vovat | I think these convention reviews get shorter every time

Yesterday was the eighth Monster-Mania Convention.

bethje and I have been to all eight (although we hardly did anything at the first one), and I think they've gone somewhat downhill. A lot of people come to them simply for autographs and merchandise, so the organizers seem to not put as much effort into the panel discussions, which is primarily what we come to see. At least they were smart enough this time to have panels run all day this time, rather than taking a mysterious break in the middle. As far as what we saw, Tyler Mane (the guy who plays Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's upcoming Halloween remake) was pretty cool, and did some audience participation bits. Matthew Lillard was more interesting than I thought he would be, and I like how he admitted that some of the movies he was in pretty much sucked. I'm still not sure why he was chosen as the final speaker of the night, though. And the panels with the stars of The Devil's Rejects are always fun, which is probably why they have them at pretty much every convention. My least favorite panelist was Andrew Bryniarski, who played Leatherface in the recent lousy remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I remembered him from his last convention as being rude and obnoxious, and if anything, he was even ruder and more obnoxious this time. At one point, he singled out an audience member for rolling her eyes at something he said. So, yeah, this definitely wasn't my favorite Monster-Mania, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

After the convention, we went out to eat at the nearby Friendly's, where we've gone after a fair number of these things, despite the fact that the service is never very good. I think part of the problem is the layout. We were seated in a part that was pretty much hidden from view for people in the kitchen. It was forever before we were waited on, and it might have only happened then because Beth caught the attention of a staff member who was walking by. For dessert, I had the Watermelon Slammer, which wasn't good. I should have stuck to the Orange Slammer, which I had last time and enjoyed. As much as I love real watermelon, fake watermelon flavor often tastes funny. Oh, well. At least now I know not to try to watermelon flavor again.

I was really tired after the convention, and decided to take a nap for about an hour and a half, but I ended up sleeping for upwards of four hours. And now it's probably about time to go to bed again, but I'm not that tired. Doing things during the day screws up my schedule, which is kind of weird, because I don't remember doing things during the night ever screwing me up that much when I worked during the day. I kind of wonder if I'd like it better if I didn't HAVE a schedule, but just went to bed when I was tired, and then to work for an allotted period of time when I was awake. But how many jobs are there where you can do that?