Our Traveler Returns from SPACE

It’s been several years since I last sold comics at a convention, but this month found me once again behind the table. The Plastic Farm table, to be precise, at the Small Press & Alternative Comics Expo (SPACE) in Columbus, Ohio. Plastic Farm is an ongoing series chronicling the deepening insanity of a man who can alter reality, and it’s the brainchild of Rafer Roberts.

The reason I was at Rafer’s table is that he had drawn the comic I was there to sell, Wild Women of the Kitty-Kat Galaxy. Rafer graciously agreed to help me ease back into the game, and I found it very calming to talk comics with him during the slow periods of the show.

Slow periods have always been my 2nd biggest fear about conventions. When left with my own thoughts, I tend to become overwhelmed with doubts and depression. This in turn keeps costumers away and leaves me in the abusive grip of my brain.

There were stretches of time where I was alone at the table; what’s the point of being surrounded by indie creators and not checking out their work? Having several years of perspective behind me, I realized that I could beat my bad brain. Low traffic means only less opportunity, and I let that get to me I can miss those people who do come within range. Like a trap-door spider, I just need to be patient until prey presents itself.

But less killy-eaty than that.

Besides, I found that I had missed the camaraderie of like-minded story-tellers. Everything from mini-comics to graphic novels were on display, ranging in narrative structure from image-dreams to biographies to continuing adventures. It’s like stepping into the fire bath of She-who-must-be-obeyed; it makes you immortal, or it returns you to your actual age.

On second thought, it’s more like something else. Go ahead and pretend I had a clever allusion for getting a power-up.

…

My biggest fear about conventions, by the way, is being trapped by a skeevy fellow describing his liberated, nearly-naked heroine to me in excruciating (and panting) detail. This happens, though thankfully not so often at small press shows.

So, it looks like I’ll be going back next year. Maybe I’ll even have another new comic!

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Magical, Farting Elves

Network diagnostics are not a strong point of mine, so when things get screwy at work I’m pretty helpless.

Today, for about a half an hour, the network completely forgot I existed. I lost access to servers, code repositories, email, and a number of internal apps. Some of my co-workers suggested that I should check that my passkey still worked, but others pointed out that I might just leave if it didn’t.

To stay sane (and because IM still worked) I chatted with a co-worker while struggling to get my access restored.

Me: You know how you had network problems the other day?
C-W: Yeah?
Me: Now I can’t log into anything.
C-W: oy.
Me: My computer locked me out, and I could only get back in by restarting it.
Me: But anything that requires a password is hosed.
C-W: Freak week.

13 minutes later…

Me: It’s exactly as though my password expired, only it shouldn’t have.
Me: I didn’t get 1000 reminders. 😉
C-W: Weird.
Me: Aaaand now it works again.
Me: …
C-W: Lucky you!
Me: Someone must have fed the elves.
C-W: Or farted.

Yup. Farting elves are the cause of so many of our problems. If only there were a way to treat their tiny little flatulance.

And Then We Ate Cheeseburgers and Sat in the Cold to Watch Movies

I watched 7 movies at Riverside Drive-In over the two days of April Ghouls “Drive-In” Monster-Rama”. (8 scheduled, but …well, I’ll get to that.) It would be entirely unlike me to not at least comment on them. Here, then, is my account of seeing horror films in their natural habitat — the drive-in!

NIGHT ONE – FRIDAY, APRIL 5

It was absurdly cold, and it only got worse as the night wore on. Jessica brought cookies, Tim brought cake, and I kept getting cheeseburgers and hot chocolate to warm up. I also got an ice cream bar before the show started, which made me hardcore according to Mike.

Friday the 13th

Say what you will about the sequels, “Friday the 13th” is still a pretty neat movie. Coming before the establishment of the slasher genre in American horror, it drew heavily from the giallo films of Italy. These were largely spree/serial murder movies in which typically only the gloved hands of the killer were seen by audience until the final reveal (much as in the old Killer in the Mansion flicks). The focus was on gory death scenes and detection.

Similarly, Sean Cunningham’s killer remained largely hidden, with the camera aimed at the victims. The reveal is a bit clumsy, but I always preferred this identification of the audience with the killer to the spectacle of indestructible ghouls on a rampage.

It was a good solid movie with which to start the event, and it prepared us for the camper killing to come.

The Burning

Released around the same time as “Friday the 13th”, “The Burning” is (I found out later) based on a camp story from the New York area. In it, a maintenance man named Cropsey is accidentally burned by campers who were trying to play a trick on him in revenge for his being a bit mean.

The movie starts with this incident, then fast forwards about a decade to Cropsey killing the shit out of a bunch of campers. It’s an interesting early slasher, as the victims actually behave pretty sensibly once they notice the killings. It’s also strange because the “final girl” is an asthmatic dweeb who seems to be a budding sexual predator.

A flawed movie in a lot of respects, it was still well worth seeing. I enjoy watching the formation of genres, while the rules are still malleable and the edges are rough.

Return of the Living Dead

When gratuitous nudity is not the highlight in your zombie movie, you’ve done something very right. Dan O’Bannon’s “Return of the Living Dead” is a masterpiece of dark comedy, with all the social commentary and inevitability of breakdown of George Romero’s work.

In the legal kerfuffle over the rights to Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead”, co-writer John Russo wound up with the rights to use the “Living Dead” name. Having lost all rights to the original movie, Romero continued make sequels, dropping out the word “Living”. Russo’s script was finally attached to O’Bannon (co-writer of “Alien”), who worked it over and directed it.

The result was spectacular. The zombie designs (by artist William Stout) are gruesome, the peril escalates every time our heroes act, and the dialog is eminently quotable. The acting is sporadic, but anchored by experienced pros Clu Gulager, James Karen, and Don Kalfa.

This is one of my favorite movies, and it was a treat to see it with an appreciative audience — even if by then we were beginning to feel like the cadaver in the warehouse freezer.

Day of the Dead

The lesser entry in Romero’s first three Living Dead movie, I’m still quite fond of “Day of the Dead”. Bub is a joy, and his very existence raises serious questions about just how dead the zombies really are. I had been looking forward to seeing this again.

However, by this last movie of the night (morning?) there was frost forming on my boots. The very fact that I had seen it before made it easier to decide to crawl into a warm bed and save my strength for the following night.

Vampires, zombies, depravity, and a slumming Oscar winner!

NIGHT TWO – SATURDAY, APRIL 6

It was still cold this night, but never so much as the night before. We sat quite comfortably and let the images play over us.

Scream, Blacula, Scream

I think that the success of  “Blacula” had surprised everyone. What could have been a forgettable (and regrettable) exploitation film had been granted unexpected gravitas by the performance of William Marshall as the diplomatic prince, cursed by Dracula himself.

This sequel is a brazen attempt to recapture the magic (and box office) of the original. What saves it is the inclusion of Pam Grier as the voodoo priestess attempting to restore Blacula’s soul before his “children” get out of control. There are problems, to be sure, but the combination of Marshall and Grier is killer.

I just wish the projectionist had fixed the framing earlier. There was a lot of ceiling for a reel there.

Sugar Hill

There was a lot to love in this line-up, but “Sugar Hill” is what made me decide that I had to attend April Ghouls. It’s not that I hadn’t seen it before — I had, several times — but that I had to support anybody who was showing such a remarkable film.

On the surface, it’s a movie attempting to cash in on the brief fad for blaxpo horror. The astonishing thing  about the film is it’s constantly empowering plot. Strength always comes through weakness in this story. Sugar herself continues to use her nickname, although it could be seen as diminishing. Dead slaves, dumped in the swamps of New Orleans, provide the muscle. Baron Samedi, master of the dead, often assumes guises of service (taxi driver, gardener, etc.) to get close to the targets. Plus, it’s just a fun movie!

The highlight of the entire trip, for me, was hearing first-time viewers exclaim their enjoyment of this gem.

Blood and Lace

I can’t say that “Blood and Lace” failed to deliver shocks. In actuality, there’s an escalation of outrageousness throughout the runtime that leads to an inevitable and hilariously depraved revelation in the final seconds. It was as though every few minutes the filmmakers asked “How can we make this more twisted?” I can readily think of at least three friends who should probably see this (if they haven’t already).

My problem with the movie is two-fold: there’s nothing to the movie outside of the efforts to shock, and the time between shocks feels interminable. A movie this packed with strangeness shouldn’t be so dull. Coming directly after “Sugar Hill”, this did not fare well with us.

Still, I’m glad to have seen it. I’d never even heard of the thing, and now I can make jokes about pulling corpses out of the freezer for head counts.

The Thing with Two Heads

Speaking of heads…

I’m a big fan of Ray Milland and of cheesy movies, and “The Thing with Two Heads” is a big part of why. It wasn’t the first Ray Milland movie I ever saw (that was probably “Escape to Witch Mountain”), and it wasn’t the first movie I loved for not being any good (“Caveman”, maybe?), but it was one of the first bad movies I loved to talk about and the first movie in which I consciously noticed Milland.

It’s hard to miss him in this; he’s the cranky, white-dude head on Rosey Grier’s shoulder.

That’s about it, really. There isn’t much else to it, except for a two-headed ape (that disappears after a brief escape), a motorcycle race, and… nope, that’s pretty much it.

Cranky, white head on Rosey Grier’s shoulder. Probably muttering about his Oscar between takes.

Revisiting that turkey made a perfect end to two nights of drive-in movies.

They’re talking about adding a fifth movie each night for the fall show, specifically so the first night can be all of the original Planet of the Apes series. It may just be more awesomeness than I can handle!

We Are in the Quantum State of Possibly Being in Pittsburgh

Some people go fishing or hunting. Others follow bands from venue to venue or travel to support sport teams.

My friends and I gather to watch horror movies in their native environment — a drive-in!

I’ve written at length about last fall’s trip to Drive–In Super Monster–Rama 2012 in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania (~30 minutes from Pittsburgh). This year, George Reis and Riverside Drive-In added a horror marathon for the spring. April Ghouls “Drive-In” Monster-Rama 2013 was a 2-night/8-movie festival, featuring movies from the 1980s on the first night and from the 1970s on the second.

I’ll get to the films in a later post, but for now I want to write about the social aspect of the event. Spending time with friends who share our affection for these movies is a good part of what keeps us going back to sit outside of our cars in the cold and rain.

Tim, Scott, and I attended our first Drive-In Super Monster-Rama in 2010. Our mutual friend Chad had found a blurb about it online and told us all about it. He was unable to make it out to Vandergrift that year, but we went as advance scouts. We all knew each other from a B-movie forum and had met several times at Northwestern’s 24-hour film festival, B-Fest.

For April Ghouls, our group’s body count had grown to 9 — our original trio plus veterans Jessica, Chad, and Mike and newcomers Dave, Hilary, and Rob — (10 if you count the 3-legged dog). That’s a good number of folks to get moving in any particular direction, and for the most part we didn’t try. Outside of Riverside Drive-In itself, the only time all of us were together was for dinner at the roadhouse just before the second night of movies.

The rest of the time, we bounced around in smaller groups. On Friday several of us went to the Monroeville Mall (the mall featured in George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead”) to check out the zombie museum. For unexplored reasons, it shares space with a 9-hole mini-golf course. Tim had brought along his Telstar putter, so Chad, Mike, and I joined him in a round while Scott and Jessica browsed the museum and small store. By the 9th hole I could even keep the ball on the green. (Tim won, but only 2 strokes separated first and last place. I thereby claim moral victory as the chronicler of the game.)

When Hell is full, the dead will play 9 holes.

Saturday saw six of us descend on Reads Ink, a house in Vandergrift converted into a 3-story used book store. It’s a neat shop, but we were all feeling frugal and the dog couldn’t come in so we only stayed about a half an hour.

Oh yeah. I keep teasing you with the dog.

His name is Bandit, and he is missing a back leg because of reasons. Dave told me, but there was an adorable 3-legged Pomeranian in front of me so I didn’t really hear the explanation. It sounded like “Well, his previous owner–“, at which point my brain replaced everything with “D’awwwww, puppy!” Bandit spent time with Hilary in the car, seeking refuge from the cold, and he spent time in Dave’s lap, contentedly ignoring the movies.

It wasn’t until I was home that I realized we were all just like that dog. We might not be like others, but we’re happy just to be ourselves in the company of friends.

Until it’s too cold, at which point we hide under blankets.

A New Local Bookstore

A new book store has opened in downtown Ann Arbor. Literati Bookstore, on the corner of E. Washington and S. Fourth is a cozy two-story shop with a selection that brings to mind the sections of Borders that weren’t devoted to genre fiction — back when Borders actually was a local store.

I did a double-take when I first noticed the open sign.

I didn’t have a lot of time to peruse the shelves, but I did get a sense for the sections. Fiction, children’s books, poetry, and books about media are upstairs, along with a small selection of magazines. Downstairs are humor, various types of history, biographies and reference. Crafts and religion are in there somewhere, I forget exactly where, and I’m certain that I’ve forgotten at least two categories — most likely from the basement.

The staff seemed very friendly, and they let me wander on my own after attracting my attention with a greeting. As an anxious sort, I appreciate that. It’s nice to know who I can ask for assistance but be trusted to ask when I need it.

There was a nice amount of customers milling around late in the lunch hour. Not crammed in, but enough to raise hope that there’s enough interest to keep the place open. Both registers were going, and for my part I purchased a copy of Sean Howe’s “Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.”

(I have my fingers crossed that it will reveal Jack Kirby was a space god and Steve Ditko a pan-dimensional sorcerer. We all know Stan Lee sustained a papercut from a radioactive comic book.)

Anyway, I wish them well. With Literati and Aunt Agatha’s only a block apart, all we need now is a nearby source for new horror, science fiction, and fantasy!

Weighty Matters

“It’s really quite an interesting psychological phenomenon.” — Andrew Steyn, The Gods Must Be Crazy

I can’t wear my wedding ring until I either gain more weight or get some sort of spacer for it. (For the record, I’m planning for the second option.) I’ve recently shed a few pounds, and the darn thing just slides off my finger now.

A few years ago, I lost quite a lot of weight and had the same problem. Then I gained most of it back and could wear the ring again, so yay?

Having been through this cycle of ring-wearing feasibility gave me an opportunity to perform a field study on the assumptions of wait staff.

There’s a sports bar conveniently located a block away from work. Wendi and I eat there often enough that the staff remember our typical drink orders. We’ll sit down, and a waitperson will point at us and identify our beverages. We confirm, and everybody leaves the encounter feeling pretty good.

When I stopped wearing my wedding ring the first time, I began to notice something odd. These same servers began to give us separate checks. I pointed this out to Wendi, who found it amusing, but neither of us clearly recalled how the bills had previously been handled. My perception could be biased by own acute awareness of my empty finger, but we suspected otherwise.

Now and then a server would ask whether it would be one check or two, but the emphasis was always on their assumption that it would be two. “Will this be separate?”, “Two checks?”, or the like. Again, we couldn’t remember how the question had been phrased before.

Fortunately (?) I beefed up again, and my ring finger once more sported proof of my official pairing. (Sorry, ladies and gents. This marbled steak is taken!)

The change was immediate.

The very same servers who had been assuming we would pay separately now thought differently.

“Will this be together?”

Same wait staff. Same couple. Same drinks. The only difference was whether I had my ring on.

Recent weight loss has again made my wedding ring fit too loosely. No sooner had I started to leave the ring at home then we were right back to separate checks. It seemed our suspicions were confirmed.

Now, how do I get grant money for a proper study?