Downtown Denver was overtaken by zombies a couple of weekends ago. Paul and I, along with our friends, Jen and Scottie, were caught unawares. It was weird.
It began innocently enough while in line at the liquor store. Paul and I were buying ingredients to make martinis because we wanted martinis later in the weekend. The people behind us were dressed up like zombies and said they were going to a zombie crawl. I thought, "Huh. Interesting. Their make up is pretty cool," and then, "What the heck is a zombie crawl?" Then we moved on.
Later, we went the train station to meet Jen and Scottie. The plan was to take the train downtown for an evening of dinner and live music. While we were waiting on the platform at the train station I saw a small crowd of zombies join the rest of us humans. And then a larger crowd of zombies arrived. All of a sudden it hits us: the aforementioned zombie crawl is a Zombie Crawl (capital letters necessary) and it's downtown. The accumulating crowd of zombies does not strike me as so interesting and/or cool any more. They're kinda freaky and slightly disturbing.
Finally the train arrived and we boarded with the zombies. With each successive stop the ratio of zombies to normal people became more unsettling.
By the time we arrived at the 16th Street Mall and we were surrounded by zombies. And these were serious zombies. Some of them had chainsaws. Some were covered with blood. Some were chasing each other and other humans and screaming. Some were staring blankly and wandering aimlessly. Others were limping on partially disabled limbs.
It was all rather obnoxious. It seems that zombies are not terribly clear on who is involved in their game and who is not. Or maybe they enjoy running into innocent bystanders and then offering a half-hearted, "Oops, sorry, dude," before turning to run into another victim.
On the train ride into the city we had decided that we would eat at Tokyo Joe's so we got our bearings and took off in that direction, on foot. Paul remarked, "This bothers me. It seems like people with nefarious purposes could get away with a lot under the cover of a zombie uprising." I agreed. Who could tell real screaming from fake screaming in this mess? How would you tell if someone was really being chased or just pretending for the sake of the zombie "fun?"
Tokyo Joe's was completely overrun with zombies. I think maybe they congregated there because raw fish flesh can be similar to raw human flesh. It took forever to get our food -- something like 25 minutes to get our sushi. That is much longer than is normal for Tokyo Joe's.
When we finished eating we needed to get to the club where Jen's friend, Josh Fischel, was playing. It was several blocks away so we walked a bit to the train and re-boarded. After we took our seats, we were joined by some young tweens. They were in the 12 to 14 years old range and giggling hysterically while glancing warily down the train car at a trio of 30-something zombies. The tweens were not zombies. It appeared to be a game of tag between zombies and humans that had migrated to public transportation.
The zombies began to lumber toward the group of tweens. The tweens shrieked with hilarity as the zombies approached. It was quite the ear-splitting cacophony. My ears were ringing. Jen, Scottie, Paul and I looked at each other, rolled our eyes and gritted our teeth.
By this point in the evening we'd had about enough of zombies. We'd been bumped into repeatedly by bloody zombies, been subjected to screaming and wailing and had to wait extra long for our food. Patience was thin.
So Paul leaned across the aisle and said, "Excuse me, do you mind taking the zombie uprising that way?" and motioned toward the opposite end of the train. No one heard him amidst the screaming and thrashing around in the aisles so he stood up, stepped closer, raised his voice a bit and repeated himself.
One of the 30-something zombies finally looked at him and said, "What? Are you serious? We're just having some fun with the kids! You should sit down. Just sit down, sir!" Paul was rendered speechless, as were the rest of us. She continued to shriek at Paul and demand that he sit back down.
I was in shock. I've never seen someone over-react to a such an extent over a simple request for politeness and consideration. I could only sit there and laugh awkwardly. Jen refused to look at them. Scottie, who might be considered a little hot-tempered, was not about to sit there and let the zombies take over. So he stood and began shouting back at the 30-something zombie.
Her friends got into it then and one of them called Scottie "Tattoo." Clever, huh? Now, let me explain: Scottie is, indeed, tattooed. Very tattooed. He's proud of his tattoos and he has a right to be. He has a large star on the side of his neck which, at first, was all anyone could see. Almost every other inch of his body is covered with ink as well. He decided to take this opportunity to show everyone on the train the tattoos they hadn't seen and began pulling up his sleeves, his shirt in the front and the back, his pants legs and anything else that needed to be moved to show off his artwork and shouting, "Oh? Tattoos? You want tattoos? How about this one? Or this one? Or maybe this one here? And there's one here!"
Meanwhile, zombie and friends are still screeching away in the background. There's a lot of, "It's just for fun!" and "Chill out!" and, my personal favorite, "It's a free country, isn't it?" I'm going to interject something else here -- I hatehatehatehate when people use "It's a free country" to excuse their obnoxiousness. Yes, this is, to an extent, a free country. However, a great founding father once said something like, "The right to swing my fist ends where another man's nose begins." I'd like to extend that a bit and say, "The right to act like a raging idiot ends where someone else's peaceful evening with friends begins." Can I get an amen?
By this time, the tweens had become very emboldened by their zombie aggressors and started shouting things like, "Asshole", "Dildo" and "Penis wrinkle." Yep, you got that right. A bunch of junior high kids using a bunch of words that they'd most likely never use in front of their parents and probably aren't entirely certain of said words' meanings.
About that time 30-something zombie gets tired of yelling at Paul to sit down (because he was still standing in the aisle, dumb-founded) and begins saying things like, "You know what? I'm a bitch. Yup, I'm a bitch and I'm proud of it." Well, at least she's right about that, huh? And then, the best line of the night: "You have ruined my spirit! Ruined it! Are you happy now? Ruined my spiiiiiiriiiiiiit!!!"
I guess her ruined spirit took the fun out of screaming at a perfectly normal, polite person because they began to wander off then, while muttering more obscenities and insults to our collective intelligence and parentage. Two stops later we had to get off the train for our destination and as we disembarked we got another earful of "Penis wrinkle."
We spent the rest of the evening telling each other how ruined our spirits were. And we've all had several good laughs about the situation since then. But holy cow. Ridiculous over-reaction much?
1 comment:
wow! that was really weird.
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