ZOMBIES, it appears, are just like you and me - or, at least, they're like Don Cherry.
I've never paid much attention to these monsters when they've lurched down my street or tilted out of my local graveyard. As somebody who obliviously wanders around with bad hair and even worse shoes on a daily basis, I don't usually notice whether a person's flesh is completely intact, or he's gobbling down human brains rather than panini at the table next to me. Live and let live, I say, although admittedly, these freaks are dead.
The very notion of zombies has been a bit of a puzzle to me, frankly. Wikipedia explains that in Haitian Creole and West African "Vodou" lore, zombies are animated corpses brought back to life by mystical means. The term, it says, is "often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and selfawareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli" - which brings me quite naturally to Don Cherry.
What sorcerer (or, in voodoo terminology, "bokor") at some point thought it wise to animate this ex-coach and hockey brutality fan? Did we honestly need another embarrassingly ignorant, appallingly dressed jackass with a thirst for blood? As you know, Cherry's latest gaffe was to publicly condemn three of hockey's former enforcers on Hockey Night in Canada's Coach's Corner right after a few of their colleagues had died, possibly as a result of goon-related issues. "Grapes," a longtime meathead-booster, described these hockey survivors as "pukes" and "hypocrites" for publicly criticizing the demands of the role they were expected to play on their teams.
One of the best things about zombies is that they don't usually talk; on that front, Cherry is the sort of zombie who gives zombies a bad name. In addition, these foul dimwits are not supposed to have wills of their own - they're usually controlled by a bokor. Evidently, in the face of a threatened lawsuit by the explayers, the bokor at Coach's Corner finally got Cherry to apologize. He did so in an atypically low-key manner. I'd just like to alert the CBC to the fact that feeding a zombie salt will return it to the grave.
Zombies are devilishly resilient, as we're well aware. The classic 1968 George Romero film Night of the Living Dead showed us that even if their destination is just a bleak and lonely farmhouse, zombies who are on the march remain so in the face of significant opposition.
Maybe it's that persistence, and their excitingly grotesque appetite for human flesh, that has won them such a devoted fan club. The New York Times wrote last year that zombie infatuation is on the rise.
Surprisingly, the "zombie capital of the world" is now Atlanta, Ga., or so Atlanta magazine proclaimed in an article titled Zombies Are So Hot Right Now. Last year, its annual Zombie Walk attracted 1,000 hideous participants; the city once played host to a Zombie Symposium. Zombie films and hit series like The Walking Dead are also filmed in Atlanta, which apparently is full of foreclosed-on houses and gloomy woods for that deliciously decrepit vibe.
As is the case in Canadian hockey circles, in Atlanta there's a certain degree of tolerance for rampaging dolts. This year, the city's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a playful online guide to "surviving the zombie apocalypse." In it, author Ali S. Khan noted that zombies "are often depicted as being created by an infectious virus (hockey mania? -KZ) which is passed on via bites and contact with bodily fluids" (blood? sweat? playoffs-related tears? -KZ).
Khan provides advice on how to stock an emergency kit in case a few days go by before you find a "zombie-free refugee camp."
"Plan your evacuation route," he advises in Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse. "When zombies are hungry they won't stop until they get food (i.e., brains), which means you need to get out of town fast! Plan where you would go and multiple routes you would take ahead of time so that the flesh eaters don't have a chance!"
If zombies do infest American streets, the Centers for Disease Control will be in charge of investigating the outbreak, Khan notes. He adds slyly that it will send "young nameless disease detectives for the field work."
Zombies are, ultimately, unavoidable. They've even invaded literary classics, as in the bestselling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, in which a zombie plague hits England. That book begins with the immortal line, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."
I haven't read Seth Grahame-Smith's book, but only because I suspect that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies could just as easily be subtitled The Don Cherry Story.
