Meatwad

Some people don't know Aqua Teen Hunger Force. That was myself only 8 months or so ago. Others just don't like it. Well fuck 'em because it's the best, most shockingly original, completely mind-shattering cartoon since, well, The Brak Show. So I am partial to Adult Swim cartoons. Big deal. There are worse things in the world. I could be a fan of Dragonball Z or some other anime bullshit. Not that anime is bad or wrong. In fact the previews I've seen of the 2nd Ghost in the Shell film look amazing. It's just that MOST anime really isn't that interesting to me. In high school, a friend of mine kept bugging me to watch Ninja Scroll, so I did. Wow, pretty great. I'd rather watch zombie movies. Because zombie movies are, by their very nature, awesome. I guess this is a popular thing to say these days. It's crazy to see all these zombie movies getting made these days. Like the new Dawn of the Dead remake. The great irony is that it took George Romero approximately 18 years to get his new installment to the Living Dead series into production.

Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of seeing David Sedaris speak live at UCLA. David Sedaris is a hilarious writer. Most of his stuff are semi-autobiographical short stories. Of the books of his I've read so far, I feel that Me Talk Pretty One Day is his best. There's several stories about his emigration to France and one in particular where he describes his first real successes in learning to speak French. He talks about how he wandered into to the local butcher shop and pointed at various cow parts, describing them in butchered French. The stuff he says made me laugh so hard that I cried. That's a pretty big deal considering A) Books typically don't make me laugh out loud and B) I don't cry.

Anyway, at that UCLA appearance, Mr. Sedaris starts talking about how he was first in line to see the Dawn of the Dead remake. I was listening before, but this really piqued my interest. I mean, David Sedaris is this slightly short, gentle voiced, gay writer living in France talking about how he loves zombies. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, yeah...he's probably just fucking around with the audience. He doesn't REALLY like zombies, right? Then he starts singing his praises for The Zombie Survival Guide, which is this actual book about how to survive a zombie epidemic. I nearly came all over myself. Not only is this guy the funniest writer in the world, he's also a true fan of the zombie genre. What's not to love?

Meatwad doesn't have to worry a whole lot about a zombie attack. Well, that is, depending on the type of zombie that were to attack him. First of all, let me rule out something - the monsters in Evil Dead are NOT zombies. They are possessed humans. A sad predicament, but really not relevant here. In my humble opinion, there are basically only two kinds of zombie (with the exception of the kinds in 28 Days Later, which FUCKING RULED!!!): the kind that eat brains, like in the Return of the Living Dead series and the kind that just eat everything, like the Night of the Living Dead movies.

Now, see, here is where another distinction must be made. These series' are separate. Let me break it down for you, assuming you are not a zombie fan: in the beginning of sorts, it was all about Night of the Living Dead. George Romero directed this low-budget classic in the late 60's as a metaphor for the changes society was going through due to various hippie movements. In the late 70's, he made a sequel - the film many say is the greatest zombie film of all time - the original Dawn of the Dead. In this film, the zombie outbreak has reached epidemic proportions and a small group of people hole up in a mall to survive. It is essentially a joke about the craze of consumerism. Finally, in the 80's he put out another sequel called Day of the Dead. This is the post-apocalyptic future where the vast majority of all people are zombies and the few who survive live in caverns underground.

Now, the Return of the Living Dead series is different. The first one came out in 1985, which, coincidentally, was the same year Romero's own, Day of the Dead came out. The interesting thing about this series is that it is not an official part of Romero's series, BUT it is connected to it in that the background story for it (as explained by one of the characters in ROTLD) is that Night of the Living Dead actually happened and that zombies exist in the real world. Except Romero's Night of the Living Dead got some of the facts wrong. The zombies were actually created by the U.S. military using a chemical called Trioxin, which was supposed to create the ultimate soldier. Interestingly enough, the film The Serpent and the Rainbow, which is about voodoo zombies, is loosely based on a true story. In real life, it has been found that the major chemical component of making someone into a zombie is a poison called Tetrodotoxin - which can be found in puffer fish. Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer eats sushi for the first time? He demands to eat Fugu, which is puffer fish sushi. Of course, he gets poisoned and almost dies. Just think if the poison had gone into effect. Zombie Homer. Well, actually, its more complicated than that but whatever. At any rate, ROTLD takes place in a morgue, and in this morgue's basement are some of the actual zombies from the military experiments. The zombies are kept in containment barrels in some kind of solution that keeps them in a frozen state. The morgue got these barrel zombies through some kind of mix up in the military. Which is what happens in our bureaucratic society everyday. Have you seen Brazil? Similar kind of fuckup. Oh, and I also just saw City of God, which is excellent and takes place in Brazil, whereas Brazil is called Brazil but physically takes place somewhere else. Max Cavalera, of the band Soulfly and formerly Sepultura is also from Brazil, but likely not the City of God. The name Sepultura is a variant of the term sepulcher, which is basically a tomb. Zombies rise from their tombs. Anyway, the idiots at the morgue accidentally crack open one of the barrels, and everything goes to shit.

There are differences between zombies from these 2 series. In Romero's series, zombies basically just eat everything in living humans. They're just walking human disposal systems. But in the ROTLD series, they try to eat brains specifically. This sort of makes more sense, because, if zombies eat entire humans, how do more zombies get made? And don't tell me they only eat as much as they can fit in their stomachs because we all know that zombies don't stop there. They'll eat until their stomach rupture and everything inside spills out. They can keep on eating until their own rotting flesh turns to dust. In ROTLD, they just go for the brains, so there is plenty of human to get up and walk around as a zombie after the original zombies have finished their snack. This works on two levels, because in Romero's series, you have to also wonder what stops zombies from eating each other. Sure you can say, oh that's because zombies are cold and dead, and they can sense the warmth in living people. But it is never directly addressed, so you still have to come to this conclusion on your own. In ROTLD, that's not a problem. Once a brain is gone, other zombies just don't care about you anymore.

You're probably thinking that I think that ROTLD zombies are better than Romero zombies because they 'make more sense'. But they really don't. Why are they attracted to brains in the first place? Well that is explained, but its pretty stupid. Apparently the dead hurt a lot when they rot. They yearn for some kind of relief to their pain, and for some reason, eating fresh brains temporarily relieves that pain. Why? Who knows. It's just an illogical explanation to patch up a previous logical problem. And because of that, its no better than the original. Anyway, Romero's stuff came first, so I am partial to it. They may not try to explain everything, but his movies jump-started the coolest sub-genre of horror. And for that, he's the master. Oh yeah, and if you think that vampires are cooler than zombies, go away. You're not alone, but you ARE wrong. Vampires are NOT scary. They're lame. They are an excuse to put sex in horror. Anne Rice sucks. Ok so I haven't read her books, but by everything I know about them, they sound pretty lame. I don't care how many A-list stars you put in that shit, they'll never be scary. Horror is meant to be scary and zombies are far, FAR scarier than vampires.

Zombies don't try to be sexy. And if you think they're sexy, then you are a necrophiliac and you have issues. Then again, vampires are technically dead, but whatever. Zombies just eat everyone around them. And they're constantly growing in numbers. Eventually they will win. It's inevitable. It's metaphoric for your fears that you'll get some horrible STD because you're a slut (which, by the way, is a pretty healthy fear. Sometimes fear is a good thing. Be good. And clean, says I.) It's metaphoric for the the fear of a growth of a particular type of organization you hate or simply don't understand (for example, gangs, or terrorists, or mormons).It's metaphoric for the fact that one day, you will die and there's nothing you can do about it. They are inherently scary. And they're everywhere. Because that's what horror movies are all about. Scaring your pants off so you can have sex with that person sitting next to you and get the herpes. Or the warts. Or whatever. You slut.

So what does all of this have to do with Meatwad? Well, depending on the type of zombie (let's say Romero's zombies are Type A and ROTLD zombies are Type B) attacks, Meatwad may or may not have to worry. See, Meatwad is what he is; he's a wad of meat. Zombies obviously like meat in the form of fresh humans, but would they like Meatwad's meat? It depends. Certainly, if Meatwad were human meat, he would be threatened by either type of zombie. But there are two problems with that. First, he's probably not human meat, because the show he appears on is called Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The fact that the word "hunger" appears in the title, and the fact that his cohorts are a shake and french fries (freedom fries?) suggests that he's probably a type of meat that humans eat, as the other characters are human edible and the title of the show strengthens this hypothesis. I mean, yes, technically, humans CAN eat human meat, but how often does this occur in societies which also eat fries and drink shakes? And I'm not talking about psychos. I'm talking about the average Joe. Average Joe likes BEEF. Beef is cows, and my strongest guess is that only zombie cows are interested in beef. I never saw a zombie cow in any sort of zombie movie whatsoever, but that would be pretty interesting.

The other problem is the question as to whether or not Meatwad is actually alive. I don't want to get into a philosophical debate with myself over the true meaning of existence and life, but Meatwad is a cartoon wad of meat, so it is questionable as to how much alive he really is.

Now that I have gotten those caveats out of the way, I'm going to just throw down. No more beating around the bush. Type A zombies (if you remember which ones they are) would probably not attack Meatwad, because he is probably beef and may already not be living. But I can say with complete certainty that Type B zombies would definitely, DEFINATELY NOT attack Meatwad. Why? Because Meatwad has no brain. This was proven in in an episode of ATHF where Frylock (the french fries) examines Meatwad's "brain", only to realize its a really a rubber chew toy. I don't think retarded zombies would even be fooled by that.

Ok, so I skipped over a lot of other kinds of zombies. Lucio Fulchi, the great Italian horror cheese director made his own zombie flicks, which, in turn, spawned its own shitty rip-offs. But his own Zombie (or Zombie 2 as it is known in other countries) was really a rip-off of Romero's own Dawn of the Dead. This is because Romero's DOTD was recut for Italy by Dario Argento (kind of Italy's Kubrick, but not nearly as talented) and played in Europe under the title Zombie. So Fulchi comes along and makes his own zombie flick, which has no connection to DOTD, and calls it Zombie 2. A little lame because, as I just said, it has no connection whatsoever to Romero's work, not even in mythology. Also, its a wilful attempt to con the audience into seeing something they may not actually want to see. Fortunately, Zombie (2) kicks ass in its own right, so this is a forgivable crime.

Also, 28 Days Later, directed by the guy who introduced the world to Ewan McGregor, is awesome, but it completely fucks with the 'traditional' concept of the zombie. Many arguments were made for and against this on the internet when the film first came out. I, for one, feel that whatever Danny Boyle (the director) did to zombies is acceptable because the film is such a well-produced piece of work. (Plus it was shot on Mini DV - an inspiration for DIY filmmakers). It actually incorporates real human emotion into a genre which is known for poor acting and direction. And let's not forget Peter Jackson's own Braindead/Dead Alive - which I was going to write about before but was too lazy to. I still am.

Watch Meatwad and his buddies. Love the show because like it or not, it is on another level and you have to respect that.

"Let it go and accept the truth that we is dumb. Dumb as hell." - Meatwad

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