Zombie Shamble: Review

[mizarchivist]

First off, I didn't bring a camera with me yesterday. I figured that someone I'd know would hook me up. As it turns out, I think for every zombie there as also a camera.

I picked up a dress specifically for the march- I wanted prom, but ended up with a sun dress of sorts, which quiet_elegance ripped and distressed for me. He could have gone into movie effects or the like if he had wanted to. I made the chocolate blood (sorry kebbykate, the blood packet didn't arrive until Saturday's post, which would have been fine if I had been home in the afternoon)- but the chocolate blood was awesome. And very sticky. But it made great blood tracks. My makeup was mostly the watercolor pencils: the white, gray, purple, green looked pretty gruesome. I think doeeyedbunny's donation of the bruise purple makeup was pretty much perfect and added an extra dimension.

I can't wait for the flickr folks to start posting the pics, because the number of creative costumes I saw were fantastic: a woman who was in a drycleaner back with a check slip stapled on for brains, Dorothy (ate Toto), an anarchy cheerleaders, several prom dates- including one woman who proably took the red sequened evening dress from Goodwill that I decided against- oh- a fiancial broker who almost killed me with the funny. Disco guy. Ash repleat with hand chainsaw (battng for the opposition, of course). buxom_bey's "Mary Sue" outfit was quite cool, and pixel was in a Toys R Us buttondown from his days as a drone there, and he was carrying a headless stuffed animal with a TellyTubby sound box inside- creepy! Oh, and a little girl who was dragging a bloodied stuffed animal on a string- precious. There were a lot of zombie kids, really.
While waiting for things to shamble out of Davis, I was happy to run into ethanfield and his girlfriend, whom I'd not yet met. Ethan is another Ohio transplant and someone I've known since I was a teenager via YRUU activities.

For a while, I thought we'd get arrested, there. The Somerville cops had no idea what was going on, but we kept spilling into the street, despite the direction to stay onthe sidewalks. We also seemed to forget to follow traffic light patterns and just kept shambling, so eventually the cops scrambled to catch up and did an on the spot parade duty, which was beyond cool. I feared arrests.
I also had major wince moments dealing with the over-exuberant youth who were angry angry zombies who beat on glass windows. Some were way too rough. C'mon kids: let's not be jackasses. But I never heard shattering glass and only some shopkeepers (usually staff from restaurants) were majorly pissed off.
At Porter, Pixel and Bey called it close enough and headed back to clean up for da Stacks party. I'd promised a ride for gilana, so I stuck near her. We ended up shuffling further than expected- a contingent had decided to go to The Cellar for drinks after, which is between Harvard and Central. At that point, the march evaporated! Being in the middle of it, I found it tough to tell how many were left at any one time. I expect we started to lose people on the Harvard Green, and it just kept falling off (like our limbs) from there.
Since the sabbath wouldn't end until 8:36 and we were barely past 8 at that point, a walk down to Central seemed to make sense. So, we freaked out Tyler at Pandemonium, then chilled (sort of literally- um cold n stuff) in the middle of Central Sq. What was extra fun was explaining to folks why we were dressed thusly. One woman didn't want explanation. She was pissed we'd have such poor taste. gilana decided it was probably because her husband was a zombie, so she was lacking sense of humor on such things. The best was having a European pair (dad and daughter?) ask us. Trying to explain "Zombie" to them was an uphill battle, but they sort of got it. The best question was why we as a group looked  better than the folks dressed up on Halloween. Because we're made of awesome, of course!  Second best interaction was while waiting for the clock to tick past :36 and transport back to the car could happen, a train pulled up. There was a family right in front of us with 2 grade-school aged kids. So we ended up shambling towards them. Both kids were quite thrilled and waved enthusiastically. Heaven help us if real zombies show up some day. The kids these days will hug them or somethin'.

gilana and I arrived at the Stacks, were treated to gelatinized brains, and wet washcloths (for which to clean up- yay. Dried chocolate blood is itchy!) Today I'm feeling pretty frickin' tired but not bad for someone who spent the better part of yesterday evening undead.

By the way, if you want to see something surreal... Bollywood meets Michael Jackson and it's wearing red PVC. Link found via Halfway to Human, the wacky folks who brought you this march. shamble. whatever.