Days of the Dead - Day One -
Friday July 1, 2011. Indianapolis, Indiana - by Shrub

Where do we start? The whirlwind weekend which was the inaugural Days of the Dead convention in Indianapolis is over and we’re back home recovering and putting the fast paced blur of memories back together. The main mission for this show was accomplished, and that was meeting and hanging out with a ton of great and fun people and just having an all around blast of a time.

I’m just writing here, haven’t really come up with an outline or anything but I really just want to get some of these memories and pictures out there for you guys. This may read like a big mess but, nobody’s paying me so that’s how we’re gonna go with it.

The two main events from Friday night were the I Am Nancy screening and the Roddy Piper standup act. We hit them both. “Nancy” was a fun watch for Nightmare on Elm Street fans (which I suppose is all of us isn’t it?), following Heather Langenkamp around to a handful of conventions and interacting with her fans who tell her earnest stories about how the movie affected them personally. I was blown away by how many told her they grew up with Nightmare, watching it for the first time as very young kids. Personally I watched it for the first time when I was in the 7th grade. Had a neighborhood friend over in the early days of VCRs and after it was over we were freaked the hell out!! Of course we loved it, but it definitely left a mark. And I had never seen my friend, who had to walk home in the dark afterwards, flat out sprint the way he did that night. Haha.

My favorite parts of I Am Nancy, though, were when Heather herself was doing the interviewing and she sat down with Robert Englund and Wes Craven to reflect on the experience and the impact it’s had on all of their lives since it was released. She even interviewed Craven’s daughter who was very candid about her dad Wes at the time and told some great behind the scenes stories, including how she read scenes with Johnny Depp and as a 7 year old, inspired her dad to break the “the women always fall down” mold of horror movies.

- Buy the I AM NANCY DVD here -


Terrible looking shot of Piper on stage. Our camera could not handle that club!

For the Roddy Piper show, I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew that he used to crack me up back in the eighties when I briefly watched the WWF for him, The Bushwackers and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan… and of course there’s his legendary performance in “They Live,”

but while he was definitely still Rowdy Roddy on stage, his stories got a little deep into the wrestling weeds for me. Knowing less than half of the wrestlers he was telling stories about left me a little bit lost, but talking to people afterwards, who are more knowledgeable about wrestling history than I am, they all seemed to love it.
So after the long Piper show, I have to admit, we lost our momentum a bit and wandered over the other bar to see what was going on and to try and get the party back on track. They had some seriously flat Smithwicks in that joint ($6 each, by the way) but the guy let us swap out for some bottles so we were back in business. We hung out with a guy we met, Chris from Kentucky, for a while and then we all moved to the hall. Let me get off track here for a minute. The Hall was where all the best action took place. We were blockaded from both bars at different points of the weekend. Who knew you could take your drinks OUT of the bar but not back in? And then you can’t take drinks purchased in one bar into the other bar. We’re such rule breakers and trouble makers. Oh well, it was for the best anyway because as I say, the hall was where the fun was. The bars were a little more low key with people sitting around in groups chatting, but the hallways were where the madmen (the ones with the bottles and coolers in their rooms) roamed and ran amuck, and so yes, this is were we found our home.

So Friday night we ended with hall party #1. Kara met her new friend Sal Lizard there. You’ve heard of Gay-dar? She has Dirty-Old-Man-dar. So they hit it off great of course, telling raunchy stories until 3 AM or so while I shot the breeze with them, Chris from Kentucky, the Spooky Empire guy (forgot his name!) and another cool guy with a couple of Fulci tattoos. So that’s Friday. Saturday is up next.

Saturday included the Scream Queen panel, a tour of the vendor room, the Nightmare on Elm Street prop museum, a Girls and Corpses zombie stripper pageant, the human centipede and of course, more hall parties!

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Sal Lizard, Kara. Friday night hall party.

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