Saturday, June 13th

I woke up Saturday morning in some major obnoxious pain. My legs were a little stiff and sore (all that crouching, sprinting, and tumbleweed-leaping). And the sunburn...AAAAAARRRRGH!!! My shoulders were bright red. My chest was bright red. My arms were bright red. (Most of my face was mercifully protected by the bill of my redneck gurl hat.) I very gingerly took a cool shower, and got dressed. Okay total TMI, but for the first time in my life, I wanted to burn my bra. If the straps moved over the slightest bit--PAIN AND SORROW!

I made up my mind on the spot that I was going back to full-time Playback Geek. My zombie days were over. I was NOT about to get painted again, and have to scrub it off. There were plent of zombies, they'd never miss me. Besides, all zombies look alike, don't they? Heh.

Had a nice breakfast and coffee at the Gold Hill, petted the house kitteh, and headed over to the cemetery for a 9AM shoot. The last shoot--our permit said we had to be out of the graveyard by noon.

All the vampire goth cowchicks and all the zombies where there. The weather had turned. It was overcast, windy, and cold. The poor little cowchicks were freezing their chaps off. Especially the loveliest cowchick of them all, whom Mark had positioned at the top of a raised, walled burial, above EJ. That poor kid just about turned blue, but she was quite the trooper and shook her tail feather just as well as she had the night before.

We did the same type of scenes we had done in the bar--the band playing, and the cowchicks and zombies dancing. We did a take or two with the reaching hands, and one where the crowd actually pulled EJ down and he vanished into the thick of them. That was awesome!

Poor EJ. He was tired, his shoulder was hurting, and his feet were killing him from wearing cowboy boots for 18 hours the day before. But he was a trooper too, and performed as well as he always does.

A lovely couple brought their hearses to the shoot, and Mark the director made an impromptu decision to use one of them for the end of the video. We shot some scenes of all the zombies and cowchicks reaching through the closed cemetery gates, trying to get EJ and the band as they left. The band barely escapes and walks out cool as you please. They get into the hearse and EJ drives away.

We had gathered quite a crowd by then. In fact, we had recruited some zombies from the onlookers who had come to visit the cemetery, including a couple of zombie kids. KYOOT! We let out a mighty cheer, crew and observers alike, when Mark yelled "IT'S A WRAP!" through his megaphone. There was much rejoicing, hugging, and zombie butt-shaking. We took a few "formal" portraits of the band, director, and dancers, and then it was time to pack up and go.

I said goodbye to all my new friends. I gave EJ a gigantic squeeze. The poor man was going to have to spend the day doing things like taking people to the airport and FedExing his gear back to Ohio, so this was goodbye. WAH!

I was kind of bummed as I pulled out of the cemetery. I knew it would most likely be a long time before I saw any of my new buds again. But I was delighted to have been part of such lunacy and fun.

What to do now? Well, I had prepaid for a refill tank of gas. The damn PT Cruiser got excellent gas mileage, and I was only down by a quarter-tank. TIME TO DRIVE! I was hellbent on burning that tank of gas!

Before we continue, let me explain something about myself. It seems that when I'm in a strange place, with a rental car (especially one full of prepaid gas) and no schedule or obligations, I become completely unpredictable. Especially to myself. I had NO idea where I was going when I headed back over the mountain.

So I drove into Reno. Actually, I drove all the way THROUGH Reno. I goggled at the few big, fancy resort casinos. I gagged and trembled in fear at the sight of the five-story clown in front of Circus Circus. I had lunch at a family run sandwich shop. NOM NOM NOM! Then hell, I was through Reno, so I just kept going. And going. And going. I drove into Califronai. Quite a way into Califronia, in fact, I zoomed around the desert. I saw mustangs in the distance. I spotted ravens and a coyote. I had a helluva good time. Finally, I turned around and drove back through Reno.

I was still restless, so I hung a right and drove into Carson City. Okay it wasn't that exciting, but I went to Carson City! Cool!

It was early evening by the time I got back to the edge of Reno, and the road back to Virginia City. NOT ready to go back to the hotel! I decided to see if anything good was playing at the theater. I was just in time for Start Trek! Yay! I had a dinner of popcorn and Junior Mints, and enjoyed the heck out of the film.

When I got out, it was about 10PM. Hey! I hadn't driven through Reno in the DARK before! So I did! OOOOOO neon! Wow, drunks! Yikes, a scary, staggering woman in a wig and wearing incredibly low jeans! You could have fit a gong into that coin slot. I'm sure there were spelunkers in there somewhere.

Finally, I was tired. I drove back over the pass to Virginia City. I stopped by the bar to chat with locals and drink a few margaritas, then toddled off to bed.

This was Rosie's last chance! I stayed up as long as I could, the lights dimmed, reading a book and being very quiet and, um, metaphysically inviting. NOT A DAMN THING! I guess I'm just ghost repellent. Sniff.

See exciting photos from the last day of shooting!

In the next (and final) thrilling adventure, Lorelei sleeps in, sees a ghost (in a picture anyway) and makes an impetuous decision! (Big surprise about that last one, huh.)

As I'm sure everybody knows by now, every TV station on the planet is showing footage of Michael Jackson's final "performance"--actually a rehearsal for his upcoming tour. I heard not one but THREE different commentators say that it proved that MJ was at the "top of his game." One said it disproved the rumor that MJ was worried about having the stamina for 50 concerts, because he was looking fine.

What were THEY looking at? What I was looking at was an emaciated man who barely had the energy to lift his feet. Sure, he was doing his signature dance moves, but he was doing them like he had lead weights around his ankles. The man was so undernourished, so underslept, and possibly so drugged, that he just couldn't move well at all. He seems uncoordinated--almost floppy.

Take a look at this:


Then go Google up Thriller, or Billie Jean, or anything else he ever did.

I am not a Michael Jackson fan. Never much cared for his music. But I have to say, watching this made me kind of sad.

What do you think? Am I imagining it, or does he appear to have the energy level of  a stoned koala?

It took six hours of grueling (and often frustrating) work, but my amazing mechanic, Bob Anderson, got Annabel started for the first time in about two years! OH she sounds so beautiful. The wicked growl of her engine sends me over the moon. I just can't keep the stupid grin off my face. I had to drape over her hood and kiss her a little bit. We will be ROCKING Halloween this year!

Her first event of the driving season will be a parade on July 18th, where she'll represent Dark Hollow Haunted Forest.

I am loopy with joy!

SQUEEEEEEEE!!!!!

EEEEEEEK!!! The 1979 movie version of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood has finally been released on DVD! It's awesome! And it has an adorable baby Brad Dourif in it! Can't stand it...boy too cute...*thud*

Friday, June 12

The video director, Mark Easter, asked us to be at the Virginia City Graveyard at 9 in the morning. I dressed for the occasion--a tank top with a '50's style zombie exterminator ad on it, cargo shorts with tons of pockets, and my redneck cap with the skull and crossbones on it. I brought a tube of sunblock, some fruit I nabbed from the hotel, and six bottles of water. I was READ-AY!

The gatekeeper opened up for us and let the production vehicles drive in. Still, we had to carry stuff about 100 yards to the main video site. I carried tons of equipment along with the guys--at that point, I was the only chick there. Everybody was impressed with my ferocity (and my GUNS, baybuh).

We set up at an impressive gravesite at the top of a hill. There was much debate as to whether the musicians could step on the grave itself or not. Being a perpetual bad influence, I insisted that the poor bastard had been dead for over 100 years and didn't give a damn. I won.

The band had two lead guitars (EJ and V.C. Graves), a bass guitarist, a drummer, and a guy playing a Farfisa organ. (That thing weighed about 80 pounds. EJ and John were NOT happy about carrying uphill to the video site, but they managed.)

There were three cameras. Mark the director had the central stationary camera, and then there were two guys with handheld cameras. Mark appointed me the Official Playback Wench. It was my job to play the song, over and over and over again, as the band played unplugged instruments and sang (even though their voices wouldn't end up on the final video--the studio version of the song will). I had to take down notes and mark the time for every part of the song--first verse, chorus, second verse, bridge, and so on.

While the camera dudes were setting up, I chatted with Tom Gordon, the sweet young man who was playing our head zombie. (Yes, he DID get 12 copies of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon for his birthday.) Tom is 6' 8" tall. They wanted a zombie who could tower over EJ, and EJ is 6' 2". Tom is a great guy, and we talked horror films and books for awhile. Then everything was ready, everyone was in position, and we were ready to go. Mark hollered for the cameras to roll, and then pointed at me and yelled PLAYBACK! I bravely hit the button. Music blasted out of the boombox as loud as it would get, which was surprisingly quiet in the vast graveyard. Mark yelled CUT and repositioned the boom box behind a tombstone and right next to Chuck, the drummer. The only problem was that I would be in shot if I stayed where I was. So Mark told me to just "hit the button and run." Well, okay then! I hit the button and sprinted out of the shot, leaping nimbly over tumbleweeds and scrubby brush. The band "played" all the way through the song, and they were looking FINE. Mark yelled CUT, and then it was time to do it again. And again. And again.

I slathered on the sunblock several times during the day, but we shot outside for more than seven hours. I fried like an egg. My skin ended up the color of a boiled lobster. (So did poor Tom Gordon's nose.) Mark shot the band from every possible angle, over and over again. Toward the end of the day, Tom suited up in his zombie gear and lurched through the graveyard a few times, creeping up on EJ. It was fairly awesome.

I had a great time talking with the musicians and crew. They were all wonderful, and they dug the fact that I have an encyclopedic knowlege of obscure gothabilly.  I was thrilled to death to learn that the organist was a former member of the Cult of the Psychic Fetus, one of my all-time favorite psychobilly bands!

It got hot that day, by Virginia City standards anyway. It was about 85 degrees. I was fine in my tank top and shorts, but poor EJ was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, black slacks, a long black coat, and a leather cowboy hat. He was slowly roasting inside his clothes. Tom was boiling too, in his rubber zombie mask and gloves. By the time we finished shooting for the day at about 4:30 PM, everybody was exhausted and filthy. I looked like a teacake covered with dirt. I'd sweat, then run out of shot kicking up dust, which stuck to my damp skin. It was NOT pretty.

We all pitched in to lug the equipment back to the cars. But the day was far from over. We were scheduled to shoot inside a bar called the Washoe Club at 7PM.

I scooted off to the hotel for  a fast shower. The amount of mud runniing down the drain was truly horrifying. But I got all purdy and girlie. Mark had mentioned that they needed people for the crowd in the bar, so I put on a slinky black dress, cowboy boots, and (gasp) makeup. I was looking pretty damn cute, if you ask me. I went back to town, wolfed down a slice of pizza and a beer at the Red Dog Saloon (nobody got any lunch during the shoot) and headed over to the Washoe Club.

There were already quite a few goth vampire cowchicks hanging around. These were adorable young hotties wearing goth/western duds. There were also plenty of zombies. No "normal" crowd. Mark hollered "We need more zombies!" The next thing I knew, I was getting rags draped over my pretty black dress, bony-moldy body paint sprayed on my limbs, and putting on the fugliest zombie mask I'd ever seen. The makeup guy liked my tattoos, and left my arms bare. My mask had only one eye. They sprayed black makeup around the eye that would be peeking through the eyehole, so no one would get a glimpse of my fishbelly white flesh. I ended up looking like the dog Spot from the old Our Gang TV show.

EJ's wife was there, along with John's wife and Chuck's girlfriend. Our awesome gurl still photographer very kindly took over playback duty for me so I could be in the zombie shots. Basically, the band was just going to play the song like they were playing a regular club, but the crowd consisted of vampire hotties and gruesome zombies. The best part? We were supposed to dance!

A few zombies just danced like regular people wearing zombie suits. What fun is that? I did a creepy, jerky, stiff zombie dance like my rigor mortis hadn't quite worn off. Everyone was duly impressed and horrified. At one point, I started an all-zombie mosh pit. Yeeeeehaw! In the last couple of run-throughs, Mark had all of us zombies and goth chicks reach for EJ, like we either adored him or wanted him for lunch. The effect with all the hands was REALLY cool.

During the course of the evening, we saw more Virginia City town dogs. A big white one visited us for awhile, and an adorable black-and-white pitbull baby hotlapped the bar a few times. He seemed totally unruffled by the loud noise and the zombies. PUPPY!!! I had to take off my zombie mask and rub my cheek on his furry little head.

We finally wrapped for the day. The poor band was exhausted. EJ's feet were killing him from being in cowboy boots all day. We all chatted in the bar for a few, then staggered off to our various beds.

I stripped off my sweat-soaked dress and turned the shower on, but made the water very cool. I could feel the heat coming off the skin of my back and shoulders. I had the worst burn I'd had in years. I washed my face and hair, then tried to wash the body paint off of my arms and legs with just soap and water. No dice. I tried a washcloth. OOOOOOWWWWW!!! Let me tell you, scrubbing waterproof body paint off of badly sunburned skin SUCKS CANE TOADS.

I turned off the shower and ran a cool bath, then spent the next 40 minutes gingerly scrubbing the nasty, sticky paint from my blazing skin. COVERED WITH SUCK! I kept hoping that my heartfelt swearing would summon Rosie the ghost to come sympathize with me, but yet again, she was a no-show.

Finally, I was clean. I got out of the gigantic tub, put on a big, loose t-shirt, and tucked myself into bed. Even the soft linens hurt my skin. Whine. Tired as I was, I couldn't sleep.

I put on some jeans and went down to the bar. After a few drinks, my sunburn miraculously stopped hurting! I (kinda staggered) back to my room, fell into bed, and crashed like a ton of bricks. Rosie could have appeared and tap-danced on my ass and it wouldn't have made me wake up.

Despite the sweat, the dirt, the sunburn, the tumbleweed-leaping, and the lack of food, it was an incredible day. I can't remember when I last had so much fun. I was really  happy to be a part of the production.

Thrilling photos from the shoot!

in the next exciting episode, the video shoot wraps up, and Lorelei skips the state and tries to waste a tank of gas!

This story makes me really angry.

In brief, a single mother is being charged with various felonies for allowing her 14-year-old son to balloon up to 555 pounds. If she's convicted, she could spend 10 or 15 years in prison, and the kid will end up in foster care until he's 18.

Yeah, something is obviously messed up in this household. They're poor, for one thing. Cheap nasty starchy food inflates people without even trying. The kid clearly has emotional eating problems. The mother can't control him, because he's in school all day eating whatever he can get his hands on, and she often works second and third shifts just to stay afloat. (And y'know, 14-year-olds aren't the easiest things to control anyway.)

The kid is in mortal peril. He could die of diabetes or a heart attack. But does the state of South Carolina actually believe that the best thing for him is to take his mom away and lock her up for a decade?

As tempting as it seems sometimes, this kind of thing is EXACTLY why I'm not a Libertarian. The fact is, sometimes people get themselves in trouble, and sometimes they need help. The state needs to get the kid into a nutrition clinic. They need to get both the mom and the son counseling. They need access to nutritious food, not empty-calorie crap. They need HELP.

If South Carolina doesn't have the funds to help them, somebody needs to fucking call Oprah or Dr. Phil or one of those guys.

There are people out there who deliberately beat, starve, and otherwise abuse their kids. The DA needs to concentrate on prosecuting them, not persecuting people with a serious problem.

K, done ranting. Sorry.

First, I got a wonderful surprise in the mail from my dear friend dinogrl . It's a black girlie t-shirt with crossed stakes on the front. Huge lettering reads "...And then Buffy staked Edward. The end." Best. Shirt. EVAR! Thank you soooooo much, dinogrl!

My mom had a biopsy done on a suspicious mass last Friday. We've all been mega-stressed waiting for the report. (I think I slept 3 hours last night.) She got the call today--totally benign! WOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!! I stopped at Safeway on the way home and bought three kinds of ice cream, waffle cone bowls, and whipped cream. We had a PAR-TAY!

Speaking of par-tays, I can't stop saying "Senator Al Franken!" I say it loudly. I say it quietly. I mumble it. I write it on my notebook at work. I write it on my hand. Sigh.

Not a perfect day, though. There's some outrageous bullshit going on at work that I'm not going to directly discuss until the person most affected by it makes a public comment. But I'm pissed, sad, and disappointed. Mostly pissed.

Back to happy. I love this time of the year, mostly for the fireworks safety clips they show on every single news story until the 4th. There's nothing quite like watching a mannequin get its arm blown off by a Black Cat or a cherry bomb. The boys and i buy fireworks every year, and have a great (safe) time with them. But next year maybe I'll see if I can pick up a couple of mannequins, strap fireworks to their various appendages and BLOW THE FUCK OUT OF THEM! Now THAT would be FUN!

Back to the video shoot story tomorrow. I got distracted by a nasty cold virus that nailed everybody in the house for about a week.

Going to bed now. Last night I couldn't sleep because I was so worried about my mom. Tonight I can't go to sleep because I'm too spazzed out and hyper with relief. Sucks to be me!

Under the influence of cold meds and high fevers.

I've been hella sick for the past three days. Was somewhat better yesterday, but relapsed today. I slept most of the day, and I finally feel a bit better.

This is what happened while I was down for the count.

Pass it on! Spam everybody you know, baybuh!

I was pretty jazzed going into this flick. Sam Raimi had finally returned to horror! Yay! I tried to read as little about it as possible. All I knew was that some chick was trying not  to, um, get dragged to Hell.

I'll cut right to the chase. Fairly Epic Fail.

I can't understand why this movie got such great reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. All I can think is that the reviews were by non-horror fans, who don't know a good horror movie if it bites them in the ass. Nevertheless, they should still understand things like, y'know, plot and character and stuff.

My dear friend ladyeuthanasia  hated this movie. She felt it was anti-feminist; that the girl in the movie was targeted for damnation for being too ambitious in a man's world. I can see her point, but I respectfully disagree. ( lots of griping and some minor spoilers )The performances weren't bad, overall, but the actors just didn't have much to work with. Between the embarrassing racist element, the flabby plot, and the predictable "twist" at the end, I left the movie with a giant MEH.

I really wanted to watch Evil Dead 2, but I was in Virginia City with no TV. So I just had to think of it fondly.

WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?

Not me. I want 1980's Sam Raimi back.

In which Lorelei goes into a tourista frenzy!

Thursday 6/11/09

EJ called me early on Thursday morning. He had a ton of errands to do for the upcoming shoot, and some business to take care of with the director in Reno. He said he'd call me after he picked up his wife at the airport that afternoon. I wished him good luck, and went back to bed for another hour. Aaaaahhhh...

Got up around 8:30, took a shower and went down to the Gold Hill's "Great Room" for a continental breakfast. Yogurt, muffins, juice and coffee, nom nom nom. Took a cup of coffee back to my room and hung out on my wooden balcony, looking down at the street and pretending to be Al Swearengin. (Had to yell SWEDGIN! off the balcony a few times, too.) Petted the adorable Gold Hill Resident Kitteh, and headed into Virginia City to see the sights.

The first thing I did (since I happened to be parked close to it) was to go to The Way It Was museum. Awesomeness! The museum concentrates mostly on the Comstock mine and the Bonanza period, but it has a good collection of clothing, medicine bottles, hardware, and other cool things from the period as well. I geeked out and took a nice long time examining everything.

I hit the Boardwalk, poking around in all the awesome old buildings, and shopping for presents for the folks at home. I found critter t-shirts for the kids, and I got a Bucket of Blood t-shirt for Daniel. (How could I resist?) I spent a lot of time looking at architectural details and ornamental ceilings and prints on the walls of the saloons and other things that would probably bore the crap out of normal people. I got the guys some candy at an excellent sweet shop called The Candy Barrel. It had "normal' candy, and also brands I hadn't seen since I was a kid, like Cow Tails. (You KNOW I got some of those for Orion!)

All that walking made me hungry. I went to Virginia City's only Chinese restaurant for lunch. I figured the Chinese had been around the American west for the better part of two hundred years, so there was probably good food to be had. EPIC FAIL! I ordered sweet and sour chicken, and it was just about a cut below mall food court chow. The rice wasn't sticky rice, it was some kind of Uncle Ben-like stuff. The chicken wasn't stir-fried on order. I saw them scoop it out of something like a giant crock-pot. It was mushy and bland. Um, ew! (Later on I heard some kids from Reno talking about how good that restaurant was. All I have to say is that I'm REALLY glad I didn't get Chinese food in Reno.)

The Red Light Museum was in the basement of the building with the Chinese restaurant. You'd better believe I wanted to see that! It was just a dollar, by donation. I went down the dark, dank stairs. The first thing I saw was a pussy. Cat. A gray tabby, very cute. HA HA HA! (Yes, that WAS mature of me, wasn't it.) The museum itself was a large collection of...stuff. There was a sign saying that it had taken the owner of the...stuff 20 years to gather it up, and cost over $35,000.  Interestingly, after spending all that time and money, he or she didn't bother to catalog it, or even explain it. There was case after case, shelf after shelf of weird crap--old undergarments, jewelry, perfume bottles, lithographs, advertisements, ancient vibrators and so on--but none of them were labelled. They were generally grouped by category, but if you didn't know what you were looking at, well, tough titty said the kitty. There were also two tableaus you could look at through glass, featuring full-sized mannequins. One was a lady of the evening lounging woodenly on her bed, greeting a john. The other was a girl lying on the table while an abortion doctor prepared his instruments. EW. I left the Red Light Museum kinda-sorta creeped out. It was like a collection of stuff you'd find in the basement of a 19th century serial killer. Or maybe I just read too many serial killer books. Anyway.

One of the saloons offered a mine tour. There was a mine right under the building! (Okay, actually, there were mines under ALL the buildings in Virginia City. There's a huge network of underground tunnels, going way, way down into the ground. Some have been filled in, but many of them are still there.) That sounded pretty cool. I paid my $4.50 and joined the tour.

It turns out that this was the LOOZA mine. It was in between two other mines that had produced literally tons of gold and silver. This one produced a total of $435.00 in precious metals. BUMMER! But it was still pretty cool to look at. Our guide was great. He knew all about the history of the mines and the town. They had lots of interesting equipment--mechanical lifts for people and ore, giant steel hand drills that were held by one man while another smacked it with a 20-pound sledge hammer, and hydraulic drills known as "widowmakers" for their penchant for exploding and killing everyone in a six-foot radius. We got to look up an airshaft with a switchback of ladders in it--it went 60 feet straight up, all the way to the surface of the street. The guide told us lots of entertaining stories. Evidently when the owners of the building first started looking into the mine as a possible tourist attraction, they found two full cases of 150-year-old dynamite. A bomb squad had to be called to remove it, and even then, it was removed at 2AM, in cas something went wrong. ZOINKS!

By then I was kind of touristed out. I wanted to do something completely different. I got in my little PT Cruiser and headed over the mountain to Reno. I didn't really have a plan, but when I saw a big theater complex, I decided to catch a flick. I saw "Drag Me To Hell." I'm very, VERY disappointed with Mr. Sam Raimi. More on that later.

EJ called after the movie was out, and told me where everybody was meeting for dinner. I didn't make it back in time for dinner, but I met EJ, his wife Susan, John and his family, and Scott at the Delta for some hanging-out and slot machine fun.

WOW. I had seen pictures of Susan before, and I knew she was lovely, but I have to say, they didn't do her justice. She is absolutely gorgeous. Also smart and funny. We had a good time hanging out in the saloon and talking with everybody. I had five dollar bills in my pocket, and that's what I spent on slots. I am weirdly immune to gambling. It just doesn't do anything for me. I picked machines for intelligent reasons like "it has a kitty on it!" I eventually blew my five bucks (took awhile playing nickel slots) and then read all the historic tidbits on the saloon walls. EJ kicked some butt at video poker and got a shower of silver dollars. Yeehaw!

We all left fairly early, because Friday was going to be a long, long day of shooting. We stepped outside the Delta, and saw a cute little elderly gray dog walking around on the sidewalk. Susan and I went into immediate worry mode. Was the dog lost? Where was his owner? What was he doing out at this time of night? Then we noticed that the dog was staring fixedly at the doors of the Delta. I opened the door for him, and he ran right in! Over the next few days, I would discover that there were a number of "town dogs" in Virginia City. They all had owners, but while their owners were at work, the dogs would roam around, going from business to business, visiting friends, getting treats, and patrolling the town. You would often find dogs hanging out in saloons or restaurants. i absolutely loved that. (If I'd had more time there, I would have liked to interview some of the dog owners and business owners and write an article for the Bark or something.)

I went back to the Gold Hill. I decided to drop by their bar for a nightcap (Bloody Mary, om nom nom) then went to bed with my book. Yet again, I waited up for Rosie. I fell asleep still waiting.

See thrilling Thursday pictures!

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode, in which Lorelei becomes Head Playback Geek, carries lots of equipment, wrangles cops, gets a gnarly sunburn, and turns into a zombie!

...than a living person should have!

WTF am I talking about? Well, my dear friend E.J. Wells, who writes and performs amazing and wonderful music, decided to make a video for his song "Something In The Graveyard."  (SITG will be on his next CD, and it kicks some major butt.) He told me he was shooting the video in the graveyard in Virginia City, Nevada. We chatted online a bit about how cool it would be if I could come down there and help. Then we found out that flights to Reno are dirt cheap...well, the next thing you know, my tattooed white trash ass was on a plane en route to Reno.

Wednesday, June 10th

Warning: I am writing this down for myself. If there's too much detail and blah blah blah for you, DON'T READ IT baybuh. Now on with our story.

I've been e-friends with EJ for a couple of years now. We've talked on the phone before, but I had never met him. I knew who some of the other band members would be, like V.C. Graves and Scott Shriner. But I'd never met them either. Yes, I was flying to another state to hang out with a bunch of people I had NEVER LAID EYES ON IN PERSON. (Yeah, I know, it's not uncommon in the age of the internet. But dude, it was a first for me. And I don't have a lot of firsts left.)

I was way excited. I'd worked on video productions before, but never a music video. And EJ had told me how beautiful and historical Virginia City is. I reserved a (really cheap) room at the Gold Hill, which is the oldest hotel in Nevada. It has no air conditioning, and no TVs in the older parts of the hotel. I was fine with that. It's not like northern Nevada gets as hot as Vegas, and I figured I'd be too busy to watch TV. I figured right.

I'm getting ahead of myself. The plane landed in Reno, and the airport cracked me up because it was full of slot machines and video poker machines and other weird gambling devices. I threaded my way between them, picked up my rental car (which turned out to be a rather cute white PT Cruiser) and headed for Virginia City.

I had a street map, but it kinda didn't say that Virginia City was on the other side of a MOUNTAIN. It was. The high desert was just gorgeous. I loved it the moment I saw it. Carefully, I made my way along the twisting highway (which was a lot like highway 49 in Oakhurst, by the way). After I passed the summit, I started seeing signs advertising the "World Famous Suicide Table," which made me very happy. I love roadside attractions. And Virginia City is one big, beautiful, historically significant roadside attraction.

The downtown area, called the Boardwalk (for its wooden sidewalks) is amazing. Yeah, sure, it's a tourist trap, but what they're trying to trap you into seeing is the real thing. The Red Dog Saloon was there in the 1860's, and it's still there today. Same with the Washoe Club and the Opera House and just about every other building in town. I was enchanted. But I wanted to get to my hotel before I went exploring.

The Gold Hill Hotel is on the far side of the Boardwalk. I loved it the minute I saw it. The people were friendly, and my room was all tricked out 1800's style. (Okay it was really, really pink, but I could live with that, because it was supposed to be haunted. More on that later.) I freshened up in the old, slightly lopsided but utterly cool bathroom, then flopped on the bed. Comfy! (And not 150 years old, which is a Good Thing.)

My phone rang. It was EJ. He was expecting his friend John and family, but he was driving around his old stomping grounds while he waited. He said he'd come by and pick me up. Woot!

There was a funny moment of disconnect when I saw EJ in person. There's just something bizarre about seeing a person in the flesh when you've only seen him in pictures and video. But I got over it fast and gave him a big hug. I think he was kind of bemused by me in person. I'm, um, kind of a lot to take in. But if he was horrified by my purple hair or tons of tattoos ,he was polite enough not to say anything.

We drove around the area, looking at old buildings and ruined mining structures and cool rock formations. Then we went to the cemetery. OH. MAH. GAWD. It was beautiful. Ornate iron fencing, carved marble stones, twisted trees and all. We wandered around (I was taking pictures like a fiend) and EJ told me about some of his graveyard adventures. Heh. He was every bit as sweet and funny and just all-around awesome in person as he was on the e-mailnet. I felt very, very lucky to get to spent some time with him.

It was early evening by then. John (The dashing and delightful V.C. Graves) and his family had arrived. They were staying at the Ramada in Virginia City proper. Even that was cool. Even though it was a new building, it was decorated with historic fixtures and furniture. John, his totally wonderful wife Connie, their adorable (and hella smart) little boy Jack, EJ and I went out for (pretty decent) Mexican food.

Connie took Jack back to the hotel. John, Eej and I bopped around town for a bit. EJ showed me the World Famous Suicide Table at the Delta saloon. (It's a faro table where three different idiots lost their stakes and then blew their heads off. I mean, how Deadwood is THAT?) It's in a creepy/cool old saloon with wooden floors and pressed copper ceilings. Come to think of it, ALL the creepy/cool saloons in town sport those features. HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY! Have I mentioned what an Old West history geek I am? Yeah...

The guys took me back to the Gold Hill. After checking out the (really pink) coolness that was my room, they headed for their hotel. I dimmed the lights, snuggled up in my comfy bed, and read a good book for awhile. I enjoyed the quiet more than I can begin to describe. I waited for the ghost (a lady of the evening named Rosie, evidently) but eventually nodded off. If she visited during the night, I slept right through it.

Dang.

To Be Continued...

See some thrilling photos here!

Stay tuned for the next entry, where Lorelei visits the Bucket of Blood, meets EJ's staggeringly gorgeous wife, and learns the secret of Virginia City town dogs!

Something occurred to me the other day. I don't tell my kids not to talk to strangers.

I mean, what kind of retarded advice is that? We grownups have to talk to strangers every day. We talk to store clerks and contractors and people at work we barely know. You HAVE to be able to talk to strangers to get by in this society.

Not that I'm an idiot. I've told them never to go anywhere with a stranger. I've told them that strangers don't need help finding rings or puppies or children--at least not from other children. I've told them not to give strangers personal information.

But as for casual talk? That's fine with me. Last week when I went to my ophthamologist's office to pay a bill, Orion came with me. It took awhile for the front desk to get to me, and he struck up a conversation with a lady about the office's tropical fish. He is a very polite conversationalist, and the lady seemed to enjoy their chat. When I finished paying the bill and said "Come on, it's time to go," he said to the lady, "Excuse me, please. I have to go now." She was charmed.

I often talk to strangers. I compliment people on their clothes or their dogs or their cars. I don't want to deprive my kids of the joy of spontaneous conversation.

Socialization is particularly important for Fenris. He loves to talk to strangers (so much so that I have to guide the conversation sometimes, to avoid his talking somebody's ear off.)

I am certain that this is the right approach. I don't want to raise fearful kids. I want to raise smart, aware, socially skilled kids.

Hey, it's not like I tell them to go play in traffic or anything. That can wait until they're teenagers with their own cars.

used the phrase "Big piece of tire carcass" this morning.

That made me happy.

Has such interesting serial killers.

in Yoga today. My balance was good (for me anyway,) and I could really feel areas of my body that have become stronger over the past couple of months. I managed to do a pigeon pose with no hands on the ground, and hold it.

Okay. The first time I tried it, I started to pitch over. (This is a pose where your thighs are basically supporting your weight.) Then the instructor said something about grounding your legs, and I pushed back against that mat like it wanted to bite my ass. I stabilized! I pcked my hands up off the ground and held them over my head! I totally did it! And I'm not even sore!

Sorry. This is a really exciting event in my rather pitiful life.

And here's a bit of TMI for you. My legs can stretch 6" wider from side to side since I started yoga.

Shut up you perverts.

Dumbass mistakes evidently DO come in threes.

I made a massively dumbass mistake at work last week. Nothing serious, easily fixed, but obvious and embarrassing.

HOPEFULLY I'm done being a dumbass for now.

Hopefully.

This was the SIFF movie I was looking forward to the most. I had heard it was deeply disturbing, pushed the envelope, and all that happy stuff. I walked out not only disappointed but kinda pissed, because it could have been so much better.

It's a fantastic idea. Two unpopular teenage boys find a woman in the basement of an old mental hospital. She's beautiful, but her skin is cold. She moves, but she has no heartbeat. She's a living dead girl. So what do the boys do? One of them decides to rape her. Disgusted, the other boy leaves.

Turns out that not only is she a living dead girl, but she can't be killed. You can strangle her, bash her in the head, even shoot her, and she won't die. She will show the damage, however, and she won't heal.

The story is mostly about the two boys, how they react to the dead girl, who causes both of them to reveal his inner nature.

Sounds good, right? Well, it would have been, if it weren't for some serious corn pollution in the script. The screenwriter has evidently forgotten all about what it's like to be a teenager, and what high school life is about. The movie opens with two bullies playing catch with a fat kid's glasses. Yeah, we've never seen THAT before. One of the two protagonist boys has a huge crush on the beautiful girl who dates the football star. Wow! How original! And then there's the dialog. Evidently the writer figured if he had the words "fuck," "man," and "bro" coming out of his actors every 5-10 seconds, they would sound like authentic teenagers. What they sounded like was actors, choking and gagging on stilted lines. Now, I probably couldn't write an accurate 2009 teenage conversation either. It's been a long time since I was in high school. But if I was planning to attempt it, I might, y'know, go to a teenage hangout every day for a couple of weeks and LISTEN. Find out how this particular teenage subculture talks, rather than just pulling it out of my ass.

There was some awkward direction, which sometimes caused unintended laughter. There were also some very poor casting choices.The "football star" guy looked about 30 years old, and couldn't act his way out of a wet paper bag. The "beautiful girl" was too old for the part as well, not to mention flat and uninspired.

And did I mention the weird pacing? Okay, this was a festival cut, not a final cut. But the movie was far too slow and repetitive in places. It needed at least a half-hour cut from it. Then there were the weird, out-of-atmosphere isolated events. There's a genuinely funny scene where a cranky chick beats the crap out of her would-be attackers. It's a well-directed scene and funny as hell. But it's the ONLY funny scene in the film. Deliberately funny, anyway.

The two guys who played the leads were pretty good, as was their geeky pothead friend. But the finest acting came from the deadgirl herself. She had no lines, but she conveyed a bone-deep sense of menace and just otherness. She rocked.

The make-up in the film was fabulous. The deadgirl gets steadily deader and more gruesome as the movie goes along. Her skin grows more mottled, her lips more drawn back. CREEPY. The gore effects were also quite good.

I ended up giving the movie a festival rating of 3 out of 5. There was enough interesting content that I didn't walk out, and even some genuinely fine moments. But it just missed.

The filmmakers were present at the showing I saw. They were going to do a Q and A after the film. I stuck around, wondering what these guys would have to say for themselves. They were incoherent, arrogant, and unresponsive to questions. They flatly refused to answer two different questions, one about the symbolism of a flower growing in a basement, the other about a vicious black dog that appears in the film. Their rationalization for this was they didn't want to spoil it for everyone who was planning to buy the DVD when it released. Right. That would be exactly one guy, who goobed all over the film until I wanted to hit him with a bat. I'm still wondering if he was a plant.

There was some seriously nasty stuff in this movie, but it refused to really come close to the edge. One of the snotty little directors said they were careful to make the sexuality in the film not erotic in any way. They didn't want it turning people on, it was all supposed to be horrible. Well, it wasn't that horrible, just boring. And what if they HAD made it erotic? Wouldn't it make most people intensely uncomfortable to find sex with an animated corpse stimulating? So wouldn't that be a plus, for filmmakers who wanted to push the outer edges of good taste?

I have the words "How far can too far go?" tattooed on my arm. It's a personal creed. And I tell you what, this movie didn't go nearly far enough. It thought it was edgy, but in the end, it pulled most of its punches.

I did like the ending, even though I saw it coming from 300 miles away.

Note to potential distributors of Deadgirl: Do not let filmmakers speak. They have a more limited vocabulary than the kids in the film, and all THEY ever say is fuck, man, and bro.

Sadly, even if it's recut for DVD, this will never be a truly good movie. The bad dialog and spots of bad direction are too glaring. It could be a decent film, if somebody's very careful wtih the scissors.

Am I recommending that you see this movie? I can't decide. If you're an adventurous consumer of horror, go for it. There are some jewels in there among the lumps of coal. Non-horror fans probably want to avoid it. The relationship between the two boys and the coming-of-age aspects of the film aren't fully developed enough to make for a solid storyline..

Okay, I've blabbed about this movie enough. Now for the moral of the movie:

NEVER, EVER, EVER FUCK A ZOMBIE.

The end.

So here I am, up too late again, cuz I just can't sleep. Well, that's not quite true. I fall asleep and then wake up with a gasp and a dislocated feeling of dread. Four times so far. Fuck that, I may just stay up all night.

So I checked my email, and was absolutely delighted to see an email from a girl who was my best friend when we were both 7. Yes, that's SEVEN YEARS OLD. A total flood of visual, auditory, and olfactory memories hit me all at once. My friend, her parents, her sister, the smell of breakfast cooking when I'd stay over, her dad telling me goofy jokes. Amazingly enough, we connected immediately. Yes, we both grew up a little unusal. (okay, she's unusual, I'm a total freak, but still...) How refreshing! I'm looking forward to catching up with her.

Y'know, that's the biggest advantage in keeping my own last name after I was married. My friends can find me. I didn't keep it out of feminist ideals or anything. (I alwayls thought that was silly--I won't take my husband's name. I'm sticking to my FATHER'S name instead, because I'm an emancipated woman. If you're an emancipated woman, Take your mother's name and start a dynasty. Or make up a new name entirely. OH MAN, I really am going "blah blah blah Ginger," aren't I.) Actually, Daniel and I considered dumping both our last names, and taking on a new family name. Our favorite was McRagnarok. Somehow, we never got around to it. Pity.

O was having stomach problems again. I just don't know what to do. I don't know if we're passing something back and forth, or if there's something wrong with our well water or what. I'm going to get it tested. The county is supposed to do that for free. There's probably a goddam dead horse down in the well or something. Yeesh.

After a miserable Friday (stomach problems from hell) I pounded some hardcore stomach meds and headed out into the night to see "I Sell The Dead." Survived that.

Spent much of Saturday in a  spring cleaning frenzy. Changed out the boys' wardrobe to their summer duds. Got rid of tons of old toys and clothes, which was satisfying. Saturday night I went to see "Dead Snow" at midnight. Survived that too.

Took the kids to XXX Root Beer for a classic car show on Sunday. Had a RILLY RILLY good chocolate malt. NOM NOM NOM

Did some yardwork, some more cleaning, and crashed.

Today we took the kids and the grandmas to Lake Wilderness park for a picnic. Ate sammiches, played frisbee and catch, petted lots of cute dawgs, and the boys went swimming in the lake. I might have acquired some color on my ghastly-white face. DAMN IT!

Okay, I admit it. I enjoyed napping in the sun with the boys while they were drying out. And I didn't even burst into flames or anything!