Current mood:

chipper

lml ^_^ lml
I went to Portland this weekend for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival at the Hollywood Theatre. Warren drove Sylvia, Toren and I down on Friday early afternoon. I could really say a thousand things about this trip, the main one being that it totally rocked. Portland is a cool city, I met a ton of awesome lovers of Lovecraft, and Toren and I got to explore the city during the day on Saturday. I found four Discworld books at Powell's that I haven't been able to find anywhere in Vancouver. I just about bought the manga version of Empire Strikes Back, but didn't (I've bought so much Star Wars crap over the years and I always regret it afterwards). I bought a Deep Space Nine novel partially written by Armin Shimmerman (w00t). Toren and I walked from downtown to Urban Outfitters (I know it's wrong, but I LOVE URBAN OUTFITTERS SO MUCH) where I bought two t-shirts. On the way we stopped at a CD store where Toren bought some CDs and I contemplated buying Da Unicorns (even though I have all the mp3s, their CD is still worth buying) but I didn't because it was $15 USD and I should really buy it at Red Cat where it will be cheaper and I will be supporting my local record store.

See, it was that kind of weekend. Once I start writing it immediately goes off on a bunch of little tangents because I did so many awesome things.

We watched lots and lots of Lovecraft-related films. Most of them were short films. The two long ones I remember were Quatermass (funny and silly B-movie from the late 50s, I think) and The Last Wave (really good Australian movie with lots of aboriginal mysticism). The Call of Cthulhu trailer looks fucking rad. It's done in that 20's silent film style. Other things we watched, all short films:

Why Settle For a Lesser Evil?: Doc[MOCK]umentary following two Cthulhu worshippers campaigning for Cthulhu for Prez (NO MORE YEARS!!11). They realize that Bush will actually cause all the destruction and devastation that were hoping for. Ends with worshippers and a Republican shouting on the Capitol steps: "NO MORE YEARS! IA! IA! BUSH FHTAGN[sp?]!"

Enter the Dagon: Another MOCKumentary about some really shitty filmmakers making an action martial arts Lovecraft movie. Good part: getting a psychic to channel H.P. Lovecraft to ask him for movie-making advice. Lovecraft immediately starts strangling the director. Bad part: semi-racist Asian stereotype girl who helps make the movie.

The Visage: If the lead actor wasn't so horrible, this probably would've been pretty fucking awesome. A guy down on his money and his luck is asked to watch over a dead body for three days to keep evil spirits from stealing his soul (or something). Scary shit ensues. The dead man's grinning face was definitely the creepiest part.

The Summoning: 20s silent film style, classic Lovecraft storyline - a guy reads about a local artist who died. Random stranger leaves a note on his doorstep telling him if he wants to know The Truth, meet up with him. Guy is given a book, starts to read it. Hears sounds in the basement, follows them. Sees a portal. Decides to stand on it. And read aloud from the book (I LOVE THIS ABOUT LOVECRAFT CHARACTERS - Why did you decide this would be a good idea???). Is devoured. It's probably based on a Lovecraft story I haven't read. I really liked this movie. It was super well done.

The Monster was animated and couldn't have been more than 5 minutes long. It was cute.

...Consulting my program....

Ah yes, The Tell-Tale Heart was also black and white and the only voice was the voiceover reading the story. This one was also quite good.

Pickman's Model was a really poor VHS copy of a movie from what looked to be the 80s. It was okay. If the art done by Pickman was better it probably would've been more believeable.

The Witch in the Dream-House (or was it the Dream in the Witch-House? I forget) is a really really awful movie filmed on a VHS camcorder in a house that looked like an IHOP. All the characters had crazy creepy mullets or white boy afros. And nobody could act or speak properly (I am not exaggerating). And the special effects and editing were unbelievably terrible. There are parts where characters just stare at the wall for two full minutes. And where the camera isn't actually following what's happening - instead it's filming a corner of the room. There is a witch who looks exactly like the Wicked Witch of the West (because that's what witches look like!) and her familiar, a human-headed rat but actually it's a cute little ferret! And when they travel to the fourth dimension there's these crazy rainbows in the background and everything is pixellated. It was submitted to Andrew (who puts on the Festival every year) the second year of the festival. He decided it was too bad to actually show, but he would watch it with his friends who came to visit during the festival just because it was so funny. And then three years ago they decided to have a midnight showing of it at the Festival and since then it's developed something of a cult following. The guy who plays the character Elwood is INSANELY funny. Somebody has made Elwood t-shirts. I don't think I've ever heard Toren laugh so hard. So that was an experience.

I met a ton of people, as I said. Most of them were film-makers and artists and they were all the nicest people. And they all had great respect for Toren so they were supernice to me. People kept asking me, "So, Marlo, what do you do?" And I'd kind of blush and say I worked in an office. These people work on Lovecraft magazines and sculptures and publishing companies and paintings and movies. It was humbling. There was a [I should say THE] bonafide Lovecraft scholar there, S.T. Joshi, who seriously has insanely encyclopedic knowledge of everything Lovecraft. We stayed at Andrew and Linda's house (their little son is named Vincent after Vincent Price) and I think we only actually bought two meals while we were in Portland. They were so hospitable - I think there were probably 6-8 other people sleeping all over the house). We slept in their basement. The first night we slept there we heard this intermittent electronic mooing noise, which was pretty hilarious. We crawled out of bed and tried to follow the sound (which only occurred probably every minute or so). We found the source - a toy barn with all kinds of buttons that make farm animal noises. After pressing them all and probably waking everyone up with tinny clucking and oinking, I figured out how to stop the mooing. It was totally hilarious and I laughed until my sides hurt.

We couldn't really find any good restaurants, mainly because we had no idea where to look. We pretty much just wandered around until we found something that was acceptable. It's hard when you're vegetarian and trying to avoid eating too much dairy, too. When we had Chinese food they didn't even have chopsticks, or any tofu on the menu! Sigh. America. We did have some pretty good Mexican food in Mount Vernon on the way home. That was cool because there are NO Mexican restaurants in Vancouver.

Of course we went to Powell's, and spent over two hours there. Best bookstore ever. I think Powell's owns Portland. Everywhere we went, there was another Powell's bookstore.

People I met. I met people from LA (Brian & Heather, Aaron & Kirsten), people from Portland (Andrew & Linda, Lee Moyer), and people from places but I don't know where (Scott, Donovan, John Tines and his girl whose name I forget). Some of them were real characters that I want to steal and write into a book. I think the Coen brothers must've met Scott (works for a Lovecraftian publishing company) at some point because he seriously IS Walter from the Big Lebowski. He has glasses and curly brown hair and he's tall and wide and even wears a beige vest with lots of pockets. And he's a gun nut. Unlike Walter, though, he's pretty sane. And really really fucking smart and tells the best stories ever. Maybe I'll try and outline the Severed Dog Head story later. And the Giant Christmas Present story. Lots of his stories involve guns, too. So funny. And Brian (a sculptor) was cool because he's a total social butterfly and even though he's probably 40, he is always super-stoked about everything. I love meeting people with such enthusiasm. And Linda was great because in every conversation she had to mention her breasts (which are quite formidable).

And on top of everything, the weather was fantastic. Clear blue skies, and it was actually hot. And Toren and I figured out that we spent around 85 hours straight together. Crazy! It was lovely. He's the best.