Jen and I spent most of this past weekend in Pennsylvania, an adventure which was fueled by a screening of the horror flick Popcorn at PA's Colonial Theatre. Though that was the catalyst for the trip, the real driving force behind the trek down there was essentially to just hang out with friends, drink booze and eat oodles of unhealthy food, three goals which we admirably succeed in fulfilling. My angry GI tract can attest to this. I'll try to keep from droning on too much, but here's a little recap of our weekend in PA!
Our living quarters for the weekend were in the home of our good friend Geof Capodanno, who runs the blog The Man Cave. We've been friends with Geof for a couple years now and have hung out together at various conventions as well as at our place in New York, but this was the first time we were ever actually granted access to the titular man cave, which was of course fairly exciting. Geof and his wife Juliana have been trying to sell their house in PA of late, planning a work related move to North Carolina soon, so the man cave wasn't exactly in its full glory, with many items packed up and ready for the move. Nevertheless I can now proudly say that I have not only entered the man cave, but I have also opened up a beer with Geof's prized possession; a super sized Rowdy Roddy Piper lighter/bottle opener. Regardless of the current state of the cave, I'd say I still managed to get the full manly experience. Because nothing says manly like popping open a beer with a bottle opener adorned with the image of a dude in a skirt. Then again, I guess dudes in skirts are what you'd expect to find in a man's cave. Zing.
We got to casa de Capodanno somewhere around 4 o'clock PM, and spent a couple hours getting settled in, drinking beer and hanging out with Geof and Juliana, who are honestly two of the coolest and nicest people I've ever had the pleasure of spending a weekend with. Seriously, I'd be saying that even if they didn't put us up for the weekend. Around 7 it was time to head off to the town of Phoenixville about an hour away, where the plan was to meet up with Kristy Jett, the other Capodanno house guest for the weekend, and a couple other folks for dinner and drinks, at a bar a stone's throw away from the Colonial.
Inside the Pickering Creek Inn was a whole slew of horror community folks who came to the area to see Popcorn, many of which I was surprised to realize I either knew or knew me. It was truly a veritable who's who of internet friends and acquaintances and I never cease to be amazed by how tightly knit and family like this community is. Everyone knows everyone else, or at least knows someone that knows someone else. It's pretty wild. Though the bar was cramped and hot as a dutch oven inside, the combination of a wide variety of quality beers on tap, good food and good company made the Popcorn pre-show a real blast. Shout outs to Mary Bastian, Jeff Mahaday, Katherine Backoff and of course Shit Movie Fest's Tom Bryce!
Since the word was that the parking situation at the Colonial wasn't so great, most of us ended up huddling together in the pouring rain and walking over to the theater. Now the cool thing about the Colonial is that it's the actual theater where the original Blob was filmed, a fact that is celebrated every summer by what they call Blob Fest, a celebration which includes a screening of the film and a re-enactment of the iconic scene where everyone runs out of the theater when the Blob spills in. The whole theater is decked out with Blob posters and even a little wall plaque that encourages you to rub a mini Blob for good luck. I wish I had pictures of all this stuff to show off, but my dumb ass left our camera at Geof's house. What a great blogger I am, eh?
The Colonial plays host to a horror movie on the first Friday night of each month and the selection for June was of course Popcorn, presented by my sister from another mister Kristy Jett. To refresh your memory, Kristy is still currently hard at work on bringing a new DVD/Blu-ray release of the 1991 film into our lives, and she helped tracked down the 35mm print that was screened by the theater. After her brief but eloquent presentation speech, the lights went down and the popcorn came out.
The Colonial plays host to a horror movie on the first Friday night of each month and the selection for June was of course Popcorn, presented by my sister from another mister Kristy Jett. To refresh your memory, Kristy is still currently hard at work on bringing a new DVD/Blu-ray release of the 1991 film into our lives, and she helped tracked down the 35mm print that was screened by the theater. After her brief but eloquent presentation speech, the lights went down and the popcorn came out.
This was only the second time I had seen Popcorn, the first being last year when Kristy introduced it to me in the comfort of my own home. Being that the movie is very much based around the world of theatrical viewing experiences, I knew seeing it up on the big screen with a crowd would be much more exciting than seeing it at home on DVD. And it was.
Popcorn certainly isn't the greatest film or anything but it's pretty damn fun to watch and I love the fact that it's a total love letter to the theatrical showmanship of folks like William Castle, which is something I deeply love. Point being, while it's a flawed little movie, I can totally see why Kristy loves it so much and is trying to get it out there as much as possible. It's the kind of movie that demands to be seen by horror fans, so if you haven't yet seen it, find a way to do so. The character of Toby is truly one of the most underrated horror villains of all time, brought to life by the incredibly charismatic late actor Tom Villard, who managed to channel a lot of the showmanship and charisma of that other burned up horror icon. His off the charts performance alone is worth watching the film for.
Popcorn certainly isn't the greatest film or anything but it's pretty damn fun to watch and I love the fact that it's a total love letter to the theatrical showmanship of folks like William Castle, which is something I deeply love. Point being, while it's a flawed little movie, I can totally see why Kristy loves it so much and is trying to get it out there as much as possible. It's the kind of movie that demands to be seen by horror fans, so if you haven't yet seen it, find a way to do so. The character of Toby is truly one of the most underrated horror villains of all time, brought to life by the incredibly charismatic late actor Tom Villard, who managed to channel a lot of the showmanship and charisma of that other burned up horror icon. His off the charts performance alone is worth watching the film for.
After the screening I picked up one of artist Chris Garofalo's posters he whipped up for the event, which he impressively die cut by hand, to look like actual ticket stubs. From what I gather these will soon be available to purchase online, but the yellow papered "Butter Edition" I snagged was an exclusive to the event itself. Lesson being, it pays to get out of the house and make the trip out to events such as these!
After the movie we said our goodbyes and headed back to Geof's house, where we spent the remainder of the night drinking, kicking each others asses in WWE 12 (a wrestling video game) and watching Geof and Juliana's wedding video. Must establish that they didn't force the video on us but rather we kinda demanded they show it to us. We counteracted the beauty of that video by watching Tony Todd aggressively lick and fuck a white chick, so there was a nice balance there to the evening. Gotta have balance in this world.
Speaking of weddings, did I mention Jen and I are gonna be eloping this summer and tying the knot Clarence & Alabama style at the court house? How lucky am I to have found a girl who doesn't want to waste $20,000 on a lame overblown ceremony?!
But back to the weekend.
After the movie we said our goodbyes and headed back to Geof's house, where we spent the remainder of the night drinking, kicking each others asses in WWE 12 (a wrestling video game) and watching Geof and Juliana's wedding video. Must establish that they didn't force the video on us but rather we kinda demanded they show it to us. We counteracted the beauty of that video by watching Tony Todd aggressively lick and fuck a white chick, so there was a nice balance there to the evening. Gotta have balance in this world.
Speaking of weddings, did I mention Jen and I are gonna be eloping this summer and tying the knot Clarence & Alabama style at the court house? How lucky am I to have found a girl who doesn't want to waste $20,000 on a lame overblown ceremony?!
But back to the weekend.
The following day the plan was to head into Philadelphia and spend a few hours there. But first, it was off to one of Geof & Juliana's favorite little food joints to cross off a prominent goal on my bucket list; eat a genuine Philly cheese steak. Goddamn are those things good, and even better when washed down with Bud Light's new Lime-a-Rita's, which are essentially alcohol packed fusions of Bud Light Lime beer and margaritas. At 8% alcohol, we all kicked off the day feeling pretty damn good. Now send me free cases for the name dropping, will ya Bud?
I overheard the previous day that Juliana's mom was vending at a nearby flea market on this day, so I suggested we hit that up before we headed off to Philly. Amidst all the Santa statues and creepy clown dolls, two things I find at nearly every yard sale I attend, we found some true treasures in the form of several cardboard boxes filled with old comic books, everything from superhero comics to movie tie-ins like Total Recall and Bill & Ted. It was amongst all this gold that I found a copy of the comic book Satan's Six, one that features a special guest cameo appearance by none other than Jason Voorhees!
Pretty awesome, even if Jason's appearance is pretty brief and his name misspelled...
Come on guys, you get the rights to put Jason in your comic and you spell his goddamn name wrong?! Doesn't get much more #fail than that. Unless this was an unofficially licensed thing so they had to spell his name wrong in order to get away with it? Who knows.
As you can you see I also found a copy of the RL Stine book Ghosts Of Fear Street at a different vendor's table, so I'd say this was a pretty successful flea market outing!
Off to Philly we headed, where we spent much of the remainder of the night. It was pretty cool because the Philly Comic Con was going on this past weekend, so there were a lot of costumed geeks roaming around the city. We were all a little too cheap to pay the 45 bucks to get into Comic Con, so it was nice to at least get some small dose of the nerdy action. The geekdom is infectious, even at a distance.
After feasting on some mediocre cupcakes that were not quite worth the hour we spent looking for them, we were joined by Kevin Miller, who runs the awesome online horror shop House Of Mysterious Secrets. I always see him at conventions but never get to hang out too much with him, so it was nice to finally get some time to talk. We all went to a tasty Mexican place called El Vez for dinner, which had the two things that are an instant tickling of my happy bone; top notch guacamole and booze. Needless to say, I was a happy camper. Take that, Angela.
After dinner we only had an hour or so left until the last train back to Philly for the night pulled into the station, so we hit up a nearby bar, where Geof introduced me to the wonderful world of Duvel, one of his personal favorite beers. We spotted Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, at the bar and ended up hanging out with him a bunch, drunkenly convincing him to head back to Geof's place, where I kicked his ass in the PS3 wrestling game we were playing the night before. He insisted on custom creating a player that looked like Thor, which proved to be no match to my Ultimate Warrior.
OK so that didn't happen, but it'd be cooler if it did. We did go to the bar and we did drink some tasty Duvel's, but Hemsworth was too caught up at Comic Con making $150 a pop to meet sweaty fans. As we were on our way out, I got a call from Tom Bryce informing me that Kristy Swanson was at the bar across the street from us, sporting a Princess Leia hairdo, but we were in a bit of a rush to get back to the train so we never got to head over there and gawk at her. If there was one thing I was certain of that night, it was that I didn't want to get stuck in Philly overnight. Not exactly the kind place you want to be stranded when the sun goes down. Kinda like Bon Temps, only the threats aren't so damn pretty looking. Are they ever?
There's a quote from Hunter S. Thompson that I've always loved and it goes a little something like this...
"The last train out of any station will not be full of nice guys"
That pretty much sums up the train ride home, where we were joined by a tweaked out dude that Jen was pretty sure was mere seconds away from getting his big break on the local news for gnawing her face off. Thankfully, he kept his flesh appetite under control, and we made it back to Geof's house in one piece, where we proceeded to drink and chat the rest of the night away.
I know I say this all the time, but I am truly so thankful for the internet's powers of bringing like minded people together, no matter what hobby or thing it is that those people bond over. For me it's of course horror movies, and I've met some of the greatest people that I currently have in my life through the internet (Jen included). My life is far better for having people like Kristy & Geof in it, and the fact that they are is all thanks to my decision that one day back in 2008 to start a blog. Never did I in my wildest dreams imagine how much that day would change my life, and I shudder to think what my life would be like had I never made that decision. Find your joy, find the people that share in that joy, and you will be one joyous motherfucker.
Right about now, after a weekend like the one I just had, I'm feeling pretty damn joyous. So thank you Geof, Juliana, Kristy and everyone else who made the weekend so much fun. As always, I now begin my search for the next excuse to get us all back together again!
I overheard the previous day that Juliana's mom was vending at a nearby flea market on this day, so I suggested we hit that up before we headed off to Philly. Amidst all the Santa statues and creepy clown dolls, two things I find at nearly every yard sale I attend, we found some true treasures in the form of several cardboard boxes filled with old comic books, everything from superhero comics to movie tie-ins like Total Recall and Bill & Ted. It was amongst all this gold that I found a copy of the comic book Satan's Six, one that features a special guest cameo appearance by none other than Jason Voorhees!
Pretty awesome, even if Jason's appearance is pretty brief and his name misspelled...
Come on guys, you get the rights to put Jason in your comic and you spell his goddamn name wrong?! Doesn't get much more #fail than that. Unless this was an unofficially licensed thing so they had to spell his name wrong in order to get away with it? Who knows.
As you can you see I also found a copy of the RL Stine book Ghosts Of Fear Street at a different vendor's table, so I'd say this was a pretty successful flea market outing!
Off to Philly we headed, where we spent much of the remainder of the night. It was pretty cool because the Philly Comic Con was going on this past weekend, so there were a lot of costumed geeks roaming around the city. We were all a little too cheap to pay the 45 bucks to get into Comic Con, so it was nice to at least get some small dose of the nerdy action. The geekdom is infectious, even at a distance.
After feasting on some mediocre cupcakes that were not quite worth the hour we spent looking for them, we were joined by Kevin Miller, who runs the awesome online horror shop House Of Mysterious Secrets. I always see him at conventions but never get to hang out too much with him, so it was nice to finally get some time to talk. We all went to a tasty Mexican place called El Vez for dinner, which had the two things that are an instant tickling of my happy bone; top notch guacamole and booze. Needless to say, I was a happy camper. Take that, Angela.
After dinner we only had an hour or so left until the last train back to Philly for the night pulled into the station, so we hit up a nearby bar, where Geof introduced me to the wonderful world of Duvel, one of his personal favorite beers. We spotted Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, at the bar and ended up hanging out with him a bunch, drunkenly convincing him to head back to Geof's place, where I kicked his ass in the PS3 wrestling game we were playing the night before. He insisted on custom creating a player that looked like Thor, which proved to be no match to my Ultimate Warrior.
OK so that didn't happen, but it'd be cooler if it did. We did go to the bar and we did drink some tasty Duvel's, but Hemsworth was too caught up at Comic Con making $150 a pop to meet sweaty fans. As we were on our way out, I got a call from Tom Bryce informing me that Kristy Swanson was at the bar across the street from us, sporting a Princess Leia hairdo, but we were in a bit of a rush to get back to the train so we never got to head over there and gawk at her. If there was one thing I was certain of that night, it was that I didn't want to get stuck in Philly overnight. Not exactly the kind place you want to be stranded when the sun goes down. Kinda like Bon Temps, only the threats aren't so damn pretty looking. Are they ever?
There's a quote from Hunter S. Thompson that I've always loved and it goes a little something like this...
"The last train out of any station will not be full of nice guys"
That pretty much sums up the train ride home, where we were joined by a tweaked out dude that Jen was pretty sure was mere seconds away from getting his big break on the local news for gnawing her face off. Thankfully, he kept his flesh appetite under control, and we made it back to Geof's house in one piece, where we proceeded to drink and chat the rest of the night away.
I know I say this all the time, but I am truly so thankful for the internet's powers of bringing like minded people together, no matter what hobby or thing it is that those people bond over. For me it's of course horror movies, and I've met some of the greatest people that I currently have in my life through the internet (Jen included). My life is far better for having people like Kristy & Geof in it, and the fact that they are is all thanks to my decision that one day back in 2008 to start a blog. Never did I in my wildest dreams imagine how much that day would change my life, and I shudder to think what my life would be like had I never made that decision. Find your joy, find the people that share in that joy, and you will be one joyous motherfucker.
Right about now, after a weekend like the one I just had, I'm feeling pretty damn joyous. So thank you Geof, Juliana, Kristy and everyone else who made the weekend so much fun. As always, I now begin my search for the next excuse to get us all back together again!
No comments:
Post a Comment