Pretty Girls on a Bruce Campbell High

The best photo from Portland doesn't even have Bruce in it. This is what happy fangirls look like on a Bruce Campbell high.

I still have photos to sort and edit. This will take a while!

Shatner responded to my tweets!

Ha! Pretty awesome. Shocked that my fellow UPS'ers didn't jump all over this, but hey...

Fangirl attempts to start a UPS vs. Fedex Twitter war...

Yes, I have a bit of UPS pride. I couldn't resist trying to take this conversation between William Shatner and Bruce Campbell in a different direction:

Of course, Fedex was quick on the draw too. And then the puns started...

Ha! Fun stuff.

I'm going to have to head over to the other job in a bit. It's going to be hard acclimating to skipping my afternoon nap from now until November.

Wizard World Portland, Part Three

Sunday morning, I was dragging. Tired from not enough sleep, having woken once again at 3am. 

It became hectic pretty quickly after a cup of coffee. Packing and readying to check out from the hotel, though I was hoping to leave my car with the valet while we did our last day of con adventures.

Our hotel was so good to us. Between the extra shuttle stop at the liquor store on Friday, the repeated pickups and dropoffs at the con, the great service, extra coffee, great restaurant and bar and the awesome valet and front desk staff, it was a great experience.

Once packed and the car loaded, I was ready for more fun. First stop: the ticket exchange line. Second: the main entrance line. Third: the Bruce Campbell photo op line. Finally, this stuff was becoming routine. We got into the photo op area well before they started lining us up, but that was okay, we weren't going to do the same song and dance with the lines that we did on Saturday.

Soon enough, it was my turn again. I didn't blink, didn't freak out, just got my picture. Life was good. And Bruce looked good. Mad professor, anyone?

 After that, we rushed straight off to the autograph line. Things went smoothly and we were able to get our autographs. While Kim waited for her second trip through the autograph line, I ran off to meet Robert Englund.

Robert Englund and the Elm Street franchise basically illustrate everything cool about my childhood. Some of my best memories were of renting horror films with my older cousin, listening to rock music, hiding coffee pots in our bedrooms and staying up all night. 

I was a bit nervous to meet Robert, for no reason in the end. I had chosen a rather obscure picture to have signed, having searched high and low for it since I had once had the poster on my bedroom wall, torn out of a horror fan mag.

I took this photo while I was in line because I was too broke at this point to pay for a photo with Robert. Wish I had been able to get one, but maybe next con...

And here's the gem I got signed:

Yes, that's right. From the Dream Warriors music video shoot: Robert Englund as Freddy with members of DOKKEN!

This literally illustrates the best parts of my childhood.
Seriously. Here's me one Christmas Morning with Nightmare 3... I was so thrilled!

And here's me sporting my Dokken shirt back in the day:

 
 So there I am in Robert Englund's autograph line... 

I say hi and hand him the photo. 

"Where did you get this?"

I tell him I looked all over for it since I used to have the poster on my wall as a kid.

He's excited to see the photo, so I give him the extra print I had.

And that's when Robert Englund starts telling me stories about shooting the Dream Warriors video...

Whoa. I'm standing in front of Freddy Kruger as he's telling me about making a video with Dokken. How cool is that?

Probably as cool as seeing Dokken in a small club about 9 years ago.

 

I could have never imagined such a thing as a young fangirl. Never. In fact, even Saturday I would have never imagined things going down the way they did.

But there you have it. Proof that I've been fangirling for a really long time!

Seriously huge thanks to Kim, Jane, Mike, Bruce Campbell, Mike Estes, Ted Raimi, Robert Englund, the Wizard World staff, our hotel staff and my understanding husband for making it a weekend to remember forever!

Wizard World Portland Adventures, Part Two

Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi gave an impressive performance at their panel. While it was advertised as a Q&A, it was anything but the same old: "When is Army of Darkness 2 coming out?" questions.

No, Bruce and Ted decided they'd just have a little fun with everybody. It seems that illustrating what a bitch filmmaking is was a good theme.

They chose people from the audience and decided to make a hypothetical two-minute movie with a $25 budget.

 It was absolutely hilarious. I told Bruce on Sunday how much I liked the panel and how nice it was to see something other than a standard Q&A.

Other fun parts of Saturday Comic Con:
Cosplayers:

Cassandra Peterson doing photo ops and signing as Elvira:

After an exhausting day, drinks and dinner with good friends!

Jane: it was good to meet "Precious."

Falling into bed at 11pm never felt so good... until I once again woke at 3am out of habit.

Wizard World Portland Adventures, Part One

Was fortunate enough to attend Portland Wizard World over the weekend. What a nice little break from real life!

Drove out Friday after work and got to the hotel early enough to check out the con with a friend and get a photo taken with Cassandra Peterson (Elvira).

  

 

 Since we had both traveled a distance, we were both out cold by 8pm. Working graveyards makes it hard to have a life on Friday night. That said, I woke habitually at 3am and had a heck of a time getting back to sleep, which left me a lot of time in the early morning on Saturday to goof off and drink a little coffee with rum added.

I look like a nightmare in the morning. Just think: this is what I look like when I go to work in the morning. Sorry, Faux Bruce Campbell and other unfortunate coworkers:

We had a nice buffet breakfast at the hotel, I stuffed myself because I knew I wasn't going to have time to eat again until late. After that, we were in the shuttle and off to the con. I'm so lucky to have a friend like Kim who manages to keep better track of things than I am. Even with my minor OCD, I felt like I had no idea what I was doing when we walked back into the convention hall.

The Bruce Campbell photo op line was our first destination, where we were lucky to meet my online friends Jane and Mike who are new to the U.S. and new to cons as well. They had VIP tickets, so they got to go ahead of us at every stop and we didn't actually get to visit much until the end of the day.

Professional photo ops are a new thing to me as far as cons go. I had been through one with Sam Trammell a couple years back, but that con was small compared to Portland. The line seemed to take forever to move and then all of a sudden, it moved way too fast. Next thing I know, it's my turn. They ask you to take off your glasses to avoid lens glare, so there I am, half blind, trying to pose with Bruce Campbell, looking so dapper in his blue suit. Put my arm around Bruce, SNAP!

The photog hollers out, "We've got a blinker here!" Oh no, I was mortified. Three tries later, a decent photo was taken.

 I'm happy I managed to get a little extra Bruce time, but I was so mortified that I was blinking, probably squinting really, because I'm blind without my glasses. I think I look awful. I have to focus on Bruce, because he's beautiful no matter what.

Then it was a mad dash to the autograph line which they had already cut off. First they told us to come back at 2:15, then 2:30, then 2:45. Finally, we just started lingering as the con staff kept trying to get us to move along. Somewhere along the line, they hadn't managed to inform us that we were supposed to exchange our printed tickets for different ones. Oops!

Hours go by and finally we're near the front of the line when a staff member informs us that our tickets are no good and we need to go back to registration. Luckily, Mike Estes rescued us and allowed us through.

Mike, you rock! I have to publicly thank you for being so kind during the entire weekend.

I left out the fact that we chatted a bit with Ted Raimi and got photos with him somewhere in the process. Honestly, my timeline is a bit messed-up with all the confusion.

 Yes, I blinked. This graveyard shifter was having a hard time keeping her eyes open for the camera.

But back to Bruceness. They were making a big deal of not allowing photos to be taken of Bruce while he was signing, which was a real disappointment. I had wanted some more candid photos to share, but such is life.

Bruce signed an Army of Darkness photo for my son, who wants to make movies when he's older. I told Bruce about my son and we chatted for a short time before I had to move along so the next person could have their turn.

By then we were in a situation. Kim had to go back through the line again due to con rules that said you could only get one autograph per trip through the line. Worried about getting seats for the panels, I covered Kim while she went to exchange her tickets in order to be legal coming through the line again. When she returned, I ran off to get seats for the panel.

In the end, they cut the autograph line off early and Kim didn't get her autograph, joining me at the Sons of Anarchy panel. Our seats weren't that great, the first six rows were VIP. The plan was to jump forward between panels, but we ended up out of luck on that end.

Lucky my camera was fairly kind to me.

 This is Ron Perlman and Kim Coates doing the SoA Q&A.

Bruce and Ted were up next with their Q&A, which turned out to be anything but the standard Bruce Campbell Q&A.

Due to space, I'm going to break up the reviews into bits, so this is officially To Be Continued...

Portland Countdown, Unfortunate Decapitations and Bruce Campbell lookalike.

I officially have two days to prep for Portland Comicon. I'm not ready at all. Still need to check cameras, pack clothes and such, get the tires on my car checked, print out tickets and con schedule, remove all my work crap from car and find something for Bruce to sign.

I'm excited, but I'm stressed about having everything ready to go once I get off work on Friday. I usually get out around 8-9am, so I have to rush home, shower, pack the car and run. My friend is getting into Portland right about the time I'll be getting home from work. If I had a regular job, I wouldn't have to stress on the shower, but I tend to work dirty jobs. Of course, if I had a regular job, I'd be stuck working all day Friday and not be able to attend the whole con.

I had ordered prints of some photos I took to have Bruce to sign at the con. Imagine my reaction when they arrived today and his head was cut off in every single print! What gives? Having worked in a photo lab, I know that if you have to crop for print size, you do so in a manner to not decapitate your subject. I'll be calling customer service for a full refund tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm now out in the wind trying to decide what to have Bruce sign.

Recently, I met someone who reminds me of Bruce Campbell. Sam Axe-style Bruce to be exact. I think the universe is trying to tell me something, or I could be imagining the resemblance because I'm excited for Portland. Either way, I spend a bit of my time every day trying to avoid getting caught staring at Faux Bruce. The other day, it was several hours of trying unsuccessfully to avoid being distracted. Would it be wrong if I approached a near-stranger and asked him to say, "Give me some sugar, baby!"? I suspect the police would be called.

Lucky for me the Clark Kent-style Dean Cain lookalike isn't working with me now that our seasonal hires are laid off at work. It took me quite a while to figure out who he reminded me of, thankfully another coworker figured it out before I did.

Anyway, keeping with the Bruce Campbell lookalike theme, here's some real Bruce photos that hopefully illustrate what I've been trying to avoid staring at lately...