Stop Already: Vampire Overdose

Listen, I like vampires as much as the next guy, but I can't be the only one growing tired of their sinister hold on pop culture. In the beginning there was Buffy and it was good. After Buffy, Angel, Spike, and the rest of the gang became little more than syndicated filler, the vampire genre took a much deserved breather. And then, in 2005, Twilight was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public, and vampires once again took their place as the monster du jour. An unstoppable army of 12-year-old girls and their undersexed mothers made the Twilight series a phenomenon. Many a girl prayed that Jesus would bring an amber-eyed vampiric hottie into her life, an undead boyfriend who would carry her around the forest like a rucksack, a sparkly bloodsucking corpse who played piano and was good at baseball. HBO offered subscribers a decidedly more adult story with the premiere of True Blood, based on a series of books about Sookie Stackhouse, a buxom young Southerner who falls in love with a brooding, hunky vampire. But vampire fever hasn't stopped there. Hell no! This fall on the CW, teens, parents, and snarky 30-something hipsters who get a boner from ridiculing pop culture phenomena while secretly enjoying it, will be treated to some shit called The Vampire Diaries, which I think is about a girl who falls in love with two vampire brothers.

Stop, stop, STOP! We get it! Vampires are cool and when something's cool Hollywood has no choice but to shove it down our collective throat every second of every day until we can no longer stomach one more dreamy-haired vampire stud or tortured, hair-twisting human who loves him and we have no choice but to puke all over the place until the gutters are running waist deep with snot-colored vomit. Is that what you want, Hollywood? Is it?!?

Hey, I like True Blood, and Twilight wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen in my life (It was, however, one of the worst books I've ever read), but I know how this ends, and I know because I was a ska fan. That's right. The connection between ska music and vampires isn't initially crystal clear, but think about it. Ska wasn't super popular when I discovered it in my early high school days, in fact, there were only a handful of us at Charlotte Christian School that even knew what it was. It was weird. I remember there was this upper classman named Pete who I had never spoken to in my life, but somehow I just knew he listened to ska. It was something about his hair. One afternoon he walked up to me out of the blue and said, "Hey, you're Matt, right? You're that guy who likes ska." "Yes," I said quietly, a bit more awed than I probably should've been. "Cool," he smiled. We never spoke again.

Where was I going with that? Oh, yes. Ska started becoming more and more popular as I closed in on graduation and by the time I was a freshman at Campbell University, the ska renaissance was in full swing--an appropriate term as the swing renaissance grew out of ska's inevitable demise. By second semester, I was so fucking sick of ska music I couldn't hear it without rolling my eyes or shooting my "ska shoes" a hateful glance (Those things were so uncomfortable!). Most of America followed suit, giving up their momentary love of ska music and the party-down-good-times it brought along and moved on to, I don't know, Nickelback?

Here's the point: vampires will go the way of Less Than Jake unless we put a cap on things. I'm not saying abandon vampires completely, I'm merely suggesting giving them a break. My idea: let's give some other monsters a chance to shine. Like how about...

Zombies

Now I know what you're saying, "Matt, zombies are just as played out as vampires. What an idiotic suggestion." I'd agree. I never thought I'd say this, but I am growing pretty tired of the standard zombie story. But imagine this: take something like Twilight, remove Edward Cullen, and replace him with, I don't know, Steve the Zombie. Why can't a zombie boy experience the love of a high school girl? And the emotional conflict is just as stirring. Edward cannot allow himself to get too carried away with Bella, otherwise he will suck her dry. What about Steve? If he gets too close to his human sweetheart he will totally eat her brain. I've got goosebumps. Somebody write this shit down.
Incubus

What's sexier than an incubus? They're so horny, they've been know to bang women to death. Again, imagine Twilight, but replace Edward with Steve the Incubus. Sure, it's far more satisfying to tween girls to read a story in which the hunky boyfriend character refrains from pressuring his girlfriend for coitus, but imagine how much sexier it would be if the book was about an incubus and his lady friend getting it on 'til the break of dawn. I imagine the movie version would be a lot more appealing too.
Gnomes

When are gnomes gonna get a piece. Imagine Sookie Stackhouse risking her life to aid gnomes in their quest to be taken seriously in human society.

Actually, that sounds awful. Let's keep gnomes out of this. I'm not sure they qualify as "monsters" anyway.
Overweight Goth Kid

No one would believe this one. Forget I brought it up.

It doesn't have to be one of my suggestions, hell, plug in your favorite mythical creature (unicorn, merman, those things from Spaced Invaders). We need to give vampires a rest. I like them too much to see them clogging up the racks at CD Alley. Please, Hollywood, give the vampire community a few years to regroup. Can't you just find it in your hearts to STOP ALREADY?