SFO for a flight to Denver.  After a two-hour layover in Denver and a vegetarian burger on a crunchy role with questionable tomatoes and limp lettuce, you climb aboard a subway car disguised as an airplane for the two hour flight to Winnipeg, Canada.You land in Winnipeg and, on the cab ride to the hotel, you look out the windows and see condemned buildings and vacant lots and people shuffling along the sidewalk in a daze and you think, “If the zombie apocalypse started here, no one would notice.”

You check into your hotel, grab some questionable sushi, meet a few of the volunteers and invited guests from the convention, then call it an early night so you can get some sleep.  At 1:50AM, you’re woken up by the couple in the next room having wall pounding sex and you realize the walls are as thin as the Bush Administration’s reasons for invading Iraq.

The next day you realize this convention is going to be very small.  Maybe 50 people if everyone brings in a homeless person from the crime-ridden streets.  And you’re wondering if you’ve wasted $1000 on airfare and hotel.  But then you get to spend time with the volunteers and guests and you realize this is going to be a different kind of convention.

You enjoy a reading by Conrad Williams from his new novel ONE and a panel about the unique writing journey of Edo van Belkom.  You have drinks at the hotel bar with Joshua Gee and F. Paul Wilson, who not only both enjoy the TV series LOST but who help judge the Gross Out Contest, which you hosted.

You host a panel and have a reading and sell all six copies of your novel (which you told customs were just samples and not for sale).  You take cold medicine that containspseudoephredrine, the main ingredient in crystal methamphetamine.  You find out your hotel is frequented by aboriginal prostitutes.

You hang out with Rhonda Parrish (who thinks you have a good singing voice) and Gavin Hughes (who you strong-armed into reading for the Gross Out Contest).  You hang out with Kelly Young (who took compromising pictures of you) and Tommy Castillo (who won the Gross Out Contest).  You sing karaoke with these four people.  You’ve never sung karaoke before, but you manage to pull off a rendition of Sinatra’s “Fly Me To The Moon,” which isn’t as good as Kelly’s version of “Walking in Memphis” or Tommy’s version of “The Rainbow Connection” in the voice of Kermit the Frog, but you have a great time.

You go out to lunch and dinner with these people.  You hang out in the bar with them.  (Because that’s what writers do at these conventions.)  You have a conversation about surviving a post EMP Winnipeg and how you would get home during the breakdown of society and how when you leave the room to take a leak you come back to find out the hypothetical you in this scenario has just been violated.

In addition, you meet Cliff and Linda and John.  You meet Derek and Tim and Sherry.  You meet Nicole and Shad (who got engaged at the convention).  You meet Toni Stauffer and Thomas Sippos and Chris Angus and a dozen others who you fail to mention because your memory isn’t as good as you thought it was.  So you apologize to those forgotten and hope they forgive you and still buy your book.
When you leave Winnipeg on Sunday, you realize you had more fun at this convention than at perhaps any other convention and you realize you have fond memories of the murder capital of Canada.  But it still looks like the zombie apocalypse is just waiting to happen there.

So on Zombie Talk Thursdays on Twitter (#zombietalk), the question posed today was:What songs would you listen to while battling the zombie hordes?

Naturally, since Breathers is written from the viewpoint of the aforementioned and often-maligned zombie hordes, it’s not second nature for me to think about what songs would be appropriate for dispatching of the undead.  But I came up with the following playlist, along with a brief description of why I included each song:

“Down With the Sickness” by Richard Cheese
Both this cover version and the original version by Disturbed appear in the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. I like this one because it would a nice, surreal, lounge music feel to the mayhem.

“The Man Comes Around” by Johnny Cash
Also on the soundtrack to the remake of Dawn of the Dead, this is a prophetic song for a zombie apocalypse.

“Comanche” by The Revels
From the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, this is the song that plays when Bruce Willis take his samurai sword to Zed and his pawn shop pervert pal. Enough said.

“Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” by AC/DC
The opening guitar riff is enough to put me in the mood to pick up an axe and start swinging.

“Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo
Just to add a little irony to the playlist.

“Brain Stew” by Green Day
Mostly I love the title, but the steady bass beat and the scratchy, dissonant sounds at the end are the perfect aural accompaniment to using a chainsaw.

“Subtract You” by Zebrahead
While the title is appropriate for dispatching the undead, the song itself is fun and playful. And who doesn’t want to have fun when you’re killing zombies?

“No More Mr. Nice Guy” by Alice Cooper
Another well-titled addition to the playlist. After all, you can’t be George Baily and kick some zombie butt.

“Surrender” by Cheap Trick
Like “Subtract You,” this title has the attitude that you’re not backing down. Plus it’s got that uptempo beat that makes getting splattered brains and blood not such a big deal.

And finally, for those lovers committed to battling the zombies together:

“Never Tear Us Apart” by INXS

What are some of the songs in your zombie battle playlist?

You can follow me on Twitter @s_g_browne.  Or follow Andy on Twitter @AndytheZombie.

I read a blog on another social networking site where the blogger, a woman, related how some man who she’d met at a bar told her that: “All women are two beers away from being bi.”

Personally, I’d rather that all women were two beers away from being with me, but that’s not the point. The point is that all men are stupid. Or at least capable of being stupid. With or without the two beers.  But the beer definitely helps.

There’s a reason men are stupid.  It’s called testosterone.

Now some men will argue that they’re immune to this generalization, that they’ve evolved beyond the hordes of primates who are still slaves to their libido. Yeah, right. Whatever. If the testosterone doesn’t make you stupid sexually, it makes you stupid in other ways – painting your face or chest for sporting events, driving down the street with your windows down and your stereo thumping, being coy or suave when approaching a woman rather than just being honest.

It’s a handicap, really. A retardation. Men should have support groups just for the fact that we’re men.

So ladies, the next time some man says something stupid to you, have some sympathy. He’s working with a limited amount of brain cells.