Ep. 4: Zombies

Okay, so, uh, wh…which ones are the good zombies? Transcript at https://podcast.unwieldylocutions.com/podcast/ep-4-zombies/

Transmission

Human survival rate

 

TRANSCRIPT COURTESY OF ZALARY YOUNG (Thank you, Zalary!)

[Theme song: “Drone” by Chastity Belt chorus]
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’

PATTI: So. This is a very special episode, I’ve always wanted to say that.

SPENCER: [laugh]

PATTI: Welcome to a very special episode of Mansplainer in which we flip the tables and I become a womansplainer [sings] womansplainer. Yeah, this might be more impressive if it were a feminist or female based topic, probably. But instead, you just asked me about something hobby, interest-adjacent of mine, I guess.

SPENCER: [laughs] Yea. So this is Spencer

PATTI: and this is Patti.

SPENCER: And I have a question this time.

PATTI: Ok, You actually had a few questions, I think.

SPENCER: Yea, some of were kind of follow-up-y. So, I’m enough of a nerd that I am aware, culturally, about a lot of this stuff, but, I don’t have enough specific interest in ‘the genre’ or umbrella genre, but I know a bunch. I’m hoping you can help me out.

PATTI: Ok.

SPENCER: So, zombies. What? What’s …

PATTI: [laughs] Just’s what the deal with zombies?

SPENCER: Yea, what’s their deal. So, like, the thing is, depending on who you ask, there are different types of zombies, right? And I’m not talking about fast zombie, slow zombie, I’m talking like..

PATTI: Which is a controversial topic, I mean, everything about zombies is controversial because whenever you get involved in a genre you get people who are very invested in their uh, sort of, culture around being very invested in things. I feel like horror genres are fairly similar to comics in that way, right? People are very protective of things and you’ll always have one person in the corner saying “Well, actually…” [both laugh]. Ok, so go on. What specifically ….

SPENCER: So, ok

PATTI: And I should preface this with the fact that while I am a huge horror fan, have been since I was far too small to be watching horror movies, it was something that my mom and I used to do together, um, zombies are not my favorite. They’re actually something I don’t have a ton of interest in.

SPENCER: right.

PATTI: Just a … I would rather watch a zombie movie than a torture horror movie, um, but really more slasher vampire kind of horror than zombies. So I’m going to do my best here and I fully expect to be “well-actuallied” by someone who listens to this.

SPENCER: And I will say, I do not like horror AT ALL.

PATTI: I know.

SPENCER: A part of it is just general wussiness and part of it is when I was like 7 or 8 I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and my dad was watching Psycho and it was like 1:00 in the morning and I was on my back and he was like, “hey, come sit down a minute” and then I watched most of Psycho when I was really not emotionally prepared for Psycho. And…

PATTI: I don’t know that anyone is ever emotionally prepared for Psycho [both laugh]

SPENCER: And so I kind of don’t do horror at all. I will say I’ve been dragged to a couple of horror experiences and one I will straight up admit was a very good movie although I did have to pee twice and those were convenient excuses to take a 30 second break. Get Out. It was amazing

PATTI: Oh yeah, it was very good. Yeah, ok.

SPENCER: But, I mean, even still I don’t feel bad that I have to pee because I need like a second.

PATTI: This is a man who did not make it through Drew Barrymore’s death in Scream which I think most horror fans agree is, not her death, the movie, is almost more of a comedy than a horror movie. It wasn’t until 3 that it actually got scary. Anyway. Let us get back to your zombie question.

SPENCER: So, I know enough about Zombies to know that there are, the original zombies were magic, right? It was a spell cast over people, and/or corpses. There are like, Resident Evil zombies, which are viruses. There are zombies that are just no reason, they’re zombies. And like, there are a couple of different types but I don’t know which one works better in, like which one makes better movies, because I have a couple of thoughts on that having not really seen many zombie movies, about what I would guess would make a better movie.

PATTI: Now I just really want to make you watch zombie movies. But, I mean you watched Shaun of the Dead.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: That’s not really a horror movie.

SPENCER: Yeah. So.

PATTI: So, that’s your first question.

SPENCER: Yeah, which one is ‘good to watch’?

PATTI: [laughs] So, that is a highly subjective question.

SPENCER: Well, yes.

PATTI: Right? So I will say this, zombies have been around for a really long time but the cultural history of zombies has been, as most things are, appropriated, right? So it started as early as the 8th century and is tied to some religions and voodoo and in the US with Haitian Creole in Louisiana and the original zombies were people who died and they were brought back to life and didn’t have the ability to speak and they didn’t have free will. A little different than what you are seeing in movies now.

SPENCER: and I will say I knew about that kind of zombie because of a Scrooge McDuck comic.

PATTI: [sighs heavily]

SPENCER: from the 60s, where

PATTI: which I am sure was rife with cultural appropriation and racist overtones.

SPENCER: Uh, a bit of racism. But it was an original zombie.

PATTI: I feel like maybe some Scooby-Doo plot lines have relied on that, although ultimately none of the Scooby-Doo villains were truly magical.

SPENCER: which is the point

PATTI: Yes, which is why Spencer has a lot of problems with the movies. Let’s not.. do you want to go there?

SPENCER: I’m just going to say that Scooby-Doo is ahead of its time in teaching us that any [weird] craft we’re saying, or evil plots in the world, are really secretly about white people trying to steal land.

PATTI: [laughs] So really, Scooby-Doo is introductory skeptics. Right?

SPENCER: Kinda

PATTI: There is no magic, there is no magic. This is all able to be scientifically proven. Velma’s a scientist, right?

SPENCER: Well, she’s the best one.

PATTI: I will say that what those movies got right is that Scrappy-Doo is nonsense garbage and the worst. He is the Robin the muppet of the Scooby-Doo universe.

SPENCER: I feel so much worse, though. He’s so much worse. I know you hate Robin with a fiery passion

PATTI: So much.

SPENCER: but I feel like Scrappy-Doo, [sighs]

PATTI: There is someone, somewhere for whom both Scrappy-Doo and Robin the muppet are their favorites. And I don’t know if I want to meet that person or if I never want to meet that person.

SPENCER: [laughs] I’ve never seen Patti get in a fight but I’m pretty sure …

[both laugh]

PATTI: it’s like cousin Oliver. They feel like the cousin Oliver, right?

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: Ok.

SPENCER: anyway.

PATTI: Let’s get back. So it depends on the type of person you are. If you are someone really invested and engaged in magical thinking, whether that’s based in religion, which some people would argue is magical thinking, or just you’re willing, you’re able to remove yourself from the realities of the world and suspend your disbelief and believe in magic, um, I could see that magical zombies could appeal to you. For me, and I think for most people, and if you’re watching the trends of zombie movies, shows, books — for the love of god, you cannot take 3 steps without running into a zombie, the CDC is even running disaster drills using zombie infections now, as a way to engage people because they are such a cultural touchpoint — um, the viral, the idea of a virus that would either re-animate or stop someone from fully dying is very popular right now. So I think people would lean into that as the ‘better’ movie, partly because it appeals to a fear that people… actually think it could happen, right? That’s part of what made, gosh, my mom loved the book The Stand, and the movie The Stand, but when she read it, it completely terrified her because she felt like it could happen. Which chemical warfare is kind of a warning about things like that and I think that on some level, people actually believe that the government could be developing a virus and it could escape and either re-animate the dead or turn people into zombies. So right now, given our current political climate and propensity towards conspiracy theories in our culture, I feel like that probably makes for a better movie because your audience is more willing to go along with that.

SPENCER: So, the reason I ask is that I feel like one of the things that tends to ruin horror for people is the same thing that ruins a joke, which is explaining it. Right?

PATTI: mmhmm

SPENCER: One of the horror movies I was dragged to, as it were, was Event Horizon, which –

PATTI: We didn’t physically go to Event Horizon

SPENCER: No, I know. That’s why I said it the way I said it, in a manner of speaking. And the thing is, it was …. weird and upsetting. Then at the end, spoiler warning for a 15-year-old movie, at the end, it turns out hell is real (singsongy badaduh). I’m like, that’s really unsatisfying.

PATTI: It is.

SPENCER: It’s really unsatisfying. And that makes me angry to this day.

PATTI: Right. I will say that when you put something like magical into a movie, it does let you sleep better at night, if you don’t believe in magic. Right?

SPENCER: Right

PATTI: Because you can go to sleep and not think that anything is actually going to happen.

SPENCER: It makes me kind of wonder if there’s no explanation – there’s no explanation, just ‘they’re are zombies here’, like Shaun of the Dead where they toss into a news segment what is happening but they don’t really ever explain “Here’s why there are zombies.” It’s just, zombies are a thing, you gotta to deal with it, and then that’s that. And I don’t know if that would make it better or if something like say Resident Evil, or I didn’t read or watch World War Z, but I’m guessing World War Z is a virus thing?

PATTI: Well, there are a couple of things, right? So, general consensus for most modern pop culture is that it is a virus that causes zombies, very rarely is it discussed how that virus starts, like it just happens, right? In Romero’s Night of the Living Dead it wasn’t explicitly spelled out, it just happened that this was happening but more and more people could be re-animated or in the case of some newer films, anyone who dies doesn’t die because of whatever this infection is that’s spreading.

SPENCER: Oh, like The Walking Dead

PATTI: Yea, and I will say

SPENCER: where it’s already there and they don’t die kind of thing.

PATTI: Yea, I will say that The Walking Dead the one thing that is different there is that corpses aren’t re-animating, most zombie films it’s recently deceased, already dead people that are coming back as zombies. And apparently in The Walking Dead, I think I watched the first 3, maybe 4 seasons of, and then I was just exhausted by these people

SPENCER: [laughs]

PATTI: It is unusual for me to bail on a show, but come on. It wasn’t people — in that universe people who are already dead can’t come back. Scientifically that’s more accurate, right? You can’t re-animate a dead thing. You know technically Dr. Frankenstein’s monster: zombie. Huh, re-animated corpse. Yea, think about that.

SPENCER: huh

PATTI: The whole idea of flesh-eating, brain-eating zombies didn’t start really until Romero. Right? Because they were just unthinking henchmen who were doing evil people’s will because they were magically created by magicians, priests, things like that.

SPENCER: Yea. When I was 18 I was dragged, I was tricked, rather, by a friend into a seeing the remake of Dawn of the Dead and I feel like –

PATTI: Is that the one where they’re in a mall?

SPENCER: Yea.

PATTI: Malls, popular places to hide from zombies.

SPENCER: We’ll talk about that in a second, I guess. But –

PATTI: Well, yea.

SPENCER: I feel like, I haven’t watched it again because not my jam, but I feel like there was a title card in the beginning that said something like “When hell is full of dead people, the dead will roam the earth” or whatever

PATTI: Yea

SPENCER: I feel like that is another zombie type, where the explanation is “Hell is full”

PATTI: You know, what’s weird about that is I actually had to look that up, because I did not remember that being a thing; apparently it’s a thing, I never noticed it.

SPENCER: ok

PATTI: That’s, I mean, come on.

SPENCER: So that for you is the least satisfactory of all of them?

PATTI: Yeah.

SPENCER: Ok

PATTI: So every zombie is someone who went to hell?

SPENCER: Or would have gone to hell.

PATTI: Come on.

SPENCER: I guess that is requiring an extra level of buy-in. Because you have to believe in hell and believe that the dead would [trails off]

PATTI: Most movies have characters transition from being living into a zombie at some point. Frequently those are people connected to your main character: a parent, the child, usually not a child, but that would be a good plot twist, please more child zombies.

SPENCER: There was definitely a baby zombie in that movie. He was born a zombie

PATTI: Yeah, I don’t [sigh]

SPENCER: OK, speaking of the transition part, what are – this is the one thing that I just don’t understand. What are the rules for transitioning. How do you make more zombies. I know the classic is “I got bit by a zombie” and like, okay, does that mean spit went into the blood, so is it saliva, in which case could a zombie just spit on you from a rooftop and you’re a zombie now? [laugh] Sniper zombies?

PATTI: Well

SPENCER: (makes spitting noise)

[both laugh]

PATTI: Unbelievably, very little information on this is available. Most of the time it’s bites. Right? That’s what it is. I don’t, I will say this: Zombies don’t generally have the dexterity to aim saliva and spit at people.

[both laugh]

PATTI: I know that it’s complicated because the only way to kill a zombie is to destroy the brain or remove the brain from the body, right? So either decapitation or somehow – bludgeoning. Um, I think it has to be a mucous membrane, or blood and mucous membrane or blood, what would make more sense is a blood/blood contact.

SPENCER: So are we just assuming zombies all have open sores in their mouth?

PATTI: Zombies kind of all have open sores because they’re decomposing.

SPENCER: Yeah, but like in their – yeah.

PATTI: Yeah. The fact that they have teeth is kind of amazing.

SPENCER: Well, yeah, cause that tissue is real fragile.

PATTI: I will say that there has been some scientific research around how zombie virus is likely to spread, and it’s actually not likely to spread through bites like rabies because viruses mutate and become better. It would probably spread more like an avian flu or an airborne disease, they think. So anything you’ve seen in movies would not help you. You actually need to be in the full CDC hazmat suit with the face mask and the respirator.

SPENCER: Yeah. Okay,

PATTI: We’re all doomed. If this ever happened, we would all be doomed.

SPENCER: So even if it does require blood to blood contact, or, or whatever. It seems like bludgeoning is a real bad way

PATTI: Yeah.

SPENCER: Any kind of melee weapon, you get a little spatter on you, you are screwed.

PATTI: Well, that’s part of what makes it scarier, right? Is that what makes them hard to kill, is that it’s real easy to get infected.

SPENCER: okay. So, the other part of it, is, like, I know there are different canons, I guess, about this, but if it’s really really hard to kill them, shouldn’t you just be able to wait them out? I mean, they’re dead bodies, stuff decomposes. So, how long do zombies last?

PATTI: Right.

SPENCER: Because I kind of feel like I’d just wait a week.

PATTI: Yea.

SPENCER: I’m good

PATTI: So, how long would zombies last?

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: So zombies are at their base, human. Yay. I did read a book on decomposition by Mary Roach, called Stiff.

SPENCER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

PATTI: It’s really good. So, we know how quickly the human body decomposes. They follow a pretty predictable pattern. There are 5 stages to decomposition. There’s fresh [both chuckle], bloat, active decay, advanced decay, and dry or skeletal.

SPENCER: So, hold on. Why don’t you see more fat zombies or big gassy zombies with bloat.

PATTI: [laughs] This is an oversight. I agree.

SPENCER: You’d think that you’d see like balloon zombies walking around like the Michelin man.

PATTI: I would really like you to make an illustration to go along with this podcast.

SPENCER: [laughs heartily]

PATTI: And since this is going to be a holiday episode could you put the bloated zombie in a Santa cap? Please and thank you.

SPENCER: I’ll see what I can do.

PATTI: Alright, so. Here’s the deal. Environmental factors dictate how long it takes someone to decompose and move through these stages. So decomposition starts within hours of death, but depending on where you are, um, if you are in a warm, hot, humid climate you can skeletonize within two or three weeks.

SPENCER: Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like the last, maybe it was the Dawn of the Dead remake or something, was like in Virginia or something.

PATTI: Yeah.

SPENCER: Those zombies aren’t sticking around.

PATTI: So this is part of my problem with The Walking Dead is that they’re in Atlanta. It started in Atlanta, they’re in Georgia. First of all, the smell, ungodly. I would just head north as quickly as possible. That said, the zombies would not last very long. You know I guess I don’t know what the timeframe is on that show. Maybe it’s shot like 24 and I never noticed.

[both laugh]

PATTI: and each episode is an hour of a day. I really have not watched in a long time. I’m going to get a lot of well-actually on this. But, if you lived, however, in Maine in winter and zombies showed up, or in Alaska in winter and zombies showed up, or really anywhere in Canada, they would last substantially longer.

SPENCER: Right, ok. I guess what I don’t get about that is: freezer-burn.

PATTI: [laughs] Well, once they started to thaw out, it would be a real problem. They would decay more rapidly, I’m assuming, this is really gross, I’m sorry guys: their flesh would slough right off.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: after they thawed. So yeah, they might have a nice winter of nibbling on live people who would, let’s face it, be hiding in houses with doors and locks, and I just really content that A. Zombies would not have the dexterity to open doors and they’re too fragile to break them down. Also, stairs. I don’t think that zombies would be able to manage stairs. Go to the second floor, you’re fine.

SPENCER: Yeah, and basically everybody has a second floor, and if zombies can’t spit at you they can’t turn a knob, right?

PATTI: Again with the suspension of disbelief.

SPENCER: and like, even if, okay let’s say they break a window or whatever to try to get in. 1. Glass is a lot harder than you think. 2. They would cut their bodies way up and they would have lacerations and they’d cut like, tendons, or whatever is actually helping them movie. And they wouldn’t be able to do anything.

PATTI: Yeah.

SPENCER: [huffs]

PATTI: You’re not going to get disagreement from me. I do not – the actual, physical, corporeal zombie would not last very long. They wouldn’t. Unless they were magical zombies, and therefore they can’t decay. So maybe that’s a checkmark in the column of magical zombies being scarier, right?

SPENCER: Yea, I’m just remembering

PATTI: I mean, if we’re going to base this all in science, and go with the virus story, they’re going to decay because science is science and they’re dead bodies and they’re going to decompose.

SPENCER: Right.

PATTI: And a 150 pound pig in the dead of summer only takes a couple of weeks to skeletonize. Which is pretty – oh, ew!

SPENCER: [laughs]

PATTI: Hang on. According to one study, a graduate student at Penn State University, Rachel Renee Bauer, actually stated that it will take a 150 pound pig 4 days in the heat of summer to reach the state of advanced decay – leaving mostly just bones and skin.

SPENCER: So that means in like, 2 days, even if you got it fully functioning again, it wouldn’t really be able to move because the muscles and the tendons would be.

PATTI: And, the thing about bloat, right, is that your skin can only stretch so far.

SPENCER: [groans]

PATTI: Aw, Spencer’s going to barf. [laughs] Is there anything else? I do have one other thing that I found.

SPENCER: I do have one thing that’s kind of related to the outlasting part. Which is, I’m remembering, Spike Trotman on Twitter was talking about how humans are actually really terrible survivors on like a bunch of different levels, in terms of we’re not the heartiest animals but

PATTI: we’re very adaptive

SPENCER: we’re very adaptive. And she had a phrase that stuck out to me and I think about it like once a month, and that is “human beings starve like champs.” Which means, that even if you get to the second floor and you don’t have access to anything, like, if it takes two weeks, it would suck. But you could probably starve for two weeks and then go back to business.

PATTI: People don’t like to think about that though. But I think that’s why so many zombie films are focused in cities and why so many people hide in malls, right? You have access to everything. And, if it’s Night of the Comet, you have a great music montage, right in the middle. By the way, Night of the Comet is my favorite zombie movie.

SPENCER: hmm, good to know. I thought the whole mall thing was just a commentary on consumerism.

PATTI: mmm, it could also be that. But it’s a really good way to give people all of the stuff they need to survive without making them work very hard.

SPENCER: Yea, that makes more sense.

PATTI: I mean, you got a DQ, you’re set.

SPENCER: [laughs] aww, ice cream. Alright, you said you had one more thing?

PATTI: Yeah, so this is exactly the kind of thing that I know you are very interested in.

[both laugh]

SPENCER: This is either going to be really embarrassing or really great for me.

PATTI: So, earlier I mentioned that the CDC has used zombie apocalypse for disaster training to get people engaged and interested. And using pop-culture touchpoints is not unusual for different, different organizations to use to get people interested, and think creatively, and do things. So, there was actually a study done by physics students at Lester University that calculated that in as little as 100 days humans would be outnumbered a million to one if an infectious zombie virus were to strike. So, after three months, things would look dire for humanity with only 300 people left alive. Even if the last people on earth were to somehow hold out for 9 months, it’s unlikely they would be able to repopulate the planet without being infected or eaten first. So, they did this research as part of an annual exercise to apply scientific models to hypothetical scenarios, and their course tutor, Mervin Roy, from The Physics and Astronomy Department, said that he thought the topic would be inspirational – to get them engaged in complex physics. So the research paper was published in a peer-reviewed journal run by students to give them the experience of editing, reviewing, and publishing papers and their research didn’t stop at that. So once the study had been completed, students flagged up that humans are good at adapting and overcoming adversity and it wasn’t taken into account in the original study. So the team reworked their calculations and published an additional report

SPENCER: nice

PATTI: which considered that people would adapt and become better at escaping and killing zombies and they could quickly have a lot of babies. So they actually discovered that the best place to hide is in the mountains, not in malls. And that the team re-estimated that it would take about 1,000 days, or 2.7 years for humans to wipe out all the zombies. In another 25 years the human population should start to recover from the attack. So the point of this was to use variable and the parameters of infection, so they used an epidemiological technique called “The Sur Model” which is the thing that the CDC actually uses, to figure out how diseases spread. So that’s pretty exciting.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: I thought you would find that really interesting.

SPENCER: I do. I

PATTI: You have a lot of questions.

SPENCER: I have a lot of questions that you probably can’t answer

[both laugh]

PATTI: Yeah, because I couldn’t find the actual study. I found an article about it in a UK newspaper, which we can link on the show page.

SPENCER: Yeah, I’m thinking about the severity of other epidemics and pandemics, and how those spread. And like, government responses to those, and even just –

PATTI: If you believe movies and televisions show, the government is like “See ya, suckers” when the zombies strike. Or they just quarantine, they hem people in and whoever is in that parameter is going to die.

SPENCER: I feel like there is a very bad UK action movie about that, I can’t remember

PATTI: There are a bunch of movies about that.

SPENCER: But, like, to go to a recent panic

PATTI: ahh – are you going to talk about ebola?

SPENCER: Yeah. It’s really really really bad news

PATTI: Yeah.

SPENCER: if you get it. But it really really really doesn’t transmit very well. And for the other stuff, that transmits very well, it’s generally not as bad news. The Spanish Flu is really really really bad news, but even still, even without knowing epidemiology, basically, at that point, it still capped out – I don’t know. Suddenly I remembered the Native American genocide where 97% of indigenous peoples in the Americas were killed by an epidemic before the bulk of European and Colonists showed up and started taking over, so maybe never mind.

PATTI: So a couple of things, right? First of all we should state that neither of us are medical professionals.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: So, the second thing we should note is that the Ebola outbreak that happened in 2016 was complicated for another, a number of reasons, right. There was a lot of immigration panic tied to it

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: and it was one of the first cases that was acquired here in the United States, actually happened. And I think we also, you really need to think about the fact that transmission of a virus like Ebola is different from an airborne virus.

SPENCER: Right, right.

PATTI: So that’s part of that earlier study that cited that a virus mutates it, the zombie virus would be more likely to be spread if it was like an avian flu or something airborne. Which is, something like, what the influenza that kills people every year, rather than something that requires mucosal membrane contact or blood-borne transmission or even, gosh, what am I thinking? Droplets, right? Those are much easier to protect yourself against.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: I mean, even if you get a droplet of an infected fluid on you, it would have to hit exactly the right place at the right time and be absorbed in the right way for you to get it. Whereas if someone with influenza sneezes on you, and you inhale, that airborne –

SPENCER: Right, which is why I have qualms with this study that I have never read.

PATTI: God, and now I’m like rethinking all of my training and trying to remember droplet versus airborne – I am not a physician but I do train on this stuff every year. Just wash your hands, okay? Wash your hands, cough into your arms. That’s all I’m going to say. And you know –

SPENCER: 20 seconds. Because if you don’t do it long enough it doesn’t actually clean your hands.

PATTI: Right. You don’t have to use antibacterial soap. Regular soap is just fine.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: Just wash your friggin’ hands people. Also get your flu vaccines.

SPENCER: Seriously.

PATTI: People have asthma, like me, and people have COPD and small children and the elderly and people with compromised immune systems, we rely on you and herd immunity and I can get a flu vaccine, I get my flu vaccine, but there are some people – cancer patients – who can’t, and they really need us to get them. So I’ll get off my little soapbox there. So. But, yes.

SPENCER: But do it.

PATTI: Yeah.

SPENCER: Do it as soon as they come out if you can.

PATTI: Happy Holidays, get your flu shot.

[both laugh]

SPENCER: And that’s a gift for us all.

PATTI: Right? I will consider it a gift from you. Yay, the gift of herd immunity. Ok.

SPENCER: Alright.

PATTI: Do you feel good about that?

SPENCER: Yeah, yeah.

PATTI: So, sincerely, check out Night of the Comet, you can get it on DVD — you couldn’t for a long time but now you can. I think it was actually streamable on Netflix for a little while. Epic. There is a comet, people become zombies, people were outside partying to see it. If you weren’t outside you didn’t get it. Two sisters hole up in a mall with two other guys. I feel the zombies could talk in that movie, though. I really need to rewatch it. Maybe we’ll rewatch that today instead of a Christmas movie. [to Spencer] It’s not scary. He just gave me a look.

SPENCER: [whispers] It sounds like a horror movie, a musical.

PATTI: It is. No, it’s not a musical. Nobody sings, they’re just in a shopping mall so they try on a lot of clothes, to music, and dance around.

SPENCER: Is it like –

PATTI: You guys can’t see it, but I just danced.

SPENCER: Is it a like a zombie movie version of like

PATTI: Manequin

SPENCER: Oh no, I was going to say

[both laugh]

SPENCER: wow. I was going to say like Buffy the Vampire Slayer is to vampire movies? or is it …

PATTI: It’s not that good.

[both laugh]

PATTI: I mean, I love it and I maybe watched it every day the summer vacation after third grade. Don’t get me wrong. For me, it is cinematic perfection.

SPENCER: Is it more like Once Bitten for vampire movies?

PATTI: Yes!

SPENCER: It has a lot of nostalgic appeal, it’s not particularly good, but it’s like that kind of –

PATTI: How dare you insult Lauren Hutton like this. Look, Once Bitten is great and I will still watch it all the time, given any opportunity. But I actually don’t think that anyone in Night of the Comet went on to have a bigger career. Whereas people in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie, which I stand by

SPENCER: Oh yeah, it is probably the peak of vampire – the oeuvre.

PATTI: Yeah, it is, I will say this, it is peak 80s sort of teen mall movie, with zombies.

SPENCER: [gags]

PATTI: I don’t really, it’s not really a horror movie. I don’t know.

[both laugh]

SPENCER: Well, thank you for –

PATTI: I know you don’t have a favorite zombie movie so you can’t share one.

SPENCER: So this is Mansplainer.

PATTI: You’ve been Womansplained. Feel free to well actually me all over Twitter and everywhere else on the internet about zombies and how much I don’t know. Because I don’t care. I mean, ask me about Jason Vorhees, I’m all over it. Zombies is a rough one. So yea, this is Patti.

SPENCER: This is Spencer.

PATTI: Thank you to everyone who puts so much time and effort into understanding zombies on the internet. We’ll link to a couple of places where I found some information. And thank you to to Chastity Belt for our theme song. We’re going to put a link to a video to the song Zombie Christmas by Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler on the show page. It’s fantastic and thematically appropriate, and seasonal at that. So, have a Happy –

SPENCER: Solstice

PATTI: Whatever you celebrate.

SPENCER: We will also put a link to the video Devo’s Merry Something to You.

PATTI: Yeah, so just be good to one another. It’s been a rough year.

SPENCER: and get your flu shot.

PATTI: and get your flu shot.

SPENCER: Bye!

[Theme song: “Drone” by Chastity Belt chorus]
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’

PATTI: Also, Event Horizon was a sci-fi film. [snickers]

SPENCER: Okay, but in the end, the explanation is “Hell is real”

PATTI: Yeah, I don’t know. I got nothin’. If it makes you feel any better, somebody tricked me into watching that movie in college, and therefore, …it’s like The Ring. You have to pass on the movie, or you die.

SPENCER: You have to be a shitty friend to someone else.

PATTI: Yeah

SPENCER: [laughs]

PATTI: So, I love you, and I chose you.

SPENCER: Thanks.

PATTI: It is really terrifying, though.

SPENCER: Yeah, you should read, was it Mallory Ortberg’s livetweets of it?

PATTI: Yeah. Yeah.

SPENCER: I’ll link to the start of that in the show notes.