When you're on the road (the missus kicked me out, it's a long story) it's important to know where you can turn in the unlikely event of some competitor's rogue experiment or dark denizen of the hoary nethertime.
Eat your heart out, HP Lovecraft.
Say you’re being pursued by vampires. Yes, vampires. (Stranger things on heaven & earth, Horatio...) You borrowed their DVD of Cocktail and they want it back, but you can’t find it, so you’ve been forced to flee. (It could happen, Vampires love Tom Cruise as a rule.) So the Legions of the damned are hot on your trail and you find yourself in a part of town where all of the Walmarts are fresh out of stakes and garlic and there’s nary a church to be found.
What’s a horror movie hero to do?
I wouldn't know, I'm a mad scientist. And what I would do is order up some beer & hot wings and chat up the cute co-ed in the short-shorts of course. Because according to my extensive research, if you’re being pursued by vampires and churches are rare, rest easy, friends. Hooters is holy ground.
That’s right, Hooters!
According to some cub reporter at Fox News, in June 2006 Monsignor Isidore Rozycki blessed his town’s Hooters. (And I thought the "Blessing of the fleet" was a nice tradition... Oh. Oh, no no, the restaurant, people! This is a family show!)
"But I can only eat so many hot wings, Doc. At a church I can find secret Vatican force of vampire hunters or pick up an approved Vampire Hunter's Kit. At the very least they have holy water!"
Like you wouldn't rather have holy beer anyway. Fine, okay. Sooner or later you’re going to have to leave the restaurant, whereupon you will be in no better shape than when you went in. Well, you won’t die hungry, I suppose. (Or sober, necessarily)
In the interest of keeping my loyal readers alive, I have taken it upon myself to prepare a little primer on Vampire Slaying.
Step #1 - Ask to see his passport or driver’s license. If he’s an American Vampire, great. Proceed to step #2 with all due haste.
If your vamp has a foreign passport, you have a problem. In an age of heightened cultural sensibilities, you’ll find yourself being slapped with a subpoena faster than you can say “Buffy” should you attempt to kill them in a manner out of sync with their deviation from the Carpathian mean. (Because we all know that lawyers have ties to these guys.)
(Unless you're from Arizona, I guess...)
Luckily, we can turn to Cecil over at the Straight Dope, who helped us out with our Zombie problem awhile back. He has compiled a list of the traditional manners of dispatching the undead in a manner which is sensitive to their country and culture of origin. Please feel free to print out Cecil’s list and keep it in your wallet for quick consultation, should your place of refuge’s traditional hour of last call fall before sunrise.
Step #2
Dispatch the vampire.
There are several ways in which to do this. American vamps conform to the Bela Lugosi school and you can feel free to wail on him with the nearest sharp pointy stick, torch, chainsaw, plate of hot wings, buxom waitress, high-heeled shoe, or whathaveyou.
For cross-cultural extermination, I refer you to Cecil’s list, mentioned above.
Now there are those who whiners would poo poo our fun, who would have you believe that the vampire chasing you is just misunderstood. Or perhaps make the specious claim that vampires are merely suffering from the rare disorder Porphyria, which is caused by a blood deficiency and (in extreme cases) causes facial and skin issues which sound compellingly vampire-like.
Bunk.
This simply doesn't hold up under scrutiny. If some fellow is actively seeking your blood and shying away from stakes, crosses, garlic and Hooters girls, then rest assured you have a legitimate prince of the undead on your hands. You may stake him and order another round with a clean conscience.
And if none of these things work? Run faster.
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