Went on to become this Georgian corpse-killer:

While we can all agree that Andrew Lincoln is totally dreamy (even if he’s grown a bit skeletal himself since he started his Walking Dead stint) I think after tonight’s episode I’m firmly on Shane’s side – if you’re not busting zombie heads, you clearly have no interest in survival anymore.

High-fashion onesie

This morning I had to take two dogs for a walk when it was 37 degrees. I know that’s not exceptionally cold if you’re Canadian or a penguin, but I could barely get myself out of bed, much less find enough layers to ensure I wouldn’t freeze the second I made it outside. For whatever reason, I get cold way faster than the population at large, and until I can afford winter trips to Cabo, it’s all about thermal shirts and long johns for me. I’ve been scouring stores, and the only real options are the AA thermals, the Uniqlo HeatTech line (oooh, science), or this stunning one-piece Fair Isle contraption from Japan…

(How do you go to the bathroom in this?)

One of the nice things about quitting smoking (I’m on my third week) is that I’m setting aside all the money I would  have spent on cigs, and instead buying something as a reward. So my plan is to buy a pair of long johns for every day of the week, and laugh in the face of the bitter elements.

April joined me for a photoshoot

Say hello to my weekend uniform.

(The best thing to happen this week.)

I’ve been MIA of late, since I’ve started doing a bit of blogging and writing for Out magazine. That’s awesome news for me, but it means I have a lot less time to muse on my own personal favorite things. I’m going to set aside more time for that, but until then, here’s some stuff I put together over the past few weeks (much of which would have ended up on here instead, except with more curse words):

A review of Colson Whitehead’s awesome zombie apocalypse novel, Zone One.

A preview of the prelude to Lady Gaga’s newest music video (very One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).

A slideshow of the images from Benetton’s new, controversial ad campaign, with lots of world leaders getting kissy kissy.

Shame on you if didn’t see the latest episode of Glee. But if you didn’t, you can read about it here.

A little info on a particularly badass queer graffiti artist.

A slideshow of all the best abs in Immortals (don’t pretend you paid $12 to see anything else except muscles).

An interview with indie punk band Hostage Calm, who got more than 3,000 signatures on their petition to end the gay marriage ban in NY state.

Lots and lots and lots of gay weddings.

Alright, see you soon. Oh, and go to out.com 500 times a day please – gotta keep those numbers UP!

I’ve been curious about Amber Heard for a few months now. She’s gorgeous, and in a Nylon Guys interview she said something interesting: That horror movies are “sometimes the only real platform for a young woman to act. Horror films give you the opportunity to be tough and independent and to fight, to kick, to kill, to cry.”

I get that (I’m only taken seriously when I kick, kill and cry too) so I was excited to see The Ward on Netflix. It’s the first film John Carpenter’s directed in nine years, it stars this kicky blonde girl who thinks she’ll have a platform to act, and it’s set in an insane asylum, which I always find fascinating.

Amber’s character Kristen ends up here after she burns an empty farm house. She arrives at the asylum with no memory of her past, disoriented and surly. Eventually she meets the other girls in the ward. They’re nice enough, but they fit stereotypes so perfectly it starts feeling a little contrived. In this clip you can see Zoey (the nympho), Sarah (the infantile one) and Emily (the kooky tomboy) – and Kristen, who is just kind of pissed off.

The “Alice” everyone’s getting worked up about is a rotting girl-corpse who devises different ways to take out the girls, one by one.

Really, the movie would be better without Alice.

I know that having a ghoul lurking around makes everyone question their sanity in thought-provoking ways, and quick cuts to rotting flesh make for good shocks, but the ghost aspect actually detracts from this film. The best scenes here involve the (living) girls interacting with each other, or the various ways the nurse, attendant and doctor exert their authority and coerce them into submission – there are two great electroshock scenes, one a little deadlier than the other. And when Kirsten has her interviews with the doctor, she does act – and yell and fight – and she doesn’t need a monster to make that happen.

Despite an 11th hour twist (why do screenwriters always add those? to make us watch the movie again) there’s not all that much to recommend The Ward. I love a nice 60s aesthetic, and the actors are good when they get a chance to act, but the story is awfully sparse. Instead of learning more about the inmates, we see them showering with a corpse hiding in the steam. Instead of figuring out whether the attendant is molesting his charges, we see endless creepy pans across the long asylum halls.

You know what? Go watch Halloween, and then watch Girl, Interrupted. That way you’ll see two good movies instead of a mediocre one.

I’m posting this without much comment. There’s all this ridiculous controversy about this singer – “Her lips are fake!” “Her music’s inauthentic.” Which is all bullshit, as Gawker will tell you. I love her stuff, and her videos are REALLY evocative of the kind of mid-century nostalgia I live and die for.

Warning: Nude dudes below. It’s PG-13 though. You can handle it.

Zone One - Out October 18

Some books read like love letters to New York City: Joseph Mitchell’s Up In The Old Hotel, for example, and Joan Didion’s gut-wrenching essay: “Goodbye To All That.”

Zone One? It’s hate mail for the whole island. There is a lot of gut-wrenching, though.

James Maher's take on Chinatown post-apocalypse

Meet Mark Spitz – he’s managed to survive after most of the population has been reduced to mindless ‘skels,’ only because he is so exceptionally mediocre. A consistent B student, whether he studied or not. The member of the senior class “Most Likely Not To Be Named The Most Likely Anything.” That mediocrity grants him a longer lease on life than his parents, his girlfriends, than almost anyone he knew before the innard-chomping nightmare the survivors refer to as ‘Last Night.’

It’s a good name. For the survivors sweeping Zone One in southern Manhattan, the evening when the world went mad stays fresh in their minds. How can they escape it? Mark and the two other civilians in Omega Unit spend their days picking off the wasted victims of the disease – walking corpses who still sport haircuts copied from sitcom characters and bear passing resemblances to former gym teachers, girlfriends, relatives.

That’s the problem when the whole world’s gone skel – the victims still have some shadow memory: they frequent the same hang-outs, wear the same clothes, maintain the same piercings and haircuts and facial features (at least until the skin starts rotting away). In an interview with GQ, Whitehead sums it up: “The skels are ghosts, other people haunted by their pasts. I’ve certainly been stuck on certain periods and events in my life, so a skel is a statue dedicated to nostalgia.”

Each monster has its trope. With vampires it’s abusive lust, with werewolves it’s a split personality. Zombies come in mobs, and with mobs there is a mentality. The skels in Zone One invite contemplation, not as sad skin sacks, but as walking memories of the people they were, people who were always part-monster to begin with.

In 'Zone One,' the skels are incinerated, creating clouds of ash over the city. By inbrainstorm

Zone One didn’t have to be a zombie novel, but it’s a handy device to dissect the problems of the populace post-Empire, particularly in a city. As a new recruit to New York, there are certain lines that hit me in the gut. Spitz will pick off zombies and consider their former, waking lives – He wonders when they came to the city, bright-eyed and ambitious, and how they’d been forced to settle in the intervening years, crowding around cocktail bars and laughing too loudly in attempts to capture some Sex and the City fantasy. He thinks about the shut-ins who barricaded themselves against the coming plague, particularly “new recruits” like myself, who were too fresh to the city to develop the kind of support system that could have afforded them a means of escape.

It scares you. Scared me, at least, in a way blood-spurting zombie movies never have.

Formally, it’s excellent. Spitz falls through temporal trap doors constantly in the narrative, moving backwards to memories of ‘Last Night,’ the deaths of his parents, unexpected skel attacks, and then he snaps to at the last moment, when his life depends on it. The language is carefully chosen, and evokes spinal cords, joints and necrosis, even when describing entertainment systems and subways. And there’s humor, too, in the unlikeliest places. When Omega Team spots a few walkers in the distance, they try to tell if they’re human or skel. The deciding factor? They’re wearing ponchos. “Only a human cursed with the burden of free will would wear a poncho.”

Definitely pick up a copy on the 18th. Whether you’re a zombie fan or not, this book has a lot to say.

1. Britney Spears

2. Coffee

3. Cigarettes

Alright, that was supposed to be a much longer list. But I’m pretty much stumped. Better play to my strengths, anyway. And go check out that tumblr.

It took me a while to explain to a straight friend that what he thought was a “Deep V” was more like  a droopy crew neck. This SNL digital short should set that misconception aright…