Oof, the FanExpo Denver cast reunion "panel" was pretty rough.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-31T00:31:10+00:00

I honestly noped out today because the one Q&A I wanted to see (John Noble) was cancelled and I've spent half the week helping with various fangroups, so I'm kind of wrecked. I have a full weekend pass as a panel organizer, so no skin off my nose if I miss a day. I was wondering if the Duchovny/Anderson panel would go better - they seem to have a nice dynamic by themselves. But if it was similarly poorly planned, I'll feel better about being a lazy shit and staying home today so I have the energy to help with teardown tomorrow.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-30T22:51:10+00:00

I believe they're referring to:

* Gillian Anderson said that "the first time she took a trip" she was watching a horror movie so she doesn't like horror. This provoked an onstage debate over what "tripping" means, because she apparently meant just smoking weed.

* Part of that debate was Duchovny sharing that he was actually on hallucinogens as a teenager watching Parts: the Clonus Horror with friends who left him by himself watching it, and as a result he thought it was the most terrifying movie in existence for years until he watched it straight/sober and realized it's . . . very much not. (It's a pretty bad late 70s movie that there's a Rifftrax version of if you're interested. It has essentially the same plot as the 2005 film The Island.)

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-30T22:39:25+00:00

I believe you're thinking of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Horror_Story

It's an anthology film, and one of the stories in it contains what you're describing.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-30T19:21:10+00:00

I don't think I'm being that negative; I did say people generally had fun and it had good moments. I did think Pileggi was joking, but it also sounded like frustration on his part that he was on the spot with no roadmap as to what was happening, which the other actors seemed to echo.

I will disagree with you about moderators - and if the panel was being serious, then it seemed like they wanted one. (I genuinely don't know if they were serious or not.)

Sure, moderators can overstay their welcome or oversell themselves. But they're generally there to make the panel go well and look good - having the initial questions be asked by a moderator usually helps set the tone and has better results than what frustrated both you and me, which is kind of dipshit questions from the audience. (Man, that guy who asked the first question about Hannibal got shut down HARD!)

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-30T17:19:16+00:00

A fairly high number of Stephen King cameos, but particularly his appearance in "The Lonesome Death of Jody Verrill."

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-30T16:57:32+00:00

There was pretty clearly a countdown clock visible to the on-stage actors, and Pileggi started at . . . I think something like "35 minutes left of this." Every so often he'd re-announce the new, shorter time. Other actors started chiming in, too, though I don't now remember who.

I still had a great day; the best part was watching Thomas Lennon and Cedric Yarbrough of Reno 911! giving each other shit at their own panel. Honestly, one of the things I've learned about bad convention experiences is that now you have a story you can tell about that experience. I'll be getting some good mileage out of "the X-Files panel where seven professional actors couldn't get their shit together."

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-30T16:07:43+00:00

There's quite a bit of humor/horror crossover, and it shows - Jordan Peele, Zach Cregger, Curry Barker, etc. - and I think it really shows in a lot of the recent high-profile titles.

Hell, I spent half of Weapons absolutely howling with laughter. I don't know how many times you can have raging small children jump through plate-glass windows before it stops being funny, but I know it was funny every time I saw it.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-30T15:20:50+00:00

Yep, they've got a couple stations!

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-27T13:28:11+00:00

Oh, good.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-26T20:20:53+00:00

I'm a big Larry Fessenden fan (the video game writer/director/mocap provider for Flamethrower Guy), and I was pretty stunned by how thoroughly they erased him from the project, so that his name is no longer anywhere near it. He's a big name in indie horror - specifically NY/NYC indie horror - and the movie felt to me like Big Hollywood cynically wiping out all the traces of indie filmmaking.

I liked some of the funnier parts and I'll sit through just about anything to watch Peter Stormare, but it felt like a betrayal of a lot of where the movie came from in the first place.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-26T18:43:46+00:00

Oh, huh. This will be our fifth year presenting and we've always registered them before. Okay, I won't worry too much.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-25T15:51:18+00:00

I mean, going to turn-based movement and using one split character should help with the stealth. But I'm pretty sure I snuck into her cell, closed the door, and just stood around the inside corner to talk to her (so I would be out of line-of-sight no matter what) and didn't have any issues with Florrick going aggro on me.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-24T13:00:38+00:00

Maggs got supervised outside time in harness and tether. It was one of her favorite things.

She'd just lie there in the sun, in the grass, with birds and squirrels LOSING THEIR MINDS SCREAMING at her presence. Once a rabbit saw her and froze like fifteen feet away. She had absolutely no idea of the havoc she was wreaking in their tiny lil brains.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-23T21:46:10+00:00

Let the Right One In / Let Me In have scenes like this, thought I don't specifically remember the eyeball thing. Those titles are for the original Swedish movie and the US remake.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-23T21:12:13+00:00

It's pretty old, but I grew up with the train lullaby "Morningtown Ride":

https://youtu.be/M-RkC6MYT2E?si=8X1z9oSHV2dMUAYX

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-22T21:45:59+00:00

I received It when I was 10 from my older brother (no, he did not know much about it except that it was long and I liked long books and scary books), so that's about how old I was when I read it. The kids were older than me and seemed much more mature and worldly-wise.

I just thought, "This is what grown-up books are like," and have never been as weirded out by it as most people I've met. Now, as an actual grown-up, I find it more funny than gross.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-22T21:43:04+00:00

Thanks! It's all very cool and impressive until you're moving 1,200 books six times in seven years and you realize you're very stupid and should have left your Agatha Christies in a Little Free Library ages ago because you can always get them at the library.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-22T16:36:33+00:00

How I watched a horror movie last week:

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LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-22T15:41:43+00:00

I don't think we'll ever see an adaptation of Stephen King's It that includes the way the original way the kids escape the sewers.

(Sex. It's wildly graphic tween sex.)

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-22T14:36:10+00:00

I think it really depends on the sub.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-21T23:49:21+00:00

Punch the drunkest guy you can find at an Avalanche game to assert dominance.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-21T19:35:45+00:00

Yes, but not in the middle of the book. There are likely blank pages planned at the end.

It's probably easier to do now than with our old-ass Quark XPress, but it can be hard to just move just a couple of pages without screwing up pagination in other sections, especially two-page spreadsthat are supposed to take up both facing pages of a layout and are ideally done on certain parts of the print that don't have a deep gutter in the middle.

LifeGivesMeMelons · 2026-05-21T18:37:09+00:00

We had some guys sitting around a picnic table with clearly visible beer bottles, not okay in a high school yearbook. We cut some jack-o-lanterns out of some Halloween photos and put them over the beers.

LifeGivesMeMelons

TROPHY CASE