So here is it, January 1st and I have a new WordPress theme. Actually, it’s a new theme to the new domain name, bradzipprich.com I migrated the other posts over from the previous site I was using. I was going through a ton of themes for this site and finally settled upon one that my lovely wife approved of, it matches the houses color scheme even. There are some options on it that I need to tweak but just haven’t gotten there yet.

This morning I put in about 500 words to the rewrite of Urban. This is the story I wrote for NaNoWriMo in November. It’s a challenge to write a 50,000 word story in 30 days for those who haven’t clicked the previous link. It was my second year doing it and I finished. After finishing I spent December trying to figure out what to keep from that draft. As it turns out, I’m only keeping about 15% of that original story. However, I am really excited about the re visioning of the story that I have come up with. My goal is to have it done by April with an allotment  to finishing in June if I get caught up doing some other short stories. I’m taking my time with this one and putting allot of thought into each word.

If your curious here is the synopsis I posted on the NaNoWriMo site for the story. This was from the story I wrote in November, there are parts used in the one now but…well, you’ll have to wait for that.

Over the years the theory of some world changing event happening in 2012 struck fear and hope throughout the world. When nothing happened everyone went about their daily lives. Seems they had the date just a little off,

It was February 9, 2013 at 11:53AM when Urban Emory was ripped from his reality and smashed into another.

In the blink of an eye multiple dimensions merged together depositing people and other undesirable things onto Urban’s new Earth. That, was three years ago and the planet was still reeling from the tears in the fabric of realities that floated around it.

As a refugee to this new place Urban found his skills unusable like many others due to the overwhelming population. His family was nowhere to be found. His wife had not made it out of childhood in this world. He was left alone much like a few of his other selves that came to this world as well.

So, like many, he joined the Bureau, the one place that would take him in. Never in his life did he think he would see the mythical creatures of horror and legend let alone be protecting the world from them.

At some point this year The Road To Landsford will be released by the Library of the Living Dead Press. This is my first full novel to be published and I am thrilled about it to say the least. When I have more info on when it will be published I’ll let you know. This novel is a prequel of sorts from the short story I have in Zombology: A Zombie Anthology entitled Children of Landsford Towers.

I’ll also have a number of short stories coming out in some anthologies with that press this year. My two favorites are Tattooed Sweets that will be in an anthology called Horrorology and A Bad Day that was a collaboration with T. Patrick Rooney that will be in the book entitled Zombology VII: Risen Cadaver Collaboration.

What else is going on, well nothing much. Still working with the rest of the group on Don’t Look In The Podcast. We cover a variety of movies and it can get a bit weird at time. Taking a break from our Sons of Anarchy fancast, Watchers of Anarchy, that I do with my wife Tracy and our great friend Laura Best. We should be starting that up in February again with a review of the first season.

That’s all I got for now. I’m planning on keeping this site updated more often so subscribe to the RSS feed if you want. Things might change a bit on the site from time to time as I test out  a few things for some friends. I love playing around with the WordPress and anything else web related. Might have something to do with that first webpage that I coded in Notepad back in 1994. Plus I like helping people so if you have a question let me know.

Okay, so I really need to update this more. But until then, for those of you that did not get the limited edition Zipprich Christmas Card I give you the cover of the card.

Ladies and gentleman I give you Billie Holiday

01 Miss Brown To You.mp3 Miss Brown To You

02 What A Little Moonlight Can Don.mp3 What A Little Moonlight Can Do

05 A Sailboat In The Moonlight.mp3 A Sailboat In The Moonlight

12 The Very Thought Of You.mp3 The Very Thought Of You

On October 4, 1972 the theater goers had a chance to become graced with a movie that would go down in history. Yes, I am talking about none other then Night of the Lepus. In case you missed it here is the trailer.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIsI7CwjH3M

So what does this have to do with anything you ask. Well, this is one of my side projects. This cheesy story, oh yes there will be cheese, well maybe carrots, is something I am writing completely on my Blackberry. That being said it will be a slow project since I will only be doing it when I have a free moment or so. Each chapter will be posted here when completed though so if you happen to read it let me know what you think.

Dawn of the Lepus

Chapter One

Cresting through the treeline the sun shined through the early autumn leaves. Their varying colors glistened as the light reflected off of the morning dew as the birds called out to each other amoung the branchs.

Sounds of a zipper shoot out as the doorflap of a tent opened up cutting into the mornings tranquility. Grass crumbled below the bare foot that stepped out into the cool mornings air. Standing there, clad in a pair of tattered jean shorts and a grey t-shirt the young man looked out around the forrest that surrounded him.

Empty beer can lay scattered throughout the campsite around him. The remains of what had once been a huge campfire lay smoldering in the center of the clearing. Another tent was setup directly across from him, it’s door flap sat open revealing it’s vacancy. He stood there looking around the clearing as a russel came from inside his tent.

“Trent!” A femine voice from inside the tent called out, “shut the door, the sun is shining in my eyes.”

“Am I interupting your beauty sleep?” He said with a smirk before turning and attempting to climb on top of her only to be cut of by the sleeping bag on top of herself.

“Get off of me Trent, I want to go back to sleep. Go bug Rob and Laura.” The young woman said as she pushed Trent off of her.

“Fine. Be that way.” Trent responded as the annoyance filled his words as he climbed out of the tent. “They’re not in their tent, maybe I can catch them in the act.”

“You perv.”

“Well you’re not putting out this morning,” Trent responds while walking briskly across the campsite  ”Watch out for wild animals while I’m gone.”

“Whatever.” Comes the responce from the tent, “don’t get yourself lost.”

The popularity of this secret campsite was easily recognized by the noticeable paths that connected to it. One path lead from the hole in the fence almost a mile back. The other path, the one that Trent was following, lead to a fresh water spring warmed by the local geological foundations. His footsteps echoed out in the forest with each twig that broke under his foot. He continued to follow the trail for almost a quarter of a mile until something caught his attention.

“Well, looks like someone is having some fun.” Trent says just loud enough for anyone nearby to hear as he continued following the trail of discarded clothing.

As he bent down to pick up the black laced bra that was laying on the forest floor the gentle sound of splashing water filled his ears. A sly smile spread across his face as he looked up towards the sound and quickly walked towards it.

The words fell quickly from his mouth as Trent burst throw the foliage that hide the warm springs from the pathway enthusiastcally, “I knew I would catch youuuu….”

Off to your right you will see some thumbnails on Flickr that are from my trip to see the Mothman statue and museum. Have look and if your ever in that area you should stop by.

The first leg of our trip has been completed and we are currently in Welcome, NC. Yes that is the name of the town. We are here visiting Tracy’s mother before heading off to Virginia Beach tomorrow to see my daughter and will be spending a few days there as well.

If there are any Nascar fans out there that actually read this the Richard Childress Racing Museum is located here in Welcome, who knew. We’ll be heading by there today for a look and I’ll have a few pictures up from that as well. Guess it’s a good time for me to get my Flikr account up running and connected to the blog huh. Needed to do that anyhow so I can get Zombie Farmers blog setup with her Flikr account linked as well.

So anyhow, we left the house Wednesday morning at 5 AM, yep 5 AM, who knew it came twice in the same day. An hour or two later and we are in Indiana where the rain started. As we journeyed east we decided to just drag the rain with us the almost the entire trip.

During our trip we stopped by Point Pleasant, WV, home of the Mothman. This is a town that had the sightings of the red eyed monster and where the bridge collapsed killing many of the towns residents. After the bridge collapse in 67 the town decline quite a bit until the Mothman Prophecies  hit the theaters in 2001. After that the town embraced the Mothman. The statue is located on the corner near the Mothman Museum. The museum itself is rather small but includes a ton of items from the movie and items related to the bridge collapse. All in all it was a pretty interesting place to visit for $3 a piece. On thing that struck us was the amount of people going in the museum. This is a place you have to plan on going to, its not exactly on the the way you have to plan on stopping. After visiting the place you can tell what the loss of a bridge can do to the town.Sadly though we didn’t get to walk around and visit the town nearly as much as we wanted due to the downpour of rain.

The trip through West Virginia was interesting due to the rain and the roads. Very pretty country with quite a bit of hills and trees. The road we went down had quite a bit of nothing for awhile which begged made us wonder what these people did for a living. Another thing, I think WV has a huge vampire problem. We kept seeing these huge crosses all over the place. Tracy says they are for the churches and all but I am pretty sure it is due to the vampires. Some of the crosses didn’t even have a church by them, there’s vampires in those hills I tell ya. I didn’t want to stop and ask the boy playing the banjo if my theory was true though.

Flickr plugin not working os here’s my link, http://www.flickr.com/photos/bradzb

Back when we started this podcast I put the show up on Podomatic as a temporary thing. The big reason was because it was simple and I figured I would just switch the feed over to the DLItP server once I got all that setup and working like I wanted. Well, things didn’t go quite that easy.

After fighting with a few things on our server I finally got things setup the way we need and go about trying to change the RSS feed on Podomatic. Now, putting a change in a feed or evenputting up a 301 redirect to let your feed tell whatever is looking for it that it has moved is arelatively simple thing. Doing either of these things takes 30 seconds to a minute, less than two at the max even. This is what I needed done to redirect the RSS feed that goes from Podomatic to iTunes. Sounds simple right? Well it’s not. Since I do not have a PRO account at Podomaticthey can’t spare the “man hours” it would take to make this change. What do I have to do now? Well I contacted iTunes and they remove the podcast and then I have to setup the podcast all over again. As a result of all this fun everyone who was subscribed to the podcast will have tore-subscribe again unless iTunes just amazes me and changes the feed on their end, I’m not holding my breath on that though. 

So, a pro account at Podomatic costs you $99.90 a year and with that you get 100 GB Bandwidth with 2GB of storage. That in itself is kind of crappy actually, not like you can put up a website there or anything. Let’s go with the host we use here at DLitP, JustHost.com With them $71.40 will get you a free domain name, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, email, and a ton of other things. With just a little playing around you can setup a WordPress site, install a great podcasting plugin called Blubrry and your ready to go. Run your RSS feed through Feed Burner and you have all the stats you need, you can even use the stats from Blubrry as well.

That’s my rant. Guess I should have expected much more then what Podomatic gave me for free but I don’t think paying for their service is really worth the $99.90 that they are charging. Ifyou’re on Podomatic or any other service and looking to get your own server going and want some help let me know, I’d be happy to lend some advice or a hand. It’s not nearly as bad as some of my twitter outposts make it seem, I have perfection issues sometimes.

And now, back to the show.

Sunday afternoon, the gutters are clean, he Harley needs to go to the shop, the car is washed, the race is over, and there is nothing on TV. What’s on OnDemand this weekend? Outpost was the movie I first choose but during a preview for Dance of the Dead they mentioned zombies so that pulled me in quick.

Spoiler alert. I am writing this as I write so there you go.

What to say about this movie so far. Well for one everyone in this movie is in high school. When you think of the stereotypical groups in high school, well, they got them all in this movie. The overdone militant gym teacher, the jocks, the geeks, the preps, pretty much everyone along with a weird grave digger.  Oh yeah, there is a huge nuclear power plant in town as well. 

Finally we are to the point of the dead rising….and one of them actually says ‘Brains”!  A total nod to Return of the Living Dead because where do the dead rise from? The cemetery of course. That got me to thinking. If you come back to live as a zombie being in a casket would have to suck.  Then again the this movie the zombie infection spreads way fast. Oh yeah, another ROTLD nod, a dead biology frog comes back to life and attacks the biology teacher. That moment sent me back to the scene in ROTLD with the half dog.

Ok, this movie throws a few thins at us zombies wise. We have the dead rising from the grave. We have the dead saying ‘Brains’. We have the dead running. Now, we have the dead driving. I can honestly say I have never seen a zombie driving before.

Next up, the ultimate zombie deflection tool, metal!  Ha! they hole up in a funeral home. Classic, classic ROLTD. Lucky for group that they have the only badass at school who had a gun in his truck. Of course he has a 357 revolver witha  ton of shells in his pocket but he is one of the brightest people in the group. !!!! A zombie in a body bag lol. Well crap, badass got bit and gonna die.  I’m not researching this movie much but so far, he was the best actor in the group. BTW turn time in this movie is One Eighteen. 

Back to the militant gym teacher again. The group meets up with him again and of course he arms them up with enough stuff to win a war against anyone. Best line, “Little lady you get the machete.” “But I don’t know how to shoot a machete.” Of course what does the militant gym teach drive? A Hummer of course. Granted it is a H2 any self respecting militant would be sporting a H1.

Of course, who saves the promo queen and friends, the president of the sci fi club lol. Just as you think Jimmy and Lindsey are about to die the rockers start playing and save the day…and Jimmy gets his slow dance. Nice nod to Re-Animator as well. Then….zombie lovin…they are just eating each other up…those crazy zombie kids are so in love.

In the end the Sci-Fi club helps save the day and prom queen says she saw a UFO, classic I tell you. Do I believe in UFO’s you ask, yep, I listen to Coast to Coast AM on a regular basis.

All in all Dance of the Dead was a fun movie. It gave nods to every zombie movie out there but wasn’t in there for the scare value it was in there for the fun value. You knew who was going to die and you had an idea on how certain things would end. It was a fun movie though. For a free movie on On Demand I can’t say no. As a rental, still good for a fun watch. Scare factor, not at all. Final death scenes, well there are a ton of different ones. Even a arm shoved down someone’s throat.  Go rent the movie, it’s fun, invite the teenagers even.

Sometime in the 23rd century…the survivors of war, overpopulation and pollution are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the forgotten world outside. Here, in an ecologically balanced world, mankind lives only for pleasure, freed by the servo-mechanisms which provide everything. There’s just one catch: Life must end at thirty unless reborn in the fiery ritual of Carrousel.

So here was are watching this movie with tons and tons of miniature work going on at the beginning. It reminds me of some displays I saw years ago when Epcot first opened. It is nice to have everyone color coded in the same clothes, sure does help with reusing them in all the scenes to make it look like there are more people there then actually is. The music in this one, not that big of a fan I must say.

We have a runner and Logan is a horrible shot. Not only is he a horrible shot but you can even see the piles of pyro on the floor. So the Sandmen don’t have much gun training, wonder who has the job of patching all those holes they created with their horrible aim? 

Is there a Logan’s Run shopping center out there somewhere? I would sure like to get me one of those snazy Sandman robes. A set of those drinking glasses would be nice. For some decor I suppose I could just get a ton of things chromed. Can’t really complain about the decor though, this is the future and all, guess we will all be dressed like that at some point.

Nothing like getting answers out of a tight lipped computer, sure does does screw up Logan’s mind though don’t it. Can you imagine how hard it would be to sleep at night with a blinking hand? Just yesterday Logan was out taking random pot shots at people and today he has a blinking hand that swiped four years off of his life. Watching this movie reminds me of the Buck Rodgers series. I’m pretty sure that if I was to watch and episode of that after this I’d see the same outfits being worn.

Back in the miniature car again for a ride for what should be known as the ‘We don’t got no chrome’ sector. Green screen work sure has come a long long long way . Is it me or does the little girl that swipes the bracelet remind you of the little girl on The Hills Have Eyes?

The lasers are going wild, wild I tell you. I have an idea, lets run into the deathtrap and see about wrestling with the Sandman. Then we run into slowmo orgy room. Besides being rather odd I have no clue why that scene is in there.  Maybe they had to use the music somewhere and created a scene for it.

Wow Farrah Fawcetts character in this movie sure is stupid. The scene in the doctors office couldn’t have happened more then an hour ago and she can’t remember it. Then, with her half baked explanation of what went down they let them go. I suppose their light sticks might have been running low on batteries. 

One of the problems with these underground abandoned areas is that no one is doing upkeep on them. If you have ever watch Life Without People then you know how things fall apart. With that much water flooding the place the structural integrity of the dome is surely going to fail one day. Probably shouldn’t think about that and just watch the movie huh.

You know they are freezing. Moments ago they had been swim in the water and now they have penguins. Not only are their penguins but there are Cylons. Ok, I guess he really isn’t a Cylon. 

From the moment they jumped into the lake you knew they would end up naked. Much nakedness in this movie. i must say I am impressed by the ending of the movie though. Remember that show I was talking about earlier, Life Without People , they did one on Washington DC and considering when this was made it’s pretty close. Not really sure how long they had been living in their little world though. Pretty sure thatDC went under water though. Downside to their vision is that there are no animals running around. Honestly I don’t think they would have stood much of a chance. I am sure a wolf or something would have nommed them in all their adventuring. 

What a let down to escape certain death to find crazy cat man. A mumbling crazy cat man. Can you imagine the smell in that place. I am sure that crazy cat man didn’t keep up with the litter box cleaning. Bet he smells rather horrible as well. He is rather plumb, maybe he survived on cats.

Francis has some serious issues with being out in the world. Nothing fixes those issues like getting the crap beat out of you with a flagpole. Really though, did he beat him that badly with the flagpole. Do you really really really think that after all Francis went through getting hit with a flagpole would kill him off?

Nothing like preaching to people and they think your crazy cat man. The two Sandmen in the interrogation are by far the oldest people we have seen in the movie. There day on the carousel is soon to come I am sure. After Logan blows up the world those people sure are calm on their first walk outside. You would think they would be freaking out instead of walking around like drones.

It’s the end of the world and everyone that had every need taken care of for them is let out into the wilderness. I would guess that 75% of them are dead within a year since they don’t have a clue how to get food. Besides, how would they dress now? Really is no need for color coordination.

That’s it for that movie. All in all it is a great story but it is also a 70′s movie and that really shines through. Should it be remade, umm I’m going to say no. I think a remake of this movie would just screw it up somehow. Besides, all that nakedness would surely be cut lol. 

Next up, Independence Day.

The other night I watched the 2008 release of Blindness. Yes there are other ones a 1964,1998, and 2007. They are all different movies though. Apparently coming up with a unique name wasn’t a high priority.

Anyhow, this isn’t a movie that we are doing on the show but i felt like doing a post for it anyhow. I could see doing this more in the future so go ahead and add the rss to your feed. If you have a suggestion for a movie let me know.

 Ok, back to the movie, here’s the plot synopsis.

When a big city has a mysterious outbreak of blindness, the victims are quarantined by the government in a hospital without any medical care, treatment or hygiene. Among the first people affected by the so called “white blindness” are an ophthalmologist and his reluctant health wife that has not lost her sight but stays with him to help him in the difficult moment. The place immediately crowds and a group of criminals takes the power, demanding jewels and electronics first and sex later for the limited ratio of food they control.

From the above you get a pretty good idea what the movie is about. This is one of the movies I wanted to see in the theater but never did get around to seeing it. I enjoyed the movie but I am glad that I missed it in the theater, this is one of those at home movies.

The movie runs at 118 minutes but it takes forever to watch. Honestly I thought I had been watching it for hours. That’s just how the movie progresses, not slow, there is always something happening but it just seemed extremly slow to me.

One of the things I felt was interesting was how they filmed the city. You don’t really get a good idea where they are at. Clearly it is not the US but there are a few people with recognizable  US accents in the show.

After watching the show I feel there had been a ton of deleted scense that didn’t make it into the final cut. I did notice a few things that didn’t seem to come together but since I had to return the DVD I never got a chance to check. There was one scene at the end  in which everyone is wearing yellow jackets, something they hadn’t had on earlier. It made perfect since though. When they leave the hospital there is a big group of them and in the process of walking through the city they get separated. They show one of the people getting left. You would think they would yell or something but no they didn’t. So in order to keep track of them Julianne Moore who played the doctors wife puts yellow jackets on them since she can see. Something I didn’t actually remember from the movie is if they used her name. Honestly I don’t think they did. Even on IMDB she is just listed as Doctor’s Wife. Actually after looking at the listing again it appears that no one actually had a real name in the movie. I’m serious check out the IMDB cast listing.

That’s my review of this movie. Do I recommend it, yes I do. Now with that recommendation please take note that I don’t think all people will like this flick. There are some shocking scenes in the movie and society does break down so you get to see the really ugly come out.

I give it 3.75 out of 5 stars. I would give it a 4 star but I wouldn’t have been thrilled if I saw it in the theater.  The star rating system, what have I fallen to? If anyone has a better rating then stars let me know lol.

Keep watching those movies.