Season Premiere of Walking Dead & My Experience Walking With the Dead

WARNING: DISTURBING PICTURES & WALKING DEAD SEASON 3 SPOILERS AHEAD 

My weekend was filled with people pretending to be rotting corpses. And I loved every minute of it.

Saturday I was part of a large gathering of zombies in Minneapolis for the eighth annual Zombie Pub Crawl. One word sums it all up: amazing. I haven't heard a final head count, but they were expecting up to 30,000 people to participate. Thanks to my cousin, I was fortunate  to find an amazing makeup artist to turn me into the undead. She did such an excellent job that I was afraid I was terrifying the handful of small children we saw that night. My own 12-year-old daughter made me promise never to show her a picture of me that night again. When I looked into the mirror that night I couldn't stop laughing. I didn't even recognize myself. Personally I didn't put a lot of effort into my costume aside from the makeup and white-out contacts. I made t-shirts advertising my zombie book and ripped up a pair of jeans. But there were hundreds of genius ideas floating around that night. I think I spent half the time just sitting back and watching the parade of undead pass by. Downtown Minneapolis certainly became a hubbub for zombie fans. Everywhere we went there was live music, including one of my old favorites, The Gin Blossoms. There was even a large pile of bubbles we got to play in. Our group started at 2 p.m. so by 11:00 we were done for. Next year I plan to pace myself a little more and take everything in.

With makeup artist Stephanie Molin

The contacts made the look!

Chris Hardwick of Talking Dead summed up last night’s season premiere best with his opening monologue. “Holy shit!” There wasn't any dialogue the first five minutes of the show, then the opening credits started with new pictures to the same music diehard fans have come to adore. Not only is this an entertaining show, but the photography and music is so well done, it's like a piece of fine art.

Right off the bat, we learned the gang has been traveling around for a good while based on Carl’s sudden puberty, Hershel’s beard and Lori’s now bulging stomach. And Lori is worried her baby is a demon (which is probably is if Shane was really the baby daddy) or it's dead, or she will die in child birth and turn. Most Walking Dead fans don't care for Lori anyway and I think we'd all love to see that baby chew its way out of her womb. 

Can we talk about the zombies wearing riot gear for a minute? That was the most insane thing ever! Since their mouths were covered up, they weren't as big of a threat except that they could slow up Rick & Co until the others got to them. I think the writers of this show took complaints of few zombies last season to heart because we saw HOARDS of them last night! And how about the one who had the skin ripped off his face? Nasty.

When the last few minutes of the show aired and the credits came on, I was in so much shock that I had to rewind my DVR and watch it again. All I could think was, did that really just happen? Was there even a discussion on whether or not it was necessary to cut off Hershel's leg or did Rick completely lose his freaking mind?

In short: Maggie is excited by the slaying and has her eye set on becoming the next Sarah Connor. The romance we all know coming between Daryl and Carol seems to be heating up. Andrea is deathly ill and in her own way is becoming BFF with Michonne (who is a total bad ass). T-Dog had some more lines. Hershel's other hot daughter (the blonde) is a terrible singer and now Carl has the hots for her. Rick is still mad at Lori for being a jezebel and to channel his anger is cutting people's legs off. PLUS now there are other humans in the picture and we know they're all going to die from Rick saying in the previews that he is not going to be a big boy and share the place. And we all know Hershel is going to die--that conveniently placed axe was so not sterile.

via Entertainment Weekly

I think the writers of the show outdid themselves last night. Looks like we're in for the best season ever, folks. What did you think?

~Jen