Stratovania

Last weekend was the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill, and we went on Saturday. I'm sure I've already written about how there aren't as many question-and-answer panels as there used to be, and I don't know whether this is because the convention organizers don't want to do them or the guests don't. The first two panels this time were with Craig Sheffer and William Fichtner, neither of whom we really knew, although they were both in some movies we've seen. The latter was a guy the Joker killed near the beginning of The Dark Knight.

The third was Heather Langenkamp, who talked among other things about how it was kind of weird to show her son A Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time, although she doesn't have a problem with kids watching horror movies.

For the longer panels, the first had Melissa Barrera, Tony Revolori, and Marley Shelton, who were in some of the later Scream movies.

The final session was a Hellraiser reunion with Doug Bradley, Ashley Laurence, Simon Bamford, Barbie Wilde, and Nicholas Vince.

Clive Barker was at the convention, but couldn't attend the panel for health reasons. There was some discussion of the Hulu remake, and a few of them mentioned that they liked the aesthetic, but not how much it differed from the original story, and downplayed the original BDSM themes. I'd heard something before about how the first movie was really more about Julia, but people liked Pinhead so much that he basically took over the franchise, even though he's usually a supporting character. Bradley also talked a bit about Barker's screenplay for Hellraiser III, which ended up not being made for weird legal reasons. It would have had Pinhead being resurrected in a vat in a church, and the Great Pyramid turning out to be a Lament Configuration housing the first Cenobite. Instead, we got CD-Head.

The air conditioning in my car hasn't been working. Actually, what happens is that it works at first, but soon cuts out after I start driving. I took it to the dealer, and they said it would cost upwards of $3000 to get it fixed, and it didn't seem worth it. It's definitely made for some uncomfortable rides, however. It hasn't just been incredibly hot in this area recently, but the air just feels gross and oppressive even when it isn't that hot. It makes me want to leave the apartment even less than usual. At the convention, it was warm even inside the hotel for the first few panels, then too cold in the bigger room for the last two.

While down in South Jersey, we went to a Spirit Halloween, and I took my usual pictures of costumes with weird generic names. And it isn't even just rip-offs of copyrighted characters that get these names. They're not even particularly funny, just odd.

Just don't say "Undead Guy" three times.

I guess the difference between a classic and a sassy nurse is slightly shorter stockings? Or is it the needle?

And is a bull scarecrow a real thing? There was an Oz book where the Scarecrow was turned into a bear, but not a bull.

Two weekends ago was Monster-Mania. The problem is that we usually spend most of our time there at the question-and-answer panels, but due to the writers' and actors' strikes, people weren't allowed to discuss their work. They could still be there and sign autographs, but there weren't any panels. Beth had already paid for it, though, so we still went, but didn't spend a lot of time. We walked around the dealer rooms and bought some drawings from an artist named Jen Tracy. She got a haunted one, and I got Tik-Tok.

I also thought her Medusa drawing, which we didn't buy, was really cool. And we watched part of a game show called Curse Your Luck, a play on Press Your Luck with horror movie characters instead of Whammies.

There was a trivia part, but it was difficult for the audience to play along. The screen was too small to read, and the hosts didn't finish the questions if a contestant answered them before they were done reading. We did learn that Friendly's has the mini mozzarella sticks again, at least at the location we went to, although Beth says they taste different than they did before. It's hard to tell, as it's been so long, but I think I got what she meant.

This past Wednesday, we went to Playland, where we both felt kind of sick after going on some pretty tame rides. Beth swears by motion sickness pills, and thinks the ones I bought just weren't up to the task. I also bought more pizza than we could finish, because I wasn't sure how big the personal ones were. And I'm usually capable of eating a lot of pizza. But anyway, it was pretty fun, but there wasn't anything new, although I think it was the first time we rode Catch a Wave. There used to be something quite similar at Clementon Park, where it was called the Falling Star.

I mentioned last year that the Derby Racer seems slower now, and one of the employees confirmed that, although he didn't know the reason why that happened. His guess was that there was an injury. I also mentioned the Old Mill, actually the first thing we rode on our first visit to the park, but I didn't talk about the sign that says it has a "dark and forbidding atmosphere."I guess things have changed since 1929, and dragons aren't as scary when they audibly creak anyway.

I always like to take pictures from the Ferris Wheel, and I guess it's a good thing I'm calm enough about it now, because I used to get really nervous when that kind of ride (not this particular one) would stop at the top to load more people. I'm still kind of scared I might drop something, though.


We've been watching the new Futurama episodes, and from what I've seen and the descriptions of the ones that have yet to air, it kind of seems like they're overdoing the commentary on current events. They've always done that, but not quite that often. I'll wait until I've actually seen the entire season to pass judgment, though. Also, I downloaded the Steam version of Final Fantasy X some years ago and decided to check it out this weekend. There's a guy who ends up 1000 years in the future and befriends a guy voiced by John DiMaggio, which is pretty familiar. I'll probably write more about the game once I've gotten a little further into it or it becomes too frustrating for me to want to continue, as FF8 was.


Finally, tomorrow is Ozma's birthday. How are you going to celebrate?

We went to one small amusement park not long ago, and another even smaller one just yesterday. This was Clementon Park, in the area where Beth grew up. She went there a lot as a kid, and we went there together several times as adults. It had closed a few years ago, but was then bought by a new owner. It was always small, but now a lot of it is water rides, so there's even less room for the dry rides. It wasn't very crowded, so we got to ride everything we wanted to, mostly multiple times. There were a lot of little kids, but that was proportional to how many people there were in general. They still have the train, Sea Dragon, the carousel, the swings, and the log flume from earlier.

It's weird how a log flume is technically a water ride, but is usually not in water parks. It's called King Neptune's Revenge, and I've probably said this before, but I'm not sure what he's seeking revenge for. The train is of the C.P. Huntington variety, modeled on the Central Pacific Railroad locomotive built in 1863.

A lot of amusement parks have these, and this one goes along a track lined with animal statues.

Speaking of animals, I appreciate that the carousel has some animals other than horses, including a dragon, a lion, a tiger, and a zebra, although not all of them move up and down.

The lion has an eagle on its back, so I have to wonder if they're the parents of a griffin.

I rode on the rabbit for my first ride, and it reminded me of Peg Amy riding Wag in Kabumpo in Oz.

There's also still the wooden roller coaster they put in to replace the old Jackrabbit, which was previously called the Tsunami and the J2, but is now the Hellcat. Whatever the name is, it's a very rough ride.

And the Ferris Wheel is still there, but it wasn't running that day. The park also got a new Scrambler and Tilt-A-Whirl, and by that I mean they're new to the park; they look and sound pretty old.

For a while, they had a Turtle Whirl, with cars shaped like turtles. The current one is painted purple with green slime.

We didn't go on the new Super Loops, called the Ring of Fire, but we did do the Thunder Drop. They have a Pizza Hut at the park now, so I had a personal pan pizza for dinner. Well, Beth had one slice. I eat a lot of pizza and Beth not much of it, but Pizza Hut is nostalgic for both of us. Yeah, Brooklyn has a lot of pizza that is objectively better, but it doesn't remind me as much of childhood. Oh, and at one of the gift shops, there was this flag with a bird on it. It reminded me of Heckle and Jeckle, and it's not like it's the park mascot or anything, as far as I know.


We'd been going to the Monster-Mania Convention for a long time, so it was surprising that the most recent one made the news, and not in a good way. Gary Busey was a guest there, and there were a few sexual harassment allegations about him. This had nothing to do with us, of course, but it's crazy when something familiar comes up in unexpected places.

We have tickets to see Neko Case twice this week, both at standing room venues. Let's hope my feet will hold out for that long.

Last weekend was the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill. Beth and I have been to most of these, and there's not as much to say about them anymore. It does seem like they're downplaying the question-and-answer panels, and while I get that this is time when the guests aren't able to sell stuff, they've always been the main thing we do. The first three were only a half hour each.

First was Roger L. Jackson, the voice actor behind Ghostface in the Scream films, as well as Mojo Jojo in The Powerpuff Girls, Doc Brown's father in the Back to the Future game, and the talking mucus creature in Mucinex commercials. He actually did voices throughout the panel, which was pretty cool. I've only seen the first Scream, and there are supposed to be more guests from the series next time, so maybe I should get caught up on that.

Next came Ray Santiago and Dana DeLorenzo from Ash vs. the Evil Dead, which I've never watched. I'm not against watching it, as I liked the original Evil Dead movies (Beth didn't, for what it's worth); but as it was, I didn't get much out of the session.

Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, who were in Re-Animator and a few other films together, did the next panel. Barbara was in the back of the room (with her daughter, I think) before it started, and she walked past Beth and said, "Excuse me" on her way. We saw Re-Animator, but it's been a while. What I remember best was Jeffrey talking about how they were filming Castle Freak in Italy around the beginning of the O.J. Simpson trial, and there was a headline referring to O.J. as the new Othello. There was a wait before the next panel, and everyone who wasn't a VIP had to line up in the cold. I suspect they didn't alter the plans after they found out it was going to be below freezing. Fortunately, it wasn't for that long.

The panel for Dexter, had Erik King, C.S. Lee, and David Zayas, but not Michael C. Hall, even though he was there. Although I didn't actually look around the autograph rooms, apparently Anthony Michael Hall was at the convention as well, and I have no information as to whether anyone mixed them up. I remember, some years ago, someone told me I looked like Michael, which probably wasn't meant unkindly, but I'm not sure what I think of being compared to a guy known for playing a serial killer. I've never seen Dexter, but the panel was a pretty big draw.

Finally, we had four people involved with the Friday the 13th franchise: Warrington Gillette, Derek Mears, Steve Miner, and Kane Hodder. Warrington was the original Jason in Part 2, but the story I've heard is that he didn't want to do the stunts, so Steve Dash took over the role. Dash was a pretty regular Monster-Mania guest until his death a few years ago, and I don't think Gillette was before, and I have to suspect that wasn't a coincidence.

Masks and vaccinations weren't required at the convention, and I'm not sure that was the best idea, especially considering how tightly packed the seats were, but the authorities have long since stopped pretending to care. I didn't particularly want to wear a mask for that long anyway, but I would have if it had been recommended; I don't feel qualified to make these decisions for myself. As of last week, we no longer need to wear masks at our desks at work, although they're still required when dealing with the public and recommended in the hallways. The desks aren't that close together, and there aren't that many people in my office, so that's probably a good compromise. They still require masks on the subway, but I miss when they were uncrowded, although I guess the MTA wouldn't. It's weird how, even though mask rules stuck around for a while, everybody basically just stopped insisting on social distancing, I guess because it was difficult to enforce. I'm sure it was pretty much impossible on the subways.

Today is Pi Day, and five days ago was Mario Day, although both of those only work with the American way of writing dates, which really doesn't make a lot of sense. Speaking of things we do differently here, I just recently saw something online about how the letter pi is actually pronounced pretty much the same as our P in Greek. I've also seen people insist that omicron is pronounced with a short O, but Duolingo always uses a long one. So does Lrrr, for that matter.

Of course, it's pretty standard for foreign words to be pronounced differently when incorporated into another language, but while it's sometimes because a sound really isn't used in the new language, other times it seems totally arbitrary. But since the English P can also be used as a variable, maybe pi is pronounced differently on purpose. I didn't think until today to look up why that's what the number is called, but according to Wikipedia it's short for periphereia, meaning periphery or circumference. By the way, I also understand they skipped over xi when naming COVID variants so people wouldn't associate it with Xi Jinping, even though it's pronounced totally differently. They only ever talk about the really prominent variants on the news anyway, so it kind of seems like they went right from delta to omicron.

I actually did play a bit of a Mario game on Mario Day, specifically Paper Mario: The Origami King. I beat the Scissors on my second try, took a few to get through the first-person shooting segment with the airship cannon and the paper planes, and still haven't gotten through the part with a bunch of origami troops chasing you through a volcano.

There are too many ways to die instantly in this part of the game. Still, I haven't totally given up. I mean, I eventually finished that river rapids section. I realize that trying something until you get it right is a standard part of video games, but it can be so frustrating. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I finally managed to get some star fragments after looking up how to wish on shooting stars. I also have some Pisces fragments, but Celeste hasn't given me a recipe that uses those. I checked up on where I left off on Final Fantasy IX, and I'm up to Deathguise, one of the last few bosses. He totally kicked my party's butts, though, so I'm going to have to level up some more before trying that again. From what I've seen online, he's kind of a wake-up call in that respect. And because I apparently don't have enough games already in progress, I started on Dragon Quest Builders, which Beth gave me for our anniversary.

This past weekend was the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill. Beth and I go to these regularly. For the first few, we went on all three days; but after a while they started only really having events on Saturdays, so there isn't a lot of point to going to the other days. For us, that is; other people go in order to meet celebrities and get autographs, and I'm sure that's the bigger money-maker for the convention. The night before, we stopped at Red Lobster on the way down from Brooklyn. I don't think either of us had eaten there in two years or so. It's still good, but not good enough to go there that often. She tried a Crabfest special, while I stuck with shrimp. On Saturday, we drove to the convention, and fortunately they have a dedicated parking space aside from the one at the hotel itself, which fills up really quickly. This time, they reduced the length of the daytime panels from an hour (well, generally less than that, really) to a half hour each. It moved things along quickly, but there were some guests I might have liked to hear from a bit more. The first panel was with Shawnee Smith, who was in the original Saw movies. Then came Beverly D'Angelo, who had some interesting stories.

When someone asked about her appearance on The Simpsons as Lurleen Lumpkin, she mentioned that she wrote "Bagged Me a Homer" and never signed over the rights, so she continued to get residuals for it. She sang much of it, too. She also discussed how she lived near Frank Zappa, and she met Matt Groening through him. His house was since bought by Lady Gaga, and there are always a lot of cars outside. Next was Kathy Najimy, who mentioned having been a big fan of Bette Midler some time before starring in Hocus Pocus with her. (That's a movie I still haven't seen. Beth saw it at the theater with her uncle.)

She also talked about how Peggy Hill's interest in Boggle came from her, and the character's bad Spanish was how a lot of Americans in California spoke the language. The last of the daytime panels was Devon Sawa, and I didn't know much about him, although I did see the original Final Destination some time ago.


After a fairly long wait, here were two later, hour-long panels, the first being several of the actors who played Cenobites in the Hellraiser movies: Barbie Wilde, Nicholas Vince, Simon Bamberg, and Doug Bradley. Clive Barker also showed up for part of it, although he left early.

He and Doug knew each other from way back when they both lived in Liverpool. Doug addressed the story about how he was offered the part of either Pinhead or the mattress delivery man, which is technically true, but it was always intended that he play Pinhead. There was just a moment where he thought maybe he should take a role where you could see his face. Some other discussion involved how there might have been more to the story of the second film if they hadn't run out of money. The final session was with Robert Englund, who talked about how he wouldn't necessarily mind playing Freddy Krueger again, but knew he couldn't do it for much longer, and thought they should go with someone younger.

He said he'd heard a rumor about Kevin Bacon taking the part (or maybe that was just Robert's own suggestion; I can't recall for sure), but as a guy mentioned afterwards, Bacon is only eleven years younger. I wouldn't be surprised if they do make another remake at some point, although the 2010 one with Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy got bad reviews (and deservedly so, in my opinion). I should mention that we saw someone dressed as Falkor from The Neverending Story, not really horror-related, but a great costume.

Dave Hagan, who runs the convention, said that next year he wants to try having a sort of spin-off highlighting other pop culture, because he's had guests who were interested in attending but didn't fit the theme, not that I'm entirely sure what Beverly D'Angelo has to do with horror. Dave also wrote a novel, which I bought for Beth. Our tradition is to eat at Friendly's afterwards, although we go there quite often when we visit New Jersey anyway.

Today, we went to a birthday party for Beth's young cousins before returning to Brooklyn. They have four dogs there, and they all want to be around her uncle Harry, even though two of them technically aren't his dogs.

Now we're back home again. We don't like to leave for long, because the cats like to have people around. I understand yesterday was Black Cat Appreciation Day, and we weren't even around ours.

The 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.

Today is Ozma's birthday! That's not what most of this post is about, but I always have to acknowledge that I remember the birthday of one of my favorite fictional characters. I intend to write at least one Oz post later this week (and the one I'm planning might actually be a bit harsh on the Royal Ruler), but since the last post I made on my WordPress was Oz-related, I want to cover some other things before getting back to fairyland.

This past weekend was the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill, which Beth and I attended, but we didn't stay as long as we usually do. We mostly go to the question-and-answer panels, and while they usually end at 10, this time they were scheduled to end at 9 so they could do the costume contest earlier. Then Fairuza Balk canceled, which meant the last panel ended at 7. I had wanted to see Fairuza, since Return to Oz was so significant to me. Oh, well. The first speaker we did see was Zach Galligan from Gremlins, who mentioned how much more violent and disturbing some earlier drafts of the movie were, including such things as Gizmo dying and turning into Stripe.

I think there was also something about mogwai being from outer space, or at least that was in the novelization.

Daphne Zuniga, whom I mostly knew from Spaceballs, was next, followed by Danielle Harris.

The panel for The Devil's Rejects consisted of Bill Moseley and Sid Haig, the latter of whom I was glad to see again after he'd had to cancel his last appearance for health reasons. The two of them are always entertaining.

After an hour break, the final panel had three people who'd played Jason Voorhees: Steve Dash from Part 2, Tom Morga from Part 5, and Derek Mears from the remake. Okay, if you've seen the movies, you know that one of them wasn't the real Jason. Steve was such a cranky old New Yorker, and it was awesome.


We've made it a tradition to eat at Friendly's after the convention, usually at the nearby one in Cherry Hill, as it's the only one we can easily get to before it closes. Since it was earlier in the evening this time, Beth suggested going to another one, and we probably should have. It seems like we're more likely to get bad service at the Cherry Hill location than other ones. Maybe that's just a coincidence, but it really shouldn't have taken almost two hours to have dinner there. Also, aren't silverware and napkins being provided generally a given? The next day, we ate at Pizzeria Uno for the first time in a while. They still have the shrimp and crab dip appetizer, which is really good. I remember getting sick the first time I tried their pizza, but I later learned to like it.

I didn't see the eclipse today, nor did I notice it being particularly dark outside the window at work. I'm sure there are plenty of recordings of it, but I don't plan on seeking any of them out, and I'm sure it's not the same anyway. I hadn't gotten the special glasses or anything, though. I wonder if this eclipse was visible in Oz, and if so what the attendees at Ozma's birthday party thought of it.

This past weekend was pretty eventful. On Friday evening, I went to see Cracker at City Winery. I believe it was advertised as an acoustic show, but while David Lowery did play an acoustic guitar, Johnny Hickman played an electric one. They were joined by a guy called Pistol on steel guitar. Most of the cheaper seats at the venue have obstructed views, and none of the pictures I took came out well, but it was still a lot of fun.

The set started with "Pitchforks and Torches," which David said had become much more relevant since he wrote it. I don't remember everything they played, but I'm pretty sure it was the first time I ever heard them do "Dr. Bernice" live. For some reason, somebody cheered after the line that mentions Karen Black. The stripped-down arrangement for "Teen Angst" was pretty cool as well. For the encore, they did a cover of "It Was a Very Good Year," then closed with "King of Bakersfield" because the first line mentions wine. I didn't have any wine at City Winery, but I did have mozzarella flatbread and Diet Coke. David has been in the news recently for his lawsuit against Spotify, which led to an article referring to him as a "cranky rocker" right in the headline. Funny, I know Taylor Swift didn't let Spotify use her catalog, and I don't recall anyone calling her cranky. It kind of reminded me of the recent Last Week Tonight bit about journalism, and how you can easily get news for free these days, but people still need to pay for newspapers in order for the journalists to be able to do their jobs. And I don't think it's fair to blame the consumers in such cases. Entertainment is expensive, so who isn't going to take advantage of the ability to get it cheaply or for free? Remember when file sharing was first becoming a thing, and there were arguments that it was hurting record sales, but also that people were being introduced to bands they wouldn't otherwise have heard of? I'm sure both were true, and it's difficult to prove which was more common. But then, artists generally don't make that much from record sales anyway. That said, I did buy both a Cracker compilation including a live recording and a Johnny Hickman solo album at the show, so I'm doing my tiny part.

I took the bus down to South Jersey after the show, and drove to Cherry Hill for the Monster-Mania Convention the next day. Beth and I were both quite tired, but even the panels that weren't all that interesting tended to go by pretty quickly this time. The panels are often in the form of reunions, which basically means several actors who were in the same movie, and often not the most famous ones.

Lee Majors did the first session, then after him were reunions for Fright Night, Revenge of the Nerds, The Fog, and Halloween 6.

We've seen the first and the last of those. I've heard people say the producer's cut of the Halloween film is better than the official version, but I've also heard it involves Dr. Loomis becoming evil, which doesn't sound right. Apparently there was a lot of difficulty in getting the movie made, including the director finding Loomis' character boring when Donald Pleasence largely carried the earlier movies (well, except 3, which he wasn't in, and neither was Michael Myers).

Jason Patric, who was in The Lost Boys, had his own question-and-answer session. I have seen that one, but I don't remember it much. It does have the distinction of being the first R-rated movie Beth saw at the theater, but I'm sure that's unrelated to how much attention the convention gives it. Then came two actors from the Bates Motel television series, followed by five stars of Nightmare on Elm Street 4.

These included Robert Englund, who is pretty much just known as Freddy Krueger when he's known at all, but has actually worked with a lot of different actors and done just about every sort of acting work. While he could easily fill an hour by himself, he's also quite good at directing attention to his co-stars. We've made a habit of eating at the nearby Friendly's after the convention, but this time they were out of Diet Coke, and the waiter said he'd accept a coupon but the manager wouldn't take it. He could have told us these things when we first got there.

I started a new temp job today, which is supposed to be full-time for a few months, but today and tomorrow it's only five hours per day. Then I don't come in at all on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Monday. For me, training is pretty much always more tedious than actually doing the work.

Within the past few days, bethje and I attended a performance of Les Miserables at the Imperial Theater and the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill. I wasn't originally supposed to go to the former, but the person Beth had originally planned on going with canceled. I read the book a few years ago at Beth's behest, and one thing I noticed about the musical interpretation was that it came across as much more sympathetic to Eponine. Victor Hugo presented her as ugly and annoying, while in the play she's the one everyone tends to identify with. I can't help but suspect the main reason Marius wasn't interested in a relationship with her is that he didn't want to have to meet her parents. After the show, we ate at the Heartland Brewery, which Beth considers her favorite restaurant in New York City. I can't say I have one of those, at least not yet. The food is quite good, but expensive. I can't say I've ever tried the beer, but I'm not a fan of beer anyway. It kind of seems wrong to go to a place that advertises itself as a brewery and NOT have beer, but I guess that's like saying you're doing Burger King wrong if you don't get a burger, or that you shouldn't build any animal other than a bear at Build-a-Bear Workshop.

Speaking of feeling like I'm doing something wrong, I've attended the Monster-Mania Convention many times, and I'm still not sure I'd really consider myself a horror fan. I guess I am by extension, since Beth has shown me a lot of stuff she liked, and it's not like I didn't enjoy it. I'd probably feel more at home at an Oz convention, and there actually WAS one of those this past weekend, but it was in California. I would like to attend that sometime, though. Maybe next year. Anyway, the two of us mostly just attend the question-and-answer panels, but they weren't as interesting this year as some of them have been in the past. When a guest shows up but doesn't do a Q&A, I always wonder if they weren't asked or they chose not to. It DOES take up time they could use to make more money signing autographs, but it's also a sign of goodwill. Sid Haig is always a good panelist, and he was supposed to do a Q&A last time, but was too sick to attend. Still, however, he didn't do one this time either. Another guest I would have thought would be a shoe-in for a panel was George Wendt, if only because I think the audience yelling out "NORM!" would have made it worthwhile. And yes, Wendt was in a horror movie, the 1986 House, as was Richard Moll who played Bull on Night Court. I wonder if he ever does conventions.

Guests who did have panels included some actors from the Godzilla films, Mitch Peleggi (Director Skinner from The X-Files), Denis O'Hare, Danielle Harris and George P. Wilbur from the Halloween series, Alex Vincent and Brad Dourif from Child's Play, Malcolm McDowell, and several actors from Scream.
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We've gotten into the habit of eating at the nearby Friendly's after the convention, and this time was no exception. I do kind of wish someone else we knew attended these conventions. Looking through the posts of other attendees on Facebook, I did come across this. I don't know the guy, but I DO know the person who drew the picture that's on his shirt. I probably would have freaked out if I'd seen it in person, but I think he was there the day before we were.

The twenty-eighth Monster-Mania Convention was held this past weekend. I believe the number counts the ones in Maryland, but not the one in Connecticut, or something like that. I don't know. bethje and I have attended all the Monster-Manias in Cherry Hill except for one. While we did look at the dealer room, we spent most of the day attending the question-and-answer panels, which have the advantage of not costing any extra money. The first was with Michael Berryman, who recounted his experiences bonding with wolves and tigers (he's a regular Dr. Dolittle, apparently) and of tracking down people who violated their bail.

The next panel was supposed to be with Peter Mayhew, but he canceled at the last minute, and you don't argue with a Wookiee. It does bug me when people do that, though. If you don't want to do the Q&A, don't agree to it beforehand. Verne Troyer was next, and Beth remarked that he needs to come up with longer answers to his questions, because he finished them all very quickly. Adam West and Burt Ward promoted the upcoming 1960s Batman DVD/Blu-Ray set, and they were still able to play off each other.

Burt and his wife now run a rescue for large dogs. Derek Mears and Bill Moseley had a panel together, and even they couldn't figure out why, as they'd never appeared in any of the same movies.

Derek took a picture of the audience, and you can see us in it. In the second photo, we're in the seventh row back, all the way to the left. There was a Q&A for Insidious that ended up being cut short, but I didn't mind because I barely remembered anything about the film anyway. There was an hour break before the next set of panels in a different room, and we waited outside for most of the time while the people around us discussed Comic-Con. I've only been to a comic convention once in my life, and it was a fairly small one in Philadelphia. While I'd certainly be interested in the larger conventions, I have to suspect that my fear of crowds and hatred of waiting would get in the way. From what I hear, they're incredibly crowded, and so many people want to attend the events that they have to use a lottery system to determine who's allowed in. I kind of think Monster-Mania has gotten too crowded, so I can only imagine what those are like. I miss going to Oz conventions, but they never seem to have them in this part of the country anymore. Maybe someday I'll have the money to make it to California for the Winkie Convention. Anyway, the 7:00 panel was for Return of the Living Dead, which we'd never seen. It turned out to largely consist of the two oldest members of the panel making dirty jokes. One of them, Clu Gulager, had once acted alongside Ronald Reagan and Lee Marvin. Also on this panel was Linnea Quigley, whom Beth and I actually know primarily from the Horror Hall of Fame TV specials in the early nineties. Robert Englund hosted, and Linnea appeared in segments with her then-husband, special effects makeup artist Steve Johnson. I don't think she ever talked (or screamed, for that matter) in them. They Live is another movie we haven't seen, but it looks to be pretty popular on the Internet, and I put it on our Netflix queue. Keith David has been in a fair number of other things we have seen. If I had been braver and could think of a legitimate question, maybe I would have asked him about his work on Gargoyles, which I used to watch a lot in high school. Rowdy Roddy Piper was there as well, and that reminds me of a question someone asked about why they often have professional wrestlers as guests at Monster-Mania. Since Roddy was in a horror movie, he's relevant, but others aren't so much. The answer was that some people who aren't big on horror might want to see wrestlers instead. Okay, but by that logic they should have a bunch of other non-horror stuff as well. It's not like everybody who doesn't like horror automatically likes pro wrestling. Then again, they DID have Adam West and some Star Wars actors, so I guess they do try to expand things a bit in other ways. I guess you could consider Chewbacca a monster, but he's not a SCARY monster, unless he loses at holographic space chess. The final Q&A of the night was with Mads Mikkelsen, the Danish actor who plays Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal. There are occasionally guests who seem to attract a lot of women, and Mads was definitely one of them. The ladies love this guy. We watched the first few episodes of the show before coming to the convention, and I did like it. In truth, I don't watch a whole lot of recent TV, which makes me feel a bit left out sometimes, as that's a good deal of what many people talk about. Caroline Dhavernas, who played a character who hallucinated that objects were talking to her in Wonderfalls, is a psychiatrist on Hannibal. I always think it's interesting when an actor plays two roles that are opposites in some way. It's sort of like how Robert Englund was the one who led an angry mob against a serial killer in Strangeland. You'll notice I don't have any pictures for the later panels, and that's mostly because my phone battery died and I didn't bring a regular camera. Since I got a phone that takes halfway decent photographs, I've been neglecting my digital camera. I sometimes feel a little guilty about that, but the batteries on that never seem to last either.

We ate at Friendly's after the convention, and haven't done that much since then. I did get an oil change on Sunday, so that's something. Also, the cats had been staying at Beth's mom's house, but we brought them back up to the apartment last night. They hated the ride (pretty much goes without saying for cats), but they didn't take much time to adjust to being back here. It's probably easier for them to get the attention they crave when they don't have to compete with the dogs. Beth isn't feeling well now, but Wally still keeps trying to wake her up.