August Vacation

We traveled up to Seattle to visit friends for a few days in August and we visited crazy pop culture weird stuff store, Archie McPhee.


I love pickles!


I love bacon!


Here is my son with his purchase - a unicorn impaling a mime. Classic. It also comes with a snooty businessman and a hippie to impale.


Here is some awesome lasagna I had down the street from Archie McPhee...with a unicorn.


Darth Vader puts the death grip on me in front of Comics Dungeon during their anniversary sale.


Me and members of the 501st.


We stopped at a used record store called Golden Oldies. Great place crammed with vinyl. I picked up some old Hall & Oates records as well as this rare gem:


Apparently this was some special premium or gift to Canada Dry distributors - a 4-record set of a radio special celebrating H&O's 10 years together. 3 sides are cuts from various albums with the pair providing anecdotes about writing the songs, people they worked with, etc. And Don Imus is the host! The other 5 sides are a concert recording from Montreal. Totally sweet!


We stopped at the world famous Scarecrow Video in Seattle. All I can say is holy cow! Mike was nice enough to take the kids on a long walk while I spent an eternity checking out their gigantic inventory. I rented a dvd-r of the 1978 TV-movie Cotton Candy, directed by Ron Howard and written by Ron and his brother Clint (who also starred, alongside Charles Martin Smith).



For all of it's 1970's trappings, I still dig this movie (likely a lot due to nostalgia) and sure wish Ron would put it out on an official DVD. It was produced by Ron Howard Productions and Major H Productions (which according to Biography.com was a company founded by Howard) as part of a multi-year deal with NBC. Someone in some Internet Movie Database comments said that Disney bought it and has it locked up in their vaults. Who knows?

I've love to see a DVD release of it, with some extras. Ron and Clint and Charles could do a commentary track. Heck, Leslie King (who played the drummer) is still around from what I can tell - she directed a short film back in 2004 and appears to have cowritten a new project that's in development. Here she is in 1979's Gas Pump Girls.




Pretty decent BBQ pulled pork sandwich at a Texas BBQ place.


Then we went to Portland's Oaks Park amusement park with my sister for the first time and it was a blast. This is where they filmed part of the Sasquatch Dumpling Gang, one of my favorite flicks!




That was an awesome corndog.


We rode Big Pink, one of the rides that the characters in the Sasquatch Dumpling Gang rides. It was fun!


Later, we went to the Oregon coast with friends and had a swell time. Here I am hurling some seaweed back to the ocean at the coast and thinking it would be cool to make an H.P. Lovecraft movie someday.

At a pirate-themed shopping mall, I picked up some old VHS tapes including Breeders, the ridiculous sci-fi horror b-movie by Tim Kincaid. Here's a monster shot:




In other August events news, our dog got a haircut.


My son earned his third degree blackbelt. He's only 12! In fact, he is the youngest student to achieve third degree blackbelt at his school. I am constantly impressed.

So now the summer is over. School is cranked back up and I am still trying to finish shooting on BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN. Getting great performances and bloody kills (like the one below), but it is taking a long time.



After that's all shot and the footage is off to my buddy (and the movie's writer/producer) John for editing, I'll get back to finishing up all of the stuff still on my plate.

Onward!!!

---

Brooke Wilberger, Rest in Peace

I had this flier taped to the door to my garage for years. The apartment complex where she was abducted is just down the road from my house. It was one of those situations where you can't believe something like that has happened in your town.

We screened one of my flicks at a theater at the beginning of August. I'd shot a lot of the movie in my house and I noticed the flier on the door in the background of a few scenes. We'd taken it down only a while back, after Joel Courtney had been extradited to Oregon for a while.

All of the information released by the DA thus far adds up to the location of Brooke's remains being anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes from my house. It's eerie.

The first thing I thought when I heard the news was that her family would be able to finally lay her to rest.

Time is Flying

I cannot believe summer is over!!!!! Geez louise it went by in a flash. My kid's back to school next week so my nights will soon be booked up with helping with homework when not occupied by Boy Scouts or other activities.

Had a good time visiting Seattle, then Portland, then Bend over the last few weekends. Will post some vacation photos soon.

Still need to call my website host and see if they've been able to track down the bandwidth issues with the drsquid.net site.

Movie-wise have mostly been busy planning the next round of shooting for BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN. May not fit it all into September, but hopefully can get everything done by the first part of OCTOBER.

Heard that Luc Bernier and Isabelle Stephen finished shooting the "BeetleManiac" segment for TRULY DREADFUL TALES. I have another package ready to go out for a segment and need to get a monster costume done so my friend Rob Merickel can take a crack at the last segment for it.

Ridiculously busy so pardon the sporatic postings here. After October, things should settle down a tad and I can hopefully start posting some real progress reports from all these projects!!!!