Woody: Brain-dead and proud of it

By LARRY WOODY

The other night while channel-surfing I came across a brain-dead zombie stumbling around and mumbling incoherently.

Turned out it was just Joe Biden making a speech.

The real zombie show was on the next channel...and the next...and the next.

Seems like every other TV program is about zombies! I figure eventually we'll have a Zombie Cooking Show ("Today's special: Brains On the Barbie") and the Zombie Weather Channel.

We might even have a zombie sports channel although I'm not sure it could compete with most of ESPN's brain-dead commentators.

Halloween is at hand, and zombie costumes are all the rage. Come Hallows Eve, there will be baby zombies, soccer mom zombies and geezer zombies stalking the earth.

Some of the zombie outfits are so realistic that they're scarier than Rush Limbaugh.

I don't get all this fascination with zombies, and everybody wanting to be one. When I was growing up, being brainless was nothing to brag about.

Granted, that was a by-gone era, when we rode dinosaurs to school.

When I was a kid we didn't go in for a lot of fancy Halloween costumes. We'd usually throw a sheet over our head and go as a ghost...or a mattress.

My boyhood pal Booger Johnson got creative one year; he poked his head through a cardboard box, dumped some sand on his head, and went as a kitty-litter box.

His trick-or-treating was cut short that night when a gang of cats chased him home.

Adults would occasionally enter into the Halloween spirit and splurge on an elaborate costume. One year our 2nd-grade teacher, Miss Wigglebottom, dressed as Elvira Mistress of the Dark. When she walked into the classroom several of my male classmates immediately reached puberty.

Later that morning there was an awkward moment when our principle, Mr. Frump, dropped by our class and Miss Wigglebottom complimented him his goofy Halloween mask; turned out he wasn't wearing one.

Back to zombies: despite all the literature devoted to them, I'm still not clear on exactly how they function. How do you un-do the un-dead?

As I understand it, if a zombie bites someone, they become a zombie too, with a craving for craniums. If a cannibal and a zombie go out for dinner, how do they decide who's the main course?

There are a number of ways to dispatch a zombie, such as immolation, decapitation or being forced to watch another presidential debate.

You can also get rid of a pesky zombie by driving a stake through its heart -- no, wait, I'm thinking of Dr. Phil.

I suppose psychologists could explain our fascination with the un-dead: a craving for an after-life, meeting cute ghouls, etc.

But rather than get too deep in the weeds, I figure the zombie craze is just good clean fun. Well, fun anyway. Most zombies don't seem too keen on personal hygiene. And their table manners are atrocious.

Zombies are a timely topic at Halloween, and something to think about. While we still have a brain.