Tonight, I took E (though at first he was very much set against going) to the Zombie Ball. There’s simply no good way to explain what a zombie ball is other than to remind you of what you’d expect to find at a normal ball and then ask that you imagine finding a few hundred zombies there in stead. There was no biting, but there was plenty of corn starch-based blood and spooky contacts floating around in the crowd. The whole shebang went down in Scottsdale’s The Venue of Scottsdale which tends to hold small to medium-sized concerts and salsa dancing festivals. Tonight they tossed all that out on its ear for zombies and industrial bands.

So there we were, sitting in cheap suits we’d ripped to shreds, stained with (fake) blood and jumped around on while they were laying atop the gravel in the backyard. A few crazy industrial bands went on and got off while I flittered around the room snapping pics of zombies (I’m a photographer…more on that later).

Then the head master of the “Pain Solution” school got on stage. Holy shit. What followed was the best freak show I’ve ever seen. This guy stood on knives, pushed pins into his body, hammered a nail into his nostril and stapled the tips audience members through on stage to his body. The higher the bill, the higher on the body he stapled it. By the end he had a few $20 bills stapled to his forehead and who knows how many other bills stapled to his chest, arms and legs.

It was incredible and E agreed.

More on this tomorrow.