MONSTERPALOOZA 2019!!!

Yes, it's that time of year when my family journeys up to Pasadena to experience my personal favorite convention, Monsterpalooza!  Once again, the experience was fantastic.  For those who don't know, it's a horror convention that began as a showcase for makeup and mask-making companies.  It's morphed into a celebration of all things horror.  There are still makeup and effects companies showing off their wares, but now there are celebrities signing autographs, special film premieres and panels that span subjects from upcoming blockbusters (like Godzilla: King of Monsters) to previews of this year's Universal Halloween Horror Nights.  There are even makeup tutorials if you're so inclined.

This year, we got to see some old friends like Lisanne Harrington and James, Matt, Shawn and Larry from the Monster Party podcast.  This was also the first year that Karen went with Lil and I so we got to experience it through a first timer's eyes.  That's always fun.  Here are some of the cool things from this year's con.

This larger than life fly model chilling out and eating popcorn with it's "baby" was just awesome.  As weird as it sounds, I'd have loved to have this sitting next to the stereo in my home office.

This macabre Easter get together was another highlight.  Unlike the fly above, this one was tiny with the whole scene only measuring about a foot and a half on each side.

The deer head above is by one of the most unique artists I know of.  Brooke Weston is a "rogue taxidermist" who creates miniature worlds within taxidermy animals.  This particular piece is called Vermillion Temple and I encourage you to go to his website (linked here) to get a better look.  Lil and I were in Burbank one time and managed to run across a number of Weston's pieces at the Bearded Lady Oddities Shop.  They are amazing.  I honestly hope that one day I'll have one hanging on my office wall.

Of course the cosplay is insane.  The woman in black above was especially stunning and I had to get a picture with the Tar Man from Return of the Living Dead.  Speaking of makeup, there were fantastic examples and demonstrations all across the convention floor.  Check some of these out.

And no visit to Monsterpalooza would be complete without a trip through the museum.  This year, my favorite pieces were The Right Hand of Doom from Del Toro's Hellboy movie and the actual puppet prop used during the transformation scene in the classic snake/man hybrid movie Ssssss.

There are a lot of horror conventions out there but Monsterpalooza is something special.  By the next morning, I was already wishing I had another day to go back and take everything in again.

If you get a chance to visit SoCal in the spring, you should try to coordinate your visit to check this out.  It really is fantastic!

October Music and The Ocean

Those of you who read the blog know that I’m a huge music hound.  I love most types from pop to jazz to blues, heavy metal, classical and even classic country.  As long as I can remember, music has been my one refuge when things seem bad and I’ve even noticed (and commented to some of you reading) that my listening tastes tend to change with the seasons themselves.

Fall is upon us and with it comes my favorite time of year, Halloween.  My birthday is in October.  My daughter’s birthday is also in October and we just make the whole month one long party.  It’s around this time of year that my listening tastes become slanted more toward rockabilly, punk and metal.  Bands like The Cramps, Nekromantix, The Horrorpops, The Birthday Massacre and soundtracks from Suspiria (Goblin’s best work), John Carpenter’s The Thing and pseudo-soundtracks by The Midnight Syndicate will go into heavy rotation over the next few weeks.

That said, this week I found myself listening to a song that’s definitely not in that vein and realizing that I’d almost unconsciously mimicked the lyrics in my own life.  As most of you read, I lost my Dad about a month ago.  I spent a couple of weeks in Texas helping my mother get things sorted and then when I came back here, I realized that I hadn’t really dealt with it myself.  I spent the next couple of weeks kind of going through the motions of work and home.  Then something clicked and I asked Karen and Lil if they wouldn’t mind going down to Laguna Beach after work one night. 

We hit up Husky Burger on PCH and then crossed the street and headed down to Shaw’s Cove.  We wandered along the rocks and watched the waves crash.  There were some cool blow-hole effects happening in one spot and the high tide was just starting to subside.  We waited there and watched set after set roll in until the sun finally started creeping down enough that the air got a little too cold for us.  Once we got back to the car and started driving home, I realized I felt better.  A lot better.

The ocean has that effect on me.  I’m not sure why. 

A week later, I found myself throwing a Counting Crows disc into my car stereo.  “A Long December” (a song that I’ve liked for a long time despite it being overplayed) came on and the last verse struck me.  For the one or two people out there who may not know it, the lyrics are about a guy who's reflecting on the past year, realized it's kind of sucked and is looking forward to the new year in hopes that it'll be better.  The last verse goes like this:

And it’s one more day up in the Canyon

And it’s one more night in Hollywood

It’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean

I guess I should

I’m not the biggest Counting Crows fan, but I don’t think I’ll be able to hear that song again without automatically thinking about the last few weeks and how good it felt to just sit and listen to the waves for a while.

Starting next week, we'll start posting about the Halloween movies being viewed this year (including a couple that Karen and Lil may or may not particularly like).  On Thursday, I'll post up the last Horror Histories for the time being.  It was supposed to go live a month ago but life got in the way.

Happy October, everyone!

Southern California Vol. 25 - Santa Cruz Mystery Spot

Okay, so in the past two weeks, we’ve covered your penny arcade interests at Fisherman’s Wharf (Musée Mécanique) and explored California’s Bigfoot history (Bigfoot Discovery Museum).  You’re still up in Santa Cruz and you’ve done your Lost Boys excursion to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.  You’ve got time for one more thing and you want it to be fun, weird and historical all at the same time.  Where do you go?

You visit The Mystery Spot.

After WWII, Americans experienced a prosperity they hadn’t seen in years.  Suddenly, everyone had an automobile and road trip excursions were the usual way to take a vacation.  A handful of entrepreneurs realized the potential of all those travelers stopping for a rest break and possibly dropping a few dollars if the attraction was interesting enough.  One such man was George Prather. 

Prather built a house that seems to defy gravity and the laws of physics.  It’s located on three acres of land that he purchased in 1940.  The story he liked to tell was that he was walking on the property when he suddenly felt dizzy and his compass began going crazy.   He realized immediately that this place must be an anomaly in Earth’s gravitational field and built the house so that people could experience it first hand.  Of course, the fact is that the house is built on the hill in such a way that everything you’re experiencing is a visual illusion. 

Balls aren’t really rolling uphill, but they certainly look like it.  That man isn’t standing out on a tiny ledge on the wall or is he?  What about that lady in the chair that seems to be floating?

The Mystery Spot has been open since 1941 and is now a California Historical Landmark.   It’s also a lot of fun, so why not round out your excursion to this neck of the woods by making yourself extremely dizzy.

Fair warning for those of you who've been following these California posts for the last six months.  We're going to take a break from the Golden State and spend some time focusing on a different country altogether.  

The truth is that as this posts, I’ve just returned from two weeks in Tokyo, Japan.  Some of you may remember that I went there last year with my family.  This time though, we went back to focus on some of the things that people don’t normally know about or do on a visit to Tokyo.  We visited the infamous Suicide Forest, sought out Godzilla locations, had drinks and food at a Kaiju bar, searched for the inspirations behind our favorite Ghibli Studios films and generally sought out the odd.  For instance, how would you like to visit a parasite museum? 

You know you would, so be sure to swing by here over the coming weeks as we check out the weird and wonderful around Tokyo.  I promise we'll eventually come back to California because there's a lot more weirdness out here to cover.

Until then, take a moment and check out my short story A Debt to the Dead on my Amazon Authors page. I think you’ll enjoy it. 

Southern California Vol. 24 - Bigfoot Discovery Museum

Last week, I showed you a really cool museum of antique penny arcade machines in San Francisco (Musée Mécanique).  If you’re going to be up that way and are really into the unusual stuff or even just want to pretend you’re in the movie The Lost Boys, you may find yourself visiting Santa Cruz.  

There, you can visit the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk featured at the beginning of that film.  Who knows? Maybe you'll even see some muscle dude playing a saxophone to that song by The Call.  If that's you're plan, do it on Saturday and on Sunday, take a relaxing drive and check out the Bigfoot Discovery Museum.

Look, I’m not about to argue with anyone about whether Bigfoot is real or not.  Whether you think it’s been debunked by all the Finding Bigfoot shows or not, I can tell you that plenty of people have seen something they can’t identify.  For just one afternoon, pretend there’s still a possibility that a large mysterious animal is roaming the Northern California wilderness.

The museum is only two rooms but it’s arranged into three different “areas”.  The first deals with the bigfoot from myths and legends going back centuries.  Here you'll find native american accounts and early sightings.  The second area focuses on more modern eyewitness accounts and physical evidence.  You'll see plaster casts and photos as well as that famous piece of film footage by Patterson and Gimlin.

The final area will please all of you Six-Million Dollar Man fans out there as it focuses on the Paranormal Bigfoot.  That area features displays about the possibility that Bigfoot is an alien, possesses supernatural powers and/or can move between dimensions.  That’s some pretty wild stuff compared to just figuring we’ve got a cryptid animal running around our forests.

As I mentioned above, the museum is pretty small and if you’re not going to actually read the accounts posted along with the casts of footprints, then you can easily do it in a half hour.  Still, it’s worth seeing just to get that sense that there may be something out there.  The owner is famously friendly and approachable and will be glad to tell you about his own experience seeing a sasquatch at the age of five. 

Since you’ll be driving through some of the most gorgeous scenery on Earth as you make your way down the coast by Santa Cruz, you should take a moment to park, hike out to a tree and read a few chapters of a good book.  I’d suggest The Wash which can be purchased from my Amazon Author’s page.

See you next week!

Southern California Vol. 23 - Musée Mécanique

This week I want to talk about a museum that’s further north than L.A.  I haven’t even touched what all there is to do in San Francisco because to be fair, I’ve only been there twice and both times for only a couple of days.  However, since we’ve been talking about museums over the last two weeks, I have to give a shout out to one of my favorite museums on the planet.  

I’m talking about the Musée Mécanique located down near Fisherman’s Wharf.  I’ve only been there once and I only got to stay a fraction of the time I wanted to, however I’ve made it a bucket list item to go back and spend at least an afternoon exploring everything on display.

The Musée Mécanique is basically exactly what its title suggests.  It’s a collection of over 300 antique (and not so antique) coin operated machines.  There are games, puppet shows, film loops and music boxes.  The building they’re in can only house a portion of the machines they’ve collected over the years, but you’ll get to experience at least 200 while visiting. 

It all began with Ed Zelinsky who collected his first penny arcade machine at the age of 11.  He first put his collection on display at Playland in the 1920’s.  Eventually, it became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and finally moved to its current location in 2002.  It’s still owned and operated by the Zelinsky family.

So what’s so great about a building full of old arcade machines?  Well, they all work.  That’s right.  They all actually work.  In fact, the museum is free to get into but you’ll need coins to operate the machines themselves. 

Among my favorite things during my short visit was a puppet show.  It’s called The Opium Den and once you deposit your coin, you’ll see the horrors of opium addiction in the form of death’s heads and ghosts visiting the Den’s customers.

Check out the picture above.  That’s my friend Will Mason holding my four-year-old daughter up so she can see the “adults only” show.  Don’t worry.  The film loop was a bunch of ladies showing their ankle-length bloomers.  Oh the scandal!  

So seriously, if you find yourself in San Francisco and all of your friends and relatives want to go to the most touristy place around, then you’ll end up at Fisherman’s Wharf.  Let them wander over to the chain stores on the pier.  Tell them you’ll meet up with them in an hour or so and go check out the Musée Mécanique.   It’s a truly great time and a pretty rare experience.

If it’s closed, you could just sit there by the water and read a book.  Might I recommend The Wash?  You can pick it up at my Amazon Author’s page.

Thanks and see you next week!

Southern California Vol. 22 - The Museum of Death

This week’s suggested destination is definitely not for everyone.  In fact, I’d say at least two thirds of you reading this would probably detest a visit to this museum but I can’t discuss weird museums in L.A. and not talk about The Museum of Death.  Now, don’t get this mixed up with the famous gift shop at the L.A.County Department of Coroner.  This is entirely different and honestly makes a visit to the Coroner's Gift Shop seem like a visit to Disneyland. 

The Museum of Death literally collects and displays items having to do with… well… death.  Right inside the door, you’ll be confronted with photos of decomposing bodies.  You’ll find, old mortuary equipment, embalming training films (that run on a loop), caskets and other bits and pieces of funerary custom.  

And that’s the tame stuff.

The museum’s owners and staff make it a point to tell people before they buy a ticket that this place is not for the faint at heart.  You’re given a couple of different chances to back out and it’s not just some P.T. Barnum trick to draw you in.  They’re serious. 

Aside from what I mentioned in the paragraph above, you’ll get to see the actual head of Henri Desire Landru a.k.a. The Bluebeard of France.  He was responsible for the deaths of over 200 women and was executed in 1922.  How The Museum of Death got possession of his head is a story I’d love to hear at some point.

There are photos taken by murderers after they’d committed their crimes.  There are  displays about cult suicides like the Heaven’s Gate group.  There are graphic displays on the Manson murders, prison art by John Wayne Gacy and much more.   It’s a sobering exhibit if you let it sink in and there are those out there (myself included) who occasionally like that sort of thing.

And hey, if you like that then you’ll love my book The Wash.  You can find it here on my Amazon Author’s page. 

See you next time.

Southern California Vol. 21 - The Museum of Jurassic Technology

For the next few weeks, I’m going to focus on some little known or out of the way museums that visitors to SoCal should check out.   The truth is, while we have some fantastic , big name museums like the L.A. Museum of Natural History, L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art, The Getty Museum and Getty Villa as well as all of the museums in Balboa Park in San Diego, there are a handful of smaller, odd museums that do just as much if not more to capture the imagination.

Before I get into that though, let’s talk about museums for a moment.  When we think of museums today, we think of places where knowledge is kept and catalogued.  We think of dinosaur bones, displays explaining atomic energy or planetariums.  However, the modern museum is much different than how things started.  The earliest museums were collections gathered by nobles or the wealthy.  We’re talking about the sixteenth century here and what became known as a Cabinet of Curiosities. 

So imagine you’ve been invited to a nobleman’s house one evening to view his cabinet.  There, in the dark corridors, you’d be taking in the collection by oil lamp or candle.  It would make the experience much more mysterious.  Instead of bright lights on a bleached white animal skull, you’d see shadows in the eye sockets and flickering light skittering across the cracks in its cranium.  It would make you wonder what other mysteries are hidden out there waiting to be discovered!

It kind of makes you want to travel back in time and experience that for yourself, doesn’t it? 

Well, you can get close by visiting the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles.  The museum houses a multitude of curiosities and (true to its name) displays of forgotten scientific endeavors. 

You can see microminiature sculptures, like Goofy sculpted onto the eye of a needle. 

You’ll see this gorgeous Divination Table, displays about the dogs of the Russian Space Program and much, much more, but don’t confuse this with going to a Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum.  Those places don’t hold a candle to the experience you’ll have here.  There are ten exhibit rooms in the bottom floor and more upstairs.  There’s also a Russian Tea Room and a  rooftop garden where you can get tea from a coal-fired samovar and enjoy the atmosphere.

One thing to note, if you’re the type who likes to get selfies everywhere you go, don’t plan on getting a bunch while visiting.  Taking pictures and even texting are not allowed inside.  Everything you see in this post was graciously provided by the Museum itself and I’m not complaining one bit.  The whole purpose of this museum is to recreate that age of darkness and mystery.  Nothing would ruin that faster than blue light from a cell phone screen.

So if you’re out visiting L.A., take acouple of hours and visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology.  It really will reignite your sense of wonder.

And if you’re into that sort of thing,I’ve written a pretty dark and mysterious book titled The Wash.  Check it out at my Amazon authors page.

Southern California Vol. 21 - Sutro Baths

We live in an age of wonder.  I know it's hard for some people reading that to see the logic behind it.  We get caught up in everything from the political landscape to the number of followers on our Twitter account.  We lose sight of the fact that we're living in an age where cars drive themselves, rockets fly  up to space and return to land perfectly on floating platforms and we can carry a library of books, movies and music in a device barely bigger than one of our own hands.

For instance, would anyone reading this be blown away if a friend told you some guy had just built a giant swimming pool nearby?  

I'm guessing most people would shrug it off.  Hell, all of us know someone who owns or has access to a swimming pool.  It's just not a big deal.

However, if I told you that someone built the world's largest indoor swimming pool at the base of a cliff and that the pool was fed by the ocean to the tune of 1,805,000 gallons, then you might... might be impressed.  

If I told you it consisted of six saltwater pools, one freshwater pool and had swings, slides, diving boards and was outfitted with pumps that could fill the pools even at low tide, you may be a little more "wowed".  

What it I told you it was built 122 years ago?

I'm talking about the Sutro Baths and they were a very, very real thing.  Adolph Sutro, a former mayor of San Francisco, built them in 1896 and if you have even an ounce of wonder left in you, the sheer size of the structure should knock you off your feet.  Here's a quick list of materials used in its construction.

Lumber - 3,500,000 board feet

Iron - 600 tons

Glass - 100,000 square feet

Concrete - 10,000 cubic yards

This was no mere swimming pool or even collection of pools.  It was a spectacle!  It also featured an ice skating rink, a 2,700 seat amphitheater and 517 private dressing rooms for people to change in.  It had a museum on site that housed historical artifacts and stuffed/mounted animals including "Monarch", the grizzly bear who appears on the California state flag.

It was such a big draw that two railroad lines served it.  So what happened to it?

Simply put, it was just too expensive to keep running.  The baths ran from 1896 until the mid-1960's.  All told, that's a pretty solid run when you think about it.  

In 1966, it was in the process of being demolished when it caught fire and burned to the ground.  All that remains are the concrete ruins and they are visible and accessible.  

They're now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco.  Looking at the foundation, you can get a good idea of just how gigantic Adolph Sutro's vision was.

If you're in the San Francisco area and decide to spend time in the National Park there, be sure to swing by and take a look.  When you do, spend a moment thinking of how awesome it must have been even though you live in a time where almost anything is possible.

Let's say you're traveling to San Francisco and you are going to spend a day at the park, why not spend it with a good book?  You can find my book The Wash here at my Amazon Author's page.  

Until next time, stop and take a look around you and marvel at the fact that you just read something beamed to you via invisible waves.

An age of wonders, my friends.  An age of wonders.

Southern California Vol. 20 - Monsterpalooza!

There’s a little warmth in the air.  Flowers are beginning to bloom.  Birds are chirping.  That can only mean one thing if you live in Southern California. 

It’s time for Monsterpalooza! 

Now, I know this blog has been focused on weird SoCal destinations and this is more of an event, but I would argue it doesn’t get much weirder than these three days in Pasadena.  I would also argue that you should make this a destination.  I attended Monsterpalooza for the first time about five years ago.  I instantly vowed I would not miss it again so long as I lived here.  For horror fans, this is like three consecutive days of Christmas morning.

The whole show started out as a trade show for mask makers and people in the makeup effects industry.  It was a place where new companies could show off their abilities and new technologies could be pitched directly to representatives from the big movie studios just a few miles away.  In fact, for years it was actually held in Burbank, so close to Warner Bros. and Universal that you could practically throw a rock and hit them.  An off season, smaller incarnation (Son of Monsterpalooza) still takes place there in the fall.  The spring version has grown much too big for that venue though. 

Over the years, the show has grown to include artists, authors, model makers, sculptors and toy vendors.  You’ll find actors from some of your favorite horror films signing autographs and posing for pictures.  You can attend panels on things like this year’s costume creations for Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights and discussions with the team behind the Fish-Man suit from The Shape of Water.  That one was particularly fun as they got into a sidebar on how they had to give the character a shapely butt when Doug Jones (the actor in the suit) doesn't have one.  It's not all necessarily just about movies though.  A few years ago, I went to an excellent panel of writers discussing H. P. Lovecraft and why his creatures endure in literature but are so hard to capture believably on film. 

The real fun though, is that the makeup and mask people are still there, representing the best way possible.  They’re making people up right on the show floor.  Once they're finished, the monsters walk around and mingle with the crowd.  You can watch zombies come to life, see demonstrations from massive puppet creations and then there’s the museum!

Every year, the museum features the most outstanding creations from exhibitors at the show.  You’ll find themed exhibits like the one above of Larry Talbot and his cursed alter-ego.  

Some exhibitors make incredibly detailed life-sized models like this recreation of a scene from The Exorcist.   

This bust inspired by John Carpenter’s The Thing was a highlight for me.

And while you’re there, you can swing by and say hello to the guys from Monster Party (one of the most fun and informative horror podcasts ever).   Special thanks to Lil for making us all look better.

So, while you’ve missed it this year you can at least mark it on your calendar and squeeze it in next year.  If you stay in the area, you can take time to visit Huntington Gardens (which we’ll talk about in a future post) and you’ll be close enough to easily visit Griffith Park and many of the other places I’ve written about here.  Seriously, I wouldn’t be writing about it if I didn’t think it was an awesome way to spend a day.

And hey!  If you like monsters, you should check out my book The Wash.  It won’t disappoint.