Diary Of The Dumb

Oh Monday, you always show up so early.

Here are a few stories about my weekend:

Friday I attended the annual Full Moon Horror And Tattoo Convention. This is the same event that gave you my famous Hand Turkey Incident 2 years ago. The venue was DEAD Friday, so I actually had a wonderful time chatting for prolonged periods with the likes of Tony Todd, Dee Wallace Stone, and the absolutely wonderful Adrienne Barbeau. I congratulated Ms. Barbeau on winning the original CANNONBALL RUN, thanked her for walking down the stairs so often in MAUDE, and asked her if I could just call her Billie. There were worse things I could do. That is an awesome series of references. Look it up.

Friday night I stood in a line outside the Belcourt for two hours. It was in order to witness a sneak peak of DIARY OF THE DEAD, the new 'installment' of George Romero's 'Dead' series. Romero himself was on hand to take a bow before the screening and say 'thanks for giving me a living for the last 40 years.' Hence the 2-hour wait time. It wasn't worth it. The movie is terrible. Horrible. Not even in the good way. FAIL!

I went with a few pals, and a few pals of pals as well. We showed up at the event at 9:30pm, even though the screening was at midnight. This was because last October we had sold out by 10:15pm when we showed ROCKY HORROR at the theater, and I expected the same thing to happen this time. It did. By 11 the line was around the block. We got there first and stood at the head.

I mention getting there first and standing at the head because Sean, Josh and I stood there for 90 minutes as the queue formed behind us. The venue has been sold out for a few weeks, but I had an extra ticket and it went to one of Josh's friends: a guy named Adam who is on my friends list and probably reads this and who is kinda cool but kinda a dipstick. He achieved 'dipstick status' by showing up and hopping into line with us at 11pm (not a huge offense: we had his ticket and I am a firm believer in 'cutting' if you are with a group). He was a little drunk and chatty, and he didn't think twice about having the following exchange with a passer-by who knew him:

PASSER-BY: Hey Adam, man what's up?
ADAM: Hey dude!
PASSER-BY: Man, I would have guessed a guy like you'd be at the head of the line!
ADAM: Yeah, well what can I say?

And... scene!

What can you say? I'll tell you what you can say, you twat, you can say "Yeah, I just showed up and cut into line but my friend here have been standing in the cold for 90 minutes waiting for me."

Fortunately, I am a dipstick as well, and so I harbor no anger. Just bitterness. I am like a human root.

Saturday, I was up bright and early at 9am so I could attend the 'town meeting' at Belcourt: in order to discuss renovation ideas, programming issues, and overall suggestions to broaden the aspects of the ONE establishment in Nashville that I support fully and lovingly.

I am all for public town-meeting style gatherings where anyone can come in and give their opinions on what can be done to better an establishment. There are usually quite a few hearty suggestions regarding ways to make more non-profit-profit and expand entertainment possibilities in a place like this.

BUT...

Having a microphone and a set of open doors ALSO means you are going to end up getting 2 or three lunatics and, to quote Patton Oswalt; 'Raisin Cakes' in the bunch.

My favorite is the dowdy 80-pound woman with Oklahoma Hair who suggested the theater starts showing 'kids movies like that one about The Indian In The Cupboard and the like. More kids needs to see movies!' This is, of course, right after Belcourt has wrapped up their Children's Series a few weeks ago, you know.

She also suggested colorful T-shirts. Which Belcourt has. And 'A western film festival. I know a lot of people like westerns even though I don't."

Ahhh, Agnes... go to the mic 3 more times. Go on. We are all waiting. Glorious.

I was waiting for her to suggest that the movie theater start projecting their movies onto a big, white screen in order to enable people to see the product better.

Sunday Night it was back to the same place (holy shit I LIVED at the Belcourt this weekend!) to see The Greatest Haunted House Movie Ever Made: THE HAUNTING.

So good. So goood. So very, very very GOOD.

Sunday I drank beer and didn't care about Jesus rising from the grave because he's just not that cool a zombie. Oh, and because I have common sense.

And can't eat chocolate.

Oh! which reminds me to give you an update on THE GREAT WILLIAMS WEIGHT LOSS DRIVE OF '08...

In two weeks I have dropped roughly 15 pounds. All from not eating sugar, bread, booze, fruit and fat. I am supposed to be done with 'phase one' and now I should be moving on to 'phase two', where I can re-introduce 'GOOD' carbs and breads into my diet, along with fruit, and the occasional glass of wine.

It ALSO means I can 'cheat'... which I did on Sunday... by ingesting 3 whopping pints of delicious beer at our local brewery.

If you drink as much as I admittedly drink, and you go for as long as I have without one (two weeks is the longest I have been 'off alcohol' since I was 19)... I can't begin to accurately describe to you what it feels like to sniff the top of a glass of freshly-poured Pale Ale. The closest I can come is to say what I said when I was a-sniffin'... "Hello, old friend!"

NUMMERS!

That's all. For lunch today I 're-introduced' wheat bread to my diet by getting a 6-inch from Subway. I didn't want chips so I opted for yogurt. The nice Arab guy who hates me but tries to be polite helped me out by putting a fork in my bag. Thanks for the fork. It's what all of us infidels like to eat a cup of yogurt with.