Sportsfans, the horror convention rocked!  Now it wasn't as cool as last year due to the fact I had met the actors before, but the whole thing was still extremely cool.  Me and two buddies got there right as it opened Friday with me hobbling around like an old man.  Why?  Well the night before, I was outside playing with my dog, Vick.  He's got this football he loves to chase around the yard, so I go to kick it while it sat on the ground so he could take off after it.  It was dark, so I never noticed the loose stone from my patio that was in between my foot and the ball...so when I go to kick the ball my foot met with a little resistance.  Basically I jammed my toes pretty bad and walking was pretty painful.  Figures it would happen the night before I'm about to spend a couple of days on my feet...hahahaha.  Anyway, we go inside and it was like a vacuum started sucking the money out of my pocket.  I bought all sorts of cool stuff like the Sheriff Hoyt figure from the last "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and a bunch of DVD's and stuff.  Eventually the actors started showing up, and I brought my "The Devil's Rejects" movie poster to get signed...and man does it look absolutely awesome hanging on my wall.  Here's a few pics from that day:

Now you may recognize Michael Berryman from the Motley Crue video for "Smokin' In The Boys Room" or "The Hills Have Eyes".  He's a really cool guy.  Day one was basically spent meeting people and buying stuff.  I didn't watch any movies this year because they weren't showing any indie stuff like they did last year...fine by me in a way because the ones last year just SUCKED.  Now, there was an act that night done by some dude named Enigma.  You've probably seen him before on TV...he's tattooed over his entire body with what look like puzzle pieces, and he has horns that are actually attached to his skull under his skin.  He does this act where he does things like stick a drill bit up his nose while the drill is running, hold an apple in his mouth while blindfolded and takes a chainsaw and cuts an X in the apple...stuff like that.  However, he started off the whole show with something that I guess was supposed to be deep and thought-provoking.  He goes on this rant about entertainment being bland and uninspired, and how everyone should just join the church of cinematology and how Hollywood passes around the collection plate.  My thought was we're at a horror movie convention so the people hearing this probably didn't car about it too much...hahaha.  He would sometimes play songs in between the stunts, just him and a guitar with a drum machine going...and I have no idea what the songs were supposed to be.  My friend Jason summed it up the best when he said to me that the dude needs to stop the music and just keep shoving crap up his nose...hahahaha.  Here's a pic of him -

Day two was an absolute madhouse...the place was packed.  I took that girl I started seeing to the convention and she had a blast.  And to make all the guys jealous, the first thing she did when we got there was buy a t-shirt of "The Evil Dead".  In fact, she even bought me a poster of Elvis from the '68 Comeback Special....how cool is that?  Normally girls I've gone out with would be like "Oh, you got another little poster?  When are you going to grow up?".  She's all excited about meeting Reggie Bannister from "Phantasm", the guy that played Pinhead in "Hellraiser", and then she also met Michael Berryman.  Now she was wearing a t-shirt for the movie "Donnie Darko" and Michael goes "oh wow...I loved that movie" so she tells him that she had to explain the ending of it to me for me to make sense of it, to which I was like "gee, thanks"...haha.  Embarrassing me like that in front of a horror movie icon...hmph!  Well before we left I decided to get an autographed 8x10 of Ed Neal, the dude that played the hitch-hiker in the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre".  This was to complete my shrine to this movie that I have in my house because, well, I'm a dork.  I'm standing in line and the guy in front of me asks him if he saw the remake...and Ed Neal goes "You mean the 90210 version?".  I just turned to my friend Jason and was like "huh???".  I mean I know any of the people that were in the original version of any movie are going to be partial to it, but the 90210 version???  Yeah, I remember all those 90210 episodes where Brenda had to stick a knife in the gut of Dylan or Steve as they hung on a meathook to take them out of their misery.  Personally I think the original and the remake are masterpieces for different reasons.  At least when I asked Michael Berryman about "The Hills Have Eyes" remake, he was honest.  He told me the original will always be special to him and the remake didn't seem to capture the magic of the first one.  Speaking of which, I went to that after the horror convention because another friend of mine told me it was a better remake than "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or "Dawn of the Dead".  Was it?  Ummm...I didn't think so.  I mean it's worth seeing but I can't imagine watching it too many times.  So yeah, the horror convention rocked.  Oh and check this.  Me and two of my friends all bought a bunch of DVD's of fan films.  One of the ones we got had a bunch of Batman ones on it.  So Friday night after the convention we head to my place...you know surround sound and a big screen makes people want to always watch stuff at your place...and we pop in the Batman one.  The first fan film on it has Batman and the Joker facing off in an ally...and the dude playing The Joker was incredible.  So they're jawing at each other and then all of the sudden a tail drops down and wraps around Joker's neck and yanks him up...then an Alien from the "Alien" movie jumps on Batman.  Now, this was pretty cool as it was...but then three red dots appeared on the Alien's head and a friggin' Predator blew it up!  Batman jumps up and throws a Bat-o-rang at it and takes out the laser cannon on it's shoulder.  Well the Predator was pissed so he jumps down and him and Batman start circling each other.  The go at it and Batman ends up killing the Predator but took a bit of damage in the process.  He turns around and there's four more Predators standing there.  Batman gets ready to fight...and out of the shadows behind him about 5 or 6 Aliens appear.  I broke out in goosebumps thinking I was about to witness the greatest thing ever filmed in my life...no lie.  Just then the credits rolled...AAARRRGGGGHHH!!!!  I didn't know these fan films were only about 10 minutes long...but I have to say if Hollywood had a clue they would hire these guys to make movies.  We also watched one where The Punisher fights Wolverine, and MAN did it rock!  Again only about 10 minutes long, but the dude playing Wolverine was perfect...and The Punisher blew away Thomas Jane.  Hollywood needs to get a clue and start hiring these guys.  I mean these people made these short movies with a very limited budget, and the premise of them blew away anything Hollywood has done when it comes to superhero movies.  Oh, and one more thing about Saturday, before "The Hills Have Eyes" started, I stopped in Hot Topic and could not believe what I found.  A DVD of Samhain live!  Yeah, you might be thinking "who is Samhain"....that's the band Glenn Danzig had in between The Misfits and Danzig...and I couldn't believe they had a DVD of a live gig there for sale.  Oh it is quite awesome.

Well this is the weekend where my band NoiseCult heads into the studio for three days.  This will rock in indescribable ways.  It's going to be so cool to have a CD where I don't have to show it to someone and say "well, the singer on this one isn't in the band anymore and I do vocals now but the old singer is on this".  I hate having to explain all that.  Time permitting, we're actually going to try and re-record the first CD as well since I'm doing vocals now...so that's going to be 18 songs in three days.  All we have to worry about is the basic tracks because we can do some overdubs or whatever the next weekend at a studio for free.  Yep, the world needs to be prepared for the metal onslaught that awaits!  And guess what else?  We're finally going to start booking some gigs starting in April after all the recording is done.  I can't wait to play these new tunes live.  And somewhere in the middle of all this I have to run my Senate campaign as well...hahaha.

Alright...I'm a little pressed for time...but don't worry I'll have a full studio report next time around.  I know EVERYONE is waiting for that!  Later Sportsfans!