Good morning and welcome to Summit Up, the world’s only daily column that’s trying to figure out why everyone’s so into zombies. We watched the first three episodes of the new AMC series The Walking Dead over the weekend, and man, is it a cool show! As usual, zombies are all over the place, being a pain in the ass trying to eat everyone and generally making nuisances of themselves. Also, as usual, the people banded together for survival are at each other’s throats pretty much 24/7 – so much so that they’re often wondering whether it’d be better to have one’s arm chewed off by the living dead than suffer one more lecture from so-and-so or another insulting diatribe from such-and-such.

Zombies truly seem to bring out the worst in people.

We’ve also been reading this great book titled The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, which is a few years old but a lot of fun to read if you’re like us and secretly hope for a zombie plague to descend upon the Earth. (We don’t want to be eaten by zombies, mind you, but the notion of being able to get out of our mortgage, credit cards and overdue library book fines is, at the very least, intoxicating!) We’ve learned a lot of things from The Zombie Survival Guide, including some of these gems:

>Stay the hell out of cities. There’s just too many zombies.

>Some zombies get stuck in lakes and rivers and walk around on the bottom, so be sure to keep an eye on your anchor chain and keep the speargun handy.

>The Romans, it turns out, were excellent zombie whackers.

>The best weapon against a zombie in close fighting isn’t a handgun but, rather, a short, sharp sword of some sort. It never runs out of ammo and never jams.

One thing we learned (or perhaps we should say “learned”) from The Walking Dead is that, if you chop up a zombie and spread its guts all over you, you can then walk around with all the other zombies and they won’t hassle you since you smell like one of them. (Don’t forget to hang some intestines around your neck as well for extra zombie gore-smell.) Beware, though: If it starts raining and washes the blood and guts off, your cover is blown!

The Walking Dead, BTW, has only three more episodes. It airs Sunday evenings, and we recommend it highly.

MILLIONS OF SUMMIT UP READERS: You didn’t answer the initial question – why are people so into zombies?

SU: So they can get out of their mortgages and student loans. Wouldn’t you rather have to deal with zombies banging on your door night and day instead of collection agents? At least with the zombies it’s OK to shoot ’em …

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OK, if there’s one thing you’ll appreciate in the middle of a zombie outbreak – where zillions of decomposing lunatics are staggering around stinkin’ up the joint – it’s a nice blast of fresh, pure oxygen. We don’t have a zombie outbreak going on right now here in Summit County, but we do know where you can get some of that O2: Guy and Sally Hudson invite you to a reopening party to celebrate their purchase of The O2 Lounge in Breckenridge. A ribbon cutting is set for 5:30 p.m. today. Drinks and snacks will be served, and you can check out some of the oxygen therapies for free. The first 20 guests will get a T-shirt and the second 20 will get a voucher from some free O2 therapy.

The O2 Lounge is located at 500 S. Main Street. Go check it out!

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The guys from

http://www.Istoleyourbaby.com are bringing their brand of homegrown Colorado standup comedy to Summit County. This group of touring comics from Denver, have launched two hugely successful mountain-tours to date and are planning to make Breckenridge a part of their third. Wednesday, Nov 17, you can head down to the Salt Creek Steakhouse at 110, Lincoln Avenue in Breck, to catch the hilarious standup of up-and-coming comedians Brett Hiker, Nate Balding, Rick Desimone, Sam Tallent and the ever hilarious Jordan Doll. Admission is free and the guys usually offer a few opportunities for audience members to win free drinks. “I Stole Your Baby’s” past shows have become synonymous with a great night out in the Vail Area so don’t miss their first ever show in Breckenridge.

There it is! We out.