Screamfest

We went to Screamfest (horror convention) yesterday. Greg's favorite movie EVER is the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Not the remake, mind you, the original; Greg was relatively offended by the remake. TCM (as obsessed fans refer to it) starred Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface. Guess who was at Screamfest signing autographs? THAT'S RIGHT! Greg was VERY EXCITED!

Here is Gunnar autographing a particularly gross 8x10 for Greg, which will soon be up on our wall (oh, joy):


Here is Greg with Gunnar:


He's absolutely giddy!


See the picture that Gunnar signed for him, with the droopy skin and bloodiness? That's the "Pretty Woman" mask (as TCM fans call it), where Leatherface had on his mask made from his victim's skin. TCM was very loosely based on Ed Gein, a serial killer in the 50's. He murdered several women and dug up the recently buried bodies of several others, all of whom looked a bit like his mother, and made clothing out of their skin. The Buffalo Bill character in Silence of the Lambs was also loosely based on Ed Gein.

Who wants to bet that I know more horror movie trivia, relative to the amount of horror movies I have actually seen, than anyone, EVER? :)

Here's Greg with some stray freak (there were plenty of them wandering around the Wyndham):


I bought some really cool stuff, too, including this SCARY necklace:

I love The Shining, it's one of the few really scary movies I have actually seen and enjoyed. The book was so good, I just had to give in and watch the movie. It's not quite as good as the book, but movies rarely are. I don't know if being scary is a good trait for jewelry, but I fell in love with this creepy necklace.

And I bought this little painting:


From this artist:

How cool is this chick? I loved all her paintings, but settled on just buying one small one. I plan to put the painting somewhere in our newly organized library, I haven't decided where yet (in the picture above I put her in front of several scary paperbacks... ooOOoo). You can see more of her stuff here:R. H. Phister, and if you want to buy me a fabulous present for Christmas this year, you could get me one of these. Especially if you happen to be married to me... That's a HINT.

We also ran into our friend Gary, from the Just Push Play podcast.


Gary was in a movie that was screened at Screamfest, Zombies Zombies Zombies!. Zombies vs Strippers, who wouldn't love that?

Er... other than me, I mean. :)

DeviantART

I set up my deviantART gallery yesterday. (deviantART is a community website created for artists to show and potentially sell their work.)

My DeviantArt Gallery

So far I have 50 pictures uploaded, and I have more to go through. This is really the first time I have seen a chunk of my pics all together, and it's pretty cool.

This weekend is Screamfest, a horror convention that my husband has been looking forward to since... well, since last year's. Gunnar Hanson, the actor who played Leatherface in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, will be there and Greg is VERY EXCITED about meeting him. TCM is his favorite movie ever. Gads.

My husband is a horror movie freak. He writes a movie review blog, and if you have a strong stomach you can read his reviews here. I would just like to say once again how thankful I am that he watches these movies while I am out of the house.

Anyway, I am looking forward to taking pictures at Screamfest, since there will be a lot of people dressed up (there is even a zombie walk) and there will be a whole area for people to get tattoos.

Maybe I could even find a zombie getting a tattoo... What could be cooler? :)

B/W Pictures

Greg has been urging me to look through my pictues to convert some to black and white. It seems like every photographer has to have some b/w pictures to round out their portfolio.

I am as pretentious as the next artist, but I just really can't get much into black and white. Every now and then I think it might add poignancy or contrast-y interest, but usually I'm all about colors.

This one, though, I think looks pretty good in black and white:
In color, it's is pretty much dominated by green, I think it might look better with all the shades of gray.

This is such a strange shot, I think it's almost easier without color:
I think I like the fact that you have to sort of look closely to see the people (who are, by the way, both white people wearing black). I think the lack of color makes it more dreamy... or nightmare-y.

This one is almost black and white anyway, but I think the green of the trees reflected in the bits of glass makes it more interesting:

What do you think?

Whew!

Doesn't coming back to work after a week of vacation suck? :)

Last week went great. I have definite tendencies towards packrat-ism, so I worked really hard to get rid of a lot of crap.

Examples of the ridiculous junk that meant a lot to me but I got rid of anyway:
* A stuffed pink doggie that my best friend Tammie gave to me in third grade
* A shiny red tape recorder that I got for Christmas when I was five (the first "grown-up" present I ever got)
* A construction paper American flag that I made in 1976 to celebrate the Bicentennial (I was 10)
* Uncle Scrooge comic books

It's embarrassing. But I am proud of myself for getting rid of so much stuff. We also got rid of a bunch of cords and cables and speaker wire that we didn't need, and a videotape rewinder (ha! remember those?).

We also weeded out dozens and dozens of books and magazines that we will donate to the local library. We ended up buying 4 tall bookcases from Wal Mart. Oh, the cheapass crapitude of those bookcases! They are so rickety they actually come with a strap to attach to the wall. I would never have bought these if we had kids! But they look pretty good all filled up with books. We had three already, so we now have a total of 7 big bookcases (two are in the living room, five are in the office).

We are actually still in the process of arranging the books. I say we should have straight alphabetical order, within fiction and non-fiction sections. Greg thinks we should arrange by height, with all the paperbacks together and all the hardbacks together. But what if we want to look up a certain author? I want to find all my Andrew Vachss books together! His plan is clearly flawed. I'll let you know who ends up winning this one. In the meantime, all the books are arranged in non-order, but they look lovely!

To celebrate, we went out and bought a couple of books. :)