Horror, Anime, & Wild Zero

So I went to Horrorfind Weekend, fulfilling a dream of my childhood: to actually attend a horror convention. Growing up I was big into horror flicks...even wanted to be a special effects guy when I grew up. That never happened, obviously. Back to the tale, however, there were never any horror conventions in the Seattle area at the time. Oh, flipping through the pages of Fangoria and it's short lived spinoffs Gorezone and Toxic Horror I would see tons of ads for upcoming horror cons, but all in L.A. or the east coast. Well, finally I live on the upper east coast, and Horrorfind Weekend happens in Baltimore. So I made some arrangements (well, M did) and went with some of the skullz dot org crew. It was a blast. Free horror swag, such as Devil's Rejects and Undead posters, tons of cool stuff to buy, and I met Ashley Laurence (AKA Kirsty from the Hellraiser movies), Eugene Clark (AKA Big Daddy the zombie from Land of the Dead), and briefly Brian Lumley (author of the Necroscope series and many Cthulhu mythos tales). Jason Voorhies (Kane Hodder), Pinhead (Doug Bradley), and Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) were also there, but the lines I felt were too long. I picked up some cool pictures by Stephen Blickenstaff (http://www.stephenblickenstaff.com/), who did the cover art for an old Cramps album I have always enjoyed, a book of zombie short stories, and a zombie survival kit. I meant to buy more, but felt I should save some dough for the next days jaunt, which brings us to Otakon.

Otakon was a bit of a letdown. We (that is Myself, the M-Tron, Sqwee, and Phoob) got there a bit late, wandered around the dealers room for an hour or so, because I like to wander and look at the booths first, sort of figuring out what I want to buy and making sure I can't find it cheaper two aisles up, and then left to get sushi. We got back only to find that the dealers room had closed. 6 PM, much earlier than anticipated...and I hadn't even looked at all the booths. Most of the reason I was there was to look for imports and such, and that was shot. Also a football game was going on nearby, so traffic was hell. I must admit I am slightly amazed no football fans retaliated against my car, as the girls had briefly put up a sign in the window that said 'Football is Gay', but perhaps they didn't see it. Anyways, it quickly became a girls night out, so I set off on my own adventures. The fan parodies were amusing, and the game room held promise, but mostly it was too crowded in most of the screening rooms, so I just sat and watched people run about in odd costumes...cosplaying as the likes of Darth Vader, the Punisher, lots of Naruto geeks, and more. I think one guy thought I was dressed as the punisher, but I wasn't...strange. Not planning on attending again, I don't think.

I did manage to pick up a movie called Wild Zero. This is the greatest movie of all time, in amusement value. Lets list what it has:
-zombies
-japanese rockabilly punks
-Guitar Wolf
-love story, and an odd one at that
-zombie love story, separate from the odd one
-flying saucers
-drinking game built in as a DVD option for the film
-yakuza
-electric throwing guitar picks
-awesome punk/rockabilly soundtrack

All in all, an awesome movie, if you dig b-movies. The sub titles were occaisionally odd though, such as when a character screams 'Rock n Roll!' as a battle cry and the subtitle reads 'That scared the shit out of me'...go figure.

Go watch the movie, and if you dig horror hit up a horror convention. That's all for now.

Black Gold Rising

So gas prices are REALLY starting to piss me off. I'm sure I'm not the only one, as they have risen 30 cents per gallon in one week, 60 cents per gallon in the two months since I moved up here...which was a price hike from southern Louisiana's prices to begin with. But 30 cents in one week is ridiculous. I'm thoroughly convinced that supply and demand has very little to do with it as well, just that OPEC (read: antichrist) knows that people expect gas prices to go up anytime there is significant trouble in the middle east, so they know they can raise it. I still say we should have not sent troops over, just simply started converting everyone in the US (other countries would follow suit) to some other form of fuel/energy, of which many are already out there. All the money spent on the war could easily have gone to this conversion, with more long term results, including knocking the economic legs right out from under the entire region we have so much problems with in a way that their insurgents and dictators would be hard pressed to combat.

Too bad we have too many oil barons with their fingers so deep in the festering, diseased holes of too many politicians.

Anyways, should be done with training at work soon and looking forward to hitting the Horrorfind convention with the SDO crew and Otakon this weekend. So good times to be had, so long as I don't look too hard at my gas station receipts.