Fangoria
My first experience with a fan convention left me bemused and a bit disappointed. Quite frankly, I expected a lot more freaky people. Maybe 1 in 200 of the people there bothered to dress up at all (no, I don't count goth-casual as dressing up). Those that did were usually more funny-haha then funny-strange - like a woman who, I guess, was supposed to be a killer queen bee (she had a bee costume on, and a tiara).
I guess I can't complain too much since I didn't dress up myself - and I'm usually more hard-core about that.
Case in point: Halloween 2004, when I was a fairy gaudy mother. (Big white silvery wings, gaudy jewelry, etc - yeah, not very obvious...). Halloween was on a Friday, which of course I celebrated. We decided to go to a haunted house on Saturday and I thought - cool, another chance to dress up, right? Out came the wings again.
After about 1 minute in line I realized what a mistake I had made. First of all, *no one* else in the +60 person line was wearing a costume. Second of all, there were employees of the haunted house who walked up and down the line dressed in black and blood, carrying various quasi-threatening plasticky chainsaws and harassing us with grrrs and arghs. These people were looking for a target, and found a big white-silvery one when they got to me.
Third of all, wings like that show up very very well in blacklight. Which means I was an even bigger target when we got into the place. And I had to go first so everyone else could see their way by the light o' the wings.
My favorite moment was in one of the last rooms, the killer clown room. Now, very few things in a haunted house truly scare me, but clowns are definitely one of them. So when one rushed up to me wielding a sledgehammer and screaming, I was more genuinely frightened than I had been for most of the trip... until she stopped abruptly, cocked her head at me, and said in a perfect teenage "oh -my - gawwwd" snide-sarcastic voice, "Halloween was YES-terday."
Anyway, I have respect for people who dress up even (or perhaps more so) when they look ridiculous. And other than the killer bee and some guy in a head-to-toe green blob costume, everyone looked extraordinarily... ordinary. Even Kelly Stables, the girl who played Samara in the Ring movies, looked cute and very very unthreatening:
It's difficult to be scared of someone when you have your hand on her shoulder and you feel like Lennie - that you could crush her bones if you hold on too tight. When we took this picture I was worried that her mother wouldn't take her back in the nest because she smelled like human.The highlight of the experience was the part I'd expressly come to see; the Slither panel, which included Firefly/Serenity star Nathan Fillion. Since we didn't shell out the extra $45 for a "Gold Ticket" we weren't able to get very close (and also, we didn't get the autograph guarantee, which basically meant I waited in line for an hour and a half only to be told 10 people away that they were no longer signing and that us General Ticket rabble had to skedaddle - they threatened to throw out the guy in front of me because he was so mad...).
In summary, the panel was a lot of fun; the director and cast made us all jealous that we weren't involved because they seemed to have such a great time with each other. Nathan F. ended up facilitating the discussion with his Canadian charm and wit (I'm a sucker for Canadians). He has very large arms and an animated face which came out kind of squinty from a distance, making me think of a dreamy Popeye. He made a lot of risque jokes which expanded my own carnal knowledge. Ask me what "The Stranger" is sometime, if you don't already know.
The Slither panel was followed by the author of The Zombie Survival Guide, which I find somewhat amusing but am openly jealous that I didn't think to write myself because I'm convinced, it basically wrote itself. My brother and I could write a chapter on our analysis of the two-flat we own and the changes we would make to zombitize it were we to find ourselves in the midst of a zombie meltdown level 2-3. Judging by the respect he got from the audience, others felt the same way.Then George Romero came out - a small man with large large glasses - and talked in a cranky tone for a while. The most amusing part of that was when he boldly stated "my zombie's will never run!" in a critique of the recent fast-zombie movement, a political stance that warranted him enthusiastic applause for some reason I can't fathom. Finally, a make-up artist panel came on and I learned that the best fake blood is made from food coloring and corn syrup, and that you have to add a little green coloring in the mix or else the blood will look like cranberry juice when you splash it against a white shirt.
So all-in-all, some amusing experiences, worth the $15 ticket but almost not worth the trek out to Rosemont and the 1.5 hour fruitless wait for a chance to ask Nathan F. something he's probably been asked many times before, because getting a new question after talking to hundreds of people has got to be very rare. The movie, by the way, looks bad. Really bad. Whether it's bad enough to break through into cult status remains to be seen - but either way, it looks like it was a enjoyable thing to make.
