Horror Realm 2009

I spent the entire day yesterday at Horror Realm in Pittsburgh. Ideally, I would have spent the whole weekend there, but alas, the demands of everyday life limited my stay to Saturday.

I was there nearly 12 hours, and still didn’t do everything and talk to everybody that I wanted to. At least I did a lot better than I did at Zombie Fest last year — I only had a couple hours to spend there, and only talked to a handful of people.

The high point of the day for me was the panel with Ken Foree. That man can talk! And it was fantastic. The hour had flown by, and Ken was only warming up. As we were all sitting around bullshitting later that night, we all agreed that Ken Foree is PIMP. I’ll be replaying his highly entertaining panel on the Midnight Podcast soon.

Other big names in the horror industry that I got to talk to were Tony Todd, Bill Moseley, and Leslie Easterbrook, who all were kind enough to talk for the Midnight Podcast. Ken Foree was incredibly interesting and creative as usual; Tony Todd was thrilled to hear I’m from Erie (he has lots of ties there); Bill Moseley revealed to me that he’s done several CD’s with Buckethead; and Leslie Easterbrook was sweet and beautiful.

It was great to meet a lot of the people that I’ve come to know in the horror community online. This includes the legendary Dr. Pus, who held the absolute coolest podcasting session ever. He recorded a spontaneous segment for Library of the Living Dead, harrassing various guests such as David Dunwoody, Rob Fox and yours truly. The whole corner was going nuts!

Everybody was extremely cool. I hung around most with author Eric S. Brown, who is just as cool in person as he is over the phone. I also hung with author/podcaster James Melzer, who treated me to a satisfying Canadian beer. Stephen A. North is a teddy bear, and a true gentleman. Rhiannon Frater, Rob Fox, Scott Johnson, ZA Recht, JL Bourne, SG Browne, Robert R. Best (along with his wonderful wife Laura), and David Dunwoody were other fantastic people I got to meet and talk to.

Of course, a lot of zombies and characters from Dawn of the Dead (1978) were around, and they were buckets of fun to talk to. The most common thing that I heard from them is how much they’re amazed that after over 30 years, they are still known for Dawn, and have incredible fans. Frank Serrao (gray suit zombie), Nick Tallo (biker raider), Joe Shelby (biker raider/Martinez), Shanon Ceccatti (nurse zombie), Leonard Lies (machete zombie), Jim Krut (helicopter zombie), and, of course, Ken Foree.

And then there were us podcasters. Along with Library of the Living Dead and James Melzer’s Unleashed, I met up with members of Don’t Look in the Podcast, the Funky Werepig and Gutmunchers. All wonderful!

And I was just as happy to see Midnight Podcast listeners Florida Possum and Zombie Farmer! They made an obscenely long journey to the Zombie Capital of the World. Florida Possum was every bit as awesome as I thought, and Zombie Farmer was sweet and entertaining (to say the least). She certainly entertained Ken Foree during his panel discussion as she developed a case of loud hiccups. Ken totally called her out on it.

The whole thing was fantastic. My only regrets: 1) not being able to be there for Friday or Sunday (reliable sources tell me Tom Savini showed up Friday night, talking to fans and browsing the laserdiscs), and 2) having not talked to the likes of Jonathan Maberry, Travis Adkins, Kim Paffenroth, and Tiffany Shepis (although she was certainly noticed).

Funny story about Ms. Shepis: a whole group of us were outside talking and drinking beers, and Tiffany strolls up to us. “You look like a big group of alcoholics,” she said. “Where is the stairway to the liquor store?” She was under the impression that the hotel had some kind of hidden stairway to the liquor store. WTF?

UPDATE: Nick Tallo sent me a VERY angry comment on this blog, calling me names like “idiot” and “dickhead” because I got his name mixed up with Joe Shelby. I apologized for this, but I no longer am a fan of Mr. Tallo because of his outburst toward me. A simple, “Hey, you got your names mixed up . . .” and an explanation would have been wonderful, but he resorted to name-calling and generally making himself look like a fool. Do not support Nick Tallo — I just lost all respect for this man.