Andy Seifert

Oh, the horror! Zombies, zombies everywhere! The dead have risen in Millennium Park and the only food that can give these pasty-white corpses any sustenance are the brains of these poor, unsuspecting tourists. Except for these four female teenage zombies, who are snacking on peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and Sunny Delight.

The tourists expecting a blemish-free Saturday now must survive Zombie March 2008, a gathering in the Loop of hundreds of the local living dead, all decked out in tattered, destroyed clothes, with dark, gray circles under their eyes, extensive bruises and blood smeared onto just about every body part imaginable. Three of them are in a brain-dead state as they stare into the Bean when a brave lady approaches them to ask what they're doing there. "We thought you guys were protesters," she says. "Well what could they be protesting?" The zombies laugh and reply, "Well, what about zombie rights?" A Millennium Park official warns them to behave.

More and more continue to appear—one with a beard soaked in blood, another with their eyes gouged out and one—a mother—holding onto the hand of her 6-year-old zombie daughter. A once pristine wedding in the park appears ruined—the photographer is trying to take shots of the bride, but there's a horde of zombies in the background, making guttural growls and moans.

The zombies give interviews to the press. "Where are you guys from?" a TV reporter asks. They reply, in unison, "Wisconsin!"

(2008-06-24)

Also by Andy Seifert

To El and Back
For the next two days, I will ride to the ends of every track the CTA offers, take in every station and every train I encounter, and watch people do and say foolish, outlandish things. Everybody has their own “El story” that they effortlessly come across. I want to find a couple for myself
(2008-06-17)

Soundcheck
Too often, like an athletic superstar that's so swept up in his growing estate he forgets he used to love playing the game, the musician feels so obligated to score hipster style points that he loses sight of making his art actually enjoyable or relatable. This doesn't seem to be a problem for Idaho's finest singer/songwriter Josh Ritter, who grew up at least 300 miles from any influential concept of "hip"
(2008-06-17)

Avian vs. Skyscraper
John Gronkowski is one of a select group of bird lovers who have volunteered to patrol Chicago’s Loop during the early morning, before even the financial district has its coffee. Their mission: help any bird in trouble, most notably the ones that migrate in the spring and fall through downtown Chicago and whose navigation systems sometimes send them bearing down, head-first, into the glass and steel walls of a skyscraper or a high-rise, an accident that leaves the bird injured and often dead
(2008-05-27)

Right of Way
"Can you say 'Give me a break?’" asks an awfully elated female college student, imagining the first thing that would come to her mind in a face-to-face encounter with ABC's John Stossel. "Are you ready to get Stosseled?" asks a friend, so pumped that she's making up verbs. Meanwhile, eight rows away, the legend himself—with his hair abnormally haggard and his trademark mustache as bushy as ever—walks in nonchalantly with little to no fanfare from the crowd, aside from the faint and subtle sound of a few girls gasping in delight
(2008-04-22)

Tip of the Week
(2008-04-15)

Professor of Play
(2008-04-01)

Lights Out
(2008-04-01)

Wheel Time
(2008-03-25)

Head Games
(2008-03-18)

Rocking for Stacy
(2008-03-11)

Punking Lincoln Square
(2008-03-05)

Trained in the Arts
(2008-02-19)

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