Cool Stuff from my Cool Stuff collection! (other cool stuff edition)

Here's some more of the odd treasures I found while digging through my storage room. Most of it is photography-related, but not all of it.


You saw the photo passes I posted in the previous post, I hope. Well, this is the other part of the puzzle:

This was once on the wall in the photography room at my high school:

This photo was one of a set that I entered in an radio station art contest, trying to win Pearl Jam tickets. My entry was good enough to make it to final judging, but didn't win. I was under 18 anyway, so I suppose they wouldn't have given me the tickets. Unfortunately, the other photos in the set got lost at the station. The theme was: "Fight Hate, Educate."

Here is the letter the station sent me. You'll see other correspondance from them further along...

Invitation to the school district's art show which I entered twice. One of the entries also made it to the finals but didn't win.

Radio station KISW put on a concert series and various other promotional events during the year. As a photography student, I always wanted a moving target, so I attended many of their events. After a while, I had befriended many of their radio personalities and their promotions guy. I sent a collection of my work to the station and received this note back, ironically when I had just started to think that my calling was radio and not photography.

Later, when I was in broadcasting class, a friend and I got to go down to the station and watch their morning show live from the studio. These are the promotional items they gave to their guests:

This black notebook contains my concert journal from my teen years:

This is the "band" my friend and I created as teenagers. The band: Empty Stage. The hit song: "Five Minutes of Silence." The band never had to practice much...

The above-mentioned friend was quite the artistic talent. I told her I was going to keep all of her notes to me and write a book about her someday. She threatened a very slow, very painful death on me. Most of that stuff has been long left behind over many moves, but here's a little treasure:

I like baseball. Here's my little collection of baseball ticket stubs:

And finally these two trading cards, the only ones I have left from the horror movie collection:

ZomBcon meets it fate at the hands of zombie-killers?

Well, the small group of fans who've donated in the hopes of keeping Seattle ZomBcon alive are likely to be disappointed. With 52 hours left, the organizers are well short of their goals and no hope in sight. I've tried to get the word out, but I suppose my personal network of friends only goes so far.


ZomBcon organizer Ryan Reiter has gone personally in debt trying to keep this thing going, yet things don't look promising for the awesome con that brought awesome celebs like Bruce Campbell, George Romero, Malcolm McDowell, Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, Sid Haig and Sam Trammell.


The saddest thing about this situation is that I'm sitting here thinking about all the awesome friends I've made at the past two ZomBcons. I'm going to miss the excitement of meeting new people with similar interests. I'm also going to miss having a reason for my friends to travel to Seattle. Heck, I'm going to miss having an excuse to spend a weekend in Seattle.


While I haven't completely given up hope, it just doesn't look good. If you are into zombies or horror or cons or anything of the sort, please check this out. You can help save ZomBcon by donating here. I can't offer any bribery or anything, but check out these awesome photos from ZomBcons past and just imagine how much fun Bruce Campbell doing an Evil Dead wedding must have been!

A... Book Review? Nah!

I'm not going to review it, really. But I figured I should comment that I re-read a favorite book recently and it still has the same effect on me it did the first time. Which explains why, while it's a favorite book, I have re-read it less than three times.

William Johnstone is a largely unrefined, formulaic writer, best known for writing in two genres: horror and action. This is, from what I can tell, his only love story. Which is a good thing. I don't think I could handle a second one since What The Heart Knows leaves me so damn emotionally worn out every time I read it.

I originally discovered this little treasure in a used bookstore. Used bookstores are few and far between anymore, but there's nothing better in my opinion. I was reading at adult level at age seven and therefore, was allowed to choose my own entertainment. My mother was all about letting me discover the world in my own way, so nobody seemed to flinch when I gravitated towards the popular horror fiction of Stephen King and Dean Koontz. But once I had worked my way through their back catalogs, I was left trying to discover treasures on my own. I wasn't a library kid. Even then I liked to own my books and revisit them like old friends. When my mom went to the grocery store, liquor store, DMV or hairdresser, I would head straight for that dingy little used bookstore, where it smelled like old books, tobacco and mothballs. The books were priced as a percentage of their original price, so if the book had been $4.99, it would be $1.29, etc. I usually had a big, fat $5 to spend, so I'd come out with two or three books if I was lucky. I started out reading The Devil's Kiss, Johnstone's first horror novel and continued following his work from there. I must confess, I learned to curse from two sources: Too $hort songs and William W. Johnstone's books.

Johnstone's horror books are masterfully dark and gratuitously violent. If one of the cable networks that pushes horror took a look at his catalog, they'd have a treasure trove.

All blathering aside, if you feel like having your heart repeatedly run over by a steamroller, you might want to check out What The Heart Knows on Amazon, because I doubt you'll find it in a bookstore.

If you're interested in checking out Johnstone's other works, you can check out his website here.

My Love/Hate Relationship With Portland, Oregon...

I love Oregon. If I didn't live in Washington, I'd move there. Actually, I was seriously looking at a property outside of Bend a few years back before we found our little slice of paradise here in Port Orchard. I've vacationed in Oregon countless times and taken many a day trip there. I like Oregon a lot. They simply have better beaches than we have here.

I remember on one particular "day" trip to Portland, during which I was lost somewhere in the downtown corridor, looking for a place to turn around. I was impressed with the city. It was like Seattle... only cleaner. It was rush hour and the "bus-only" streets and "No Turns" intersections had me particularly worried about whether I'd make it to my destination before the millenium was over. These were the days before cell phones and GPS. I had a paper map, but finding a place to pull over amongst the gazillion "No Parking" zones was challenging.

My number one problem with Portland is Burnside. Yes, that's right, Burnside. The street you get stuck on and have to travel miles before you can make a turn and backtrack to where you really needed to turn in the first place, only to find that you can't turn there anyway. Burnside is Portland's very own Hotel California.

So how is it that I never manage to find a way to avoid that dreaded stretch of road where it seems that everything is "No Left Turn," "No Right Turn," "No U-Turn"? There's a freeway entrance somewhere on Burnside which allows a Seattle-ite blessed escape onto I-5 North. Safe, away, back to home where the one-way streets seem to only confound visitors from... oh yes, Portland.

Every single trip I've ever made into Portland, I end up on that foresaken street. Only to realize that I'm now trapped like a hamster in a ball. Drive all the way across town, find a place to turn around and go back. Why, Burnside? Why do you flummox me so? I secretly think that Burnside is just one of the many ways city planners had to keep outsiders away from their beautiful and entertaining little city. If an out-of-towner dared get off the freeway, they would simply fall into the sticky trap that is Burnside and be stuck there for eternity. I think there's a special section in hell referred to as "Stuck on Burnside, can't turn anywhere, running low on gas."

Most of my trips into Portland were for concerts. There were shows at Crystal Ballroom, La Luna, Memorial Coliseum (was warned then not to get on Burnside, pfft) and a few other clubs whose names I cannot recall. I've been lucky enough to see Dream Theater, Fates Warning, Queensryche, Goodness and many other bands in Portland and have loved every visit. It's just the getting in and getting out that gives me trouble.

On one particular trip, after a great show and an unexpected early morning breakfast with members of Goodness, TB and I set out trying to find the freeway. We asked one of the locals and of course, they directed us to Burnside, follow it to the freeway, can't-miss-it-style. I think I then asked if there was another way to the freeway. The local insisted that their route was easiest. I was driving T's car to top it off, which made me even more displeased over having to travel Burnside in someone else's vehicle. I don't remember how many wrong turns we made, but we eventually got out. Our arrival in Puyallup was sometime around 6am. Heck, it was light out. T had to go to work. I went home and napped. That afternoon, it was off to another adventure in Seattle. Poor T showed up with no sleep at all and tells me she hallucinated all the way back to Puyallup that evening. Oh, the adventures. Imagine, T would have managed to get a few hours sleep if it hadn't been for Burnside.

Portland, you are beautiful, but I hate driving when I visit you. I hope you'll forgive me for my scathing criticism... like many, I just hate being lost in strange cities. And yes, Portland, you are strange.

Click here to read about the historic Burnside Bridge.

On the Seventh Day of Bruce-mas...

A secret look into what Bruce does when he's on break from Burn Notice...

Why I'm a Farmhand and not a Filmmaker...

My fellow farmhand MGX and I had a lively text conversation this afternoon, which degenerated into a brainstorm on farm-related book and movie titles... mostly horror. You may have to be a farmhand to get the true horror of these, but then again, you might not.


Farm horror stories:
The Garden of Shame (ok, this is an actual location on the farm, though it's no longer shameful)
The Land of the Foresaken Brassicas (MGX)
I Can't Get Up After Kneeling On The Cold Ground So Long (a drama)
Corpse of a Thousand Cabbages (MGX)
Revenge of the Runty Potatoes (MGX... might be a comedy)
The Fields Have Eyes! (MGX... recommends Rob Zombie for director)
The Clutching Fingers of Angry Zombie Housewives (MGX... Vincent Price as lead... nobody will get the Angry Housewife reference)
Compost Pile of the Dead
I Think the Ducks Are Stealing My Sanity...
Man With The Screaming Sorrel (this has to have Bruce Campbell in it!)
I Know You Dusted the Beets Last Summer
Cock (Rooster) of the Damned
Satan's Chicken Flock
The Birds (MGX... remake of the Hitchcock film with the Muppet chickens)
He Who Picks the Beans (MGX... based on a Stephen King novel)
The Chickweed Has Eyes (must have tentacles per MGX)
Can't Sleep, The Cows Will Eat Me

New additions (thanks MGX!):
The Turnips That Time Forgot
The Root Maggot That Ate New York


I hope these made you laugh. They made my day totally awesome!


I leave you with the Homicidal Squash, farm mascot and friend to all...

These messages brought to you by...

Sometimes They Come Back...

I watched Sometimes They Come Back earlier this week and have been meaning to give a short review... however, it seems that I got stuck posting about... *gasp* ... meaningful things like duck emergencies. So back to some happy fangirl fluff for a while.

Sometimes They Come Back is based on a Stephen King story, which makes it safe viewing because I know what to expect out of King. In viewing the film, it seemed to ring a bell with me which means either I've read the story (probably) or that King's stories tend to have common themes (also likely). For a while, I kept mixing up the storyline of this with the storyline of a few other of King's works, which made it interesting because I was expecting something totally different to happen.

I watched this while being the only one awake in the house. I don't normally get alone-time when watching movies, so that was a bonus. Was I scared? Not necessarily... but I was on the edge of my seat for this. Not much gets my attention that well, so I'm going to give this film a 4.5 out of 5 on the obscurefilm-o-meter.

Now for the screencaps and Tim Matheson fangirling...

A teacher and his family return to his old hometown...

In which a terrible tragedy happened...

Struggling with nightmares and bad memories, Matheson's character has to deal with obnoxious high school students...

While he probably wants to kill whoever chose his clothing for the film...

And then... the requisite weird shit starts to happen...

Are his students methodically being murdered and replaced... or has Matheson's character gone off the deep end? And who are these new students?

Can this mild-mannered schoolteacher save his family when nobody will believe him?

Sometimes They Come Back IMDB.

Phantoms

I figured now would be a good time to share one of my favorite films: Phantoms. I adore Liev Schreiber and Dean Koontz, so this film is right up my alley. Any fan of Koontz knows that no movie ever made from one of his novels has ever done the book justice. Phantoms comes pretty darn close.

This film also has Rose McGowan in it. She almost seems out of place in the film, but then again, her character is supposed to be a little out of place.

The basic premise is this...

Big sister takes little sister to live with her in a small mountain town...

They arrive and all hell breaks loose...

Is it a disease, or... ?

"It's just a bundt cake... it's just a bundt cake..."

Ben Affleck... before he was well-known:

Liev Schreiber is delightfully creepy...

With Peter O'Toole, they try to unravel the mystery of who or what has decimated the town...

Phantoms IMDB here.

Phantoms has some of the best lines in it. "Heyyyy, ya wanna see something?" And I'll never think of the song, "I Fall To Pieces" the same.

This is one of those films that I've seen so much that I curl up and go to sleep with it playing. That may seem like a negative to some, but I consider this to be a "comfort movie." Other movies that I use to lull myself to sleep if I have insomnia: Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness (ok, I see a trend), Alien Apocalypse, Safe House, Star Trek: First Contact, and Star Trek: Insurrection. There are more, but those are the ones I watch most often late at night when I should be asleep.