Zombie Me Up, Scotty

There’s a Walking Dead convention going on this weekend in Atlanta. Walker Stalker Con. I only found out about it this morning, and only from the Seattle Times sports page (a joke about The Falcons and how they’re playing lately). And while I have said that I’m not the biggest fan of the show itself, I do love zombie stuff, and I would love to attend if I could.

I’ve only ever been to one convention, and that was a horror/sci-fi convention in Baltimore. I went because there was supposed to be a band playing there, Darling Violetta, but then they didn’t show up. But I did see Rasputina for the first time, met the folks from Torsion, and shook hands with both Anthony Stewert Head and Ted Raimi.

But it was a lousy convention, otherwise. I’ve been dying to go to PAX here in Seattle, but it’s always sold out by the time I hear about it (are you getting the impression that I am woefully misinformed, much of the time? Yeah, I am). I want that convention immersion. I want that full-on Trekkie experience.

I want to see the cosplayers and sit down to some beta-testing game and get my picture taken with a B-list celebrity, then Instagram it, put it on Tumblr, and watch the likes, notes, and reblogs stack up. ‘Cause that’s how this all works. I want to be one of the horde.

I’m serious. We zombie lovers love to think about our apocalypse survival plans, love to pick up virtual shotguns and video-game-blast away at rotting heads, and compare notes on who did it better, Romero or O’Bannon (okay, maybe that last one’s a no-brianer, pun intended).

But we like to BE the zombie, too. Zombie walks and Halloween costumes and T-Shirts, oh my. And for me, going to one of these conventions would be like ripping into the fear-choked flesh of a chased-down victim.

I wonder how much a plane ticket would cost me?