I did notice during the broadcast that some of the Düsseldorf fans started cutting bits of grass out of the pitch and after the match was finally over for good, the Düsseldorf fans started demolishing the goal as well. That must be a particular quirk of Düsseldorf fans, since Werder Bremen fans (and I know quite a few of the more rabid variety) happily collect balls and jerseys and even beer glasses autographed by the players, but they don’t show a lot of interest in patches of grass or bits of the goal. When the Weser Stadion was refurbished, the old stands lay in a big heep on one of the parking lots for weeks, easily accessible to anyone, yet no one felt the need to take anything.

BTW, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but our interview was linked by Charles Tan at the Bibliophile Stalker blog. He gets a lot of traffic, so this is great exposure.

One of my colleagues is from Düsseldorf and of course this was main topic today at our institute… (man, I hate football talk! I just have nothing to contribute). He told us that grass trophies from such games are very important to Düsseldorf fans. Last time Düsseldorf managed to get into the First Bundesliga, his brother in law pillaged a bit of grass out of the middle circle of the field on which the historic(!) game was played right after the game. Apparently this bit of grass was quite healthy and survived in a pot on his windowsill much longer than Fortuna Düsseldorf in the 1. Liga. Well, they seem to have a tradition of storming the field to get trophies out of the grass…

These coincidences happen – I’ve had this experience myself that I was working on a novel when a massively hyped book with a very similar setting and plot came out (which turned out to be not so similar after all, once I actually read it). And of course, somebody waking from a coma to find themselves in a deserted and vastly changed world is an ideal opening for a zombie story, since it plunges the protagonist right into the full blown apocalypse without having to set up how the apocalypse happened. In fact, it’s such an ideal opening that it’s a wonder no one used it before 2002.

Like I said, I never read the comics, so I’m not sure whether the issues I had with The Walking Dead stem from the comics or from the TV adaption (though it’s likely the latter).

“So we were working on our second issue by the time I saw [28 Days Later]. It was going to be a matter of somehow trying to restage the entire first issue, because it was a very similar coma opening. I made a decision—which I pretty much regret at this point—I said, ‘You know what? It’s so different [from that point on], I will probably never hear anything about this.’ And I was wrong.”

That said, I haven’t watched the show, myself. I’ve read and enjoyed some of the comic. But judging by your comments here, I don’t think I’m going to make time for the TV version anytime soon.