Horrordom and Boredom

[vovat]

After being cancelled last year, the Monster-Mania Convention was held in Cherry Hill this past weekend, so I suppose I should say something about it. Our friend Dave, who's an artist and musician, was there with his wife Krissy in one of the dealer rooms, so we checked in on them first. This was their first time going there. We mostly attended the question-and-answer panels, starting with Richard Brake and Jeff Daniel Phillips, who had been in Rob Zombie's 31 and 3 from Hell.

I hadn't realized that Brake had also played Joe Chill in Batman Begins. Based on his parts in the Zombie films, it's weird that he would have had a role where he didn't talk much. I understand he was also the Night King in Game of Thrones, or at least one of them, but I never watched that. He was born in Wales and now lives in London, but he spent his formative years in the American South and has a bit of a Southern accent. The next was with P.J. Soles, who was in Carrie and the first Halloween, and had a brief appearance in The Devil's Rejects where Sid Haig punched her and stole her car.

She talked about being in Stripes, which I haven't seen, and how Bill Murray was really moody while not on camera. On the other hand, she was also in Rock 'n' Roll High School (haven't seen that one either), and said the Ramones were pretty unassuming, and that she was initially confused by their music as she mostly listened to folk-rock stuff at the time.

Chris Durand, Michael Myers from Halloween H2O, did the next panel. There was a wait after that for the next panel in a different room, with Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich from Scream, who moderated the Q&A themselves.

Both that one and the one with Richard Brake had a lot of talk about removing shirts. The last guest to do a panel was Danny Trejo, who's always interesting.

People like a good redemption story, after all. It really wasn't very many sessions compared to previous conventions. They'll often have a few with a whole bunch of guests who worked on the same movie or franchise, and the maximum they had here was two at a time. I don't know if that was for health reasons or because no one really wanted to do them. I suspect some guests choose not to do them because that's time they could be making money from autographs and merchandise sales, but I don't know that for sure.

After the convention, we ate at the Cheesecake Factory for the first time. I found it surprisingly expensive for a place with a name like that, but I probably wouldn't get the pretzel and cheese fondue appetizer again anyway, not because it was bad but because that plus the meal was a little much. I still haven't finished my pasta or tried the slice of cheesecake I brought home. I'm hoping it's good, as that's what their name emphasizes, but that doesn't always work out. I mean, are olives the specialty at the Olive Garden? I also found out the next day that I'd left my credit card there, and while it wasn't that far out of the way, that area is confusing to navigate even with the GPS. We ended up getting home pretty late, and I had to get up earlier than usual today, so that wasn't fun. I had jury duty today, and I have to go back tomorrow for further questioning or narrowing down or something. I've had jury duty several times and never been selected, but I don't know what's going to happen this time. So far it's mostly just been waiting, and I finished both of the books I brought today, Philip John Lewin's The Spellcasters of Oz and Angelica Shirley Carpenter's Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist. The thing is, I have a digital book due back at the library in a few days, but I'm not allowed to bring electronic readers.

Comments

[ihavenoarms]

nice