Tornado weather, Jim Thorpe, red kicks and zombies
It's midnight, the moon is full, and there's a storm nearby. Storms here are beautiful acts of nature and I always love to stand outside just before one hits. The wind swirls around me as if it can't decide what to knock over before the rains rush in behind it. I appreciate it's thoroughness as I watch random objects fly across my backyard. It's busy high in the night sky also, because the moon flickers light onto my face like a light bulb going bad from the plethora of clouds darting across its path. I don't want to go in yet, so I grab my basketball and shoot ten-footers until I'm chased inside. The sound of the wind and the net making it's metallic swish fills my ears, but my brain is far away from this place.

I was thinking of Jim Thorpe (1887-1953). He was a famous American Indian athlete who was an Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon and pentathlon, played major league baseball, and pro football. He is said to arguably be the greatest athlete of the 20th century, but I don't see why there's an argument. There was no athlete in the entire century besides him that was an Olympic gold medalist and played two sports on the pro level. Writers who witnessed his feats have said that there was no sport that he wasn't good at if he desired to play it. I appreciate that kind of moxie and I can relate to that kind of athletic diversity. I've over scheduled my own sports calendar this year, because in the spirit of Jim Thorpe, I just want to play. I feel as if I've been watching life go by without jumping into the middle of it and running as fast as I can. We've only got a few good years on our bodies and most of us waste them on eating badly and watching too much TV. I decided to change that last year and I've been having a blast.

My first thought was to get red shoes. I showed up at my second softball practice in brilliant red cleats. The ooh's and ahh's were deafening and I inspired half a team to buy new cleats. I had 45 year-old men telling me "Nice kicks!" I didn't know middle-aged men knew what a "kick" was, let alone appreciate the value of El Rojo! People love a great pair of shoes and I love the feeling when I put on a pair of red shoes. Maybe I was meant to be a clown, but I don't feel circus-y when I put them on. I get a rush like I've just slipped into a sports car. I also just got new tennis shoes and as you can tell by the above picture, I went with another pair of sports cars. Christian just said, "Of course, they're red..." when I pulled them out of the box. He understands that side of my personality, but he's a dyed in the wool Chuck Taylor black hightop man and I appreciate him for his footwear integrity. I wish everyone possessed that typed of integrity, especially zombies.

I know, I know...what? I only came inside tonight, because I realized that in the middle of that storm, thinking, "WWJD (What Would Jim Do)", and wearing my red sports cars, I was waiting on a zombie that would never show up. I know consciously that zombies are a fabrication of religious folklore and the Golden Screen, but in my preadolescent fantasy mind that won't mature for some reason, zombies are to me as windmills were to Don Quixote. I couldn't think of a better time for a zombie to show up than midnight in the middle of a storm, with me wearing my new red kicks. I know, you still don't get it.

"Men crave battle" is the only way I can think to explain it. In the same way that women crave the smell of a newborn baby, men crave conflict and we crave it most in the times when we feel most confident. I love storms and red shoes and playing sports. In that moment, I was everything I needed to be and I wanted battle, but zombies having no sense of responsibility or corporal existence in anything but preadolescent brains, were not going to appear, and thus my disappointment.

I did just watch something which sort of scratched my zombie itch the other day on the Bravo network. I've never understood my fascination with zombies and why I see them as my ultimate antagonists until I saw George Romero speak. Mr. Romero made the cult classic film, Night Of The Living Dead, the movie which begat all zombie movies since and he summed it all up for me. His lead in the movie was an African American male and it was almost unheard of at the time, because the movie was made n the late sixties. He said that the horror in the movie and the zombies were symbolism for what was taking place in the American culture at that time. The zombies represented everything he saw American culture becoming: a thoughtless automaton of consumers, devouring without thinking, destroying everything in their path to satiate their own desires. Placing a black male in the lead was just a natural conclusion, because Mr. Romero saw them as the group most affected by this thoughtlessness. He said if he would have been a fan of any other genre, then he would have created a different film, but with the same message.

Maybe my worst disappointment of the evening is realizing that the zombie is already here, in me, devouring, consuming, and destroying to satiate my own thoughtless desires. It would be the most fitting conclusion to this trite little tale of irony and the Modern Man. Where's Rod Serling's lazy ass when you need him to put his little disparaging conclusive remarks on the evening and don't give me that, "He's dead," crap either. It hasn't stopped Tupac from releasing four CD's, two movies, and three TV specials.