Freddy and the Dreamers
Aug. 21st, 2018 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatThe Monster-Mania Convention was this past weekend, which means I went to conventions two weeks in a row, but very different ones. OzCon is pretty small and close-knit, while Monster-Mania is...well, not that big compared to some conventions, but you're much less likely to have strangers introduce themselves to you. Anyway, Beth and I attended the question-and-answer panels with various guests. The first one we saw was with Nick Castle, one of the people who played Michael Myers in the original Halloween. Then Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, and Michael McNaughton discussed their parts in E.T.
Sadly, no one asked about the Atari game. Barbara Hershey was next, and while I knew her name, I didn't know if I'd seen anything with her in it. According to her profile on the MM page she was in Black Swan and Insidious, but that doesn't mean I remember her roles.
A later panel had Billy Zane, and while I've never seen Titanic all the way through (that's why you don't show a movie on a bus that's longer than the estimated time to the destination), his role was pretty memorable.
He was also a member of Biff's gang in the first two Back to the Future films; and he was in Critters, which is on our Netflix queue. The final session was with Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Tuesday Knight, and Lisa Zane.
Yes, Lisa is Billy's sister, and she played Freddy Krueger's daughter in Freddy's Dead. Englund always has new stories to tell from his many years acting, but he also tries to throw as many questions as he can to other panelists. He says he's too old to play Freddy anymore, although I'm not really sure you can be too old to play a vengeful undead janitor with dream powers. One interesting thing he mentioned was how he never thought of Freddy as a child molester, apparently an idea Wes Craven had wanted to use in the first movie, but it was deemed too disturbing. Of course, killing them is also pretty damned disturbing, but I think it's done in such an over-the-top, unrealistic way that it's likely not as triggering as his being a pedophile. There's a brief glimpse in Nightmare on Elm Street 5 of a newspaper headline calling Freddy a molester, and it was a major part of the crappy remake. But Englund made clear that there's still a sexual element to Freddy, which makes sense as he's mostly dealing with teenagers and has the whole dream thing going on. It's kind of disappointing how many people are guests there but don't do the Q&A sessions. I mean, it's understandable in that it takes away from time they could be signing autographs (and making more money in the process), but there are people I would have liked to have seen address a group. This year, they had Rob Schneider and Pauly Shore, people who are well-known but not necessarily well-liked.
I can't say I've really done anything else interesting recently. We're still waiting on the board meeting for the co-op we want to get, and we're going to have to switch over to a more expensive Airbnb this coming weekend. At least we don't have much to move, but I don't think it would be possible without my car, which I usually don't keep up here. I came across something the other day on ASMR, a term that was coined in 2010 to indicate a relaxed, tingly feeling that some people get from certain, often unusual stimuli. That's not to be confused with ASFR, which is robot fetishism, and I know that from a Black Francis song.
It's not a scientific or medical thing, but what I've read definitely sounds familiar; I can recall one specific incident from my childhood when, for reasons I can't really explain, reading the phrase "whichever you prefer" gave me that sort of feeling. It's also happened at various other times, but I can't say what triggered it in those cases. It's a big thing on YouTube now, mostly involving, cute, soft-spoken young women doing fairly mundane things. It's weird that, if the videos are any indication, blowing bubbles with gum seems to be an ASMR trigger for some people, because I'm sometimes strangely fascinated with that even though I hardly ever chew gum myself. But maybe part of that is because I've never been able to blow bubbles even with pretty specific instructions. I was thinking recently about how some things that just seem to come easily to other people are difficult for me, often because of some really simple aspect I don't think of, like using just my wrist instead of my whole arm when hammering in nails. It's probably an autism thing.
Finally, I should plug The Lost Tales of Oz, because I have a few stories in it. Some people, including the contributors who were there, got advance copies at OzCon; but the official release date is today, Ozma's birthday.
It's available from the Royal Publisher of Oz. I haven't yet read all of it myself, but it looks great, and has illustrations by Eric Shanower.
Sadly, no one asked about the Atari game. Barbara Hershey was next, and while I knew her name, I didn't know if I'd seen anything with her in it. According to her profile on the MM page she was in Black Swan and Insidious, but that doesn't mean I remember her roles.
A later panel had Billy Zane, and while I've never seen Titanic all the way through (that's why you don't show a movie on a bus that's longer than the estimated time to the destination), his role was pretty memorable.
He was also a member of Biff's gang in the first two Back to the Future films; and he was in Critters, which is on our Netflix queue. The final session was with Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Tuesday Knight, and Lisa Zane.
Yes, Lisa is Billy's sister, and she played Freddy Krueger's daughter in Freddy's Dead. Englund always has new stories to tell from his many years acting, but he also tries to throw as many questions as he can to other panelists. He says he's too old to play Freddy anymore, although I'm not really sure you can be too old to play a vengeful undead janitor with dream powers. One interesting thing he mentioned was how he never thought of Freddy as a child molester, apparently an idea Wes Craven had wanted to use in the first movie, but it was deemed too disturbing. Of course, killing them is also pretty damned disturbing, but I think it's done in such an over-the-top, unrealistic way that it's likely not as triggering as his being a pedophile. There's a brief glimpse in Nightmare on Elm Street 5 of a newspaper headline calling Freddy a molester, and it was a major part of the crappy remake. But Englund made clear that there's still a sexual element to Freddy, which makes sense as he's mostly dealing with teenagers and has the whole dream thing going on. It's kind of disappointing how many people are guests there but don't do the Q&A sessions. I mean, it's understandable in that it takes away from time they could be signing autographs (and making more money in the process), but there are people I would have liked to have seen address a group. This year, they had Rob Schneider and Pauly Shore, people who are well-known but not necessarily well-liked.
I can't say I've really done anything else interesting recently. We're still waiting on the board meeting for the co-op we want to get, and we're going to have to switch over to a more expensive Airbnb this coming weekend. At least we don't have much to move, but I don't think it would be possible without my car, which I usually don't keep up here. I came across something the other day on ASMR, a term that was coined in 2010 to indicate a relaxed, tingly feeling that some people get from certain, often unusual stimuli. That's not to be confused with ASFR, which is robot fetishism, and I know that from a Black Francis song.
It's not a scientific or medical thing, but what I've read definitely sounds familiar; I can recall one specific incident from my childhood when, for reasons I can't really explain, reading the phrase "whichever you prefer" gave me that sort of feeling. It's also happened at various other times, but I can't say what triggered it in those cases. It's a big thing on YouTube now, mostly involving, cute, soft-spoken young women doing fairly mundane things. It's weird that, if the videos are any indication, blowing bubbles with gum seems to be an ASMR trigger for some people, because I'm sometimes strangely fascinated with that even though I hardly ever chew gum myself. But maybe part of that is because I've never been able to blow bubbles even with pretty specific instructions. I was thinking recently about how some things that just seem to come easily to other people are difficult for me, often because of some really simple aspect I don't think of, like using just my wrist instead of my whole arm when hammering in nails. It's probably an autism thing.
Finally, I should plug The Lost Tales of Oz, because I have a few stories in it. Some people, including the contributors who were there, got advance copies at OzCon; but the official release date is today, Ozma's birthday.
It's available from the Royal Publisher of Oz. I haven't yet read all of it myself, but it looks great, and has illustrations by Eric Shanower.
