Allow me to say first of all that Jacksonville, Florida is a beautiful city to just stroll up upon in the middle of the day.
As soon as I stepped foot off of the poverty express and planted my beatup size 11 1/2 Nike Dunks on solid ground, I was greeted by none other then Jacksonvilles own resident cult film junky Ed Tucker who was kind enough to give me a lift to my room at the Wyndham.
After relaxing briefly and discussing everything from our expectations of the convention to the confusing dimensions of original theatrical posters. We eagerly rushed downstairs for a quick peak inside of the convention hall and wound up so overwhelmed by the greatness surrounding us that we decided to sneak in as much as we could before it was time to meet fellow fanboy Jon Haughton at the Amtrek Station.
Once inside I had reverted back in time to some toddler like mindset, waddeling around in a hurry eager to open presents on a Christmas morning.
"Look Ed, it's Sid Haig!, Look Ed, It's Fred Williamson!" I'd shout while tugging on Ed's arm while demanding he hault everything to snap my picture with them. It took Ed slapping me across the face with his polar bear sized mits and shouting, "gadzooks man, pull yourself together and quit acting like a little bitch. You're embaressing me!" to calm me down.
Ed is a pretty big dude with a presidential prescience, the kind of guy that grabs life by the short hairs and doesn't take any guff. A renegade of sorts. I could see it in his eyes that he was determined to not allow this once in a lifetime weekend to slip through his finger tips. He was going to make this the best gosh damn fanboy experience of his life or die trying and I was right there along side him ready for wherever this crazy journey would take me.
After collecting pictures from the likes of Sid Haig, Fred Williamson, Camille Keaton, John Amplas and Jim Kelly I browsed the room a bit and encountered a conversation taking place between the original hot punk chick, Mink Stole and Day Of The Deads Gary Klar over the crappiness of CGI and other anti-mainstream Hollywood retorict.
When the conversation ceased Mink Stole turned to face me and like some virginal fanboy fresh off of the banana boat the most creative conversation starter I could muster was, "wow your Mink Stole, I'm a huge fan, I just watched Desperate Living a few nights ago". Obviously a seasoned pro at handling overly anxious nerds such as myself she responded with, "oh yeah, there's alot of shouting in that movie, everybodies screaming. You should come by my table and talk to me whenever".
Thats when it occured to me that I really had nothing to talk to these guest about. Sure I was a big fan and had seen most if not all of their popular films. But truthfully everything I had ever wanted to know about them I have already learned off of the internet or in a magazine.
By the time I did get around to talking with Ms. Stole I had realized alot of the stuff she was telling me I had already heard in a interview done decades ago by John Waters. But none the less, how fucking cool was it that I was holding a conversation with her? Strangely, she is either nothing like the charectors she portrayed on screen or she grew out of that faze of her life a long time ago because she striked me as being, well, normal.
There wasn't really much selection in terms of collectables but I did notice a few cool t-shirts and some awesome og theatrical posters that I had determined I would size up later when I had more time.
I'm not going to front, I will admit to being a little star struck over being in the vacinity of so many actors who's work I have admired for so long and never thought I'd have the privaledge of meeting. The worst being when Jim "The Dragon" Kelly intiated a conversation with me regarding my shirt, which had a poster for the classic blaxploitation film The Mack on it. "Aiiight man, The Mack!" he said.
They must call him the dragon for a reason cause it felt like the man had just breathed fire upon me and I was nothing more then a standing statuete of ashes ready to float off into a trillion pieces if confronted by the slightest breeze. I just stood there doing a Terry Schiavo impersonation, the only thing my brain would allow me to do at that point and smiled for the camera.
I've been fortunate in my lifetime to have met many a famous person and the celebrity factor doesn't really get to me that much anymore. I guess maybe it was the fact that these were stars who don't get around this way very often, many of which I suspect will be in no condition sooner or later to make it out to these events at all shortly enough, giving the whole experience much more importance then that of just some convention.
At this point, roughly a half an hour into the Cult-Fiction Drive-In convention I can very easily say with no bullshit that this trip should have been any fanboys wet dream come to life.
With a day and a half left for me in Jacksonville and having already accomplished much of what I had came here for I had to wonder how things were possibly going to get any better after such an amazing start.
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