GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #441: THINGS I'VE FALLEN OUT OF LOVE WITH

 OK, so here's that tangent from the book sale GF on Monday that I cut. I was talking about falling out of love with Halloween, and it had me thinking about other stuff I'd fallen out of love with. Here's the thing: when you're young you have all these things you feel passionate about. If you're as old as me, we didn't have the phrase about dying on a hill, but you have lots of hills you would die on when you're just a kid. The older you get, the less you care about things. Looking back, I had a lot of hills I'd die on. Hell, even as recent as a few years ago, I would have died on the hills that Constantine, Jonah Hex and Drive Angry were shitty movies, and I can't see why people would like them. I relaxed on Constantine fairly early because not many people read Hellblazer as religiously as I did. Today I don't give a fuck about the other two. These are stupid hills to die on, anyway.

Here's a tangent within a tangent. Here's how I got over things that I felt had betrayed its source material. I think it was Chuck Palahniuk who mentioned it first, but I started viewing adaptations of stuff I liked as an alternate universe version of it. While the comic book, Preacher, is my favorite in history, I was iffy about the TV show, Preacher, at first. It deviated pretty quickly from the books, but that was OK. I prefer the books, but the TV show is a Preacher. Not the Preacher, but a Preacher, and that was fine. I got to enjoy the show on its own merits instead of comparing it to something else. Once I took that perspective on all things, I found I didn't feel all that betrayed anymore. I stopped giving a shit about it.

Back to the main subject. Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. I was pretty obsessive about it. And I wanted to dedicate my costumes to as much realism as I could. The prime example of this is when I was in high school and decided to go as George Stark. Complete with a straight razor. A *real* straight razor. I had no intention of harming anyone, but I felt dedication to a costume was important at the time. Thinking back, I realize how utterly insane that was and how much trouble I could have gotten into. But that's how big I was into Halloween. I also had a yearly ritual of watching the Night on Bald Mountain segment of Fantasia at the end of the night. I didn't do it this year. Or last year. I think I skipped it the year before, too.

I don't know what it is. I just stopped caring. And I still have no idea how Christmas unseated Halloween's rule over me. But that happened.

I also fell out of love with gaming. (The RPG ones with dice and character sheets, not video games.) I mostly played White Wolf games, but I loved Call of Cthulhu and a few others. For a brief time I thought The Expanse roleplaying game might bring me back into the fold, but it didn't. I used to game every Sunday night with friends, and I haven't done it in ages. I just don't care to do it anymore. Still unclear as to how that happened. But that happened.

I *do* know how I fell out of love with comics conventions. When I first started going to them, they were still about comic books. Now they're multimedia events with the comics shoved off into some corner. The moment I saw well known writers and artists in Artists Alley instead of at their publishers' booths (remember when publishers had booths?), I knew that I was no longer interested. It lost its appeal. Sometimes I think about going to a show just to hang out with my comics friends, but hell. It would probably be better to see them at an off-site after party. It would definitely be cheaper.

Along the way I also fell out of love with horror cons, and I know how that happened, too: I ran out of money. Then the plague happened, and that just cemented me not being able to go. But it also made me start missing horror cons. I think I might be falling back in love with them. I want to go back to horror cons in 2022 if we can just get this fucking plague to go away.

Speaking of horror, and I'm shocked to be saying this, but I feel my love of horror movies slipping away. Not reading horror books. That love is still strong and passionate as ever. And certainly not writing horror. That still brings me a lot of joy. But horror movies? I don't know. I watch a few of the newer flicks, and some of them are OK, but most of them just lose me. For example, I started watching Fried Barry, which should have been right up my alley. Something just wasn't connecting for me, though. I haven't finished it. And my thoughts on Prisoners of the Ghostland will have to wait for another day, because I have a few things . . . to not go off on a tangent on. On? Have I said on enough? Did I need another one?

I'll talk about that in another GF. Right now, I'm just going to sit here and hope that I'm not really falling out of love with horror movies. That would suck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #314: JAMES MARSTERS (AKA SPIKE FROM BUFFY AND ANGEL) AND WHY I NO LONGER GO TO COMICS CONVENTIONS

 All right, I kinda-sorta promised to talk about this during last night's GF column. I want to state first and foremost that what I'm about to say is in no way a bad reflection upon James Marsters. I like the guy, and I love seeing him in stuff, even when he was briefly in the remake of House on Haunted Hill as the cameraman who freaked out in the elevator that one time. Also, I'm not sober, but like I theorized last night, I'm sober enough. So there's that.

OK, so when I first started going to comic book conventions, they were still about comic books. I went to them specifically to meet the writers and illustrators of my favorite comics. And I did that. And I have so many comics signed by them. I wanted to get Steve Dillon for my copy of Preacher #1 (signed by Garth Ennis), but the only year he came to town, I got horribly sick and couldn't go. Fast forward a couple of years, and he died.

But even that first year, I saw pop culture icons. You know the staples. Lou Ferrigno. Peter Mayhew. Jeremy Bulloch. Etc. and so on. You could meet them for ten or fifteen bucks and get their autographs on glossy photos. Very affordable, no?

But there was a shift. I can't put my finger on when, why or how, but it happened. Soon you could meet even bigger stars for forty to fifty bucks, and the staples raised their prices to twenty. The next thing you know, Bruce Campbell and William Shatner and the likes started charging a hundred bucks for a "VIP experience."

Again, I have to say that I'm not picking on these guys. I love them and their great projects (even Splatt Attack, Mr. Shatner, sorry). But the VIP experience is bullshit. You shake hands, get a picture, and that's it. Done. Get out of the way for the next sucker who payed a shit-ton to meet a celebrity.

I'm a weird guy when it comes to writers and such. I don't get stage fright (which makes me part of the 1% of writers who don't because most of us are dedicated introverts). I don't get nervous when I meet celebrities. They're just people who have been in movies and TV, which is a job but more high profile. The only time I got kind of nervous was when I met Joe R. Lansdale when he was on his book tour for The Thicket. My hands got cold. It's an odd thing, I know. When I get nervous, my hands get cold no matter how hot and sweaty the rest of me might be. But he quickly set me at ease, and we had a nice conversation as he signed my books. (It helped that as he signed my copy of A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre, I pointed out that my story follows his in that anthology edited by Shane McKenzie, and he said that he remembered me and enjoyed my contribution.)

Side note: The worst time my hands got cold was when I was on trial for DUI, and after more than a year of court dates they finally decided that this was the day I'd be found guilty or not guilty. They delayed the case until after lunch, and my hands were so cold I was out of my mind. When I went to the bathroom, the heat of my urine actually warmed my hands and made me feel much better. I was found not guilty.

I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off track. In case you can't tell, I don't do comics conventions anymore because they're not about comic books. They're about pop culture. You want to meet Mark Millar? Good luck, chum. But here's some guy who played an Ewok once, and he's charging $90 for the pleasure of breathing the same air for five seconds.

That's an over simplification, but it is more or less true.

The moment came home to me when I was standing in line to meet James Marsters. I'm unabashedly a fan of Buffy and Angel. I love that shit. Marsters played the best character on both shows, Spike, the punk vampire who started out as deliciously evil but slowly became an amazing hero. (And I really loved the fact that in the early years, he wore a red shirt under his black trenchcoat, very much like Dracula's cape, which was black on the outside but red on the inside.)

This wasn't a moment of decision for me. This was just the moment when I recognized that there was a shift happening that I didn't like.

In front of me were these two young girls, twenty years of age, tops. They were talking with each other excitedly because they were about to meet Spike, whom they both loved a great deal. They both obviously had a crush on him and couldn't wait to merely say hi to him. They didn't even have something for him to sign. They stood there holding only their purses.

They were next. Someone else was up there talking with Marsters. The two girls were then approached by someone who probably represented the convention instead of Marsters. He broke the news to them that they would have to pay $40 for the privilege to meet James Marsters. They panicked and started asking this guy under what circumstances they could meet him. There were no others. They were absolutely heartbroken, and they walked away with tears in their eyes.

If this happened now, it would be a different story. I was a lot younger back then, so it never occurred to me to sacrifice my own want to meet Marsters. That's my failing, and I'm sick thinking about it. But if it happened now, now that I actually have money (taking into consideration, in this imaginary quandary that the 'rona doesn't exist), I would have absolutely given them the forty bucks to meet their hero.

But even in my ignorance, seeing them walk away broke my heart a bit, too.

I want to be absolutely clear at this point. James Marsters had no idea this was happening. He was talking with a fan at that moment and signing an autograph for her. He couldn't possibly know about this. He is not the bad guy. So I don't want to hear any comments to the contrary. You will be summarily ignored if you come at me with that shit.

I met Marsters, and he was very amiable, very personable. My favorite season of Buffy is the second, which is why I brought the DVD cover of that one for him to sign, and he started telling me some behind the scene stuff that maybe I shouldn't talk about here. It was a fun meeting, and he was genuinely exciting to meet. Some of these guys look like they were dragged to the con by their shirttails, but he was very happy to be there and meet fans. I almost guarantee that he would have forgotten the forty bucks for these two poor kids.

But that's when I started getting the idea that comics conventions were fucked. The next year was when they started doing the VIP bullshit. I almost checked out entirely, but I have a lot of wonderful (and perverted, possibly criminal) friends in Artists Alley. The last two or three years, I went to cons only so I could hang out with them.

But I stopped. Going to these things made me feel uncomfortable and out of place. So fuck it. I checked out. My AA (NOT ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS YOU ASS!) friends are still my friends outside of the show, so fuck it.

You know what I really miss? Dan Con. That was still about the comics, and many of my AA friends attended. I got to interview John Everson once there, which was pretty cool  He lives in Naperville, which is a hop-skip-jump from me in Elmhurst. But Dan Con is a thing of the past.

You want to know what's fucked? Near the end of my time at these cons, DC gave up. One of the (arguably) two biggest comics companies just stopped going there. They didn't even attend as Warner Bros. They were gone. And then Marvel stopped showing up as a company that makes comics. They were just there for the MCU.

Not that I cared in the long run. But that's a bad sign, don't you think?

So yeah. I'm done with that shit. Call me when the comics take center stage again.