In the Trenches of Blood

Journal / convention report.

IN THE TRENCHES OF BLOOD with Scott Lefebvre

#3: Horrorfind! [3/08]

 

     This weekend was a busy weekend for Fearwerx.

     For some indeterminable reason Horrorhound Indianapolis and Horrorfind Maryland decided to schedule their events on the same weekend.

     I’ve spoken, in person or via e-mail, with the organizers of both events to try to figure out the reason for the simultaneous scheduling but I haven’t figured out anything definite.

     Fearwerx wanted to do both events, so we did, but it was much more of a hassle to do both events on the same weekend than if they had been one week apart.

     Joe Sena took Horrorhound, because, based on our experience, it would be a little bit slower than Horrorfind.   Our experience was verified by the results of the weekend.

     Joe and I kept up a dialogue over the weekend and most indicators indicate that Horrorfind was busier than Horrorhound but not by a really striking difference.

     It was worth it for Fearwerx to make the effort to participate in both events, but instead of there being two strongly performing events in close proximity there were two moderately performing events on the same weekend.   The two events had to compete for vendors, celebrities and the same audience.

      It’s a disturbing trend which can be seen pretty clearly when examining a calendar of the 2008 Horror Convention season, which I’ve included at the end of this piece.

     I have to do a little homework and get my facts straight.

     The last time I took a serious look at the schedule was last month and the dates for different conventions have been announced and confirmed and I also have to do some research so I can have hard numbers about table rates and hotel costs for the conventions since Fearwerx will be participating in most of the conventions scheduled for 2008.

     The problem with having two of the major mid-level American horror conventions on the same weekends is that it’s physically impossible for me to be at both at the same time.

     I met some awesome people when I was at the last Horrorhound last November and I was looking forward to catching up and hanging out with everyone.

     I also met some awesome people at last August’s Horrorhound in Hunt Valley and I was really excited to catch up with and hang out with them.

     So I think it was really unfair of Horrorfind/Horrorhound to make me have to choose.

     When I was planning the nuts and bolts of getting to and from Maryland, I thought this was going to be another bus and train trip from Rhode Island to Long Island.

      From April on I won’t have to worry about all of that nonsense, because I’ll be moving to Long Island right after I get back from HauntCon in Houston.   But until then there’s the additional hassle of getting me from where I live to where the Fearwerx gear is.

     I also forgot that I had made arrangements with my loyal friend and sidekick Josh Gravel to come along and work the show.   This was a glitch because I thought I’d be renting an s.u.v. like we used to but now we’re onto this new thing where I take Joe’s minivan back and forth from Long Island to the conventions.

     I called Josh and asked him if he was okay with the whole bus and train to Long Island deal, and he asked me if I just wanted him to drive.   I had completely forgotten that he drove and that his car was good for the trip to and from Long Island.   At least much more so than my beloved Buick.   Sometimes when you’re busy trying to take care of the details something major gets overlooked.

     Of course I wanted him to drive, so we made arrangements for him to come pick me up Thursday morning and we’d head for Long Island.

     I worked the night before at the crappy security job that I look forward to leaving behind me in Rhode Island and got my stuff together when I got home in the morning.

     The more shows I do, the easier it gets for me to get packed what I need for the weekend.   Plus, since I’m anticipating the move to Long Island in April I’ve been giving away or throwing away lots of stuff that would otherwise clutter up my personal space, so everything’s pretty streamlined by now.

     Josh came and picked me up and we were off.   We’ve known each other for, like, sixteen years so we always end up talking for the duration of car trips regardless of the duration.   It helps to pass the time and keep the spirits up, but it’s hell on my voice.   Add a ten hour dialogue onto both ends of three days of booth improvisation and hucksterism and by the end of the weekend I sound like Tom Waits fighting Leonard Cohen in a dark alley behind a seedy bar in a bad part of town.

     We get to Long Island and we stop at Doctor Mego’s house.

     Joe’s already on a plane out to Indianapolis, and the minivan was packed yesterday and is ready for us to pick up.   Doctor Mego gave Josh the tour of the Mego museum that I had been hinting at and then we gave Doctor Mego Josh’s keys and took Joe’s keys and we were on our way to Maryland.

     We had a little problem plugging the destination into the navigational system because it refused to identify Adelphia as a city.   So I called the hotel and they gave me an alternate city, which I forget, but it worked out alright so it’s alright that I’ve forgotten.

      The trip to our destination was relatively easy.   The nav took us around D.C. which was a relief and we made good time the whole way.   I was a little leery about the town around our destination.   A lot of the stores had malfunctioning store sign lights.   Although this resulted in some wonderful accidents like the “Asian Y Out” and “St. Ractic” and “Visual Optemet” it was a little disconcerting to pull into a town that seemed sort of broken down.   There were a lot of people loitering about, lurking around, and crossing the streets.   And not the good kind of foot traffic, like around a thriving college community where there are just lots of people around.   This was like people looking sort of hurried and harried and generally economically depressed so I made a mental note to keep the time we spent out in the concrete jungle down to a minimum.   Although we did make a few forays out into town to get energy drinks and whatnot from the CVS and we didn’t have any problems, but that CVS was the most run-down CVS I’ve ever been in.

     It was just the kind of town where there was the smell of despair and danger in the air.   The kind of place that keeps you conscious of where you are and who’s around you and where your wallet’s at.

     The check in to the hotel was relatively uneventful.   The desk staff were friendly and there wasn’t any hassle with the reservations.

     We got checked into room #215 and it was a weird little corner room.

     There were two big beds in there, and a bathroom, but there really wasn’t a lot of room to move around.   The little alleys between the beds and the bureau were definitely single file which was a little annoying, but it definitely beat sleeping in the back of the minivan for three days.

      I set the ground rules when we got settled in.    I told Josh I didn’t care if he watched TV, despite the fact that I hate the goddamned thing, but I wanted him to make sure to turn it off before he fell asleep.   The first time he fucked up I’d remind him and the second time I’d kill him in his sleep.   It didn’t really become a problem.   He tried, and if he fell asleep I turned it off for him and I didn’t get woke up in the middle of the night by infomercials so everyone wins.

      The load in was 11:00 a.m. Friday and we were rearing to go.   I tried not to be too much of a nuisance, but I was parked outside the doors to the vendor room with a dolly full of boxes when they opened and we were in full effect from the moment they let us in.

The load-in wasn’t too difficult because we only had two dolly carts full of stuff.   The rest of the stuff was shipped directly to the hotel from the screen-printer.   When we got the minivan unloaded I sent Josh back with the dolly and asked him to look into where our shipped boxes were at.   He came back a few minutes later with a dolly full of boxes of shirts fresh from the printer.   We got the boxes off the dolly and I got the laptop jukebox set up and with my “Hi-Energy Show Set-Up” playlist rocking we got down to the dirty sweaty work of set-up.   This time out it wasn’t too dirty or sweaty.   I had Josh with me and this was the third Fearwerx gig he’s done with me so I could delegate a little more than I usually can.

     With the tables set where I wanted them and the banner up and the boxes getting unloaded, I realized that we didn’t have the six cases of Winchester Pub pint glasses we expected.   I sent Josh to try to find them but he came back empty handed.   I texted Joe and he ran a track on them and confirmed that the hotel had received them so it was up to me to go and find them.

     I went to security/receiving and politely but persistently inquired about the glasses until they figured out where they were and I was accompanied into the bowels of the building to where the glasses had been delivered and rolled them up to the vendor room.

     The vendor room was relatively small compared to the last Horrorfind I had done.

     This was excellent because there was less competition, although SighCo was present, but Brian from SighCo and I have a healthy relationship as competitors and a friendly rivalry.   I noticed that Satan’s Sideshow had tables labeled for them but didn’t end up showing up.   Wonder what that was about.   I was also pleased to notice that Tees from the Crypt was in attendance because although we both sell shirts, we’re not in direct competition and I knew Josh would be happy since he gets Fearwerx merch for free he’d probably pick up a couple of their shirts this weekend.

      It was weird to notice who was not in attendance because of the conflicting conventions scheduled that weekend.   It was kind of a game to figure out who was in Maryland and who was in Indy.

      Interesting anecdote from set-up.   Judith O’Dea and Kyra Schon stopped by the booth to pick up some of our glow-in-the-dark-logo Night of the Living Dead shirt to sell at their tables in accordance with a prior arrangement with my boss.   I had no idea what they were talking about since we were so distracted by all of the logistics of doing two shows in two locations on the same weekend that I wasn’t briefed on the arrangement.   I told them that I would call my boss and figure out what the fine details of the arrangement were and would personally make sure that everything was resolved within the hour.   While they were at the booth they were admiring our “Zombie Island” design and I asked them what size they were.   Thankfully their sizes were exactly what we had one left of each of, so I took them out and dropped them in front of them and said, “I’m sorry about the confusion.   Please accept these shirts as a gesture of appreciation for your patience.”   They tried to pay for the shirts and I said, “Don’t insult me.   Your money is no good here.    Do you realize how many times I’ve watched Night of the Living Dead?   If I had a dollar for every time I’d be more than fully compensated for both of your shirts.   My boss and I are fully aware at how little compensation you’ve received for the film and we would appreciate it if you would accept these shirts with our gratitude, and please let us know if there was anything else you were interested in.”   I think maybe I laid it on a bit thick, but at least I got the sentiment across and they went upstairs to the celebrity room.    Shortly after Joe called me and instructed me to split the shipment of glo-in-the-dark-logo Night of the Living Dead shirts evenly between them and I promptly did so and dropped them off at their tables with a minute to spare before the doors opened.   Confusion cleared and I got to meet a couple people from one of my favorite movies of all time.

     With Josh’s help with set-up, I was in great shape when the doors opened up at 5:00 p.m.

     The Friday was slow, but steady.

     One of the great coups of the night was when the head of hospitality came up to the booth and asked us if we had any shirts we could sell to him at a wholesale discount because he wanted to have all of the hotel staff in the same kind of shirt so they’d kind of blend in with the crowd a little bit better than if they were all wearing white dress shirts with vests and bowties.   I did some quick thinking and managed to sell him on a stack of our “Possessed” design which we were discontinuing.   Plus they are all bright red so it would be easy to pick his staff out of the crowd.   So in one fell swoop I managed to get rid of a stack of shirts I was planning on getting rid of anyway.   It was funny to see the folks manning the hotel’s concession booths wearing our shirts.   Especially since they were right off the rack and still had the creases from folding in them.   This deal was a continual windfall for us because new staff kept coming in over the weekend.   So the head of kitchen staff, a big old 3X dude, kept coming up to the table and picking up another shirt, and another.   By the Saturday, later in the day, I was going to send Josh to get us some nachos from the kitchen before things got all crazy with the after-party.   I tried to get nachos from the bar on the Friday night, but the bar was wall-to-wall and there was no way I was going to get anything resembling service so we just bit the bullet and went into town to the Taco Bell we saw on the road on the way in and stopped at the CVS to stock up on Goya sodas and Monster energy drinks.   Right when I was going to send Josh in search of nachos the kitchen guy came back for another couple shirts.   I mentioned I wanted nachos and I would be pleased to trade a couple shirts for some nachos.   The kitchen guy asked me what I wanted on them, and not wanting to look gift nachos in whatever passes for its mouth, I said, “Anything.   Everything.   Surprise me.” And let the guy take a couple of shirts that we were practically going to throw out because we were so tired of carrying them back and forth from the shows and not selling them.   The guy came back about half an hour later with a tray of nachos that had to be seen to be believed.   I don’t usually eat behind the booth but I was ravenous so Josh and I acquired utensils and dug in on our respective sides.   Those nachos were awesome.   I was so happy.   It was like getting exactly what you wanted for X-mas.   It was like $30 worth of nachos.   I love it when I win.

     As I said, the Friday was slow, but steady and relatively uneventful.   I met a few interesting people and made some sales but it was nothing really incredible.   At least I wasn’t having a miserable time and the people here were really cool and friendly.   The vendor room closed at 10:00 p.m. and I wanted to get nachos, but the only open food place at the hotel was the hotel bar and that place was packed and ridiculous so we ventured into town.

     I usually like to make the scene but I was pretty exhausted since I can never sleep before the first day of the convention so after a few cigarettes in the courtyard of the hotel we retired and I was soon unconscious.

     The Saturday was relatively busy.   There weren’t a lot of people waiting for the doors to open, but there was a fair amount of people that showed up over the course of the day.   George Romero’s manager Chris Rowe came by the booth and picked up a box of our “Zombie Survival Kits” that my boss had arranged for him to pick up and I was amused to find out that our kits were one of the items that George Romero had available for signing at his booth.

      I heard from Josh that someone came down to buy one of our WGON shirts for David Emgee / “Flyboy” from ‘Dawn of the Dead’.   I sent Josh up to go check that out and to offer Tony Todd and Ken Foree one of our ‘Badass Zombie Killah’ shirts since my boss designed the shirt with Ken in mind and many people forget that Tony Todd played ‘Ben’ in Tom Savini’s 1991 re-make of ‘Night of the Living Dead’ so the title also applies to him.   Josh came back down to pick up some merch and then came back about a half hour later.   He showed me pictures of Tony Todd and Ken Foree posing with their new shirts and a picture of David Emgee actually wearing the shirt he had bought.   I texted my boss with the news and he was giddy as a schoolgirl.   He replied that Savini was rocking a WGON design that he bought from our booth in Indy.   I guess we did something right.

     The vendor room closed at 7:00 p.m.   We went back to the room and we laid about until the ache dissolved from our arches and calves and we felt like going back downstairs to check out the scene.   There was the usual drunken debauchery but not as crazy as things had been in Hunt Valley.   I think that Horrorfind and the new location were getting to know each other and they were both a little shy on their first date.   I’ve heard a fair amount of talk about how the hotel staff is already making plans to better accommodate the convention when they return in August.   First order of business?   More bars.   ‘The Oracle’ was cozy and pleasant but it really wasn’t built to handle the hard-drinking Horrorfind crowd.   Not that I was doing any drinking this weekend.   I figured that getting intoxicated each night after working hard at the booth was just making things more difficult for me than they had to be so I decided to try this weekend alcohol free.   It was a little difficult.   Not that the temptation to consume alcoholic beverages was difficult to resist, but alcohol is part of the hospitality extended by convention attendees and declining offers prompted quizzical looks which were responded to with a brief explanation of the preceding philosophy.   It’s bad enough that doing these shows is like a sort of surrealist endurance marathon, I don’t see the need to handicap myself any further than the inherent damage inflicted by long hours of highway driving and lack of sleep.   I can have just as much fun sober as I can intoxicated and it’s a lot cheaper and I don’t wake up all hung-over the next day.

     I spent a fair amount of time outside in the courtyard with Josh and a couple of acquaintances from Rhode Island.   When we all went in to attend the ‘Dawn of the Dead’ screening, I knew as soon as I stepped foot in the auditorium that I’d pass out in, like, five minutes so I excused myself and returned to the room, passing out soon after.

     The Sunday was dead.   Not completely dead but there were far fewer people around and there was plenty of time to get to know people I had met the preceding two days.   Sales came in dribs and drabs and we started gradually breaking down a couple hours after the doors opened for the day.

     I took a break to go up to the celebrity room and get a George Romero autograph.   I’m not usually an autograph hound, but Chris Rowe reminded me about half a dozen times to make sure to go up and get a signed item in exchange for the arrangement that we had made to provide him with zombie kits and other matters of business which I am not entirely free to completely divulge at this juncture.   Let’s just say that there will be lots of awesome Night of the Living Dead merchandise available from Fearwerx in the coming months.   I took a 2X and 3X of our WGON design shirt up with me to offer George because, really, I think the least we can do is get him one since without his films we’d only have half of our product line.

     I waited in the relatively short line like a good little boy.   The guy in line before me had two sculptures, like little big head statues, of characters from George’s movies.   It was apparent that he was a bit of a fan and offered either or both to George, but George declined, with the excuse that he didn’t have any room in his house for any more memorabilia.   I haven’t seen the documentary where he gives the tour of his house, but I have seen stills from the back of the box and it’s easy to believe that space is a precious commodity at Romero’s home.   I felt bad for the guy, because it was obvious that he was a little let down but he handled it okay, got his signature and picture and moved along.   I opened up with, “I know you don’t have any room for sculptures, but what about shirts?” and George kind of laughed and rolled his eyes.   Then some dude standing behind me broke in on my schtick and dropped his head shot in front of George.   Local actor.  George just picked up the head shot, looked at it, looked at the dude and put it aside.    What did the dude expect?   Awkward moment, and then the dude left and I picked up where I left off.   I showed George the front of the WGON shirt and he laughed, and then I flipped it around and showed him the back which says “News.   Weather.   Zombie Reports.” and he and his staff laughed again.   It was, after all, the punchline.   I forgot what size he was so I asked him and when he said he was a 2X I gave him the 2X and dropped the poster I picked up to get signed in front of him.   It’s always awkward making that transition from, “You’re awesome!” to “Now please sign this for me.” but that’s the nature of the beast.   While he was smoothing down the poster to sign I told him that we had been providing him with the Zombie Emergency Response Kits he had been signing at the table and he said, “Oh, really?   There’s no gun in it!” to which I replied, “We always get that.   No gun.   No machete.   We like to think of the kits as supplementary.   You know, you provide your own guns and knives and we provide everything else.”   He laughed good naturedly and signed the white space of the “Martin” poster I selected from the line of memorabilia offered for autograph, “Scott – You need guns!   Thanks for the shirt!  -Stay Scared!   -George A. Romero”   I thanked him and, smiling like a fool, I shook his big old f*****g hand and scooped up my poster and was out of there before it became awkward or I began giggling like a school girl and raced back down to the booth.

     As I said, the Sunday was dead.   Not that we were in full-swing pack-up mode, but we started boxing up stuff that we hadn’t sold any of.   Taping up boxes and stacking them up on the side of the booth nearer to the door.   We were pretty much almost fully packed when the doors closed at 5:00 p.m. and we were down to two dolly loads at load-out which is pretty good considering that we had received a dolly’s worth of boxes shipped to us and six cases of pint glasses.

     With the minivan packed up we said goodbye to the other vendors we had become acquainted with who were taking off right away and headed into town to find a buffet.   We ate at a place called “International Buffet”.   The kind of place where you have to pay in advance and the carpet has all of these little dark circles from chewing gum or ground in food and there are kids all over the place, falling in while reaching for the pennies at the bottom of the shallow decorative wishing well grotto installation.   I was in a pretty good mood so I was able to see the humorous absurdity of the whole thing.   I didn’t give anyone any grief and no one gave me any grief.   The food was cheap and decent and filling.

     We went back to the hotel.   I’m used to taking off for home the Sunday night but it didn’t make any sense because by the time we got back it would be time to turn in anyway.   I tried to lie down and fall asleep in the hotel room.   That didn’t work, so I asked Josh to set up his computer and I followed up with all of the people I traded contact information with at Monster Mania and Horrorfind the past couple of weekend.   I could have spent a few hours building up the Fearwerx MySpace “friends” list but that seemed very unfun so I decided to go downstairs and see who was around.   There were some stragglers.   Those few people from the convention that were taking off the following morning like ourselves.   I spent a few minutes hanging out with Chris Rowe.   We tried to have a conversation but every time I started saying something there was this guy at our table that would take my topic and make it his own and I had to wait for him to finish his story to finish what I was saying.   He was a really nice guy, Josh talked to him for hours after Chris left, but I got sick of his routine pretty fast and excused myself to accept an invitation to lounge around with Chad Savage and Icky Nicky and their friends in the lounge area in the corner.

      I spent the remainder of the night hanging out with those kids.   Fun was had.   Many pictures with Alan-on-a-stick and strained attempts to come up with new variations on Developmentally Disabled porno titles.   We’re all going to hell, but at least we’ll be in good company.   I broke out the Night of the Living Dead Mego-style toy/doll prototypes and made a couple people that had pre-ordered them happy by letting them play with them weeks before they were due to get their own.

      I wanted to leave at, like, 6:00 a.m. but since I was up until 3:00 a.m. hanging out, I slept in a little.   We hit the road around 9:00 a.m. or so and made good time up the Atlantic coastline.   We hit L.I. about noon and got the load-out completed quickly.   I would have done a post-show inventory of the warehouse, but Joe’s boxes were being shipped back so they wouldn’t be back until later in the week so I figured I could just get everything inventoried by taking a trip back to L.I. next weekend.   Plus I could get a jump on the pack-out for Houston HauntCon / L.A. Fango at the end of April.

     Next episode: Houston HauntCon!

 

2008 Horror Convention and Film Festival Schedule for Icons of Fright!!!

 

MARCH:

 

Week 3:

Monster Mania: Cherry Hill, NJ: 3/ 14-16 [ ]

 

Week 4:

World Horror Convention: TBD 2009 [ ]

Horrorfind: Baltimore, MD: 3/ 28-30 [ ]

Horrorhound: Indianapolis, IN: 3/ 28-30 [ ]

 

APRIL:

 

Week 1:

Cinema Wasteland: Cleveland, OH: 4/ 4-6: [ ]

 

Week 2:

 

Week 3:

 

Week 4:

Fangoria: Los Angeles, CA: 4/ 25-27: [ ]

HauntCon: Houston, Texas:

 

MAY:

 

Week 1:

Chiller: Parsippany, NJ: 5/ 2-4: [ ]

 

Week 2:

 

Week 3:

 

Week 4:

 

TBD:

Monster Mania: Cherry Hill, NJ: TBD [ ]

 

JUNE:

 

Week 1:

 

Week 2:

 

Week 3:

Fangoria: Secaucus, NJ: 6/ 20-22  [ ]

Horrorhound: Pittsburgh, PA: 6/ 20-22 [ ]

Monster Bash: Pittsburgh, PA: 6/ 20-22 [ ]

 

Week 4:

Flashback Weekend: Chicago, IL: 6/ 27-29 [ ]

 

JULY:

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

Week 4:

 

AUGUST:

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

Fright Night Film Festival: Louisville, KY: 8/ 15-17 [ ]

Week 4:

Rue Morgue: Toronto, Canada: 8/22-24 [ ]

Week 5:

Horrorhound: Indianapolis, IN: 8/ 29-31 [ ]

 

TBD:

Horrorfind: Baltimore, MD: TBD [ ]

Monster Mania: Cherry Hill, NJ: TBD [ ]

 

SEPTEMBER:

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

Week 4:

TBD:

Crypticon, Minneapolis, MN: TBD [ ]

 

OCTOBER:

Week 1:

Week 2:

Rock & Shock: Worcester, MA: TBD [ ]

NecronomiCon: St. Petersburg, FL: 10/ 10-12: [ ]

Week 3:

Screamfest: Orlando, FL: TBD [ ]

GHOULARDIFEST 4: Independence, OH: 10/ 17-19 [ ]
Week 4:

 

TBD:

Cinema Wasteland, Cleveland, OH: TBD [ ]

Chiller Theater: Parsippany, NJ: TBD [ ]

Shriekfest: Los Angeles, CA: TBD [ ]

 

NOVEMBER:

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

Week 4:

TBD:

Horrorhound: Indianapolis, IN: TBD [ ]

 

DECEMBER: The month of the man in the red suit.

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

Week 4:

 

About Scott Lefebvre:

 

     Scott Lefebvre has been doing conventions for Fearwerx [ www.FEARWERX.com ] since July of 2007 and is proud to be the 2008 Fearwerx International Convention Manager.

     Scott Lefebvre reviews books and his reviews have been published in a number of in print and online publications, most predominantly on Icons of Fright.

     Scott Lefebvre’s first book, ‘Spooky Creepy Long Island’ is available from Schiffer Books [ www.SchifferBooks.com ] and his next book, ‘Spooky Creepy Buffalo’ should be finished and available from Schiffer Books in Spring of 2009.