B-Fest 2002: What REALLY happened? We finally did it. After two years of looking forward to it since reading the diaries on various Cabal sites, we finally managed to cash in all our change jars and drive to Evanston for B-Fest 2002. We tried to be on the road early, hopefully by seven, but we didn’t end up taking off until about eight thirty. I was up at six, but Fistula didn’t get to my place until after seven thirty. Then we had to go to Ferox’s house, and he was still sleeping, so we had to wait for him to get up and ready. Finally on the road, we had to turn around about sixty seconds in because Ferox forgot his camera. Once we crossed the Iowa boarder and traversed the Mississippi River (ha!), the landscape changed. It went from flat to hilly, and I don’t mind telling you, rural Illinois is a very nice place. Well, it was until we passed the run-down trailer encampment with broken down machinery in the front yard. We were on the verge of flipping a coin to decide whether or not Illinois is a nice state when we hit Galena and decided that yes, it is. Galena is an amazing old town where almost all the buildings are red brick. It’s very old-feeling, almost like you just cruised into Arkham, MA. We managed to avoid all the toll roads (except for one, damn wrong turn), and didn’t hit traffic any worse than downtown Minneapolis, and this was rush hour Friday. This all thanks to a really old atlas (thank Cthulhu some of those roads still exist…) and a route pointed out by my thankfully well-traveled father. Hey, Yahoo! Mapquest, FUCK OFF! If we’d followed their way, we’d have hit about thirty bucks worth of tolls and driven right through downtown Chicago. The rest of the way, the conversation was dominated by, of all things, how goddamn huge Robert Z’Dar’s face is. After finding our way to the parking ramp, managing to only embarrass ourselves once by driving into an office building lot and having to ask the security guys to let us out, we found a 24-hour ramp, parked, and walked about six blocks. Then we got lost a few times on the Northwestern campus. Finding the Fest was questionable at this point, and we had “dumbass tourists” written all over us. Thankfully we avoided being mugged or killed (Fistula’s leopard-print pillowcase increased the chances of this by at least 50%), and made our way to Norris. After buying our tickets and T-shirts, it was time to enter the sacred temple for the first time. The theater was nicer than I expected, wooden walls and carpet and stuff. I pictured a regular Cineplex-style theater, and thankfully I was wrong. After dropping off our small overnight bags (and kicking ourselves for not bringing a cooler like everyone else), we headed down to the B-Masters’ front row seats to meet the Masters. We first shook hands with Andrew (because he was the only one down there at the time that I recognized) and talked with him for a bit about Z’Dar’s face. Then he introduced us to the Enigmatic Apostic and Dr. Freex. Joe Bannerman (I think) gave us some raisins, and Tim, a.k.a. Telstarman from the B-Movie Message Board gave me one of his B-Fest mix CD’s. He has very cool hair. The chatting soon ended, and we returned to our seats, for the Fest was about to begin. The lights dimmed, and it was time to dive into some movies. We went in cold, so everything was a surprise, with the exception of the yearly shorts and Plan 9. 1. The Crawling Eye: Lots of MST3K jokes being tossed at this one. Lots of fun screaming AAAAUGH! every time the mountain was shown. And wherever there are mountains, there are clouds. Betcha didn’t know THAT, did you Mr. Smartypants? People were just warming up with the first movie, and it was nothing compared to what was to come. 2. Gymkata: Well, this is something I never thought I’d see. A ninja Olympics version of The Most Dangerous Game. Stupid movie, fun jokes. The B-Fest Players shined at the end with their video game sight gag. I’m still having nightmares about the hero’s batch, though. 3. What Is Communism? Short: Lying, shrewd, determined, godless bastards. USA! USA! We all got little flags. Mine’s hanging from my computer as I write this. 4. Hardware Wars: Silly Star Wars spoof performed with kitchen appliances. This is something I’ve been wanting to see for years. I’ve heard about it, but I never managed to track it down. It was like a late Christmas present. 5. Message from Space: Strange Japanese space opera/fairy tale about magical walnuts or something. I’m not real sure on the plot, just that it sucked. I love model ships blowing each other up, and if they’d stuck to that it would have been great. Everyone was chanting END END END by the time it was over, and with good reason. I still can’t imagine why Borntreger and Freex like this movie. FYI, the odious comic relief in this flick is also the odious comic relief from Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. I knew I recognized him, but I couldn’t pin it down. Thanks to Chris from Stomp Tokyo for solving the mystery and keeping my head from exploding. I’d also like to mention that I don’t believe Dr. Freex when he says it’s only an hour and fifteen minutes long. Here we took a break to stretch, hit the vending machines and bathrooms, wander around, whatever. We cruised back over to the Cabal stables and met Scott and Chris from Stomp Tokyo. Nothing I love more than talking to people who love giant monster movies as much as I do, and I found out some encouraging news about the pending stateside theatrical release of the newest Godzilla movie. Andrew agreed that if he can like Message from Space, then he won’t make fun of us anymore for liking Alien Prey. After hearing them talk about movies like Forbidden Zone and some strange thing Apostic mentioned with a giant mutant turkey monster, we felt like we didn’t know so very much after all. I can’t remember which break it was, but I think it was this one, when we got to talk to Chad from 3-B Theater. Great guy, and a funny-ass site, too. Seems like he’s seen everything we haven’t. It’s nice being recognized for your work, too, like maybe we’re not actually wasting our lives doing this stuff. Nah, we probably are. But it’s either this or watching The Fast and the Furious (which FUCKING SUCKED!!!). Lights dimming, must return to seats. 6. Wizard of Speed and Time Short: Goddamn, this was cool. A B-Fest legend and one of the things I was most looking forward to. There’s a full- length movie of this, but this could only succeed in five-minute hallucination-inducing short form. A movie would either be so bad you’d hate life by the end, or be so confusing and trippy your brain would crawl out of your head and hide behind the refrigerator for weeks. Next year we’re gettin’ on that stage. 7. Wizard of Speed and Time Short upside down and backwards: AAAAAUUUUGHH! 8. Plan 9 from Outer Space: Crowd participation could never be more fun. Neither could ducking a barrage of paper plates. We did a little advertising during the plate throwing. Writing upside down in the dark is hard. I hope someone noticed. 9. Coffy: One of the more pleasant surprises of the evening for two reasons. One, I love playing “spot the sample,” and all the samples from Blur the Technicolor by White Zombie are from this. Secondly, it was a blaxploitation movie that didn’t bore me. I’m not usually big on these things, but this one was a lot of fun, especially the chorus of the I Dream of Genie theme song. Oh, and good ol’ Frank Cress from Gore Gore Girls was in it, too. So was Michelle from Girl in Gold Boots and Female Plasma Suckers. 10. Can Heironymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?: It was confusing, it was bizarre, it had Milton Berle as Satan. It FUCKING RULED! And we were the only ones in the theater who actually liked it. It was interrupted by a porno cartoon for some reason. When I yelled “Leave it alone, it’s a good movie!”, Andrew spun around and looked in our direction. I think he knew where we were even in the dark. I feared for my life. When I asked later if we were the only ones who liked it he asked if I was out of my goddamn mind. I guess that means yes. Hey, someone has to champion these movies. 11. The Further Adventures of Super Screw: The porno cartoon that interrupted the aforementioned GOOD movie. A guy with a huge dong has a butt-ramming battle with a pissed off gorilla. Still trying to decide if we should kill or congratulate whoever came up with it. 12. The Slime People: Another movie I’ve been wanting to see. It’s surprising how few of these we’d actually seen. Unfortunately, the problem with old B&W monster movies like this is they’re very predictable and formulaic, and you have to be wide awake to fully enjoy them. You can find it for five bucks at any store. I’ve been awake a full 24 hours already. Time for some sleep. 13. The Lonely Lady: I’m convinced this was just an excuse to have Pia Zadora in there somewhere. I don’t know why you all hate her so much. The movie sucked, but she was naked for a while. She’s pretty, but not... enough to hold... my attention…unconsciousness taking over....zzzzzz. 14. The Corpse Grinders: The sight of Ted V. Mikels in the credits excited me, but Buzz and Michelle were nowhere to be seen. I’m sure it’s cool if you pay attention, but its slow-moving plot resembled the rocking motion of a cradle....zzzzzz. 15. Test Tube Babies: First fifties movie I’ve ever seen with nudity. While I was intrigued by this, it was really slow and boring and nothing happened. More zzzzzz. I woke up for the last couple minutes of Test Tube Babies, and then the lights came on. Time for breakfast already. Ferox was passed out on the floor, so myself and Fistula headed to the coffee shop downstairs for some food. All I brought with me was a couple of Pop Tarts and some bite-sized Snickers. Real food was welcome. We stumbled back to the theater, talked a bit about the antics of Heironymous with the Cabal, and settled down for the final leg of the Fest. 16. Midget Short: I have no idea what it was called. Midgets can be funny, but this ran a little long and lost my attention. The amusement was mostly from Andrew lying on the stage stomping his feet as the midgets ran around. 17. Breakin’: What a treat! I used to watch the sequel all the time on cable at the babysitter’s when I was a kid, but I’ve never seen the original. If ever there was a gay pride movie, this is it. Apparently Lucinda Dickey, the female lead, is also in Ninja III: The Domination *giggle*. 18. Battlefield Earth: Holy SHIT was this movie stupid. Retarded plot, bad acting, bad everything. I didn’t think at first that it belonged at B-Fest because it was too real, big budget, big name actors, etc. I was wrong. It belongs there with a vengeance. Thanks, Ken. NOTE: One of my professors told me there are about ten really thick books that make up this series, and the movie was only based on the first one. I REALLY hate L. Ron Hubbard. 19. Tarantula: These are my favorite kinds of movies, but again, you need to be really awake to enjoy them. Speaking of, Them is probably one of the best of this genre. Tarantula is pretty damn good too. I lost about ten minutes of this one to sleep, but I caught most of it. Good stuff. When I was in elementary school we had a series of orange books in our library about monster movies. Tarantula was one of them. The pictures of people with acromegalia scared the hell out of me when I was eight. 20. The Mummy: I have never felt more accepted than when a whole bunch of people joined me in screaming and cheering when the Hammer Films logo came on the screen. Damn fine movie by a damn fine company. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing rock my hairy anus. 21. Godzilla 2000: When it was announced that the last film was sponsored by Stomp Tokyo, I knew it was going to be a Godzilla movie. I don’t know how, I just did. Scratch feeling at home cheering for Hammer. As good as that felt, it was nothing compared to cheering on the Big G as he nuked the living shit out of everything in sight. An excellent way to end the day. Third time I’ve seen it in the theater, probably around tenth or twelfth overall. Because of getting there late and not getting the best parking space, we had to high-tail it right after the show ended to make sure we didn’t get a ticket or towed or anything. We were virgins this year and not very well- prepared. Next year we intend to get to town on Thursday or very early Friday, find a good place to stay, and have some time to explore the town and hopefully some more time to visit with people. Since we didn’t relish the idea of parking in some farmer’s field and sleeping in the car, risking attack by sex-crazed llamas, we decided it would be best just to drive straight home. Things started off rather quietly, and then, taking a surprising turn, conversation got very very deep for three or four hours, maybe more. Thankfully a nearly empty tank and no fueling stations in sight relieved the introspection and self-searching and turned things silly again. Finally a beacon of light shone on us; the R&L Gas Mart. It’s a quaint little mom & pop style gas station in a town which I can’t remember the name of, but the lady at the counter was really nice and stayed open a bit late so we didn’t have to push the car the rest of the way home. Finally crossing the border back into Iowa, we decided this: Illinois is a very nice place, and the people are very friendly, but they can’t drive for shit. We rolled into Rock Falls about 2 a.m., Fistula asleep in the back seat and myself and Ferox singing any and every song we both knew the words to, from Timelessness by Fear Factory to Lean on Me. We parked, woke up Fistula, and did some street dancing in front of the tavern (quite possibly the most dangerous thing any of us have ever done). Then we drove down into the park, Fistula tipped over the Port-O-Potty, and we went home. I said hello to the dog, went inside, and dropped my suitcase. After a bit of channel surfing I remembered that there’s nothing good on TV anymore and went upstairs to rinse my head off. Two days without a shower leaves one feeling a bit crispy, ya know. I dropped off to sleep around three in the morning, visions of Pia Zadora and glowing walnuts dancing in my head. This was, hands down, the most fun I’ve ever had in 24 hours. I only have two regrets. One, that we weren’t better prepared (next year!), and two, that I couldn’t share it with Malorie. Sadly, while she enjoys watching the occasional b-movie with us, she didn’t have enough interest for 24 hours worth of them. I’ll keep working on her. Maybe she’ll see the light next year. At any rate, it was a blast and I can’t wait to go back. Viva la B-Fest!