by Joel G. Robertson

Jason and I (and my cousin Chris, who was kind enough to drive me) attended Spooky Empire’s May-Hem Convention in Orlando this weekend (May 28 – 29). Okay, we really only made it on Saturday, which is fine since I’ve never been to a convention before and could only take a day of being packed into a mid-sized convention hall with hundreds of other movie fans.

So, what did we see while we were there?

Well, my original goal was simple: Locate and ask one Mr. Bruce Campbell to come on the podcast. That’s right folks, it’s all for you as I know how many of our listeners and readers love The Bruce. And to be completely honest, I’m a total BC fanboy and would consider him the ultimate “get” for our show. With that said, I’m sad to announce it didn’t happen.

Why?

Pretty simple really. The line to meet him was, to quote Jason, “approximately 47.8 miles long”; however, it looked more like 47.9 miles to me…

Regardless, I did get close enough to the mighty chin to capture this short video clip:

And even though we failed in our attempt to secure Mr. Campbell for the show, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Special thanks to Shannon, one of our super-cool listeners, who we met at the con. She actually got her picture taken with BC and gave him our business card.

We are fairly confident he either added it to the circular file, or, if we’re really lucky, wiped his ass with it.

All that said, we did meet some very cool folks (and asked them all to come on the show… time will tell) and saw some awesome things.

Here are the five highlights from May-Hem (for me):

5. Anthony Michael Hall Q & A: We got into this one quick and got decent seats. After growing up watching AMH’s movies (especially the Hughes trilogy of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and my personal fave Weird Science), it was a real treat to see him in person. I got quite a bit of video from said Q & A, which while far from perfect visually (it was pretty dark in there), the audio came out really well. So, I’ll be getting that on our YouTube channel later this week.

4. The Walking Dead Cast and Greg Nicotero: Okay, it wasn’t the whole cast, but seeing Norman Reedus (Daryl Dixon), Jon Bernthal (Shane), Steven Yeun (Glenn), and FX master Greg Nicotero in the (rotting) flesh was simply awesome. And since AMC’s making us wait until freakin’ October to start season 2, I guess it’ll have to hold me until then…

3. Meeting Shannon, one of our listeners:  Gotta say, meeting someone who’s actually taken the time to listen to the show, give us feedback, and re-tweet some of our stupidity insights was a real honor. We have so many great listeners and I hope one day we’ll get a chance to meet you all. (Well, all except maybe that one guy who keeps calling in talking about boobies and vomiting blood and slugs. I’m pretty sure we may need a restraining order for him.)

2. The vendor’s hall: While I wasn’t into everything I saw (there were at least half-a-dozen, makeshift tattoo parlors and a booth with two ladies who had to be porn stars. Their boobs were so big they had to have their own gravitiational pull!), there was tons of memoribilia, some amazing artwork, and many of the folks we talked to were super nice and helpful. I’d like to give a shout out to the T-shirtbordello.com folks, who talked with us for a while and couldn’t have been cooler!

1. Meeting Tom Sullivan, Timothy Quill, Danny Hicks, and (holy crap!) Ted Raimi: Yep, this was the highlight for me and Jason. Not only did we talk to all four of these esteemed Evil Dead alumns, but I also got all four to autograph the “Book of the Dead” 8 x 10 I purchased from FX legend Tom Sullivan himself! All four guys were so nice and gracious. Tom even went out of his way to share some of his amazing art with us, and Tim told us a great story about how he and Danny created their “relationship” for My Name Is Bruce (I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen the movie, which you should have seen, like, yesterday!).

Okay, an honorable mention definitely goes out to at least seeing Bruce Campbell in person. This is the second time I’ve seen him (the first was at a book signing for If Chins Could Kill years ago), but I still haven’t gotten the chance to talk to him.

All-in-all, we had a great time and would love to go again next year. Who knows, if he’s there, maybe I’ll actually get a chance to meet Bruce face-to-face. That way, when I ask him to be on the show, he can tell me to get bent to my face. 🙂