The late B-Fest post complete with Angry Pikachu musings

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For seven years, I lived about twenty minutes away from a major airport. This proved close enough to hear airplanes over my apartment every so often and not spend too much if I needed to use Lyft.

I used Lyft a lot when it came to airport travel. If my means of transport involved flying, I became a lazy bunny when it came to things like parking and not driving when on vacation or other trips.

I thought about this as I headed to the Burlington Airport Park and Wash, roughly an hour’s drive from my apartment. Vermont is not a large state, one of the smallest by square miles. That said, a trip to the airport or Michaels could take an hour depending on your proximity to the interstate. We don’t have billboards or many highways. Both of these are great, but you have to plan sometimes.

I joke that essentials are in walking distance, but some entertainment and retail shopping can be an hour away. Route 7, a state highway, proved invaluable.

I remember this as I pull up to my airport parking of choice. Burlington Airport Park and Wash was recommended by colleagues, and as the name suggests, you park in a lot and get your car washed while on your trip. There are a variety of services in that vein, but I get the basic package and hop the shuttle to the airport. It’s genius by way of convenience, better prices than airport parking and best of all, coming back to a clean car.

I’m grateful that there were no delays, turbulence or airline related nonsense travelling to Chicago. Landing in Chicago and the return trip had a few hiccups. On the return flight, I had a delay. When I land in Detroit for my layover, I had to run to make the flight back to Vermont. Good thing I was alone.

I’m able to find a taxi to my hotel, enter the address and the driver gets pissy with me and tells me to chill when he misses the street to the hotel entrance and I try to say something about it. After some dirty looks and turns, I get there later in the evening. Thankfully, checking in was easy. I find my room, and test the keys, locks and the like before sorting clothes, charging my phone and looking at Google maps for food. I run into B-Fest attendees Melissa, Kelvin and Noel and it was time for walking distance Asian food, and pretty good cuisine at that. The place was small with trendy decor and great vegetarian options.

Not to long before the trip, I had a physical with blood tests. One came back as iron deficient/anemic or the vegetarian got sloppy. I’ve been taking supplements, but this couldn’t be a trip riddled with cheesecake, candy, soda and pizza just because this is a 24 hour film fest.

Spinach, broccoli and later dried apricots ruled the roost, even when the group ventured to the Omega diner. If it wasn’t spinach/vegetable omelettes, it was pasta primavera. Fest snacks involved caffinated beverages, dried apricots and dark chocolate almonds. I could almost feel my hair getting thicker.

The fest ran from Friday to Saturday evening. Everyone arrives from various parts of the country as early as that Monday. I arrive Wednesday evening. Either way, folks group off to tour the Chicago area prior to the fest. I had the privilege of touring Wheaton, Illinois, home to First Division Museum at Cantigny which had an outdoor tank park with tanks one could climb in addition to exhibits dedicated to military history. We also visited DuPage County Historical Museum and their extensive train sets. The Meyer Science Center at Wheaton College also had pretty cool geology exhibits as well as a giant mammoth.

I have to say that The Little Popcorn Store was something else. The shop is a single aisle and only a few customers are allowed to browse at a time. I got a few things for myself as well as gifts.

Our traditional Thursday Night outing to the Hala Kahiki bar, one of my favorite spots due to decor alone, was cancelled due to maintenance and repair, I think it was. I wasn’t planning on getting sloshed, but part of the outing involved dressing up, and in the most outlandish suit one could find. Mind you, Tim is a gifted thrifter and plays into the lounge lizard persona to great effect. I had a long leopard print dress, and it packed more easily than my original more post punk idea involving a button festooned blazer. Always next time… Nevertheless, we had a more casually dressed outing where we could rent out a room for karaoke. Our musical tastes vary in some spots, but it turned into an impromptu Talking Heads tribute night.

If I have my way, my retirement home years will have a lot of karaoke. Gen X and millenial retirement, should we get to retire, will be lit. Lit, I tell you.

Friday arrives and we start to pack up, making sure we have pillows, snacks and other essentials. This also involved a knitting project, something that could fit in an overnight bag. We get to Northwestern University, check in and find our seats, which like the movie lineup can and does change in the span of 24 hours.

Lineup poster in the auditorium – subject to change!

There were a few changes to the lineup, but I’ll give a run down of the movies I was awake for. I slept through fest standards Wizard of Speed and Time, Plan 9 from Outer Space and part of Elves.

Deathstalker II

I play Dungeons and Dragons. I often knit during Dungeons and Dragons. In this case I discover that a dice bag with sock yarn and thin double pointed needles was only a good project idea in theory, but try to mush on anyway. I wonder if this kind of thinking went into the making of this movie. The set sure looked like something out of an elaborate D and D board. You can see some rubber foam. The dialogue likely came from a campaign. I can see how this would feature at B-Fest, or a general bad movie night, and I don’t believe the sponsor of the movie intended anything bad, but for it to be seen as shlocky, not to be taken seriously. You certainly can’t take this seriously. That said you could see the sexist themes, violence against women, gratuitous sex-all the crap that makes women tabletop RPG gamers want to vet prospective gaming groups. I identified with the role of wrestler Queen Kong. After about an hour of the hero’s nonsense, he needed a can of sword and sorcery whoop ass and should have gotten more. As the credits roll, I’m shaking my head. I turn to Melissa who immediately says, “Queen Kong forever.” Yes.

Ticks

Seth Green has a bit of a bad movie resume, not unlike the horror credits of a pre Law and Order Michael Moriarty. I’ve seen Arcade and Airborne at previous fests, so I figured Ticks would prove funny if nothing else. I was pleased that Alfonso Ribeiro was also in the movie playing a tough foil to Green, playing a traumatized kid phobic about being alone in the woods after being left alone by his drunk father. Said father dropped in highway underpass by his dad intending to send him away to a camp in the woods for at risk youth. Woodland camp nonsense aside, our cannon fodder is also subject to ticks that go from being annoying to deadly due to steroid enhanced pot grown by a significantly older man that creeped on teenage girls at the camp. I couldn’t have been the only one glad to see the ticks get him. Not too bad for a direct to video, but Ribeiro’s character should have lived through it.

Voyage of the Rock Aliens

It’s not required to have a Pia Zadora vehicle at a B-Fest, but depending on your tastes, it can’t hurt. It wasn’t like the fest was interspersed with random episodes of Cop Rock, and I am not at all suggesting they do so. It had aliens, small town rockabillyish toughs, a hilariously incompetent (and a little creepy) sheriff and police, chainsaws, serial killers and Pia seeking stardom and the freedom to sing that her gang leader boyfriend forbids, but nurtured by an alien visitor love interest as everyone breaks into song. There was a music video that didn’t feel like it related to the film, but something made for MTV promo and tacked on to the opening credits. I wasn’t grossed out the way I was after seeing Hard Rock Zombies nor did I feel like I drank a large bottle of cough syrup after seeing Vicious Lips. I got a chuckle out of this, but I’ll stay away from that town.

Cobra Woman

I enjoy adventure movies made around the 1940’s and 50’s, especially if set on an island. This one had exiled princesses and reptile cults with despotic queens and a hero/love interest that had no problem talking down to his fiancee, despite her being the heir to the island’s royal family. The costumes and sets were appealing. The action sequences were good, but we could have done without the leading man, focusing on the cult, princess and Sabu Dastagir’s (Sabu’s) character.

The Ice Pirates

I’d seen this in parts before. It follows a formula. Renegade scavengers out for a limited resource, a runaway princess up for ransom and the evil establishment. It was a fun space adventure with a solid performance by Anjelica Houston. I’d absolutely join her crew, especially after that bar fight scene.

Down

This was a crappy movie with an interesting premise, namely that of an evil elevator. I’m claustrophobic and prefer to take the stairs, but this movie did not enhance my elevator wariness. I could attribute this to the cast phoning in performances, but I think it was because this wasn’t an elevator with glass doors…..that show how much higher you’re going….and what will happen if it drops….just something to keep in mind if someone wants to make a monster elevator movie for tubi.

The Pirate Movie

I think this was when I changed clothes and splashed water on my face. Pirate musicals, even self deprecating ones, just don’t do it for me. Was that when I got food?

Warlock III

I want to say this sequel sucks because it lacks Julian Sands as the warlock. While inferior to the first two, it had a solid story of friends turning on the main character in exchange for warlock ‘favors’, the descendent of our warlock, played by Bruce Payne’s foil and potential mother to the demon wreaking hell on earth. There was a spooky New England manse, which I think was shot at Roger Corman’s studio in Ireland, and nasty karmic spells on our cannon fodder. Ashley Laurence was terrific in Hellraiser and did a good job in this movie as well.

Monsters Crash the Pajama Party

I never joined a sorority, but if initiation was in a creepy old mansion….well, I’d spend the night and not join the sorority. Especially since the professors are bent on kidnapping college girls and making monsters. I’d enjoy this at a drive in, or as a short when waiting in line at a horror house at Universal Orlando. Watching this at the fest, I started to realize the dice bag I was knitting might need to be frogged. I dropped stitches and my too thin needles.

The Dragon Lives Again

I knew that there was a slew of martial arts movies following Bruce Lee’s passing. I’ve heard stories of studios casting actors with names like Bruce Li, Bruce Le. This movie took place in varying settings of earth and purgatory as ‘Bruce Lee’ played by Leung Choi-sang, credited as Bruce Leung Siu-Lung for this film, goes to the underworld and meets varying pop culture figures of the 1970s such as Emanuelle and the Godfather? I think they threw in ‘Clint Eastwood’ at some point. That was a weird one, but had good fight sequences.

A Gnome named Gnorm

So, you get Anthony Michael Hall as a painfully incompetent cop who encounters a gem and the gnome in need of retrieving it. He plays grab ass with Claudia Christian’s character. A post Dirty Dancing and pre Law and Order Jerry Orbach did a good job as the harried police captain turned corrupt villain, but that couldn’t save that turd. I was glad this didn’t close off the fest.

Demons

They did the right thing by switching this in the lineup to close the fest. Jake sponsored this and I trust his movie (and driving music!) picks the most. I still regret sleeping through the first part of Demonic Toys….especially after I go to the doll exhibit in a cramped room at Vermont’s Shelburne Museum. You can’t go wrong with Demons as random people get a free ticket to a mysterious movie theater only to get possessed during the movie within the movie with a wrong move. The transformation to a zombie is gruesome and the pacing makes the viewer feel as though you are playing a slimy and bloody game of blob where the last ones standing struggle to stay human until the calvary comes out of nowhere. It was a long road to get to that jeep, but worth it.

And, there we have it. Hopefully I will get to go next year. I promised myself I would sponsor a movie, preferably one where animals go amok…or Cocaine Bear. We all need to see Cocaine Bear. Failing that, I won a few DVD gems at the raffle that I can subject people to…

The Shards (2026)

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I was a long time fan of Bret Easton Ellis. His novels were among those that inspired my own writing. I even got to meet him at the New Haven Public Library when he was touring and reading from Lunar Park. He was very nice and I still have my autographed copy.

Some of his views I don’t agree with and feel some things probably shouldn’t be satirized. A lot of the early books gave the impression that he wouldn’t write about these things in such a nihilistic setting if it weren’t right in front of his face or going up his nose.

I opted out of reading the Shards when it was published, the first since Imperial bedrooms thirteen plus years ago. I knew of it, but it was off the radar until I learned it was adapted to TV.

For years, I held and pontificated on the belief that book adaptations worked best as TV miniseries. Details from the book, some pretty key, are cut to make a screenplay that will be greenlit. Maybe not that good, but adaptable. Of the Bret Easton Ellis works adapted to film, American Psycho was the best, but Ellis addressed how bad Less than Zero turned out as a film in the sequel, Imperial Bedrooms. Actually, it was the first paragraphs of that book…..and years and years later, he writes the Shards as autobiographical fiction from an unreliable narrator. He tells the story of his senior year interspersed with parties, wealth, cults and a serial killer.

Just your average high school experience in 1981 Los Angeles.

The first two episodes drop to Hulu in August. I watch the first episode and post to my Bluesky that this episode was better than it deserved to be. Too tired to watch the second, I wait until the next day, and ask myself, why was this my visceral reaction to the episode having never read the book? I then think about who adapted this to television and it hit me.

I have watched many of Ryan Murphy’s shows. As a fan of both horror and true crime, I was bound to run into him at some point. I loved Pose and there are excellent seasons of American Horror Story. I can see where he ran into controversy with Monster. With Ed Gein, there were inaccuracies and the Menendez season was criticized for oversexualization.

I joked about watching the first season of Monster about Jeffrey Dahmer due to a mild infatuation with Evan Peters in the titular role. First off, Niecy Nash stole that season. Secondly, let’s just say Murphy took some liberties. Word for word liberties. I remember following this case back when it made headlines. The adapted trial scenes could have been the same trial I saw over thirty years ago. This upset family members of Dahmer’s victims and understandably so.

I know they all can’t be Pose, but come on. I wish Monster didn’t get a fourth season as FX viewers ill need Lizzie Borden misrepresented more than she already was.

That said, I saw Murphy’s name attached to the adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis novel and couldn’t help but think that in theory this was the perfect pairing. Murphy can definitely be word for word. The setting will be glitzy, yet gritty in a bright but basic way. Watching this, you get the sense of two things. First off, The Shards as a story comes across as the coke baby of The rules of attraction and American psycho. Also, Ellis and Murphy are all about the kind of 80’s nostalgia with neon soaked killers and cults on the loose.

At this point, it seems Ryan Murphy doesn’t have a cast so much as a troupe. He pulls a lot of the same actors from various productions. It works, especially with lead actors being the kids of 80’s staples Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere. The actor playing possibly unreliable narrator Bret strongly resembles a younger Evan Peters to an almost unsettling degree, almost as weird as the displayed corpses.

I don’t know how the rest of this miniseries will play out, but if Murphy wanted to adapt other novels such as Less than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms, he could easily cast the same people as Ellis’s characters are pretty interchangeable and I suspect purposely so to bring home the point of cookie cutter wealthy people.

I’d just as soon that get adapted than crappy American Horror Story spinoffs or another season of Monster.

I’ll give it this much. It’s beautifully shot and that soundtrack is amazing.

Life boxed up, or I am not a fan of all aspects of moving…

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After an exhaustive frenzy of online applications with careful resume and cover letter review to make sure any software searching for certain keywords doesn’t delete my information before a human can accept or reject me, zoom and other video interviews, I accepted a new catalog librarian position in Vermont.

I left Connecticut for Texas seven years ago. I’ll head back to New England at the end of the month.

I arranged a truck and movers, and will have to fiddle with internet and other utilities as well as DMV nonsense. I have done an extensive amount of packing as well as donated or sold stuff I won’t need for the trip. Seeing the stack of boxes and empty cabinets and closets give a sense of accomplishment with an emptiness. So much reduced to boxes and cling wrap. In addition to the tedious pain in the ass, it’s a reminder that I am leaving a place that was home for seven years. A wacky, loud home with too many flags and signs in favor of Mango Menace among other GOP (s)elected officials that need to be shit canned if not jailed, but home still.

I was spoiled as I was by the weather and wildlife, winged or otherwise. As such, I know I’ll visit when I get a chance. Speaking of weather, I really hope to hell it holds up. I know how to drive in snow, but would rather not.

Fantasy B-Fest Picks

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Things I didn’t expect on my middle aged Gen-X 2024 bingo card happened and hit like a pile of bricks.

I handle it as it comes, best I can. I resolve that the next time I go to B-Fest, I will sponsor a movie. As I understand it, I will need to list five candidates.

I really, really, really want to sponsor Cocaine Bear. Nevertheless, I need more prospects and could touch upon a few themes, for instance, attacking animals after fucking with habitats or mutations as a result of pollution.

  1. Cocaine Bear
  2. Night of the Lepus
  3. Alligator
  4. Grizzly
  5. Piranha

Failing that, I can always submit “The Room” or subject people to “Spellcaster.”

Perpetually Under Construction

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As I had a little extra time on my hands, I took the opportunity to merge this page with my podcast host, podbean as well as back date previous episodes to this blog. I may even add a photo comic, both as a still or slideshow format.

In the future, any time I update the podcast, that episode will end up here. I don’t know the ins and outs of woo commerce just yet, but I want to set up shop here, have one website on my business card. Linktree can only do so much, and I’d much rather consolidate everything than jump from platform to platform.

As it is, the links and names to favorite sites and podcasts are very out of date.

My hand is cramped and I don’t care: Ghoulish Books’ Writers Workshop

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I think I had a lightning in a bottle moment tonight.
I planned on going to a writers’ workshop after work. In true horror movie fashion, there was a darkening sky followed by a storm a few hours earlier.
I’m sure that this happening before attending a writers workshop at a horror bookstore was only a coincidence.
I decompress after work before heading over. Thankfully, the weather held up. I arrive and everyone in attendance as well as the shop owners chat a bit before we introduce ourselves and our writing prompt.
I don’t bring a laptop, only a small notebook and pen. Paper was provided, and as I read our topic on a whiteboard, the room is silent for about an hour. I don’t stop writing.
After 4 and a half pages of feverishy scribbling out a rant regarding a loud and inconsiderate neighbor and turning it into a true crime creepy doll story, my cramped hand puts the pen down and it hits me how stiff my wrist and fingers are as I think about how in this day and age, we live on laptops and the autocorrect of our phones. There was no AI prompt to what I was doing and I kind of impressed myself.
We were then asked if we want to read.
Oh shit…..
I don’t know how I manage to get the ball rolling, but I do it. I read my very very poor handwriting. What’s more, the group seemed to like it. I was even told that there was a lot of polish to it, and that it didn’t come across as a prompted first draft.
I had a lot of rejection letters and busy schedules. My writing took a backseat. I tried to revitalize my motivation a little when I asked my ex to read a finished work, but he would not. Those red flags are a subject for another time, or another writers prompt. There was something about this event that felt very right, much like my knitting group, book club and later the podcast network I joined.
I don’t know if this story was a one time lightning in the bottle miracle, but it worked. I like making a good first impression as anyone would, but I also like that writing can be a voice for people like myself who aren’t always verbose, who can be talked over. Either way, I should at least type it out this weekend. Did I mention my shitty handwriting?

Bad Movie Bunny Podcast – The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

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Wherein your hostess braves an autopsy movie…..okay, this was at a bookstore, so I didn’t need too much courage. All the same, this was a very creepy movie.

Background music courtesy of Astrofreq, who you can check out on YouTube. I’m also a part of the Prescribed Films Podcast Network, https://prescribedfilms.wixsite.com/home/pfpn