Living Dead Weekend at Monroeville Mall | Zombie Book Club Ep 101

Join us for an unforgettable celebration of George A. Romero’s zombie legacy. In this episode, we take you behind the scenes of Living Dead Weekend—from Leah's gruesome “Dr. Logan” crown to organizing a packed Zombie Book Club author crawl with 263 entries. We talk survival strategies, meet filmmakers, FX masters, and authors, and uncover the urgent community fight against Walmart’s takeover of this beloved horror landmark.

Amid flood warnings and tornado alerts, we delve into real conversations, unexpected friendships, hilarious shockers (giant penis plushies), and the heart of what this community means. We may have spent more than we made, but would we do it all again? Absolutely—because in the end, finding your zombie family is the greatest survival story of all.

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

• Kevin and Haley from Virginia Beach
• Malin Grant @pittsburgh_fighers_guild
• Ira & Shiloh @x_xPhantomime
• Brandon Starocci of Avalon Comic @avaloncomic https://avaloncomic.com/
• George The Pittsburgh Ghoul Order https://www.youtube.com/@ghoulworldorder2406
• Dan Soltesz @dsoltesz92 
• CJ the SFX artist @cj_sfx  
• John @johntystroll 
• Mark Scioneaux “The Glass Coffin” film @Mark_c_scioneaux
• Aaron
• Todd Killer Wolfson @justburiedentertainment www.justburiedentertainment.com 
• Courtney Konstantin https://www.courtneykonstantin.com/  @courtney.konstantin_author
• Disruptia Heart @disruptiaheart & @thegardenofseductionmonsterfx
• TOM SAVINI’S SPECIAL MAKE-UP EFFECTS PROGRAM: https://www.dec.edu/ts/

Transcript

Welcome to Zombie Book Club

Speaker 1 0:20

Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a convention, and it's a good thing that the zombie apocalypse didn't start. While we were there, the moral ramifications of not knowing if you macheted a zombie 10-year-old or one cosplaying as a zombie could be too much to handle.

Speaker 2 0:34

That's a real dilemma. I met a zombie who was 11. I thought they were 20, because I have no concept of age.

Speaker 1 0:39

Luckily that one already had a machete in his head.

Speaker 2 0:42

Oh, that's not the one I'm talking about. Oh well, then I'm there were a few.

Speaker 1 0:46

Uh, I'm dan, and when I'm not macheting cosplayers at conventions, I'm writing a book that does actually have a 10 year old zombie in it, as it turns out. Um, what can I say?

Speaker 2 0:57

living dead weekend has inspired me if living dead weekend did not inspire you, I don't know. Like you shouldn't be in the zombie genre because I'm left very inspired. I'm leah and I am now writing a smut story called a p calypse now, where the cure for the zombie virus might involve golden showers from aliens. All proceeds go toward funding my husband dan's actual and far less p-soaked zombie novel. As far as I know, there's not a lot of pee in your novel and or the next zombie creator's retreat, I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 1:29

So are you actually going to write that, maybe? Well, you know what? Maybe people can let you know if that's something they want to read.

Speaker 2 1:38

Yeah, it happened because I. It came about because I had a dream about needing to pee at a convention while we were at Living Dead Weekend and I told Joe Salazar about it, who was our roomie, and somehow it devolved into into a story wow that's what happens when you hang out with authors.

Speaker 1 1:57

They're like you should write about that they are your cheerleaders, but also kind of like the worst kind where it's like I, I have this terrible idea and they're like I love it.

Speaker 2 2:08

Well I think it was also coming off of. We had a bunch of us all get together at the end of it and hang out at the Airbnb and we were talking about all of these horrific smut stories that seemed to get a lot of attention and we realized maybe we all need to write really bad, ridiculous smut stories in order to fund the other things you want to do.

Speaker 1 2:29

You have to. You have to write one really bad smut story that everybody reads and you make a million dollars from it, just so you can write the book that, like 10 people might read.

Speaker 2 2:39

Yeah because I I'm gonna be real here. I'm not gonna write a good smut story. This is not gonna be polymorphously quality, oh no.

Speaker 1 2:45

It's going to be awful, yeah, yeah. So if you want an awful book, it's coming out sometime.

Speaker 2 2:51

Yeah, today we're talking about our experience at Living Dead Weekend 2025 at the Monroeville Mall in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 2:58

Yeah, you know so many. It was such a roller coaster, so let's let's talk about it also. We have a lot of interviews that we're gonna, we're gonna stitch in at the end. I mean, I mean like a lot, we talked to so many people yeah.

Speaker 2 3:13

So you know that we did. We did an interview because they were amazing, but then the minute I was like, hey, uh, you're really great, do you want to? Here's a microphone they're like no, I gotta go, I'm scared of the microphone. I get it, I'll come back later.

Speaker 4 3:26

And they never came back.

Speaker 1 3:28

Although some people did.

Speaker 2 3:29

They're like, I thought about it and I'm back.

Speaker 1 3:31

There was. There was a couple of people that they came back because they're like I love all the stickers. And then then I'm like did you, did you? Did you decide whether or not you wanted to be on the podcast? And they're like I don't.

Speaker 2 3:44

That's fair. We're glad if you're a listener or a contributor to this episode we release every Sunday, so subscribe.

Speaker 1 3:52

Yeah, I wrote subscribe, let's just keep going then. Yeah.

Speaker 2 3:59

We're going to do a rapid fire Living Dead Weekend life update of our experience so that we can keep this part relatively short and make space for all the other amazing people that will have the mic for this episode.

What is Living Dead Weekend?

Speaker 1 4:06

Yeah, We'll keep it short. We might talk more about this some other time. Oh yeah, in greater length if it comes up, if we're inspired to, let's talk about Living Dead Weekend. What is it, leah?

Speaker 2 4:18

It's a convention celebrating George A Romero's legacy in the Living Dead film series and it takes place every year at the Monroeville Mall. There was also another location in Evans City, pennsylvania, where Night of the Living Dead 1968 was filmed, but I think that one is not happening in that location anymore, but the Monroeville Mall one happened this year. It featured celebrity guests. If you've been listening to our podcast recently, we've been talking a lot about them because we were getting ready for Living Dead weekend. It had movie screenings, vendor areas, photo opportunities and it was just generally filled with a bunch of horror and zombie fans that I adored.

Speaker 1 4:53

Yeah, I just had an inspired idea. If they can't do Living Dead Weekend at the mall anymore for reasons that we'll talk about, they should do it in the caves where Day of the Dead was filmed. That would be super fun. I'd love to go to those caves. Yes, I would love that too. I think that'd be rad. Let's talk about the things that we loved about Living Dead Weekend.

Speaker 2 5:17

Number one.

Speaker 1 5:18

Oh me, yeah, you Leah's pointing at me. Okay, hanging out with our Z zombesties in real life.

Speaker 2 5:27

um so we got an airbnb that, uh, we shared with our new roommate, um joe salazar and her husband, uli, and, most importantly, their dog data, who we love. Who's my new best friend. We're godparents now of this dog Sorry, nero and Ziggy. Yeah, I actually just mailed. I messaged Joe and was like would Data like these balls that light up and bounce around on their own? And she was like yes, and I was like well, I'm sending them to her right now. So much I love Data, the dog Data.

Speaker 1 5:57

I miss you. Yeah, so we hung out with, uh, like I mentioned, joe Salazar, author of the dead weight, um also Courtney Constantine, who wrote the babysitters. Uh, babysitter of the apocalypse series is the newest one and the sundown series.

Speaker 2 6:15

sundown series. They sold out of books four, five and six. Yeah, and they were there.

Speaker 1 6:21

They uh um, courtney was like maybe I should have brought more.

Speaker 2 6:26

I mean, they were trying to fit everything into a suitcase to carry across a continent on a plane, so I think it was fair. Yeah, brandon star rocky of avalon comic fame was there. I finally got to meet him. He's the reason why we went. Yeah, we learned about this event two years ago because he went to it and then we were like we must do this they put.

Speaker 1 6:41

they put brandon on a different floor than the rest of us, like we were in a relatively small hall, but kind of the one that was where it was at. Yeah, he got put into a really big hall with all like, the, like, the, the, the vendors, like a lot of them. They thought that he was like a comic publisher or like a comic store and would be confused that he only had one comic.

Speaker 2 7:04

Yeah, he, and would be confused that he only had one comic. Yeah, he was also surrounded by a lot of celebrities and celebrity photo ops. Yeah, and, most importantly, giant penis plushies. Yeah, which I need to point out briefly because I did not put a butthole on the crown I made for living dead weekend. Um, and after seeing life-sized actually not life-sized, because that'd be a lot smaller um, toddler-sized penis plushies, if you can imagine that I felt like they're the size of a toddler, not like they're the size of a toddler's penis or even a body pillow.

Speaker 2 7:32

Yeah, yeah, they're quite large, I just wanted to specify. You could cuddle them, you could nuzzle them, um, but anyways, I was like I really could have put a butthole on my crown, oh well yeah, and people would have loved it.

Speaker 1 7:42

Yeah, they would. They would absolutely freaked out when they saw that butthole. But unfortunately there was, it was butthole free, yeah uh also alice b sullivan yeah, um elementary undead.

Speaker 2 7:53

elementary undead, the aftermath series a bunch of books, a bunch of books, a bunch of books. Also, just gonna say it right now happy birthday, alice. It's your birthday today, today, today, well, not right Today, when this episode comes out, oh, when this episode comes out, june 22nd. Happy birthday, alice.

Speaker 1 8:09

I was like I got to get on Instagram, I got to tell Alice happy birthday. I'm going to be like a week early, yeah.

Speaker 2 8:17

We are so happy that you exist. Yay, please celebrate your birthday like there's no tomorrow, but not so much that you can't come here and live record with us in the zombie bunker this summer, which we have planned for Alice to come visit.

Speaker 1 8:29

That's going to be fun.

Speaker 2 8:30

It is.

Speaker 1 8:35

These are all now our best friends and we need to officially start a zombie commune with all of the authors. You know there was a lot of things that I was really worried about going to this convention. I was not worried about meeting these people who I know are really cool. What I didn't know was that the weeks leading up to it, I'm in a place where I'm kind of feeling a little down about the fact that I don't really feel like I have friends that I connect to in real life, feel like I have friends that I connect to in real life.

Speaker 1 9:08

It's been a while since I've been like oh, I can't wait to see that person again in real life. I don't go to work and be like, oh, I wonder what Jay is up to. But when I went to this convention all of these people immediately it feels like I've known them for years, even though it was the first time we were meeting. It was totally not awkward at all and I'm like can this just be forever? Do we just buy a big house and we all live together? Is that something we can do? I?

Speaker 2 9:31

mean, you know, we'd all be good in the zombie apocalypse, which should be the number one criteria. Yeah, I also want to give a shout out to the new authors new to us, I should say that we found at Living Dead Weekend, we had dead weekend. We had carl, one half of the writing duo for wither novels. Yeah, carl was really cool. Yep, joseph pesavento, who wrote death cleanse, uh, and a bunch of other novels that are not zombies but, I'm sure, also good. We just can't read them. Sorry, joseph, we only read zombies. Yeah, um, and james redmond came down I think they were in another hall and they have a book called hell's maelstrom, right I?

Speaker 2 10:00

do remember that. Yeah, so looking, looking forward to reading all of those books, because there's always more great zombie books out there to read. There are, and.

Speaker 1 10:09

I didn't realize there'd be so many authors and if we knew in advance, we would have absolutely had you in our book crawl, because I think it was really helpful to the people that we know. I think it was really helpful to the people that we know and we would have loved to just have everybody included and made it even bigger than it was.

Speaker 2 10:30

Maybe next year.

Speaker 1 10:32

I hope so.

Speaker 2 10:33

Yeah, speaking of the author crawl, we did a zombie book club author crawl, where there was a library of the undead giveaway. All of the authors that we'd known previously are going to be there donated a book uh, in brandon's case, he also donated a poster and, um, some other cool stuff. And courtney donated two books because she's prolific and has many books. Yeah, um, but all our books. We included a t-shirt from us, some stickers and we made this whole event for people to basically get, like their passports stamped at each of our booths for a chance to win this giveaway, and we had 263 entries collectively from, I think, a little over 30 people who actually participated, and a lot of people, even knowing that they were a part of this giveaway, bought books, and that made me really, really happy.

Speaker 1 11:23

That was the whole point of this, of this yeah, it really encouraged people to go check out other people's booths. Um, which was, which was the point, but it was also surprising that it worked. Yeah, like I was, I was, I was surprised to see people excited to like get a get a sticker on their card. They're like I'm here to get my sticker I think it would have been really cool.

Speaker 2 11:45

I like a specifically book event. We could do this again. Yeah, and I also got to give Carl with their novels another shout out, because they shared that some people would be coming up to them being like, are you part of this crawl? And we didn't know they were there, so they weren't, and so they ended up donating one of wither novel chronicles. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, um, so that was awesome and just love, like the instant community building that happened. And I also want to give a shout out to charlie jumper, who won. Hey, charlie, and your stuff's going in the mail. Well it, I hope it's already gotten to you, actually by the time you hear this, because it should have. Uh, let's move on to another favorite thing uli joe's husband feeding us.

Speaker 1 12:24

Yeah, you know, it wasn't until we were setting up our table that I thought. You know we are woefully unprepared for surviving out here, because we didn't even I don't know about you, but I definitely didn't think about like we will have to eat once we get to Living Dead.

Speaker 2 12:41

Weekend I did, but I basically planned this thing. So I thought about everything, yeah, and I thought there's not a lot. Weekend I did, but I basically planned this thing. So I thought about everything, yeah, and I thought there's not a lot, but I knew we'd be able to get smoothies from the food court oh, I you know what.

Speaker 1 12:50

The smoothies from the food court was news to me. Uh, speaking of smoothies from the juice uh, juice court, other than the juice court, that's what I call it now. Yeah, juice, nuts and juice court, that's what I call it now. The food court yeah, nuts and juice court. Okay, other than Uli feeding us and saving our lives every day. Yeah, the upscale juice bar also saved our lives, and I did not know that avocado just goes in every smoothie.

Speaker 2 13:19

Dan, you're a newbie to making smoothies, I am. There's so much potential for a smoothie.

Speaker 1 13:22

Yeah.

Speaker 2 13:31

And now I just want to put avocados in all smoothies, yeah, but I just gotta. You know we cannot. I don't want to have the smoothies. Um steal, the show from uli uli is the mvp of living dead weekend. Uli, you seriously meant that we survived and had blood sugar. Fewer blood sugar crashes. Uh, we would have without you, particularly the potato tacos from taco bell. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 13:46

That was a wonderful surprise uli showed up with surprise tacos, yeah, and we were like what tacos that we didn't even know were coming to us? Yeah what?

Speaker 2 13:55

what more could you ask for in a zombesty than tacos?

Speaker 1 13:59

yeah, I nearly fainted, partially because of my crashing blood sugar.

Speaker 2 14:05

Yeah, another thing I personally loved at living dead weekend was crowning people in the dr logan. Yeah, and the last time I talked about this crown that I made for living dead weekend, I didn't know what it was called and I haven't read a description yet, but if you will indulge me, I'd like to read the description of the dr logan. Yes, please do. The dr logan zombie crown took over 20 hours to design, hand sculpt and paint in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Romero film Day of the Dead, made just for this year's Living Dead weekend. It's crafted with love, laughter and the dismembered remains of Dr Logan's zombie vivisection experiments, all ethically harvested from his spare parts, aren't they, though? I mean, they were already on the ground. We weren't part of the killing, okay, or vivisections, and it's all a tribute to the twisted genius of Dr Matthew Frankenstein, frankenstein, frankenstein, frankenstein, frankenstein, frankenstein. Logan, sculpted out of metal armature and oven-baked clay. The crown features hand-painted strips of fingers, teeth, a nose and three infected eyeballs.

Speaker 2 15:02

No buttholes, no buttholes. Sadly, I'm never doing that again. This is the one-off no butthole crown Impaled with raw crystal energy for whoever dares to claim it Amethyst, smoky quartz, clear quartz and green vivianite. And then the initials LDW for Living Dead Weekend are carved in the back like a fresh wound. And yes, that's a real bite mark, because I always bite my crowns. You gotta bite the crown.

Speaker 1 15:24

For science yeah.

Speaker 2 15:25

And I tried to sell it, I wrote, valued at 666, inspired by all the eights brains, telling me that that would be appropriate for $333. And while many people asked me if it was for sale, no one bought it because it's a lot of money. It is a lot of money, but what was more fun was just meeting people and having them appreciate it and then taking pictures with them wearing it. That was so much joy for me and I met some really cool people, particularly some special effects artists that loved it, which was really affirming and also like I think, going to these kinds of events you sometimes, even if you know you're never going to see them again, it's like meeting soul family. There were a few people that put the crown where, like we locked eyes and I was like, yes, we're relatives and I love you.

Speaker 1 16:05

Yeah, I also felt that with a lot of people, because you know in real life, if you just start spouting off things that you know about George Romero films, people are like all right, I guess I like those movies, I saw them once when I was a kid. But these people it's like which one's your favorite? And they will spend an hour telling you everything that they love about Romero films.

The Dr. Logan Crown

Speaker 2 16:29

Literally, yeah. Yeah, we had to hang out for like an hour and just chat with us, or more, yeah, which was great.

Speaker 1 16:35

One time I had to pee really bad, but then I got into a really big conversation that lasted, I think, an hour and 45 minutes. Hold that pee, yeah, an hour and 45 minutes. Just hold that. P yeah. Um, it wasn't a p-calypse, see, in so many ways that's what inspired it.

Speaker 2 16:51

Uh, the biggest thing for me this weekend was meeting jerry gurgly yeah, who is the director of tom savini's special makeup program, and joe sent him my way because joe salazar is a fairy godmother of awesomeness all the time and they were sort of like kitty corner from Jerry Gergely's booth and said, hey, you should go check out this crown. And so he did, yeah, and he loved it. Yeah, that's great. I, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 17:19

Just to give you context of who this person is he's worked on Silence of the Lambs, the Dark Half, ragdoll, night of the Living Dead 1990, flesh Eater, my Bloody Valentine, 3d being John Malkovich, babylon 5, buffy, the Vampire Slayer, the X-Files, roswell and Charmed, yeah. And for someone like that, who's the head of the Tom Savini special makeup program, to come up to me and be like this is a masterpiece, um, I hate to admit how much I love external affirmation, but I was like, oh my god, I'm actually like an art. A fellow artist is recognizing my art right now, and not just like anybody, but somebody who is themselves the most masterful of master in this kind of art. And briefly, I toyed in my head all weekend like do I take, do I go participate in this program. Do I just stop everything and move to Pennsylvania? Um, but then I decided I don't want to make. I like making crowns.

Speaker 1 18:12

I'm not sure if I want to do the rest yeah, um, I mean, it's a it would be a big life change.

Speaker 2 18:18

It would and one that I don't know that we can afford right. But, more importantly, jerry gave me excellent advice on how to make my crown with other materials and told me I could contact them anytime. So, jerry, prepare for your email inbox to be harassed by me, because I want to be your bestie, um, and just know that it meant a lot to meet you and have that affirmation from someone amazing as you and also all the other artists who came up and said really nice things about the crown. It was very, um, ego boosting, confidence boosting, made me feel like my art might be worth something, and I don't mean monetarily because, honestly, the joy of just seeing people wear it and appreciate it was all I needed yeah, I mean it was.

Speaker 1 18:58

it was definitely a fascinator. Like, yeah, like people. People would come by the table and, like you know, they'd see the stickers and most people didn't understand that we were a podcast until we said it. And then they're like, oh, you're a podcast, even though it's like right in the logo. But when they see that crown, that's the conversation starter, where they're like, whoa, look at that thing. So advice to people going to a horror convention and don't know how to bring people to your table Get yourself a crown made of human flesh From me, yeah, from Leah.

Speaker 2 19:30

Yeah, custom made for that event, but I am going to find a way to mass produce it, because he was like these would sell and I was like they would sell if I could make them affordable and currently I cannot. So he gave me a lot of great advice. Thank you so much, jerry Gurley. It was beyond a privilege to meet you, yeah.

Speaker 1 19:51

Also we had a. There was a brief moment of panic when we were setting up on Thursday. Where we got to our table, which is right near the front door, and right in front of our table in the middle of the room, was Greg Nicotero's table, and we're like, are we just going to be staring at Greg Nicotero, executive producer and special effects artist for the Walking Dead all weekend. But luckily they moved this table to the back where the rest of the celebrities were, and left us little people on our own to not freak out every minute of the day.

Speaker 2 20:24

Yeah, you know what else was at the back of our vending hall A top secret vendor bathroom. Yes, loved it. Loved not having to walk. I honestly, I brought my wheelchair with me and didn't have to use it as much as I thought, which is just evidence of progress. If you've been listening for a while, you know that this is a big deal for me, but I would have had to use it to go to the bathroom because it was so far, but instead I just had to have a short walk to the back of this former store. It looked like maybe the size of a gap, if you can picture that, I think, yeah, maybe a baby gap. Also, I never knew that people, the workers, actually had their own bathrooms and I'm so happy to learn that. Yeah, I loved how when you went back, there and the door closed.

Speaker 1 21:07

It shut off all the cacophony. It was so quiet. It was amazing. It was amazing. Like you know, I I was dealing with some anxiety through the whole weekend so, like every now and then, going back there and just turning everything off was just like a feeling of relief for a little while I agree.

Meeting Jerry Gergely

Speaker 1 21:20

I also took top secret footage of the top secret vendor bathroom that I'm going to share the week this episode comes out, room area that I called my screaming chambers, where, if I needed to escape, those are places where people, even the vendors who were going back to the bathrooms, wouldn't go into Because it was off to the side. It looked like a fucking nightmare. It looked like somebody was murdered in there and that's where I could go to just scream and cry.

Speaker 2 22:03

But how often did you do that?

Speaker 1 22:04

I actually didn't do it as much as I thought I would.

Speaker 2 22:07

Yeah, maybe just the first couple hours, you know what I loved, seeing that you could do this and I know you were pretty freaked out in the beginning, dan I felt like you might have been on the verge of a panic attack.

Speaker 1 22:19

I was having one.

Speaker 1 22:20

Yeah, but I just made Dan unpeel all of my zombie stickers and put them on my water bottles and that seemed to calm you down and then you were okay, this is kind of like a new revelation for me is that I've I've discovered by analyzing previous freak outs is that every time I'm just like I have this, this dreadful feeling that I need to escape but don't know how, or feel trapped, you know. So, finding the screaming rooms, finding the back room where the bathrooms are, finding all the emergency exits and all the things that I could do to run away if I needed to Like go get smoothies Discovering all those things made me feel so much better. Yeah, and unpeeling stickers.

Speaker 2 23:15

Probably to unpack another time. But I just realized you know, when you're at war you have your flight instinct, but you can't leave, yeah, so that makes a lot of sense. I'm just glad you ended up having a good time.

Speaker 1 23:26

Yeah, me too. I was not expecting to have a good time. It's weird because it started with me being like I need to find a way to escape and then, by the end of day three, even though I was fucking exhausted and torn to pieces physically, I was like I am sad that it's ending, I don't want it to end. I um, I was like I am sad that it's ending, I don't want it to end, I want to talk to a thousand more people apparently.

Speaker 2 23:50

Who is this man? I was. I was ready for the event to be over, but I wasn't ready to stop hanging out with all of our author friends. That was really wonderful. Yeah, uh, we also love the mall. I mean the mall, the monroville mall, it an icon. It was an incredible place to be Meeting so many people who came to this event, who were locals, where this was like a place that they hung out and also had the significance to their local culture was super cool. And I just want to say, if you're not aware, the Monroeville Mall has been purchased by Walmart and is under threat of extinction and there is a petition in the show notes. Please go sign it. I don't know if it can save it, but we can at least try. I mean, they bought a lot of acreage so maybe they could just leave them all alone and do stuff elsewhere.

Speaker 1 24:34

I do have some news about that petition that during living dead weekend it grew from 1 000 signatures to 5 000 signatures yeah, keep signing it.

Speaker 2 24:43

We were joking with folks, but like this is the time, we need to all just make a human chain around the outside.

Speaker 1 24:47

There was definitely enough of us and be like we're not leaving until this is saved yeah, um, yeah, it's. It's like such a a cultural, culturally relevant site for us. Maybe not for everyone in the world, but for us it means something, because this is like it. Such an iconic movie happened there and it's been this place that's been celebrated with things like the Living Dead Weekend for so long. Yeah, it even has a museum in it dedicated to George Romero films and special tours, which I never had an opportunity to look at.

Speaker 2 25:23

Yeah, we'll get into that Moving on, because we've got to do this quick. Got to make space for the other people who are about to come on this podcast. Dan, tell us about holding hands with Brandon Starocki of Avalon Comics.

Speaker 1 25:34

It was funny because we're going to take a picture myself, brandon and you, and you said something along the lines of like I stand in the middle because, uh, you guys are two hetero dudes and you can't stand together because of, uh, toxic masculinity, or something like yeah, I made a toxic masculinity joke and uh, and they're like, okay, well, we'll just hold hands behind your back then.

Speaker 1 25:56

So we held hands behind your back and you were like, oh my god, they're holding hands. And then it's like, oh well, we'll hold hands in front. So we're holding hands on both sides of Leah for the picture. And that's on Instagram, isn't it?

Speaker 2 26:07

It isn't yet, but it's going to be. It's going to be. I will say that or no. I think actually Brandon's already posted, but it'll be on ours as well. That proved that neither of you are toxically masculine and made me love you both more.

Speaker 1 26:19

Yeah, you know, and I feel like that was an important culturally relevant moment for Brandon and I.

Speaker 2 26:26

I agree, it's very important and we need to print it and frame it for sure. Lori Calcaterra, author of Path of the Pale Rider fame, was not there, though we wanted her to be here there and Brandon actually challenged her to a one-on-one duel to steal her Zombieweenen game show crown that I made from her for her 20, 2023 win and, as of this recording, lori's accepted the challenge and, honestly, it was very scary. In her video response, they had a lot of knives that she pulled out but, more interestingly, brandon has not responded with when they're available. I. This is a pattern, brandon. I want to be team Brandonon, but you keep flaking out on events. Buddy, yeah, you got to respond, although maybe when this comes out, you already have and I'll have to issue a correction. Yeah, uh, and, last but not least, being roomies with joe uli and, most importantly, data. Gotta say it again, that was so lovely. They also brought us cake all the way from chicago yeah, chicago cake pie, pie, my darling cake.

Speaker 2 27:28

It was a confetti cake. It was the best cake I've ever had. It had the perfect ratio for me of icing to cake. I ate it for breakfast.

Speaker 1 27:35

Yeah, thank you so much also um the the demands to cut the slices of cake even smaller. I went for. I went for quarters. That was not small enough. I went for eights. That was not small enough. We ate 16ths of a slice of cake each. It's impossible to cut a cake that size in the 60. I did it.

Mall Memories & Walmart Threat

Speaker 2 28:00

But like smoothies. Dan, your cake cutting experience is low, so I think you were the wrong person to cut the cake, but we appreciate you for trying. Yeah, but my knife skills are high, true? Well, I need to school you on correct cake cutting then for the future, okay but it was wonderful, that's fair um. I will dream of that cake forever more.

Speaker 1 28:18

Let's get into what we hated from living dead weekend, which wasn't very much. But let's talk about what we hate. What did you?

Speaker 2 28:23

hate most. I hated seeing a random person's dick. That happened the first time. I used the very secret, special, uh, vendor bathroom in the back. Someone told me about it and I was like, yes, and the women's bathroom, because you know, bathrooms have to be segregated by the binary of gender, which is stupid, otherwise horrible crimes will always happen exactly.

Speaker 2 28:45

And so the quote-unquote women's bathroom was occupied and I was like I don't give a fuck, I'll use the dudes as long as it's not gross. Uh, the light was off. The door was mostly open, so I walked toward it and I start to push the door more open and there is a man in the dark peeing full fountain arc. Seeing his dick and the pee arcing into the toilet can never unsee it. Of course he apologized, I ran away, but I still ask you, good sir, why. I learned later that the light definitely worked, as did the door, so why the door was tricky.

Speaker 1 29:21

You had to lift the handle to make it latch, but it did close and the light did work. Yeah, I can. I can verify.

Speaker 2 29:30

So yeah, this is the second time I've seen a dick that I didn't want to see in like a solid month.

Speaker 1 29:34

The things that I hated. We talked about this. It was a lot. It was exhausting. Yeah, it was hard. It was hard it was. It was a lot mentally, emotionally, physically.

Speaker 2 29:52

Like my feet felt like they were ground hamburger by the end. Yeah, your feet were in worse shape than my feet because you weren't getting wheeled in a wheelchair between the convention location and the parking, which is what you did for me. So thank you for putting your feet in a grinder so that mine could be okay because I'm doing all right.

Speaker 1 30:10

Yeah, I'm doing all right. Yeah, I'm I'm doing all right too. Um, but you know what, like as hard as all that was and I and brandon said this as well like would would you rather be there even though it's harder? Like like more work, or would you rather be at work and living dead weekend? Living dead weekend, like that's it felt, it felt felt important to be there.

Speaker 2 30:27

And I feel really grateful. I have a job that I like and coworkers, but this is, this was super special.

Speaker 1 30:32

Yeah, I didn't like not having drugs.

Speaker 2 30:35

Yeah, we did look up whether it was legal to purchase cannabis in Pennsylvania. Answer is no, so we didn't bring any yeah.

Speaker 1 30:45

And I and I wouldn't have been able to partake anyway because it's the work season. Yeah, I don't like that, but it would have been so much better if I was high.

Speaker 2 30:53

I disagree. I think I would have been really overwhelmed. Cbd is the way to go, but I gave you the CBDs we had.

Speaker 1 30:58

I would have been like maybe one gummy, no dummy.

Speaker 2 31:07

No, and then see. We'll see where that takes me. Uh, I think it would have made me chill, yeah, also, uh, I was sad we didn't get to see the rest of the convention or get picks with bub aka sherman howard. Um, that was too bad. I really told myself. You know, on sunday, I was like I'll have time on sunday to go up to hall a and hall c and check it out. I did not. Yeah, that's okay, it was. You know, we had a different experience and I think I would have chosen this experience over being just, uh, not just at an attendee. Yeah, but it was. It was unfortunate.

Speaker 1 31:32

I wanted to do that because maybe it won't be there next year because of stupid walmart and if we were just attendees, like I don't know what I would have done for three days, like I would have seen everything in one day and then been like do I just just go back? Yeah, I've been in situations like that and that's. That is actually when it is. The anxiety is more upsetting for me.

Speaker 2 31:53

Um, you know what I didn't like, leah, what the floods and tornadoes yeah, the constant flood warnings yeah with the whole convention center being an annoying sound of, with a forced notice to not leave the mall because there might be a flood and Pittsburgh apparently did have floods, but we were okay.

Speaker 1 32:10

Yeah, and then there was briefly a tornado warning. That was fun. Yeah, it's like is this how it ends? Are we in the apocalypse? Is this when it starts?

Speaker 2 32:21

Yeah, and then we didn't like when it was over. It's sad, we want to do it again when it starts, yeah.

The Financial Reality of Conventions

Speaker 1 32:25

And then we didn't like when it was over. It's sad, we want to do it again, yeah, when it was over, it was actually like. It was like leaving summer camp, it was yeah.

Speaker 2 32:32

And it's just like but all my friends are here Better than summer camp, because we all have a common interest and even more impressive common values. Yeah, that's what made the group of authors that we hung out with so special. To me is not just like, could we talk about zombie shit forever? But we've all agreed in the kind of world that we wanted to see, as courtney constantin jokes like the zombie apocalypse is basically surviving. It is socialism. So that was wonderful.

Speaker 2 32:56

Yeah, um, let's talk briefly about how much this cost us. Okay versus how much we made. Uh, I made 120 in Banana. Zombie, hands down winner, followed by Ziggy and Nero Zombies, the dogs, followed by the Hare Krishna Zombie from Dawn of the Dead, zombior yanking Dan from the truck. Zombior just by himself. Grandmata also made some sales. Make America Dead Again. I had two pride packs sold, one doggy pack, the librarian sold and the art teacher sold. That was it. What we also made was new friends and listeners, new confidence in my artistic ability, priceless what we spent $80 to get a Savini picture and two of his autographs, ouch. $70 to get a flesh eater plaque and magnet from Jerry Ruh-roh Gurgly and a picture with him. $300 for the booth, an airbnb, plus food, plus all the printing expenses and table expenses, since it was our first time vending. All told, I would say we probably spent up to twenty five hundred dollars. Yikes, would we do it again?

Speaker 1 33:58

yes, yes yes, and we do it again anytime. Is it happening next week? Let us know? Well, we can't afford it. I can't. Yeah, I'd have to put in. Yeah, I got it. I got to tell my boss.

Speaker 2 34:07

But it was priceless. Yeah, I mean I would live there, yeah, but now we're going to turn it over to you, the attendees. All of the links that folks are going to mention are going to be in the show notes and they'll also be tagged on Instagram and in the newsletter that we're going to send out. So if you're not sure how to get a hold of somebody you're about to listen to, it will be there for you.

Speaker 1 34:35

Yeah, I just want to give a brief apology if the audio isn't that great. It was in a convention hall and not everybody knew how to hold a microphone, but I'm going to do my best to make it sound good.

Interviews with Living Dead Weekend Attendees

Speaker 2 34:49

And with that we're turning it over to the incredible attendees of Living Dead Weekend. Where are you? From what's your name, Kevin? I'm from Virginia Beach.

Speaker 7 35:00

And Haley, Virginia Beach.

Speaker 1 35:02

You're our first guest for the day, so we're an absolute mess. So what brings you to Living Dead Weekend first?

Speaker 6 35:10

Big George Romero fans Been here a couple times, so I'm going to come back this year and I'm here to support him.

Speaker 1 35:17

So when we come back this year and I'm here to support them. Okay, so the zombie apocalypse, it's in full swing. You're in it. You've been in it for a while. Someone passes off two children to you. They're under the ages of five. Now they're your responsibility.

Speaker 6 35:38

How do you cope with this. Do they talk back as much as this one does? Yes, then we might just give them back to the zombies. I don't know. She's the motherly figure.

Speaker 9 35:49

We would just add them to our pack and move on, go with the flow.

Speaker 7 35:52

Is there strength in baby numbers, kid numbers? I think so. I think they can help us fight back.

Speaker 1 35:58

Do you think there's any tasks that somebody under five would be good at for the zombie apocalypse?

Speaker 6 36:06

She's very nosy, so she'd be a good scout. She's little and she notices everything and calls everybody out, so you just send her ahead and she'd come back and be like Mama, there's ten zombies over there doing mean stuff, and be like okay, well, there 10 zombies over there doing mean stuff and be like okay, well, there's 10 over there.

Speaker 7 36:19

So I think her cuteness will work for her advantage. You wouldn't expect what she's capable of. Do you want to say hi on?

Speaker 10 36:26

the podcast. You want to say hi and say your name and introduce yourself, no, okay.

Speaker 1 36:30

She's like absolutely not.

Speaker 2 36:33

Thank you for chatting with us, of course, thank you. It was really nice to meet you both. Thanks for being our first Episode's coming out on the 22nd. If you want to hear it, I'm excited, thank you.

Speaker 6 36:41

We will come back a little bit later. Yeah, don't hang.

Speaker 1 36:45

What brings you to Living Dead Weekend Also who are you?

Speaker 11 36:50

My name is Malin Malin Grant. I'm actually. You know, we run the Pittsburgh Fighters Guild. That's a medieval martial arts school, specifically HEMA, Historical European Martial Arts.

Speaker 1 37:02

Do you like teach people how to use like great swords and chop things in half with them?

Speaker 11 37:07

So we don't do cutting, oh, but we air quotations, everybody does it in their backyard, right yeah, air quotations, everybody does it in their backyard, right yeah, but uh, yeah, we use pretty much any weapon that is written about in a book, so that could be, you know, long swords, great swords, sabers, spears, maces, hammers, sticks, rapier and dagger.

Speaker 1 37:33

I mean basically whatever you, whatever you can swing at somebody in your hands what do you think is the best weapon if you're fighting like thousands of zombies?

Speaker 11 37:44

So, absolutely so. If I had to choose a weapon for fighting zombies, believe it or not, it wouldn't actually be a sword. I know I run a fencing school, but I would actually choose a war hammer or a war pick, because it's going to be durable. Right, I mean a sword. Sword is going to break over time, like it's going to have a lot of damage, but a war hammer, a war pick, you can use it over and over and over and over again, it only becomes more of a hammer.

Speaker 11 38:12

Yeah, yeah, so that would be my choice. How do people find you? You can find me on Facebook, Pittsburgh Fighters Guild, or you can find me on Google. You can do a quick Google search hemapittsburghcom or just search Pittsburgh Fighters Guild on Google.

Speaker 2 38:31

So, since you said you love graphic novels, graphic stories, I'm going to ask you a question based on Brandon Starocki's Avalon comic series. It's a what would you do question. The apocalypse kicks off. Your family is out to dinner without you. Do you go and save them?

Speaker 11 38:48

Absolutely how many, how many? I mean how many people you got to make sure, because you're a family. Yeah, my immediate family, or like all of my family. Yeah, they're having a party, You're not invited I mean zombies, I hate to say it like I got to get my immediate family, you know, safe and sound. We could talk about building up like some sort of militia or, you know, survivor's group after that.

Speaker 2 39:17

How many weapons do you have to share with your family?

Speaker 11 39:23

A lot I have a lot of weapons?

Speaker 1 39:24

The laugh pretty much answered that question. I have a lot of weapons.

Speaker 11 39:28

Melee weapons. Do you have weapons here at your stall? I have some fetters upstairs. You know fetter shorts. They're basically like blunted long swords.

Speaker 3 39:41

So Also life savers.

Speaker 1 39:43

Wooden swords, we'll have to go check it out. One of us will at some point yeah, I haven't been upstairs yet, so I'm going to have to take a look, thanks, thanks for being a five-minute guest on our podcast. Oh, of course, of course.

Speaker 7 39:56

What's your name? What? Oh, of course, of course. What's your name? What brings you to Living Dead Weekend? My name is Ira. I'm here because I'm a big George Romero fan, specifically of the movie Martin, but I do appreciate his other works. What is it you love about that one particularly? Oh God, it was my first Romero movie and I love its portrayal of mental illness and it's a very melancholy movie. And it just the first time I watched it. It literally blew me away. I didn't know movies could be that good until I watched it and I got to the end and it just shocked me. It was such a beautiful movie. I think I cried the first time I watched it. It's an incredible moving movie.

Speaker 2 40:38

I'm curious cried the first time I watched it. It's an incredible moving movie. I'm curious what you'd say to somebody who says that zombie movies are shallow and it's just like zombies running around.

Speaker 7 40:45

I think it's a little more than that, especially Romero movies. They're more about the humanity, the humanity of zombies. I don't know if that makes sense. It does make sense, but they touch on the fact that the zombies, like, remember the mall and that's why they're coming to the mall, and there's commentary on race and um. I think there's a little more meaning to specifically his films than just zombies walking around.

Speaker 2 41:11

Yeah that's the whole point of why we do the podcast, because for us zombie stories are actually like lessons for the living about life slash. It's kind of an apocalypse out there already.

Speaker 10 41:20

IMO. So A little bit.

Speaker 2 41:23

Yeah, Sometimes it's nice to escape into a zombie one. Are you ready for a random? What would you do in a zombie apocalypse question? Yes, it's a zombie apocalypse and you have a canoe to escape in. It's you and four other people you love.

Speaker 7 41:34

Who are they All right? My, who are they All right? My boyfriend, my best friend, ghost oh my gosh, that's a really hard one. You got two more, you know what. My other best friend, shiloh, you know what? I don't know how resilient you are to be fair. And maybe my mom just to keep me in check. I like that combo.

Speaker 2 42:00

Mom and some friends and a boyfriend. Okay, there's only actually enough room for four of you, and the canoe is sinking. Who is getting out of the?

Speaker 7 42:08

canoe. Oh no, you know what? My friend just said bye mom, no, bye mom. Sorry, mom, she might frustrate me a little too much so and she probably won't hear this podcast. No, I will not show her this podcast. Amazing, Do either of your?

Speaker 2 42:29

friends want a what would you do question, or are you feeling shy? I can totally do one. You can do one. Alright, hold my bag. Yes, what is your name? I am Shiloh. Shiloh. Oh yes, Bestie of Ira and Shiloh, where are you from?

Speaker 12 42:43

I'm from Ohio, just like Ira. We're from the same place.

Speaker 2 42:46

I'm so geographically illiterate. How far of a drive was that? It was a train ride. It was like that on a train. Yeah, so chill. Yeah, I mean you know a little uncomfortable, a little rickety. Where's your favorite or what's?

Speaker 12 43:03

your favorite romero film. You know, I just watched night raiders and I know he everybody loves his horror stuff, but I love, I really like night raiders. That's the one I just watched and it was like it was so interesting and unique and just fun, uh, so I'd probably have to go with that.

Speaker 2 43:18

I love it. I'm very new to Romero, so I've not watched that one yet. Isn't that embarrassing, oh thank you Shia.

Speaker 12 43:24

LaBeouf. No, honestly, I was just talking. I kind of feel like a poser here. I'm not really into this stuff like some of these people are, so I'm just kind of going with it.

Speaker 2 43:31

you know, I'm going with love when I watched Night of the Living Dead. I hate old movies. So it took a long time to convince me to watch it.

Speaker 2 43:37

And then I was like whoa and I've been obsessed ever since. Day of the Dead is my new obsession, that's my crown there, the Dr Logan Alright, here is your dilemma in the apocalypse. The apocalypse is in full effect, so we're like some months down the line here, Someone passes off two children under the age of five to you you are now responsible for them, oh no what do you do?

Speaker 12 44:01

oh no, I'm so bad with kids, but uh, I would do my best. I would. You know what I would do. I would make it my goal to search for somebody else who is much more responsible than me and probably has more resources, and drop them off there, because I do not believe that I could take care of two children on my own in the apocalypse.

Speaker 2 44:25

That was actually very responsible. We had one person say that they would just give them to the zombies, and that person was a parent.

Speaker 12 44:32

No, maybe if they were like adults, maybe if they were like a little older, I'd consider it.

Speaker 2 44:43

Well, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much, both of you, ira and shiloh, for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it coming out on june 22nd and uh, you can have a free sticker for chatting with us.

Speaker 1 44:47

Thank you, I appreciate you so much. I find that once I hit the record button, which I just did, um, I get like a surge of energy that lasts until I hit that button again I get the opposite.

Speaker 14 44:57

I get nervous and scared.

Speaker 1 44:58

Oh, okay, do you need to sit down.

Speaker 14 45:00

I might pass out, but yeah.

Speaker 1 45:03

What is your name, young man? I am Brandon Starocki. And what brings you to Living Dead?

Speaker 14 45:09

Weekend I am here promoting Avalon Comic, and just the wonderful people around here.

Speaker 2 45:15

This is where we have to break the fourth wall and say we know Brandon and the reason we're here is because, Brandon, we saw Brandon at Living Dead Weekend two years ago and we're like we need to be cool like Brandon and join.

Speaker 1 45:25

Yeah, see episode 17. Is that what it is? And another episode that I don't remember Was it higher, higher 40s.

Speaker 4 45:35

Does that sound right? 60s.

Speaker 14 45:36

That sounds about right yeah.

Speaker 1 45:39

Whatever number, I'll just say 62. So we have some questions. Are we going to ask all the questions? Yeah, okay, so that very little amount of energy that you had left prepare to use it all.

Speaker 14 45:48

Yeah, and I'm done. I'm going to be done for the night alright, so you are 13 years old.

Speaker 1 45:56

Okay, you're in English class wherever you went to school when you were 13 years old. Okay, you're in English class wherever you went to school when you were 13 years old. The zombie apocalypse it happens while you're in English class. What are you going to do? Panic?

Speaker 14 46:10

Okay, panic at the disco. No, I don't know if we had a disco at my school at that time. I panic, and that's probably it. I don't think I was smart enough at 13 years old to be like okay, I'm doing this. That, yeah me either. I think I would just die yeah, at the beginning of my life, 13 years old zombie I would be realistically. I like now. I feel like I'm confident, I could just handle anything and I'm over overconfident and I know that.

Speaker 1 46:37

So if you're in English class right now. I would live. Yeah, I would run home. Plus, being surrounded by 13-year-olds, you could just like throw them at the zombies.

Speaker 14 46:46

Yes and just use them as, like you know, meat shields. I have other questions.

Speaker 1 46:51

It's the zombie apocalypse. You just got out of English class, by the way, by throwing 13 year olds at zombies. You escape in a canoe a canoe pick five people to bring with you.

Speaker 14 47:06

I have five written okay, so I'm like five, including myself. Is that why you're saying four? Sure, okay, so, so four, okay, yeah, that works, why not? Um, my wife, my kid, greg Nicotero. Do one of you guys want to flip a coin? This is tails, okay. Okay, lee is in the canoe. Okay, so you're done, dan.

Speaker 1 47:29

Okay, well, that makes my next question a whole lot easier. So turns out there isn't enough room in the canoe. Who are you throwing out?

Speaker 14 47:43

Me and Greg could talk about a lot of things.

Speaker 1 47:47

Really You're not going to throw Greg out.

Speaker 14 47:49

Yeah, I'll throw Greg out. I'll leave Leo out. Okay, I'm going to let him know.

Speaker 1 47:54

I'll throw him out. This one you might already have an answer for. It's a zombie apocalypse, it just happened. Your whole family is out. This one you might already have an answer for. It's a zombie apocalypse, it just happened. Your whole family is out to dinner without you. I think it's a birthday party. You weren't invited, I wasn't. Do you save them? Yes, okay, and I'm biased. I figured you'd have an answer for that one, since you made a comic out of exactly that thing, and I'm a bit biased, yeah, since you made a comic out of exactly that thing and I'm a bit biased.

Speaker 14 48:18

Yeah, no, my personal, like person, me, Brandon Strzok. Yes, I won, All right.

Speaker 1 48:23

The APOC. It's in full effect now. You saved your family, kicked Greg Nicotero out of your boat. You killed a bunch of 13-year-olds. I kept you alive, by the way. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, someone passes off two children to you under the age of five. You are now responsible for them. How do you cope with that? How?

Speaker 14 48:45

do you handle it? I mean, how do they pass them off? To me Is it just like?

Speaker 1 48:47

here they're yours, yeah, they're like watch my kids and then they disappear. Like now they're yours. I'd probably be pissed.

Speaker 14 48:56

But then I'd have to. I mean, they're kids, they're five years old. I'd be pissed that they're. I mean, why am I going to watch your kids?

Speaker 2 49:04

Good guy. Brandon, I have a follow-up. Would you treat them as much love as your own child?

Speaker 14 49:08

No, no, no, okay, maybe over years in time, if they survive that long, but not immediately.

Speaker 2 49:16

Yeah, so there's zombies coming and you might need to sacrifice one yeah, I'd like to save my own kid.

Speaker 14 49:23

Yeah, yeah, in a heartbeat, love it.

Speaker 1 49:25

It's a, it's cruel, but reality, yeah, it gets my so you have an opportunity to pull greg nicotero back into the canoe. But you have to throw both kids out of the boat, jeez.

Speaker 14 49:37

I don't even know if Greg would be okay with that answer. I think he would still sacrifice himself. I'm going to go off on a limb there and think he would be okay with me keeping him off the canoe, even though, again, we could be talking about a bunch of stuff Sailing away into the sunset.

Speaker 1 49:54

I'll keep the two kids, unfortunately, because then I, then I gotta watch them all. Right, that's fair. Well, thanks, thanks for stopping by, thanks for coming here. And let me on it. Yeah, it was a pleasure to have you on the podcast once more again, even for five minutes come to zombie ween 2025 we'll see what happens all right you never know okay

Speaker 4 50:14

we'll see if my schedule does it this is george from the pittsburgh goal order. I'm everybody's favorite horde clown zombie up here in pittsburgh and I'm up here every year. I've done this since 2018. You know, just covering the whole event. You know, just making monroville mall even more famous, making monroville, pennsylvania, more famous, making the entire pittsburgh, pennsylvania more famous, making the entire Pittsburgh region even more famous.

Speaker 1 50:40

I've got some questions, some situational questions. I don't know how this is going to work out, because you're a zombie. Imagine that you're in the zombie apocalypse. I guess you're a zombie. So a little bit different perspective. Yeah, someone passes off two children to you that are under five years old. Now you're responsible for them. How do you handle that situation?

Speaker 4 51:05

Don't throw it off on me, man. It ain't my responsibility.

Speaker 1 51:11

So skirt responsibility. Yeah, do you leave them in the like? Where do you leave them when you abandon them?

Speaker 4 51:19

Huh well, I don't know. I don't have any kids, so I wouldn't know.

Speaker 1 51:23

Yeah, well, you know what I mean. Dumpsters are kind of safe. I think so before you became a zombie.

Speaker 2 51:28

George remember being 13 years old. Can you go back that far? Can zombies remember the past?

Speaker 4 51:36

Not really.

Speaker 2 51:38

Okay, imagine you're 13 years old. You're in English class in the middle of the day, Wherever you went to school at 13, and the zombie apocalypse breaks out. What's the first thing you do?

Speaker 4 51:48

Oh, I remember when that happened. That was an opportunity to just skip out and go home, when they're all hiding under their desks. I snuck out.

Speaker 2 51:58

I love that answer. That is the best answer we've gotten yes, they're all hiding under their desks.

Speaker 4 52:04

They don't see what's going on. I just snuck out, just go home. I'm going home, man.

Speaker 7 52:09

What are you going to do when you get?

Speaker 2 52:09

home.

Speaker 4 52:11

I don't know, go to the mall, I guess.

Speaker 2 52:15

Go to the Monroeville Mall, yeah, before it's Walmart. This is a better time, a better era. How do you feel about that?

Speaker 4 52:22

Walmart sucks. I boycott. I actually did an episode on my web series. It's just like a little five-minute video my buddy and I did. We were just telling people don't shop at Walmart If they lose a lot of traction, lose a lot of customers. What do you think is going to happen?

Speaker 2 52:38

I love that idea Just don't shop at Walmart ever, not just at Monroeville Mall. Just don't shop at Walmart. Well, it's been a pleasure chatting with you, george. Thanks for being on the podcast and thanks for doing a little video of us, thank you.

Speaker 4 52:49

Nice to meet you.

Speaker 8 52:52

My name is Dan Soltes, local from Pittsburgh. Just, I've loved the series since I was young. My family's from around here, so I think, as a younger person, just seeing, like being able to identify a lot of locations I think that was something always very cool when you're younger. And then you just started to learn to love the movies. Beyond that, when you actually started to watch, it was more than just the places they were at, that you recognized them. I think, just a lot of the backstories and the developments during the movies you really started to enjoy and just enjoy the universe.

Speaker 8 53:24

Which one was your favorite movie, my favorite movie, my favorite movie. Um, I think the original dawn of the dead holds a close place in my heart. Um, I know some people would disagree with this because this was the first zombie movie I ever saw. Uh, the night living dead remake the 90 remake was the first one I ever saw. I picked it up as a kid at blockbuster. It was just there. I saw the cover, it looked interesting and that was like the first zombie movie I ever saw and it's always held a dear place in my heart. After that I watched the original and you see the differences and I know I think Night 90, you know there are some people that don't. I think it's grown on. Some people, oh, I love it. Oh, I know I. Some people, oh, I love it. Oh, I know, I think there's a lot you can appreciate it.

Speaker 1 54:12

Uh, barbara's character taking a different path, kind of coming out on her own, you know you really do appreciate that it's like barbara's pretty

Speaker 8 54:16

useless. In the first movie, yeah, you know, she's almost like catatonic the whole time until, like the very end, she kind of comes out of it and this time you see, like I mean you want to talk like character development, like she came from kind of like a mousy school teacher type, like, um, you didn't like, I think it's first, you kind of thought is she going to take the exact same path that 1968, barbara talking no, she eventually learns to kind of stand on her own and she kind of ends up being a bigger fighter than anybody. I love the original best.

Speaker 2 54:50

But I will say clearly george romero got, got some feminism in him between 1968 and 1990.

Speaker 8 54:57

It was 90 it came out.

Speaker 2 54:59

Yeah, because he decided this is like a fully fleshed out character and I love that arc and I think you see it in the other movies, like day of the dead. There's a really awesome lead female character, so he definitely corrected for that for the first one.

Speaker 1 55:11

It's the zombie apocalypse you've escaped by canoe.

Speaker 8 55:14

Pick four people to bring with you.

Speaker 1 55:19

Four people to bring with me, you get to save four people in your canoe in my canoe.

Speaker 8 55:25

Um, that's a tough one. That that's really like it would have to be. People I think you know and trust, because you're getting into situations with people. They're going to be pretty mad if you don't pick them. I know right, and like I've had discussion with friends about this. Like years ago we had a discussion like would we take that? And one friend got really mad when we said he wouldn't make our list. But but his wife made our list because she was a nurse, so she made our list. But then he didn't.

Speaker 1 55:55

He was really pissed at us about it. Well, you need somebody with those skills.

Speaker 8 56:00

There's multiple levels you have to consider yeah, I would probably have to say of four people, I would say two of my good friends. Their names are Matt and Chris. I think we are very similar in our like you have to do what you have to do, you can't. Like it's not a time to mess around. Like there are situations come up, like you have to address the situation at hand. You know you can't have. Well, maybe this Like you have to do what you got to do.

Speaker 8 56:33

Yeah, you have to be very pragmatic, needs to be done. So I would say the two of them and then I would probably have to say, speaking about my friend, uh, my good friend nate. He is a paramedic. So yeah, and I know he is a very capable person, have your support class, yeah and um, because I don't want to split up their marriage. My friend met his wife, his wife Elizabeth, I would say I think would also be very capable. So I think the four of them I would probably take If any of my friends hear this. I'm sorry if you didn't make the cut.

Speaker 1 56:59

I have some really bad news for you. What I lied. So there isn't enough room for everybody. Okay, who do you kick out of the canoe? You have to kick one person out of the canoe. This thing's not going to float with everybody in it, okay.

Speaker 8 57:14

Chris, I'm sorry we're going to miss you, but uh.

Speaker 1 57:19

Oh, Chris Like.

Speaker 2 57:22

Will Chris be willing to sacrifice himself, or is it going to be a battle?

Speaker 1 57:25

Yeah, he did say that he knows that he needs to be done battle.

Speaker 8 57:28

Yeah, you did say that he knows. He knows that he's he would, he would, he would sacrifice himself. Is he a strong swimmer? I think he could make it to. He would definitely be able to make it to shore, okay. But yeah, no, chris, I think he's a no being that pragmatic person now, I think if we told him it's done, like we'd say, try to walk along the shore and stuff, maybe you can meet up with us. Yeah, meet up later.

Speaker 1 57:49

Yeah when we can't get back in the canoe, so you'll be walking again.

Speaker 8 57:52

You can meet up at the campsite you know, yeah, just stay on the banks and keep on down river. And yeah, we'll try to.

Speaker 1 58:00

We'll try to keep a warm spot next to the fire for you catch up.

Speaker 2 58:06

I think you're the first person to actually have hope that the person that gets kicked out lives, and I want to say that's very kind of you, kind of you, for.

Speaker 1 58:12

Chris, we believe in you, chris. Well, thanks for being a guest on our podcast. No, absolutely Thank you. Thank you. You've been talking to Leah for a little while. This is my first time talking to you, because I was engaged in a very lengthy discussion about many things up until this point. So what is what's your?

Speaker 13 58:32

name? What brings you to Living Dead Weekend?

Speaker 9 58:35

I'm CJ. I brought I'm here because I'm a special effects artist and I love horror, everything horror. I also really wanted to meet Greg Nicotero. I didn't get to meet him last year and I was like it's a must. I didn't get to meet him last year and I was like it's a must.

Speaker 1 58:48

Yeah, you showed us some of your work, and the hand puppet is.

Speaker 9 58:52

it's upsetting to look at Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 58:57

I really try. So do you have? Do you have all this online that people can come?

Speaker 9 59:02

and find yes, I do. I'm CJ underscore SFX on Instagram. I plug all of my stuff there. I've got films that I've been working on. I do commission work. So if anyone needs anything makeup or a prop or anything let me know.

Speaker 2 59:20

You want CJ to do it. I just saw their whole portfolio. Their zombies are terrifying and the puppet, which sounds very friendly, will haunt your dreams.

Speaker 1 59:28

Yes, he will. Inspired by the Thing. The dog from the Thing, yeah, Kind of looks a little bit chestburstery, Very. Oh, what's the name of the artist on the Thing? Oh?

Speaker 9 59:42

Rob Bottin. Rob Bottin is the artist and then like very Cronenberg-esque.

Speaker 1 59:46

Yeah, I was looking for Cronenberg.

Speaker 4 59:54

Very.

Speaker 1 59:54

Cronenbergian type of nightmare creature. So we have some questions. I'm going to ask you the most uncomfortable question. All right, let's do it. This is definitely an uncomfortable question for me. I don't like this question personally because I don't have good answers for it. So fair, okay, zombie apocalypse we're in full effect right now. Me. I don't like this question personally because I don't have good answers for it. So fair, okay, zombie apocalypse we're in full effect right now. Okay, you're in full swing. All right, somebody has passed off two children to you. They're under the age of five. Yeah, you are now responsible for these children. They left, they just ditched you. Okay, they're like can you watch my kids for five seconds? I'm going over there, and then it's like five hours later, you're like, are they ever coming back? And the answer is no. The answer is no, okay, how do you manage this situation?

Speaker 9 1:00:40

so I think it would be a fair bit of panic at first. I'd be like I don't know how to deal with children. I think I would be. I would like put them in like a corner for a minute and be like all right, let me figure this shit out. You're going to put them in the corner? Yeah, you know like I'll put them like in a cabinet or something. Oh no, and then figure something out.

Speaker 2 1:01:07

They would definitely. Are we locking the cabinet? I think you're going to have to.

Speaker 7 1:01:10

I have to lock it.

Speaker 9 1:01:11

Are you going to leave them with?

Speaker 7 1:01:12

anything Sure.

Speaker 9 1:01:15

Okay, I think that's cool. Yeah, I probably wouldn't have, but if they, they could have been like, oh yeah, can I have something? And I'd be like, oh yeah, kids need stuff. Right, yeah, they need like food and stuff. I would put them in there and then I would find like a leash and put them on the leash.

Speaker 13 1:01:33

A leash.

Speaker 1 1:01:34

And have them leashed to me. You know what? I don't know if Courtney's books include leashes, but we should talk to her about leashes.

Speaker 2 1:01:43

Yeah, I think that that's really good. This is the moment where I tell you my mother used a leash on me as a child, and I think that that's really good. This is the moment where I tell you that my mother used a leash on me as a child and it worked. I didn't run away anymore. I didn't know you were a leash kid.

Speaker 9 1:01:55

I had a friend. They were a leash kid. They would promptly like unleash themselves and like run away. God no.

Speaker 1 1:02:06

Oh well, thank you for being a guest on on our podcast.

Speaker 9 1:02:09

Thank you so much thanks for stopping by.

Speaker 13 1:02:11

Thanks for showing us your gruesome upsetting artwork yeah, no, thank you for looking anytime, thank you, thank you guys so much my name is john, I'm from new Jersey and I came to the Living Dead weekend because as soon as I saw Dawn of the Dead, I fell in love with the zombie genre. Then I watched Night of the Living Dead, day of the Dead, and just appreciated all of the social commentary in the movies.

Speaker 1 1:02:44

I it's just created an insatiable itch for great quality zombie movies since yeah, I think dawn of the dead is like a really great uh segue for a lot of people, because there's so much just on the surface that's fun that even if you don't see all the subtext below it, you can get hooked that way and then you know later in life, when your brain grows to twice its size, you can watch it again and be like whoa, hold on.

Speaker 13 1:03:15

There's more story here that I didn't see before yeah, more than just a uh, goofy, um, what is it?

Speaker 1 1:03:21

arm cuff gag yeah yeah, yeah, the arm cuff one yeah, the Armcuff one is one of my favorite and most infuriating deaths in that movie.

Speaker 13 1:03:31

Why is it infuriating? Because it's the stupidest thing to do. I thought it was just a great little bit of levity throughout all this seriousness. I just appreciated its goofiness.

Speaker 1 1:03:45

I think it is realistic, though, and I just appreciated its goofiness. I think it is realistic though, like if you're one of these Mad Max bikers out on the road raiding, like, those moments of levity are what you have to do to keep your mind together. So he probably did it to make his friends laugh, yeah, and then he died, which is how so many people die.

Speaker 13 1:04:03

It's trying to make their friends laugh, yeah trying to do things that you think other people want.

Speaker 1 1:04:09

Yeah, we have some questions we have a teacher here, an English teacher.

Speaker 2 1:04:15

So I actually think we have a very important one and you're also reading Elementary Undead by Alice B Sullivan right now, right, yes, so I think we should start with that question Okay yeah, I'm going to modify this question a little bit.

Speaker 1 1:04:26

Yes, you're an English class. Okay, yeah, I'm going to modify this question a little bit.

Speaker 13 1:04:30

Yes, you're an English class. Try to imagine that when the zombie apocalypse breaks out, what age are your students? Usually High school, so I have juniors and freshmen, so they're mostly like 16, 17. Okay Well, due to a horrible, horrible accident.

Speaker 1 1:04:44

You're stuck with 13-year-olds oh my God. So you're now a middle school uh, english teacher. I'm sorry, it's just. You know, the school made a decision and that's just how it's going to be. Now, however, in this horrible day where you're at a middle school english teacher with 13 year olds, the zombie apocalypse breaks out such a bummer. How are you going to manage that situation?

Speaker 13 1:05:12

Poorly, because I was a middle school English teacher for eight months. It was a maternity leave. It was the worst eight months of my teaching career. Swore off middle school after that, so I don't know how I would handle it. Um, I guess I would try to get them to safety because even though they drove me insane, I still loved them and cared about them. Uh, I would. I don't know, god I have, yeah, I have no idea. Like, should I? Um, am I supposed to be getting them somewhere or getting them to their parents? I don't know, you're the adult.

Speaker 1 1:05:54

Yeah, you have to make the decision. What are you going to do? You know, actually, we've got a good recommendation for you Days Worth.

Speaker 2 1:06:02

Living by Erica and Rowan. They have an online free comic. That is exactly this scenario. Okay, except they're on a field trip. Wow.

Speaker 1 1:06:11

They have an online free comic.

Speaker 2 1:06:12

That is exactly this scenario, okay, except they're on a field trip. Wow, they're on a field trip to the zoo. Yeah, they go to the zoo and the apocalypse breaks out, and then they gotta figure out what they're gonna do. So if you're looking for recommendations for this scenario, I don't know that.

Speaker 16 1:06:23

I would recommend what the teacher does in the comic.

Speaker 1 1:06:27

Well it's also 2005, so he can't text the parents in the school to see what you're supposed to do so. They kind of just they're like we're on a field trip and we're going to try to get these kids home and then when they realize, that's a bad idea, that's like we are the caregivers of these kids now and they live on a school bus with us.

Speaker 13 1:06:47

Oh my God, Like Lord of the flies, wow, just okay, I was gonna say I. I realized I would probably try to get them to the bus and then try to get them drop them off to their parents, because I don't want to take care of all those kids. You don't want to take responsibility you go to the first house.

Speaker 10 1:07:04

The parents aren't there.

Speaker 1 1:07:05

You go to the first house, the, parents aren't there, it's full chaos Next house, All the kids. They start saying but what if my parents are dead too?

Speaker 13 1:07:15

Oh my God, I have no idea. I don't want to say I would leave, but I don't know what I would do. This is what makes it a compelling story?

Speaker 1 1:07:26

Yeah, because, as adults, with our own things going on, and especially since it's your job and you want to get away from work when the job day is over, you want to get rid of that responsibility in this crisis and also do the right thing, which is get them home.

Speaker 13 1:07:42

But if you can't do that, how big is your class Right now? I mean, my biggest class is like 17.

Speaker 1 1:07:51

you just adopted 17 13 year olds. Oh my god true nightmare.

Speaker 13 1:07:56

This is, this is a.

Speaker 1 1:07:58

This is a series this is netflix right now, like, yeah, you've got multiple seasons lined up for what you're in store for that's having to listen to a lot of skibbity toilets and a lot of Rizzlers.

Speaker 13 1:08:12

That's too much, oh my God yeah.

Speaker 1 1:08:15

You're right. Yeah, you should just dump them somewhere.

Speaker 13 1:08:18

Uh yeah, I'll drop them off at the local pizzeria or something like that, maybe the first, the first parents you find.

Speaker 1 1:08:26

Well, you can just trick them into it and be like they're just going to stay here for a little while with a responsible adult, yeah, and then you take off in the school bus. Well, thank you for being a guest on our podcast. Hopefully the school never hears this. Yes, hopefully.

Speaker 13 1:08:47

You don't have to have any awkward conversations, you can delete my last name in post.

Speaker 1 1:08:51

I can, if you want me to. Sure, okay, I'll remember that, dan, in the future. Delete the last name, okay, thank you. You're doing a great job, by the way. Keep up the editing, all right, thank you very much Thank you.

Speaker 15 1:09:07

My name is Mark Sino. I'm a Bram Stoker Award finalist, an Amazon bestseller, a multiple award-winning screenwriter. What brought me here is, I guess, what brought everybody here just our love for George Romero and for everything he created. You know, I've never been to the Monroeville Mall before, never been to really. You know, I've never been to the monroville mall before, never been to really pittsburgh before. Yeah, so, uh, when I had a chance to uh to come, I, you know, I was invited by my friend and his dad and I said you know what it's a life, once in a lifetime opportunity possibly? So, uh, yeah, so we drove on up here and that's that's why we're here.

Speaker 1 1:09:41

Yeah, I've only been to pittsburgh one other time and it was at a bus station and I don't recommend it oh well, I hear the bus stations are nice, but yeah, no, no they lied to you terrible time. It was. Well, it was a. It was a greyhound station, yeah, um, I'd like to ask you a hypothetical question. Okay, the zombie apocalypse it happens. I wish it does. You're in it right now? Awesome, your entire family has gone out to dinner. This is pre pre outbreak.

Speaker 15 1:10:13

They're not going after the I'm. I should specify, right, they're not a roving band of cannibals going out for dinner, gotcha, they go out to dinner.

Speaker 1 1:10:21

Yeah, uh, they're celebrating something. Thing is, they didn't invite you. You're. You're the only member like your extended family, is there? God? Even the uncle you really don't like, right? Yeah?

Speaker 15 1:10:35

you know the one, yeah, the one that took those pictures in the basement, exactly that they invited him, him, I thought he was shunned. What did I do?

Speaker 1 1:10:45

um, anyway, so they go without you even include your uncle. The outbreak happens, Do you go to save them?

Speaker 15 1:10:54

All right. Well, there's a few schools of thought here. Am I in like a major city, or are we kind of like in a suburb? Are we in a rural area? Where would your family go to eat to celebrate something without you? My family's kind of highfalutin so would be, uh, downtown somewhere, to probably a ritzy restaurant, in which case if they didn't invite me um, you know, I have a very, very great relationship with my entire family, so how do they more apparently, no, no, in this hypothetical, I would think I'd probably have expected it and been like you know what.

Speaker 15 1:11:26

It's easier now to survive on my own than have these freeloaders that I'm going to have to kill and probably eat to survive. I understand that entirely. My plan is zombie outbreak happens. I know what's happening. I go up to the attic and I create my little safe space in the attic with water, food and I hide there Because I figure everything's going to be chaotic craziness for the first couple weeks. Then, when things die down, literally, I'll come and Stop by the restaurant. I'll probably die quickly, but yeah, see how they're doing.

Speaker 1 1:11:59

Let me stop by the restaurant See how they're managing down at the restaurant. Yeah.

Speaker 15 1:12:03

How was today's special?

Speaker 1 1:12:09

Yeah, go see the bloodbath that has occurred right as they barricaded the restaurant, and now we're fighting each other for the last scraps in the freezer right they chose poorly.

Speaker 15 1:12:16

Yeah, should have invited, is it?

Speaker 1 1:12:17

a? Is it a? Is it a storage for their food, or is it a bathroom? Now, we don't know. We don't know. You told me I talked to you a little bit before and you are a writer, yes, and I was immediately fascinated by the project that you have going on. Do you want to tell us a little bit?

Speaker 15 1:12:37

about that? Yeah, sure. So I have a book called the Cadaver Chronicles and it is all my collected zombie fiction that's been published in uh in magazines and in um anthologies. Uh, even have a story that got published in a uh, a textbook in denmark, which is one of the weirdest things that ever happened to me. Really quick side story I got an email from this giant publishing company in denmark saying, hey, we found this story and we'd like to buy the rights to put it into a, a book to teach children how to learn english using vampires, zombies and werewolves the dream.

Speaker 15 1:13:13

And I said, cool, okay, that sounds like a scam. And they're like can we have it? And I'm like sure you can have it, send me a contract. They're like we don't need a contract, it's a reprint, just give us your email and we'll send you a PayPal money when it comes out. Sounds like even more of a scam. And I'm like, well, you know what? It's just my email, so who cares? They can't break into anything with just my email. So I gave them my email and I dude, I'm telling you like six months a year happened. It went by, nothing happened. Suddenly, my phone goes off a year later, cha-ching, I got like a $500 payment, came out of nowhere and then the literally next day I have this beautiful, full-colored textbook that has me, anne Rice, stephen King, robert Kirkman every named person and me and dude, I still don't know how they found this story, this random story. I wrote that was in this random anthology and said you know what? That's the one we're putting in there. Somebody was clearly a fan, so I had to translate this shit because I wanted to make sure this wasn't like hey guys, here's how not to write English, but yeah, so that was one of the wildest things.

Speaker 15 1:14:21

Anyway, cadaver Chronicles has a short story of mine called the Glass Coffin. It's a story I wrote a while back about a man who gets trapped in a glass elevator in his condominium and the power goes out, a zombie outbreak happens and he has to watch it all unfold as it's happening. And I was having lunch with a friend of mine who's a director. He's a huge zombie fan and I pitched him and I said, hey, look, man, man, I've always wanted to make a zombie movie. I know you want to make a zombie movie. Can we make a zombie movie? And he's like I was like I have a story. It's like a one shot, one set location kind of thing. I think we can do it. He goes yep, let me read it. He read it, he liked it. I wrote the screenplay, he purchased it and then it it was. We were off and running from there and it was absolutely amazing. So the name of the movie is also the Glass Coffin.

Parting Thoughts

Speaker 15 1:15:15

It is currently in post-production. It is set to probably be released in the next couple of weeks, where it's going to go on a film festival tour. We'll have a couple of premieres. I'm from Louisiana, so we'll have a few premieres in Louisiana and then from there we're hoping to use it to pitch to other major studios. Let us make you an X-Great zombie movie. That's the hope.

Speaker 1 1:15:41

When you told me about this premise, it both sounds like the worst situation. I want to be in the zombie apocalypse, being trapped in an elevator but a glass elevator probably infinitely better than being stuck in a normal elevator and even worse like a really rickety freight elevator you can see it all just unfold in front of you.

Speaker 15 1:16:05

It's funny because I wrote it and I love horror of all. I love all the sub genres of horror. I like my horror funny. I like my horror to fucking disturb me. I like it all and.

Speaker 15 1:16:16

But sometimes, man, I just want to get like I want to watch really, really bad people have bad stuff happen to them and I don't really want to feel anything good, I just want to. Yeah, so you really have some tragic characters that a lot of bad things happen to them, but it's really funny. So I wrote the screenplay, I gave it to my friend, he read it, he liked it, he gave it to his interns. His interns were, they lined it out to see what props they needed to buy. They lined out the scenes and I'm on the phone, we have a conference call with the interns and the interns read the whole thing and they go. You know, there's this one thing, Mark. They're like it's really not that funny for being a comedy and I went it's not a comedy. And they're like, well, there's one part where the guy screams. We kind of thought that was funny and I'm like, well, it might be funny, but it's not a comedy.

Speaker 1 1:17:06

They were experiencing dark humor for the first time. They were kids.

Speaker 15 1:17:10

They were these interns from LSU, from Louisiana State, from the film department, and the youths, as I call them. But yeah, that's coming out, hopefully soon, and from there I'm still churning out books and still doing projects. That's amazing. I have an anthology that just came out. It's called Gabagool G-H-O-U-L. It's an Italian mafia horror anthology and very soon I have a person this is through my press, october Nights Press we're doing a dark, cryptid and folklore anthology that someone's editing that's going to be coming out in the near future. All right, so yeah, staying busy creating.

Speaker 1 1:17:54

Well, thanks for being an interviewee on the podcast.

Speaker 15 1:17:59

No, thank you for having me and I'm so glad I walked around and ran into y'all and met y'all and I'm going to subscribe and listen to y'all and I love it, thank you. I finding, uh, like-minded zombie fans.

Speaker 5 1:18:11

yeah, I mean, that's why we made this I'm aaron and I came because of my friend and, uh, he told me about live and dead weekend and it was my first time ever coming here. And I'm you know, I'm a horror movie buff. You know you're, uh, you're a filmmaker right well, kind of I'm not really a filmmaker, I just I'm behind this, the you know behind the scenes and stuff.

Speaker 1 1:18:30

Yeah, I've been behind the scenes as well, but I did do like one film.

Speaker 5 1:18:34

It was called Dating Slump. That was the only film I've ever did but it took a lot of work just for but it wasn't really well known, you know.

Speaker 1 1:18:41

Yeah, I get that. So we have some questions Hyp. So we have some questions, hypothetical questions. Sure, go for it. That I'd like to ask you.

Speaker 2 1:18:52

This is based on Steve Urena's comic called Zombie Date Night. You're on a date. It's a blind date. It's going really badly. You are failing on this date. Okay, just ruining it, she's all right, she's not that much better. Or he just ruining it, she's alright, she's not that much better. Or he, and the zombie apocalypse breaks out in the middle of the movie that you're watching. What do you do? Do you try and save her too, or do you just save yourself?

Speaker 5 1:19:20

See, that would be a quick decision I would have to make to do. What would I do in that case? I'd probably have to just think about it for a second. Like well, I don't have time to think about it, what am I going to do? But if it's a girl I really love and that I know, I will never?

Speaker 2 1:19:33

see again you just met her and you yeah.

Speaker 5 1:19:35

I just met her. Blind date it's not going well, I'd probably be like not worth it. I'm getting out of here, you know.

Speaker 2 1:19:42

We appreciate the honesty, aaron. Aaron, can we give you one more question? Sure, completely different. The Apocalypse Kicks Off. This is based on Avalon comic series. The Apocalypse Kicks Off. It's just starting. Your family is out to dinner Everyone you know in your family. It's a whole reunion. They're out to dinner. They didn't invite you, aaron, I'm not sure why you might have ideas based on your family, I don't know. Do you save them, do you go help them, or do you just worry about yourself? In that moment? What do you do?

Speaker 5 1:20:11

And this is my close family I'm talking about. They don't invite me, and I got upset by it.

Speaker 2 1:20:15

It's like a full-on family.

Speaker 1 1:20:16

Yeah, like they forgot or they didn't invite you on purpose.

Speaker 5 1:20:21

Oh my God, In this case I would let that go, because I'm gonna try not to take it personally, you know so you'd go save them. I'll go save them what a nice guy.

Speaker 2 1:20:31

So if you are loved by Aaron, you're good. If you're a stranger fuck off.

Speaker 7 1:20:36

If you're a stranger fuck off or you know what else.

Speaker 5 1:20:39

If you're, let's say, if it's someone I don't care about, they're out of here, you know? Yeah, okay, yeah alright.

Speaker 1 1:20:46

Well, thank you for being a guest on our podcast. Thanks for interviewing me. Where can people find you? Do you want people to find you somewhere on the internet? You can find me for Todd Wolfson. I'm Aaron Shaw. Alright, we'll talk to him next.

Speaker 3 1:20:57

Yeah, alright thanks for having me on your podcast on the zombie book club that's us. My name is Todd Killer Wolfson. I am an independent filmmaker from Pittsburgh, pa, and I'm putting out my first feature film called Bat Shit, which is a fun horror comedy. I feel like Evil Dead, tim Burton I can think of a million other things but basically I feel like independent dark humor and a bunch of crazy stuff like zombies and killer cherry pies and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 1:21:28

Yeah, okay, when you were talking to us earlier, there's singing zombies. Yes, that's possibly the scariest thing I've ever heard.

Speaker 3 1:21:35

So, basically, not to give everything away. Give it away. Give it away. Now the story's about. The main character played by Jerry Paitrola is Felix Darby, and Felix is basically prescribed this medication that makes him hallucinate and he's in a dreamy, nightmare world where anything goes from singing zombies to killer cherry pies. He's about to eat the cherry pie it's. It comes to life and tries to kill him and so, like, anything goes. He has a sidekick named Dev who's a little animated bat and it's a fun, you know, horror comedy. That's got everything in it and we have every type of animation style I could think of, from 8-bit animation to 2D, 3d, claymation. I keep going, like I try to do. I try to go just like the title Batch it as, batch it crazy as I could with it, but it's like. But it's like also for, like, the weirdos and just the people like that love zombies and horror genre and all kind of crazy stuff like that.

Speaker 2 1:22:37

Well, we're going to put you in your own horror story right now.

Speaker 1 1:22:39

Uh-oh, zombie apocalypse. It's been going on a little while, it sure has. We'll say this is like dawn, dawn of the dead era. Okay, you know you've they exist, you know about them you're dealing with. It thing is, somebody has passed off, uh, two children to you, uh-oh, under the age of five. Um, yeah, they're just like. Hey, can you watch my kids? Real quick, I gotta go to the bathroom.

Speaker 3 1:23:05

So do. Do I eat them like Donner Party? Well, that's a question or do I sell them to the black market?

Speaker 1 1:23:13

I mean these are options. So I mean you're responsible for them now, because they didn't come back from the bathroom. They said they'd be gone like five minutes. They're not coming back.

Speaker 3 1:23:22

So like I'm like their father, like like I'm the one who's looking out for them and I already created like a relationship with them, that I care about them, like have I known them for a long time, you might have.

Speaker 1 1:23:33

I mean, you've been waiting for their parents to come back and they haven't you only known them since you got randomly foisted.

Speaker 3 1:23:38

They were like foisted on you okay, see, that's a big factor, like it's a zombie apocalypse.

Speaker 2 1:23:44

I gotta go find my sister. She's in danger. Can you look after my kids for five minutes?

Speaker 3 1:23:47

okay that's a week later all right, that's the asshole when saying that I I will say, since, like you know, if you're really in a world of a zombie apocalypse and you're, you're in survival mode and you're protecting two little kids, like you have to take care of them, just like they're yours. So I would do my everything in my power to go find them, take, you know, and protect them and fight off the zombies like the best. Don't be a punk ass bitch like Rick in Walking Dead. Okay, step it up, grab whatever weapon you can find. Well, I mean later in the seasons, he basically just went off and never came back. And he basically just went off and never came back. Yeah, and he also like just let like freaking. Uh, what's her name? Um, what's the? Uh?

Speaker 3 1:24:35

michonne, yeah, michonne, like pretty much was just left to take care of the kids now yeah, like if you don't think about like that's what happened, like where's rick at, he was our fearless leader and then he just disappears, I mean to be fair, he got pretty messed up.

Speaker 1 1:24:53

He was on a bridge that exploded.

Speaker 3 1:24:55

I feel like that's a good excuse, but anyways, but I guess we're going on a tangent, yeah this is a tangent, I guess it's because, like, I don't remember all that, I just remember him just disappearing and I'm'm like what happened to?

Speaker 1 1:25:09

rick. Yeah, like he was their fearless leader. He was stabbed through the kidney.

Speaker 3 1:25:12

The bridge blew up it was oh okay, 86, that I didn't say anything. Yeah, let's start over. I mean, you can?

Speaker 1 1:25:19

let's criticize rick. No, you know what? I'm glad because I thought you were really gonna sell these kids into the black market. It seems like. It seems like, deep down, you're a good guy with some dark humor. Yeah, you probably told them that you were going to sell them to the black market.

Speaker 3 1:25:36

I don't fuck with them. I mess with them, I would definitely mess with them, but at the end of the day I'm like that. I'm not going to be like Negan, but I kind of you know, I find humor in like Negan, but not in the way that I would Well Negan would take care of those kids.

Speaker 1 1:25:53

Yeah, he's got a soft spot.

Speaker 3 1:25:54

Right, which is crazy, because he killed, like what? What's the Chinese dude, glenn Glenn? They killed him like, right in front of everyone and like, but it just shows, I guess, the dimensions of Negan, like his character, which is cool. Like, as a writer I do respect that that they made what an anti-hero, basically, so that's cool.

Speaker 1 1:26:17

It's a serious anti-hero. Yeah, no, I would not. He's also like an anti-everything.

Speaker 3 1:26:22

Yeah, almost hard to call him a hero sometimes Lucy he's got Lucy, yeah, like rah. Hard to call him a hero sometimes lucy he's got lucy, yeah, like. But yeah, I love, I, I would not, no, I would, I would, I would take care of the kids. That that's my final answer. Jeopardy, all right thanks.

Speaker 1 1:26:36

Thanks for being a guest on our podcast. Thank you for having me, man. Where can people find you if they, if they want to check out your movie?

Speaker 3 1:26:43

everything is on just buried entertainment dot com or on our youtube, just Buried Entertainment. All right, you'll find us. Batch is coming this October. I won't say what date, but it's coming October.

Speaker 1 1:26:54

Sometime in October.

Speaker 4 1:26:55

Sometime in October. Thanks for having me, man, thank you Appreciate it, partner, all right.

Speaker 10 1:27:02

My name's Courtney Constantine and I am a zombie post-apoc writer, and so I came all the way out to Pittsburgh to hawk my wares, basically to people that love zombies.

Speaker 1 1:27:13

How's it been going on your side of the booth?

Speaker 10 1:27:17

the room Pretty good. I mean, it's really fun to talk to people that actually like the genre. Usually, at book events and stuff, people are not exactly looking for zombie books, so this has been kind of exciting to actually talk to people that do like zombies yeah.

Speaker 1 1:27:31

You know, we found the same thing with podcasts. They're not always looking for a podcast and they don't even realize it until we're talking to them, and then they're like oh, that's interesting now. So I feel like it's a similar situation. Yeah, you're like I wrote a book. You're like oh, I've heard of those.

Speaker 2 1:27:50

Yeah, those things that you read, I'm stealing the mic to say that Courtney's being humble and sold out of books. Four, five, no five, six and seven, right no four, five and six, four, five and six of the Sundown series. Clearly, if you haven't of the first, I did.

Speaker 10 1:28:09

So because I was coming across the country, I had to make some choices on what I was going to bring and I really did think that just the first book would sell the most, so I only brought five of the rest of them. So I had five people buy the entire set who never even heard of me and I was like, oh okay, I just didn't expect that to happen. I'm almost out of the the rest of the series too, which is pretty exciting, yeah next time you gotta, you gotta, ship some ahead to us, truck that you could I know?

Speaker 10 1:28:36

I, yeah, if they do this again, which I totally hope they do, I will ship books instead, because this, this was crazy.

Speaker 1 1:28:42

So um, I have a question for you. Okay, a hypothetical question. So it's the zombie apocalypse. Okay, you may be familiar with the concept. Yeah, I've heard of those. You're lucky enough to escape in a canoe. Oh, my God, you get to pick four people to bring with you.

Speaker 10 1:29:00

Oh, don't do that. Who do you pick, like? So I have to immediately say my family, right? Because if I don't say that and they hear this, I'm in a lot of trouble. Which members of your family? You can only pick four. Well, I only have four others, like my three kids and then my husband, right? So I would have to say them. Isn't that required?

Speaker 7 1:29:16

Okay, it's not required. Brandon has a wife and kid and included Greg, nicotero and me and Dan, but I think it's nice of you to care about your family.

Speaker 10 1:29:27

I'm going to say that first, because my two oldest are old enough to have found a podcast that I'm on and they will listen to it, and I will never hear the end of it. However, if we're actually talking about people that are somewhat prepared, I don't know.

Speaker 1 1:29:43

Okay, who do you want to bring? I mean, I guess this is part of the process. Well it's. Who do you want to bring? I mean, I guess this is part of the process, right? Are you going to prioritize your survival or the safety of your family?

Speaker 10 1:29:54

I mean, oh see, that's messed up. Now we're just having a whole problem Because, yeah, if I was to bring my family, my kids are, I mean, you know, 20, 16, and 14, they're somewhat capable, but they probably would make sure I died. I mean, I would probably, we would probably drown, is really what would happen.

Speaker 1 1:30:11

Forget the zombies, we would drown, yeah I mean, I'm familiar with babysitter of the apocalypse, so I know that they're not exactly an asset. No, no, I mean at that age they can be maybe. But yeah, it's one of those, let's see kind of yeah, it's a gamble.

Speaker 10 1:30:26

I think now you're making me think I need to teach my kids how to garden and I need to make sure someone knows how to work with leather. They have youthful energy and athleticism on their side. That is true. I will make them row. I can tell you that they will be rowing because that would be exhausting. So keep all this in mind.

Speaker 1 1:30:43

I have terrible news for you, oh no. Terrible news for you, oh no. There actually isn't room for four people. You have you. You promised this to four people. You have to kick someone out of the canoe or else that thing is sinking my husband.

Speaker 10 1:30:58

Yeah, sorry, I mean not to be honey, I love you, um, but he would want me to take her kids, okay you know what?

Speaker 1 1:31:06

I thought this was going to be a harder question for you, but sorry, it's pragmatic it makes sense.

Speaker 10 1:31:11

I mean, I write moms with kids for a reason it's. It is what it was. What sent me down that road when I first started writing back in 2016 was the idea of what I would do because I have kids. Yeah, you gotta take care of those kids. I mean, they are my spawn. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Sorry, hubby. Yeah, I mean he would most likely just want to give up anyways. He's like this sucks, I'm out Like. So I don't blame him Stealing the mic again because I'm sitting.

Speaker 2 1:31:38

I don't want to stand anymore To say I love you, dan, but I'd pick our two dogs.

Speaker 10 1:31:43

That was harsh. Thanks, but there's room for three Leah, You're still kicking me out. Well, she needs space for the dog food, so I mean.

Speaker 1 1:31:56

I get it.

Speaker 10 1:31:57

Luckily I am a pretty strong swimmer so He'll just hold on to the side as you're rowing.

Speaker 1 1:32:03

Yeah, well, thanks for being a guest for the last couple minutes. Yeah, no problem. Where can people find you?

Speaker 10 1:32:10

I am on Amazon and Audible and the Sundown series you may even be able to find through your Hoopla or Libby apps on the library and on Spotify. All right, well, thank you. Thank you very much for stopping by. Yeah, no problem, thank you.

Speaker 16 1:32:25

Hello everybody. My name is Regina Lynn Winters. Hello everybody, my name is regina lynn winters. I am a special effects makeup artist who is currently a student at the tom savini program at the douglas education center down in manassas, and I have got to say that this program has really skyrocketed my special effects makeup techniques. But there's a little secret here that I am willing to share with the whole world. I am actually a transgender drag artist and I do the art of glamour and monster art, along with a little bit of my special effects makeup into it.

Speaker 2 1:33:05

My drag name is Disruptia Heart, and for those of you that don't know how to spell that name, it's D-I-S-R-U-P-T-I-A and Heart is spelled exactly how it sounds H-E-A-R-T, and we will have it in the show notes so that you can make sure, if you can't spell, it'll be in the show notes so that you can make sure, if you still you can't spell, it'll be in the show notes for you to copy paste. Yeah, so you can find. Disrupt your heart possibly just click.

Speaker 16 1:33:35

Well, there's also a little bit of backstory here. I started off drag as just a regular artist and Since the Boulay brothers from dragula came up with their show to showcase drag art with special effects, makeup and horror films and stuff like that, they've really taken the nitty-gritty of how, how the horror theme industry is incorporated with drag and, like you know, you can be trans, you can be a drag king, you can be whatever you want to be, as long as it's drag art. Drag is art and art is subjective. As drac morta says, my biggest goal is to actually end up on their show and win.

Speaker 16 1:34:27

I'm in my third semester at the Tom Savini School, like I told you guys, so take a look at my Instagram account and give it a follow. I am constantly working on new projects, so you guys will see daily posts, weekly posts as well and hopefully, hopefully, in the future you'll see a lot of stuff that I'm gonna get to work on. There's a lot of things that are under wraps, not just for my drag, but for my special effects as well. I'm here at the Living Dead convention to actually experience it for the first time of my life Any type of horror convention I highly recommend, if you are a horror-themed fanatic or a horror movie buff, to actually go and get your roots, your roots wetted. Go, have fun. You know? Um, they told me that you could actually dress up for these conventions and zombie makeup and stuff like that. I didn't know that at first, but I will be the first one to say make sure you come with makeup on.

Speaker 2 1:35:47

To say make sure you come with makeup on, do it up, live life to the fullest and have a great time because you don't know when you're gonna have another chance to do this, yeah, or you don't know when the next one will be, sometimes like right now, with the mall being purchased so exactly we've got some hypothetical questions for you.

Speaker 2 1:36:07

okay, question for you of what you would do in the apocalypse. It's in full effect. This woman comes up to you and she's got two kids under the age of five and she says I'm going to rescue my brother. Can you look after them for five minutes? She doesn't wait for you to answer, she leaves them with you. It's a week later.

Speaker 16 1:36:27

What do you do, I would take them under my wing and we start our own damn kingdom. We start our own following in the apocalypse. In fact, we get bitten and turn into zombies ourselves. Yeah and honey, I'm gonna say right now, I would be queen of the zombie empire and I would make sure that those kids find their mother and bite her Because that neglect, that neglect reminded me of my father. I'm sorry, I'm not sorry. He was a bastard and I'm in a better place because of it.

Speaker 16 1:37:04

We use our art and our I want to say memories or what we've gone through, and we combine them and we put them into a performance level like no other. Drag is full of pain, a lot of memories, and when I perform, I like to convey such powerful messages that people are not alone. And really, with my answer, it's a sense of community, because I'm queen of the zombies, honey, or I'm queen of whatever, queen of whatever, and I'm willing to welcome people into my community as long as they don't hurt people, neglect people, abandon people or hurt animals. Those are my rules and I want you all to take a lesson from this that if you are in pain, going through what we go through in the world right now. It's okay, we will get through this and we will prevail, because I am a transgender woman and I've been through a lot of pain in my life, a lot of sacrifice, a lot of losing people, and I put that back into my art.

Speaker 16 1:38:24

You just got to stay strong. You got to stay powerful and when you feel like you don't have anything, and if you're an artist, use your art to build yourself up, because that is the one thing that will never let you down. It will take you places that you deserve to be and it will also allow you to fight for those who can't fight for themselves. Because I have done that. I have fought for the people that can't have a voice or the people that are too afraid. I'm here to say take your time, love yourself, nurture yourself and become one with your community. Don't fight amongst each other.

Speaker 2 1:39:10

Disrupt your heart. You disrupted my heart right now.

Speaker 16 1:39:14

Good. It's a positive message. I'm here to make your day really disruptive in every single good and nurturing way. I may be Rita Rapalza's sister that has come back to destroy the Power Rangers, but don't forget my lovelies. I'm here to disrupt your day in every single good and magical, and bloody and competitive way. Thank you. Ask me another question I got more we adore you.

Speaker 2 1:39:48

I mean you instantly. I got more we adore you. I mean you instantly connect with people. I felt connected to you because of how vulnerable you were immediately, and so I appreciate your courage, Because vulnerability is the most courageous thing you can do.

Speaker 16 1:39:59

The reason why I do that is because I went through my transition alone. I didn't really have a lot of people to back me up and I lost my family. I had to make my own family. My best friend his name is Pete. He is my ex-fiancee, but he stood by my side for 13 long years and he has watched me blossom and metamorphosize into this beautiful butterfly bumblebee monster queen that I have become. You know, the shape shifting diva of the moon. That's who I am, I feel like.

Speaker 2 1:40:43

I know your answer to this question, based on what you just said. The apocalypse kicks off off. It's just getting started. Your family is out to dinner. You don't happen to be there.

Speaker 16 1:40:52

Do you go and save them? Honestly, when I needed saving and I needed love. They already know how to survive on their own because my family is strong. My mother is the matriarch of our family and she takes care of my sister's kids. My stepfather as much as I have a distaste for him, he protects my mother, you know, and he's a good man in my eyes for that. But I wish he would come around and love me and accept me for who I am. To this day he still misgenders me and calls me by my dead name. But they can take care of themselves. I would actually go and be with my community where I'm loved and nurtured and we are fighting together. My family can take care of themselves because they are a strong matriarch unit in themselves. Me and my mother, we talk every day and I'm so happy and I'm so thankful and so so I wish this was a longer time that I had with her, but my mother only has just begun to know Regina rather than my old self. We didn't speak for 10 long years and she apologized as much as I was alone.

Speaker 16 1:42:34

I went through a lot, which is why I'm sober now. I did a lot of self-defeating acts that I'm not proud of Kids, teens, adults. If you're out there struggling, hurting, reach out. There are hotlines like the Trevor Hotline or Trans Lifeline out there. Those lifelines saved my life. My life has been a whirlwind. I get vulnerable so that people hear my story and if they're going through the same thing, at least something in my story can strike a chord with them and say, hey, don't give up. If Regina can do it, so can I. I want to be a symbol of strength for my community and for everybody else out there. It's through my sobriety that I was able to be accepted at the Tom Savini School of Special Makeup Effects. That is my program and I have been there for three semesters now. My art has skyrocketed and I will get to dragula hell yeah, you will, and I will destroy all my competitors I cannot wait to watch it disrupt your heart.

Speaker 2 1:43:59

I disrupt your heart, but also the person behind it, regina lynn winters, it is a privilege and a pleasure to know you and I'm very grateful that you chose to be on our podcast.

Speaker 16 1:44:08

I have one last thing to say. Okay, jack Morda, boulay, swantulu Boulay, if you are listening, I'm coming for you, moms Ooh, and I can't wait to be welcoming to your kingdom of death, chaos, filth, glamour and horror, because I will be Dragula.

Speaker 2 1:44:34

You heard it here. This is the next Dragula right here. Disrupt your heart. I can't imagine anyone listening has not had their heart disrupted by you today. Is there anything you'd like to finish with?

Speaker 1 1:44:45

I've been disrupted my whole heart. Thank you for being a guest on our podcast.

Speaker 16 1:44:51

You're very welcome. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you.

Speaker 2 1:45:04

Well, we haven't re-listened to any of the interviews so we don't know what you just heard, but I bet it was great. How was?

Speaker 1 1:45:08

it? How was the audio? Was it perfect? Dan fixed everything. Yeah, I'm just going to assume that it all went great.

Speaker 2 1:45:15

Yeah, but thank you again, folks, for being interviewed by us and by showing up. Thanks for all the new listeners, thanks for the old listeners. Thank you for joining, for leaving a rating or review.

Speaker 1 1:45:32

Yeah, and if you haven't done that in advance, do it now, please. Five stars.

Speaker 2 1:45:36

Send us a voicemail. Tell us what we got wrong. Respond to somebody that you just learned about today in the show. Yeah, at 614-699-0006. You can leave a voicemail.

Speaker 1 1:45:46

It's up to three minutes.

Speaker 2 1:45:48

Sign up for our newsletter. Yeah, I would love that All of the people that we talk to are going to be linked in the newsletter, and you can also follow us on Instagram, where my dog will not be barking at Zombie Book Club Podcast, or join the Brain Munchers Zombie Collective Discord, where we're all hanging out anyway. So come hang with us. Ollie Eats eats brains regularly hosts movie nights.

Speaker 1 1:46:08

Thank you, ollie yeah, we're gonna watch zombie movies and I guess until next time.

Speaker 2 1:46:13

The end is nigh bye, bye, don't die.

Speaker 1 1:46:27

What the fuck, what the fuck? What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck? Go, go, go, go, go go.