Happy Cloud News - Fangoria NJ and Netflix!

Two bits of juicy news for you:

Amy Lynn Best and Mike Watt will be appearing at the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in Secaucus, New Jersey this very weekend - July 20-22. Come by, say hi and check out Splatter Movie: The Director's Cut screening Sunday Only! For more information, click HERE

In awesome other news, A Feast of Flesh, the vampire epic starring Amy Lynn Best, Stacy Bartlebaugh-Gmys and Aaron Bernard is finally available through Netflix! Distributed by the good and hearty people at Bloody Earth Films, you can now check this wonderous piece of dark cinema out for yourself. Click HERE for more info!

Back from Chicago

Okay, I'm dying from some new, exciting cold, thanks to the multiple temperatures my body was subjected to this weekend, not to mention ongoing insomnia, so I'll make this fast.

We spent the weekend in the wonderful world of Chicago for the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors, one of our favorite shows of the year (after Cinema Wasteland, of course). As usual, we got to see the airport and the hotel, but this year, we also saw a very icy parking lot and a very clean Target (we needed supplies - sandwiches, chocolate, booze, etc.).

The folks at Creation - Adam, Stephanie, Leticia - treated us like stars. Fangoria's editor, Tony Timpone (the man, the legend), brought the layout for my Rage article for me to check out, which was awesome. And we were set up across from Kane Hodder on one side and Ari Lehman and Sid Haig on the other. And we were back-to-back with composer Harry Manfriedi! So, we had great neighbors. And because Kane actually noticed this time when I hit him back (he usually punches me hello), he swore he'd never hit me again. Now instead of taps to the chest that collapse my lungs, he gives me bear hugs that compress the rest of my organs. Not sure which I prefer, actually.

I had planned a number of projects for the slow periods of the show -- interviewing people for the upcoming Resurrection Game DVD, proof-reading the new issue of Sirens of Cinema, etc -- but oddly enough, we didn't have any slow periods. Thanks to many pounds of cookies provided by our producer and sponsor, Tim Buchholz, much of my time was spent harassing people into taking freebies (you'd think they were poisoned or something? Of course, as one fan said, "This isn't a show that engenders trust!"). The rest of the time was taken up by the stampede of people who wanted to buy copies of A Feast of Flesh, take pictures with Amy and Sofiya, and snatch up our 30 copies of Splatter Movie.

Yes, for the first time in our convention career, we sold out of a title. Completely SOLD OUT of Splatter Movie by 1pm on Sunday. Most of those copies had sold even before our screening on Saturday. And the screening itself went over pretty well. We had a pretty packed house, even though you needed two sherpas and a sled dog team to find the screening room, and the two guys who decided to "Rocky Horror" the movie stayed for the entire thing, so at least they weren't bored!

We sold a number of subscriptions to Sirens as well, four of them without having to talk them into it! They wanted them because they'd read the magazine! (See? I TOLD you people read it! They don't just buy it for the free gum!)

The only drawback came at the very end of the show. A sextet of douche-waffles decided to attempt to take advantage of our and Sofiya's good graces. But they were the instruments of their own misfortune, which turned out to be very funny in the end. Still, we should have allowed Kane to hurt them.

And while I'm sure I'll forget a few names, we just wanted to say thanks to Rob, Tammy, Amber, Codger, Chris (Phreeq), Yo Joe, Johnny, Harry (sorry we were out of #4), Debbie, Mr. Skin, Marv, Chadwick and company, Ryan and Michelle, Gabby, Betsy, Sid, Ari, Kane, Megan, Ron, Cathy, Jeremy, Jen, Monique, Saint, Monet and August. And, especially, Tim B.

And Acid and my Monkey, Kory Chupacabra (and maybe I'll explain that one later).

So let's hear it for selling out of Splatter Movie! Hear that, distributors? People LOVE US!

Right... going to bed now.

Sleepless in Waynesburg

My insomnia continues to be my best friend, though I have been a little more successful at the shut-eye thing of late. Slowly but surely I'm remastering the fine art of sleeping.

Of course, I can't just blame the stress or my natural penchant towards spaz-ism. One of our local coal companies misrepresented itself to us and our neighbors. Instead of the single line of pipe they claimed they would lay (to vent methane from one of the mines), they have begun to drill a methane capture well on our neighbor's hill. Which is directly in between two of their biggest pastures. Being sheep farmers, they need the pastures to feed their sheep. Without grazing land, sheep tend to do stupid things like starve and die. To make matters even more fun, the drilling goes on 24 hours a day, the sound travels over four miles to our land, keeping me awake even more. But, since I'm usually up anyway, the noise gives me the opportunity to be angry as well as exhausted.

When our neighbors complained to workers that this is not what was agreed upon, the workers replied, "We'll do what we want when we want."

So I'll be taking this up with the news--TV and paper. And internet. And, possibly, from my roof, shouting at God.

It's a character flaw of mine. I hate oppression. Not a big fan of corporate lying, either. Makes me testy.

With all this in mind, I've been trying to focus on getting things prepared for the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in Chicago this weekend. It's always a great show for us, economically and funwise. And this year, we're listed as official guests. And Splatter Movie: The Director's Cut is premiering (in front of an unbiased audience, as terrifying as that may be) at 4:00 pm on Saturday. Which is a great time slot. The proof of my claims can be found HERE.

In other Fangoria news, my third-ever article for them runs in the current issue. It details my and Amy's set-visit to The Rage, where we got to hang with Robert Kurtzman and Andrew Divoff for the better part of the day, as well as get a personal tour of Precinct 13--Bob K's studio in Ohio. Seeing this piece in print gave me a special little thrill. Even though I've been writing professionally for about a decade now, I think that I've mentioned that Fangoria was always a market I'd dreamed of "cracking". And now I have, three issues in a row. So now I await Satan's collection on the contract I must have signed on one of my insomnia-enduced episodes.

Enough babbling - if you're going to be in Chicago this weekend, and, really, I see no reason why you shouldn't be, swing by the Happy Cloud table and say hi, pick up a copy of the pre-release of Splatter Movie, buy a subscription to Sirens of Cinema and say nice things about my hair.

Good night, good luck and good news tomorrow.

Tippi Hedren is loose in the ducts!

Two weeks ago, Amy and I took a break from killing ourselves on the Splatter Movieset and turned towards killing ourselves to get to New Jersey in time for the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors.

Like the Chicago show, the Jersey Fango is a great time and a terrific opportunity to network and catch up with friends. Unlike the Chicago show, we don't make a lot of money and the crowds are a lot thinner. Theories abound to explain this. The best one seems to be that the fifteen Monster Manias held throughout the year and the two Chillers draw attendance away from Fango. It's not like the golden days of the early 2000's when people had money. Gas tanks must be fed and at a higher price! Otherwise, the Eldritch God Dick Cheney will awaken, rise from his subsea slumber lair and shoot us all in the face.

Anyway, we like the show, profits be damned. So, Friday morning, we drove our six-plus hours to Secaucus, arriving around 11:00 in plenty of time to set up and relax before the 2:00 early-bird entrance time. Except the second we stepped through the door, we heard from line-dwellering friends (I'll Bury You Tomorrow's Alan Rowe Kelly and Art and Alana from Ultra Violent Magazine) that Creation Entertainment, the company in charge, will be opening the doors at noon to accomodate the demand. Our three-hour window vanished before our eyes.

Check in, rush upstairs, change clothes, sponge off the road dust, rush downstairs, find the registration, find our table - hi, hi, hey, good to see you, what's happening? what the fuck did you do to your hair? Tony Timpone? Passed him in the lobby. Good to see you. Not that way, I hate that guy. Hi, just a sec, be right back.

Our table was actually in a really good spot. We were in a corner, at the rear of the room, against a wall, between a loading door, an indie company promoting a movie called Closet Space (I believe... it's been two weeks and I'm old, sue me!) and our best friends at Pop Cinema (including the incomparable Paige K. Davis, filmmaker and organ grinder monkey Henrique Couto, and my good friend of nearly 15 years, Justin (Skin Crawl) Wingenfeld). Which was just awesome.

Then, as we began setting up, we heard a terrible scratching, screeching noise. At first, we thought someone had on some sort of odd sound effects record and put on the "Birds" track. A small rain of debris fell next to us and we looked up - there was a bird's nest just inside the drop-panel ceiling, under the sprinkler. There were holes in the wall between our room and the parking lot (the whole hotel was a disaster, incidentally - crumbling ceilings and walls, stains throughout) and the birds found this just lovely. Beneath the sprinkler, on the floor behind our table, a collection of twigs, dust and powdered bird shit had accumulated.

At first, this was funny. I mean, at most shows that are NOT Cinema Wasteland, we're used to being shit on figuratively. Now we were being shit on literally. We shook our heads, hung our posters, displayed our new issues of Sirens of Cinema (on sale now wherever Sirens of Cinema is sold!), and sucked it up. The nice thing about Creation Entertainment-run shows is that the head of security, Tammy, has become a great friend of ours over the years. She's awesome. She saw the bird shit. She went ballistic. "Tell the hotel, right now, to clean this up. This is a health hazard."

Oh, yeah. Bird shit isn't healthy to breathe or be around. Yeah, the little winged rats are cute, but they're teaming with mites, fleas, all sorts of unpleasantries. And these bastards were also loud.

So I politely (yes, politely - I can be polite! Go fuck yourself!) asked the nice something-Americans behind the hotel desk to send maintenance to vacuum up the pile of disease we were sharing space with.

Sometime Saturday afternoon, after two more requests and a mention of "health code violation", a two-man team of custodians arrived with a push broom and a dust pan. Away went the now-large pile of bird debris into the garbage - a receptacle located exactly four feet away on the other side of our table.

By this time, we'd hung a sign on the wall that said "Yes, there is a bird's nest in the ceiling", having grown tired of answering the question "is someone playing a sound effects record back there or are those real birds?" The avian shrieking wasn't helping our sales, that's for sure. Every now and then, the squawking would get so loud, I'd bang on the ceiling with a poster roll, yelling at them to shut up and feeling like the grumpy old guy downstairs. It usually resulted in silence for ten to thirteen seconds. Then they'd start up again. Every third time I tried it, I'd bump one of the panels and get a face-full of nest as a reward. That was fun.

In between the bird-battles, we got the chance to catch up with fine folks like Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, star of Argento's eagerly-awaited The Third Mother, who contributed to the new issue of Sirens; Scooter McCrae, master of weird horror like 16 Tongues and my underpaid composer; Tabitha and Mom Sharon, who run Corpses by the Bunch, who had their own woes to deal with; Anthony and Karen from East Coast Kitty. I met Stan Winston for a moment. He signed my Pumpkinhead DVD (for f/x wizard Eric Molinaris' birthday) and shook my hand before I was punched out of line, Time Bandits-style, by his After Dark handlers. We had a nice evening's dinner on Friday with Debbie Rochon, mere hours before she had to fly to Italy. Intrepid Fango editor Michael Gingold swung by (and we joined his nibs, Scooter, and about a thousand other people from evil clown movie 100 Tears for dinner on Saturday - a nice, intimate affair). We showed folks the Professor Jack and the Electric Club trailer I'd cut. We thrilled folks with some sneak footage from Splatter Movie. We drank to kill the pain caused by the incessant squawking of ceiling-dwelling sparrows.

That afternoon, one of the customers passed out in the aisle and hit his head on a table. Amy went to help him up and he latched onto her arm, wouldn't let her go. He was disoriented, had been drinking, and didn't know his own name at first. About an hour later, the paramedics from the hospital across the street finally arrived. The man, Bob, couldn't tell anyone his address or even how much he'd had to drink. Another man, who first identified himself as Bob's "handler"--then "friend", then "neighbor", then "a guy who drives him to horror shows"--just wanted to take Bob home. Bob was dehydrated and his blood pressure was through the roof. The paramedics, with Amy's help, got him into a gurney and wheeled him out of the room - almost taking Amy with them, as Bob still wouldn't let go. These are the adventures of my own personal Wonder Woman.

Saturday night was spent with our friends from Digger Films, the French Canadian film crew. Steve, Dave, Hugo and their buddies P.H., Johnny, T-Bag and Nova (these are all nick-names, of course; French Canadians all have Klingon names unpronounceable by their U.S. neighbors). T-Bag, incidentally, was not this magnificent man's real nickname. He told me, in a very noisy bar, to call him "T-Man". I didn't hear "man". So he was amazed when I replied, "You really want me to call you that?"

It got even funnier, later, when I realized my mistake. Not that I corrected it. The hilarity increased when the others discovered what "tea-bagging" actually was. I convinced the others not to tell him until they were halfway home. He was a lot bigger than I am.

(Unfortunately, he was told the truth towards the end of the evening. Somewhere along the line, we'd picked up a guy from Rhode Island who insisted there were fifty-two states in the Union: Washington D.C. and "East Virginia". As a result, I referred to him as "52" for the rest of the night. I like giving nicknames. It's a source of power. It was, of course, 52 who broke the news to T-Bag, feeling sorry for the poor, lost Frenchie. The joke was on 52, though, because T-Bag thought that was just as hilarious as the rest of us did. So there, 52!)

Sunday, I was not hung over. Miraculously. I was tired and desperately wanted to go home, but that's normal Sunday fatigue. My table was still over-run by bird mess and they seemed even louder today. Tammy had finally run down someone from Creation to witness the tragedy. Majid, the talent co-ordinator, was outraged. He demanded that housekeeping do something. Tammy insisted that I get my hotel room comped. The hotel didn't want to do either of those things. My fear was they would kill the birds, but by wildlife laws, they're not permitted to even move the nest. Finally, the same two custodians showed up with a plastic bag and draped it over the sprinkler inside the ceiling to prevent further mess.

This pissed the birds off even further. They started moving to the exposed hole in the wall, poking their beaks out and squawking at us with visible outrage. So, great, we go from lung disease to tetanus shots from beak-punctures. Yay.

I was very grumpy at this point. Irrationally, I was thinking this was a respect issue. That they'd stuck us in the corner intentionally - ha ha, wouldn't it be great if Mike and Amy got shit on all weekend? I knew this wasn't true, of course, but when you get into a pissy mind-loop, it's difficult to free yourself from it. While browsing the Pop Cinema table, an actress I don't particularly get along with, but never had anything against, appeared beside me with a ratty-looking entourage. They started heckling Chainsaw Sally, the star and director of which happen to be, of course, really good friends of mine. The actress agreed and tossed the DVD aside with derision. I smiled at her and pointed to one of her movies. "You were really good in this, by the way," I said.

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, thanks."

I pointed at another one. "And you really sucked in this."

Her jaw hit the table. I gave her a bigger smile and walked away.

Bitch.

Anyway...Majid, still outraged, took us up to see one of the heads of Creation to rectify the situation personally, even though it wasn't Creation's fault or responsibility. It was, however, Creation's show, so I thought a personal apology would be nice. With the show in full swing, though, including a couple hundred swooning middle-aged James Marsters fans, no one else from Creation could be spared. We did end up getting our hotel room comped. This vanished expense actually pushed us slightly into profit! So we spread the love and bought stuff from our vendor friends.

The highlight of Sunday was breakfast with Justin. He's my oldest "adult" friend. I've known him since 1991 and we've seen each other through some extreme highs and lows, got each other jobs, gigs, acted in each others' movies. Since he moved to New Jersey with his wife, Trinity, and Amy and I moved to the farthest reaches of PA, we don't see each other that much. Now he has a beautiful new baby (Reagan Poe), a slew of good reviews for his movie Skin Crawl, we have our company, farm, horses and dogs and cats - it's hard to find time to just sit and talk. Breakfast was cold and late but the company couldn't have been better.

The drive home, as usual, was long and painful and seemed to take forever. Sundays, regardless of the show, always suck. It's filled with goodbyes and packing and exhaustion. Sundays should be banned from conventions, as a rule.

Still, I can't say that we weren't treated really well, particularly by Majid, Tammy and her daughter Amber, and their compatriot Chris. Fangoria always hosts a good show, regardless of the turn-out, and I'd be lying if I didn't say I wasn't looking forward to next year, regardless of the wildlife. I'll just bring an umbrella next time. And possibly all of the cats.

Sometimes I write recaps just to remember what I've done...

Today will be largely spent packing and getting ready for the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in New Jersey. Despite numerous emails from various Fango and Creation heads promising otherwise, neither Amy nor I were ever added to the site as guests or otherwise. But it's okay, we were thanked for our continued support. There's no reason to be bitter about it, however, at least not on Fangoria's end. Everyone over there - magazine, radio, comics and television - has been very nice to us so there's no cause to complain. People who go to the con will find us, invariably. Still, sometimes it's fun to get your shots in.

At this said Fango show, we're unveiling a brief and very rough look at some new Splatter Movie: The Director's Cut footage. No screening or big fanfare, just something we'll be showing at our table. HOWEVER, if any members of the general public reading this are planning on attending, there's a catch. You have to go to the Splatter Movie page and print out a ticket we created. Present this ticket, and we'll show you the footage. There's some good stuff in there too. We're talking double axe murder here. So print out your Happy Cloud ticket (it's just like a Wonka ticket, only you don't have to eat a slew of Wonka bars to get one. Well, you could if you wanted to...) Either print it from the blog or from the Pics page.

Also this weekend, and you won't need a ticket for this, will see the premiere of a brand new trailer for Professor Jack and the Electric Club. When I say "brand new", incidentally, I mean brand new. I literally finished it yesterday, cutting it to replicate trailers for '50s serials (just as the movie itself pays tribute to those by-gone days of yesteryear).

At the end of this cutting, however, I discovered just how much I depsise iDVD. As much as I love Final Cut Pro and most other Mac-related items, their iDVD is wretched. Regardless of the setting, I wound up with crappy compression on the finalized disc, leading me to believe that cutting on FCP, recording to tape, recapturing in Premiere, making an MPG2 from there and finalizing the DVD in Encore is not the tremendous waste of time I suspected it to be. The DVDs are coming out much nicer in Encore. And, no, DVD Studio Pro doesn't seem to be an option, thanks. Takes twice as long as Encore and I'm not thrilled with the output there, either. Yes, I'm sure there is something I'm not doing or some radio button I'm not clicking, but I'll stick to this method above. It takes a little longer, but it seems to work out quite well. Ultimately, what you're dealing with is a near-Luddite teaching himself to use a telephone. I'm usually happy when things just turn on.

But, anyway, the Professor Jack trailer should be up on Myspace and Youtube next week.

* * *

By now, everyone on Earth knows that I'm a Muppet fanatic and that Jim Henson is at the top of my list of heroes. It's not a secret. I have a freakin' Kermit the Frog tattoo on my left shoulder, for pete's sake. And don't think I haven't had to give a beatin' or two out in the yard to some skinhead who made fun of it during exercise turn-out! K to the F, baby! (God, I'm white...)

So, anyway, it should take nobody by surprise that I jumped at the chance to drive to Washington D.C. because a friend of a friend who works at the Smithsonian as a prep mold-maker was currently on the team prepping a new Muppet touring exhibit and had on hand several original Muppets from The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and even a couple pre-dating those (like Featherstone and the King from The Frog Prince (not, I realized later, taking a closer look at the costumes, Hey, Cinderella, where the characters originated) and Wilkins and Wontkins from the old "Wilkins Coffee" commercials!). Our new best friend Danny had arranged for Amy and I to come in about an hour before the Smithsonian heads of state arrived to start their preparations for the exhibit. Basically, we had an hour to peruse.

So, no sweat. The S.I. folks arrived at ten, we could be there by nine. To make sure, we left at four a.m. It takes a little over three hours to get to D.C. from our house. Plenty of time. Even when we got turned around and I drove in the wrong direction for fifteen miles - not a problem. Plenty of time.

Except that Washington D.C. has the worst traffic on the face of the Earth. We hit the George Washington Parkway at 7:30 and sat, crawling along, for nearly two hours. By the time we arrived and found a place to park, it was ten to ten. And that's when we realized we'd parked eight blocks away from where we should have been.

Now we're running through a particularly horrifying neighborhood, winding our way through a carpenter's strike (where Amy was hit in the back with a rock, presumably by someone who didn't think we were sympathetic enough towards the plight of D.C. area carpenters) and dying from the heat. By ten a.m., it had already hit 80+ degrees. Yay.

We finally got to the center and lo and behold, the Smithsonian higher-ups hadn't yet arrived! There was time after all! Danny quickly took us into a temperature-controlled work room, passing a jacket belonging to one of The Dark Crystal Podlings, and took us into a vault. Okay, vault/work room.

On all the tables, beneath sheets of plastic, were about a dozen original Muppets. Not camera puppets, the ones you find in calendars or posters - these were performance Muppets, used on the shows and in the movies. Danny uncovered a Rowlf first. We were inches away from something donned by Jim Henson and Frank Oz. He was a Muppet Show Rowlf - his face was a lighter color than the body fur - and he was in beautiful shape. Next to him, on a lower table, were Ernie and Bert, also covered with plastic. Beyond them, the King and Featherstone. Across from them, placards made up for various Fraggles and Dark Crystal props.

Then Danny opened a cabinet. And took out a Kermit. He'd already been mounted on a styrofoam base to hold his shape and fitted with armiture to keep his arms in place. If I wore white gloves, I could hold him.

I never put white gloves on so fast in my entire life.

Amy snapped a picture of me holding a Muppet Show performance Kermit. His eyes were yellowing slightly, but his flocking was still intact. Danny reached over and positioned his arms so Kermit would be waving at the camera. I was holding something that Jim Henson not only held, but created and was, in a large way, an extension of the man himself. Whether or not Jim actually built this Kermit, I have no way of knowing. At the time, he wasn't doing puppet fabrication, so I doubt that this particular Kermit was a by-product of his time. But he brought him to life. This Kermit in my hands had been on the show. This Kermit had been, at one time, The Kermit the Frog.

I replaced him, gently, back in the case. Then Danny handed me a Muppet Show Mahna Mahna. I was just taking in the detail in the eyes and the feathers surrounding the face when the Smithsonian folks walked through the door. With expressions on their faces as if they'd caught us using the Muppet cabinet as a urinal. It was probably the camera that freaked them out most.

Now, I've been in situations like this before. You don't pose as a journalist for ten years and not run into things you might have to talk your way out of. My biggest concern was that Danny not get into trouble. So I shook hands and smiled and dropped all the names over at the Henson Legacy I could think of. I hit a bullseye on a couple. They started to relax a little but still insisted that Amy delete the pictures that were taken, saying that Disney is very concerned about copyright violation, etc. Which isn't what they were actually worried about. We were foreigners in their territory. Rather than wait to be ushered from the room, I thanked them for their time and told them we'd get out of their way. No one was gracious enough to offer to let us hang out in the back or even appreciate the time it took us to get there - but then again, I didn't expect that kind of reaction. They wanted us out.

So we hung out with Danny for a while longer and he showed us some of the other exhibits being prepped for the various museums, including a fascinating skull for a Jamestown exhibit. To be honest, I think I asked more questions about how their computer-driven lathe worked than anything regarding the actual exhibits.

In the back of my mind, however, I was still buzzing about holding Kermit. I'd had ten minutes in a room filled with genuine Muppets. I didn't get that when we toured the Henson New York Office Building a few years back!

And as it turned out, Amy confessed as we were leaving, that she didn't delete the pictures after all. Once she realized they weren't monitoring what she was doing with the camera, she just shuffled through them and pocketed the flash card. So I have photographic proof that I did, indeed, handle a real Kermit. I will honor their wishes, however, and not post them. Besides, they're not for the public. Everything else I do is usually put out for public consumption. These pictures are for me.

We walked back to our car, discovered we'd gotten a ticket for parking on "Senate Property", though we couldn't have been farther from the Senate if we'd remianed parked in our own driveway. We couldn't find another parking space so visiting another museum or monument was out. So we drove out and opted to meet Eric Thornett for lunch. He showed me one of the new Canon HD cameras his studio had picked up, along with some footage shot and yes, it was all very nice and yes, now I really want one. Particularly if this camera, being a Canon, will fit the lenses I have for the XL2. But I couldn't really concentrate on any of that.

Because I'd held a Kermit for two minutes. We drove six hours (then back for four) for ten minutes and I would do it again in a minute.