First off I would like to thank anyone who stopped by the booth this weekend to offer your support. It is truly appreciated and needed if we are to continue forward. Thanks guys.
A flood of emotions have come over me since I arrived back from Rock and Shock 2008. These include in no particular order, happiness, exhaustion, depression, disappointment, optimism and pain. One overly apparent theme for the weekend was that everyone was broke. The guy Chuck next to us who was running the punkstuff.com T-shirt booth said that this would likely be his last show because he did so poorly. We did ok but did not reach our intended goal. Sleep was another huge problem for the weekend. On Friday night everyone was drinking like the booze would cease to exist on the following day, the exception being me. I was not feeling well so I decide to lie down and rest for Saturday. It didn’t matter the noise from the party downstairs and Drew and Red entering and leaving the room for supplies kept me up. Drew then came to bed around 3am. As soon as his head hits the pillow a chainsaw like snore quickly filled the room. I decide I would get more rest in the bathroom so I went inside the shower and rested my head on the soap dish with a face cloth as a pillow. I woke an hour later stiff and in pain only to reenter my bed to stare up at the ceiling until the sun came up. At around 7am I thought it would be a great idea to put some hot food in my belly. I went down to the breakfast buffet where I loaded my plate up with what appeared to be appetizing. The eggs we’re rubbery and clearly prepared with powdered egg product. The bacon was old and tasted foul and the home fries were stale and disgusting. I said “well how can you fuck up fruit?” as I stuck my fork into a chunk of honeydew melon. When I lifted it from the plate it was attached to some snot like gelatinous substance that nearly made me vomit. Breakfast was over.
On Saturday morning everyone including my crew looked like a big pile of chewed assholes.
One thing that you can never forget about these things however is all the cool people that you meet. I would like to give a shout out to our neighbors at R&S this year. The duo to our left was Andrew Shanley and Andy Sawyer from FLIPSIDE (New Blood & Boooo Masters) films. They were super nice guys with strong work ethics. I would work with these two guys in a heartbeat. To our right was Chuck from punkstuff.com he also was a really cool guy and was very good to his fellow vendors. Next to the FLIPSIDE films booth was our friend Brian Paulin and Morbid Vision Films. The MVF booth was very impressive to look at. I hope he did well with his new film FETUS over the weekend. I finally got to meet and hang with the entire Toe Tag Pictures crew. I knew that they were all cool people going into this but after hanging with them it really becomes apparent just how cool they are. Christie for example was perhaps the sweetest, nicest person I have ever met in my life. Fred, Cruise and Shelby we’re all equally nice and extremely supportive of our cause. We love you guys and thank you for everything you have done for FTBOMP. Your support and friendship means more to us than you will ever know.
On Sunday a couple of interesting sights and happenings deem mentioning. First vendors all across the floor slash prices and belly aching over poor sales is the common theme. I went for a walk to see my friends Jimmy and Brandon down at the Stumpy Disc table to see the bootlegger next to them being arrested and all of his DVDs being confiscated. My friend at Stumpy Disc (who are also bootleggers but CARRY ONLY OUT OF PRINT FILMS) nervously packed their stuff up to avoid problems. There we’re two police officers and one of the angry legitimate DVD sales persons at his table. The white haired gentleman was pulling out the guys boxes and pointing out to the officers just how illegal his setup is. With titles like Hancock, Wall-e, Indian Jones 4, Hellraiser, Phantasm and hundreds of other copyrighted materials I felt no pity for this assclown who is essentially stealing from those around him, those of us who actually work for a living.
We’ll Sunday was Insane Clown Posse day. The horror convention suddenly transformed into a Juggalo convention. I’m not going to knock this lifestyle I just have a hard time understanding it as many people do mine. Clowns filled the streets and people could be heard screaming ICP lyrics from the Palladium parking lot which was filled to the brim with rowdy juggalos. One Sunday the only booth that did any sales was Psychopathic (ICP’s label) records.
All in all if I were to use one word to describe the weekend it would be educational. Another thing I learn from our somewhat sparse booth is that bigger is better. Come see us next year and you will see a whole new FTBOMP filled to the brim with splatter, gore props, and a whole ton of new stuff.
At the end of the day I was so ready to head home.
-Ron DeCaro
It nice to come home after working for 13 hours in a hot kitchen to hear my daughter screaming at the top of her lungs again over almost nothing at all. My wife who is clearly stressed from these battles that no one really wins and I myself can feel a strain on my heart. A screaming battle over being tucked in that few would understand. What am I doing wrong? Her temper when she is tired is something that you would see on nanny 911. I feel stress overwhelming stress as I prepare for the shittiest work week in some time with 9 cooking shifts and my day off gladly is filled with production meetings and ad work. The crunch is on and I’m feeling it. As I was writing this I was thrown an accusatory remark from my wife “who you chatting with?” As if my day didn’t contain enough stress. Besides the answer is obvious anyway it was Satan. Man I need a vacation and they don’t happen in my line of work which I’ve been giving serious thought to changing up. It’s just a matter of time before I let go of kitchen life and the stress that comes with it. Filmmaking is a passion but right now it could never pay the bills. I will continue to do what I do until I can find a better way and do the best to smile and laugh as I do. What else can you do? I try to keep everyone happy and do the right thing but you can’t please everyone.
I’m looking forward to Tuesday when I will be meeting up with David, Drew & possibly Jared to talk about event planning, fund raising and all that fun stuff so we can get the ball rolling on YARD SALE which is shaping up to be a monster. We are looking for 2-3 FX interns to help during the life casting and fabrication sessions. Please serious inquiries only.
On goes the grind.
-Ron
