Post by jipper on Apr 6, 2013 3:49:05 GMT -5
I thought I'd post some pics of my trip to Nashville's 2013 Full Moon Tattoo and Horror Festival. Anyone who might attend this in the future can get an idea of what to expect. The event was last weekend and also included the MTAC Anime Convention in the same building. It was three events altogether.
The reason me and my buddy take these trips are to go to the Horror Conventions. We usually only spend one day at the Convention then the rest of the trip we explore the town. So anyone reading gets the Nashville experience here not just the convention.
***Warning 81 Pics & youtube stuff Ahead, all with explanations. Leave Now if you're not interested***
We always do research to find sites to see, places to eat, shopping, etc. One food Nashville is known for is it's hot chicken. The most legendary hot chicken place in Nashville is,
Prince's Hot Chicken
Located in a less than desirable area of Nashville, this restaurant attracts every variety of people.
We're both fairly big boys and pride ourselves on liking hot food. Since we were just coming into town we decided not to eat the hottest chicken. We knew the 'Hottest' would be more of a novelty than a meal. So we both ordered the 'hot' pictured above. It is the second hottest in the restaurant. We both agree that we were about halfway through our respective chickens before the hot hit us. It hit us hard. My buddy was sweating. He looked like he'd just came in from a downpour. More so than that, Prince's Hot Chicken tore us up for a day and a half. The first day and a half we didn't venture too far from a bathroom and we weren't brave enough to eat again until late that night.
For a little more info on why we chose Prince's you can check out this entertaining but long video.
So after the chicken we went to our hotel to check-in and recover a little. We both have hotel connections and we get employee rates at 3 different hotel chains. This trip was fairly last minute so our room wasn't as good as we usually get. A tip for anyone reading, never book a room through a website like Priceline or Expedia. They all charge more than you can get by calling the hotel directly. Also you can usually talk down your rate at check-in or when you make your reservation, if you book through the hotel directly. However if the hotel is very busy you're kinda screwed.
We stayed at a Sleep Inn for $25.00 a night plus tax. A total of $62.56 for both nights. Our discounts are a big part of the reason we're able to do all these weekend trips. If anyone from the headyverse is attending a future convention that I'll be at I may be able to hook you up with a discount.
After a little settling in we headed out to explore the town. It rained all three days except for about half a day on Saturday.
The Nashville Skyline as we headed into downtown.
More Rainy Day Pics from the Car
A New Building with interesting architecture. Not sure what it's going to be.
My traveling buddy has a thing for statues. I have no idea what this is of.
Another Statue pic from the car.
One of the things we did while in Nashville was some thrift store shopping. For anyone who's never been to a Goodwill where you pay by the pound, let me tell you it's an interesting experience. For any small town people like myself, there are Goodwill Thrift Stores that bring everything out in large totes, people swarm these totes as they bring them out like vultures grabbing what they can. They continuously rotate out the totes. When you're done shopping/brawling you roll your buggy onto a scale and pay 59 cents to $1 a pound for everything. It's craziness. We visited one of these in Indianapolis last year and another one in Nashville. As well of other local thrift places. We bought a few things for ourselves but we mostly bought to resale stuff back home. So far the best buy we made was an Ipad case that probably cost 25 cents and we just sold on ebay for $35.
My buddy also found a nearly new and complete Quija Board. He took it as a sign that he should have Linda Blair sign it when we got to the convention. More about that later.
My buddy was into building custom cars in his youth. Besides taking pictures of random statues he also likes taking pictures of ridiculous cars. He posts them on his motorcycle/car forums for everyone to laugh at. We found this beauty outside a thrift store where it belonged. I don't know, I think it's funny.
After some thrift shopping we hit a tourist site while we had some daylight left. This is the Parthenon. An exact replica of the temple to Athena that stands in Athens, Greece.
A Statue that stands outside the Parthenon
They wouldn't let us take picture of the inside.
As we were leaving we heard a strange noise and decided to investigate. The area is a large park with lots of people just outside Vanderbilt University. We discovered a college girl taking a sander to a plastic cooler. We had to ask her why she was sanding a cooler. She apologized for being loud. She told us some story about being in church and how they give out these coolers to guys who meet them at games. They paint the coolers so they recognize the guy at the game. They whole thing sounded like a shady prostitution ring or something. She kept asking if the sanding was loud and saying that her dorm room wouldn't allow it so she had to do it in the park. My buddy (who's not quite as much of a southern gentleman as I am) told her that it just sounded like she was using a vibrator under the covers which made us seek out what was going on. But that it wasn't overly loud. The girl was obviously put off by the comment but didn't let that stop her from apologizing. I tell that story because I thought it was funny and it was part of the trip for me. I wish I had a picture of her. She was a cutie.
After the Parthenon we went back to the hotel. We were pretty beat from the drive in. Easter weekend traffic was horrible. Prince's chicken had also kicked our ass by this point. I've had my ass burn before but I never had it go numb and yet still hurt until I tried Prince's
After some rest and recovery we went for some food. This is the Athens Family restaurant.
As Seen on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives
We both decided to try the bacon, lamb burger because it looked so good on tv.
I really wish I'd ordered the meatballs. The lamb burger was not good. It tasted like something from a cafeteria. The fries were probably the worst fries I've ever had in my entire life. We also ordered a couple of slices of gyro meat to try. I will say that if you like gyro's, there gyro meat was good. The idea to have food was not so good. The Prince was not too happy with us.
That was Day one in Nashville.
Day two started with a hotel breakfast. I'm not usually into hotel breakfasts but a bagel was about all we could handle. The revenge of the Prince was still upon us. Next we headed to the convention.
It was small in terms of Horror guests, but with the Anime and Tattoo fest included it was as large or larger than any convention I've been to. The Horror Convention guests were,
Linda Blair (Exorcist)
Sean Patrick Flannery (Boondock Saints)
David Della Rocco (Boondock Saints)
Norman Reedus (Boondock Saints & The Walking Dead)
Lew Temple (The Walking Dead)
Theodus Crane (The Walking Dead)
The Devil's Rejects
Sid Haig
Bill Mosely
Tom Towles
Also Included,
Wrestlers,
Diamond Dallas Paige
Jake the Snake Roberts
Raven
Rhyno
4 Men who Played Jason Voorhies,
Steve Dash (Friday the 13th Part II)
Richard Brooker (Friday the 13th Part III)
C.J. Graham (Friday the 13th Part VI)
Ken Kirzinger (Freddy vs Jason)
Adriane King female star of Friday the 13th Part I & II
Randall Archer (The Collection)
Amy Nicoletto (L.A. Ink)
3 Zombies from the Walking Dead
J Larose (Insidious & Saw 3)
The Boondock Saints Crew had their own room with a ridiculously long line. We met these guys at a previous convention so we didn't set in the line for them this time.
We did see this guy,
Who is not Norman Reedus (Darryl) from the Walking Dead. But a good costume.
His costume wasn't the best horror costume though.
This was the winner in my opinion,
It might have even been from the anime side of things but it's still an awesome horror costume.
We did stand in an hour and a half long line for Linda Blair to get her to sign the Quija board I mentioned before that my friend found at the thrift store. We were actually close to the beginning of the line but Linda Blair was late getting there and then took off to do a Q&A or something.
This is the ass of the woman who was standing in front of me in line. I won't post a face picture out of respect for privacy and all. I will post her ass though because she kept rubbing it on me. I swear I almost got a lapdance in a Horror convention line to meet Linda Blair. Now I'm faithful to my girlfriend at home. I'm so faithful I wouldn't pay for a lap dance or anything. I couldn't help it though while I got an unexpected one standing in line. The girl wasn't amazing or anything but she was attractive. She tried to get us to go out to a bar with her and her much shorter and not as attractive friend after the convention. My friend knows I'm a completely faithful guy. Neither of us drink either. However he is recently single after being with the same girl for 10 years. So he tried to get the one rubbing on me's attention. Apparently he wasn't good enough for her or something. Anyway we had to decline their invitation because I'm an honorable guy, line lap dance or not.
So here are some things from Linda Blair's table that she'll sign for people for $25. She'll even let you take a picture of her for another $15. Or get both for $40.
She'll sign a titty picture or a picture of her from one of her titty movies. She'll sign stuff from the Exorcist. Or stuff with her dogs. As if anyone would want that. What she will not sign is a bible or a cross (understandable) or a Quija Board (ridiculous).
Th only way you're allowed to take a picture of Linda Blair is if you pay her $15 a photo and let her manager/guy take the picture. I still managed to take a shit ton of pictures of her without her knowing, while she was rudely explaining to my friend that if she ever signed a Quija board it'd be worth a million dollars. And that all the bibles, crosses and quija boards out there with her autograph were all fakes.
The Blair Bitch was nice enough to tell him she'd take a picture with him and the board for $25.
Now, I'm not trying to be unfair. It wasn't my Quija Board or me who wanted to meet Linda Blair. I was there to take pictures for my buddy. When we met Elvira, she had similar rules. She was a little late too. Though Elvira probably would have signed your cock if you asked her nice enough. Her prices were higher then anyone else at $30. She charged extra for pictures and all of that. But Elvira was very polite and awesome to meet. Linda Blair not only had the higher prices. She charged extra for anything that wasn't a picture or poster. She was kind of a bitch. She even had a security guard with her in uniform. She just gave off the aura of thinking she was better than everyone else.
The funny thing to me is that Sid Haig was the next person down from Linda Blair. He was there the entire time we were. He had a sign up $10 for autographs. He was taking pictures with everyone, cutting up jokes with his fans and Bill Mosely who was at the table on his other side. Sid Haig had a line just as long as the Blair Bitch and his was constantly moving the whole time because he was there for his fans the whole time. In my opinion Sid Haig is an awesome dude who to me is a bigger star than Blair Bitch. Sid was great when I meet him several conventions ago and was equally as awesome as we sat beside his table for an hour and a half waiting on Blair to show.
After we walked away from Linda Blair, I caught this picture of Bill Mosely.
We really didn't get a whole lot of pictures of the Horror actors. There really weren't a whole lot of actors at the convention and the ones that were there we'd mostly met before.
Our first convention was in a small Kentucky town. We went there specifically to meet Rupert Boneham from Survivor. While there my friend got his hockey mask signed by Ari Lehman the first actor to play Jason Voorhies. Since then we've been to several conventions. This mask has kind of been the center of these trips.
Since that picture was taken we added a couple of more autographs including three from this event.
Here's my buddy, the mask owner with Richard Brooker from Friday the 13th III.
He'd gotten the mask signed awhile ago but didn't have a picture. Brooker was nice as always and very accommodating.
Here he is posing with Steve Dash from Friday the 13th II.
Dash was great. He insisted we take multiple pictures in different locations and poses.
Here's my buddy with C.J. Graham from Friday the 13th VI.
He's one of the rarest Jason actors to get an autograph from. He's a millionaire hotel casino owner who doesn't do many conventions. We already knew all of this and were excited he'd be in Nashville. Graham also told us all about his hotels and how he doesn't do many conventions. He's was cool though. For overall size he was probably the biggest actor I've met, height and muscle wise who's played Jason Voorhies.
Here's Ken Kirzinger from Freddy vs Jason signing the mask.
He was the least busy of the Jason's, so we talked to him for awhile about his movies. He's also the tallest Jason we've met so far. The guy was huge. We mostly talked about Freddy vs Jason but also a lot about Wrong Turn 2 and he talked a little about his other stunt work. We also all complained about the remake and what timeline it was supposed to have taken place. Really cool guy. As far as quality of movie, I personally thought Freddy vs Jason was one of the best in the series. The 80's have nostalgia that goes a long way though.
I wanted to meet the wrestlers scheduled for this event. It was supposed to be Jake 'The Snake' Roberts, DDP, Raven and Rhyno. I don't know if some of them cancelled or what but Rhyno was the only wrestler I saw there. I'd only ever met four wrestlers in my time. Back in the day I met the Junkyard Dog and Al Greene when I was a teen. At a recent convention I met George 'The Animal' Steele and 'Diamond' Dallas Page. Now I've met Rhyno. I only recently got back into wrestling. So I remember Rhyno from his ECW days. He's a little balder but overall looks about the same as I remembered him. With his look and accent I couldn't help but associate him as an almost Jersey Shore type of guy. That's probably unfair of me to do though because he was really nice when I met him. I'm a little disappointed I didn't get to meet Raven or Jake Roberts. There's always next time.
My buddy stopped a fan at the convention. I had no idea what the hell was going on. The guy he stopped was James Yeager.
If you don't know who Yeager is (neither did I) he's a youtube celebrity who got into some trouble for posting videos like this.
After that video went viral, Yeager has made it onto The Colbert Report, Piers Morgan and I think Tosh.0 as well as other shows I'm sure.
There was a lot of cross over fans between the three conventions, Horror, Tattoo and Anime. A cross over celebrity was Amy Nicoletto, a tattoo artist from the show L.A. Ink.
she had her own boothe where she was meeting fans, signing autographs and also doing tattoos by appointment.
Here are some pics of the Anime Convention. The Anime convention was a separate price that we may or may not have paid. In all the confusion no one really noticed. I'd explain to you what's going on in these pics if I had any idea myself. I'm not an anime guy at all. My friend tried explaining some things but for the most part it was lost on me. I will say that while most Horror Cons are mostly dudes, this convention with the horror and the anime was probably 50/50 on gender. A lot of teenagers were there and every single one of them was dressed in anime outfits that made me feel like a pervert.
For instance,
I don't know what's going on but I like it and I feel like a pervert for liking it so much.
I feel like I should know what this character is but honestly who cares. I know it's awesome.
If Laura Croft were a real girl,
this young blue haired girl was very helpful when we were trying to find something. I'm sure her costume is very accurate but I have no idea what it is.
Red Heads and Blue Balls,
My Little Gansta Ponies?
Our Anime pictures weren't only of underage girls. We also have these dudes,
I thought a picture was warranted.
Like I said before, we only spent the better part of one day at the convention. When we left we both finally felt up to some food. There are several famous hot dog places in Nashville. I'm not big on hot dogs but getting in the spirit of things, First we tried Hot Digity Dogs. But they were closed for undisclosed reasons. We still took a pic.
So we moved on to I Dream of Weenie, a restaurant built from an old VW bus. Awesome!
We ordered three different dogs and split everything in order to try a variety.
The daily special a Buffalo Blu Cheese Dog,
It was gross. We each took a bite of our half and ended up throwing the rest away. I think it was the lack of Buffalo and the nastiness of Blu Cheese Slaw on top. It was the only dog neither of us finished.
Pimento Cheese is a thing of the south and supposedly very big in Nashville. I've never been a fan of it myself. But in the spirit of things we tried the Pimento Cheese Dog,
Surprisingly the best dog. Homemade pimento cheese isnt' too bad. I'd only ever had the processed stuff before.
Last but not least is the Jalapeno, Chili dog. Or at least I think that's what it was. I didn't order this one. I just got half of it. It wasn't too great.
Not the best dogs in the world but I Dream of Weenie was worth a visit just from being unique.
When we got done Dreaming of Weenies we checked out Antique Archaeology. Anyone who's a fan of the History Channel show American Pickers might recognize that name. Mike and Frank have two stores. One in their hometown of Iowa and their newest store in Nashville. I'm a huge fan of American Pickers so this was a thrill going in.
This is the old car manufacturing plant Mike and Frank put there newest store in.
The show made it look like they bought the entire building and were restoring it as their new shop. The truth is, this building has kind of been turned into a shopping mall. There are several shops in the building besides Antique Archaeology.
Antique Archaeology's store was actually very small in comparison to the building.
From a very recent episode this is the checkered guitar they got from Rick Neilsen of Cheap Trick.
Hanging Pig Head
Hanging Bike
For the most part it looked like the shop was there to sell merchandise like t-shirts and mugs. There was much more of that stuff than things like the Big Black Squirrel.
Various Motorcycles
Singing Tire Baby?
After paying our picker respects we hit this old time soda shop, Elliston Place Soda Shop,
Somewhere near that we found this painted on a wall. It is Nashville after all.
Next we hit the Nashville Strip. Now this is what I expected of Nashville.
I think this was the second or third Elvis statue we saw. It was the only one we seem to have gotten a pic of.
If we'd had known the circus was in town we would have gone.
Unfortunately all we got was this picture a day late.
On the Strip we found an interesting restaurant advertising the World's best burger. Later on we found out this place is kinda a stable in Nashville. The Paradise Park Trailer Resort Restaurant.
Advertising the World's Best Burger we had to try it. Especially since the Prince seemed to have released his control over us by this point.
If it doesn't look like the World's Best Burger that's because it wasn't. It was good though. The fries weren't disgusting either unlike the Athen's Family Restaurant of the day before. Oddly the inside of the Trailer Park Burger place looked like a cafeteria
but unlike Athen's the food didn't taste like Cafeteria food.
We rocked the Nashville strip until dark. We went the hotel and got some rest. That night we headed out for some famous Nashville BBQ. We tried 6 or 7 different BBQ places. All of them were either closed for the night, closed completely or not where the GPS said they'd be. It's like it wasn't meant to be.
One of the places in Nashville we most wanted to eat at was Mas Tacos. Simple Fresh and delicious looking.
Unfortunately we weren't up to going the first day we were there after eating at Prince's. The second day they closed before we could get there. They weren't open at all our last day there. After failing to find BBQ we did come across a Mas Tacos Taco Truck that night.
It was closed.... Food for the night was a fail.
The last day we left early to get home for Easter. We hit one last thrift store on the way out. Food had been such a fail for Nashville, we decided to hit a couple of Food Trucks on out way out. We don't have Food Trucks around here but we found out they are plentiful in Nashville. Here are some we tried.
The best was a taco truck near the hotel that we didn't take a picture of.
Overall while in Nashville I was rather miserable. We'd helped my buddies uncle move the day before. Our muscles were sore the whole time. It rained almost the whole time. The food was hit and miss at best. Linda Blair ruined a huge portion of the day for us. Watching young girls in anime outfits is about as painful as it is enjoyable. The same can be said for girls who rub their ass on you while you're waiting in line. Looking back though, I really enjoyed it overall. While not my best convention trip, it was another story for the books.
The reason me and my buddy take these trips are to go to the Horror Conventions. We usually only spend one day at the Convention then the rest of the trip we explore the town. So anyone reading gets the Nashville experience here not just the convention.
***Warning 81 Pics & youtube stuff Ahead, all with explanations. Leave Now if you're not interested***
We always do research to find sites to see, places to eat, shopping, etc. One food Nashville is known for is it's hot chicken. The most legendary hot chicken place in Nashville is,
Prince's Hot Chicken
Located in a less than desirable area of Nashville, this restaurant attracts every variety of people.
We're both fairly big boys and pride ourselves on liking hot food. Since we were just coming into town we decided not to eat the hottest chicken. We knew the 'Hottest' would be more of a novelty than a meal. So we both ordered the 'hot' pictured above. It is the second hottest in the restaurant. We both agree that we were about halfway through our respective chickens before the hot hit us. It hit us hard. My buddy was sweating. He looked like he'd just came in from a downpour. More so than that, Prince's Hot Chicken tore us up for a day and a half. The first day and a half we didn't venture too far from a bathroom and we weren't brave enough to eat again until late that night.
For a little more info on why we chose Prince's you can check out this entertaining but long video.
So after the chicken we went to our hotel to check-in and recover a little. We both have hotel connections and we get employee rates at 3 different hotel chains. This trip was fairly last minute so our room wasn't as good as we usually get. A tip for anyone reading, never book a room through a website like Priceline or Expedia. They all charge more than you can get by calling the hotel directly. Also you can usually talk down your rate at check-in or when you make your reservation, if you book through the hotel directly. However if the hotel is very busy you're kinda screwed.
We stayed at a Sleep Inn for $25.00 a night plus tax. A total of $62.56 for both nights. Our discounts are a big part of the reason we're able to do all these weekend trips. If anyone from the headyverse is attending a future convention that I'll be at I may be able to hook you up with a discount.
After a little settling in we headed out to explore the town. It rained all three days except for about half a day on Saturday.
The Nashville Skyline as we headed into downtown.
More Rainy Day Pics from the Car
A New Building with interesting architecture. Not sure what it's going to be.
My traveling buddy has a thing for statues. I have no idea what this is of.
Another Statue pic from the car.
One of the things we did while in Nashville was some thrift store shopping. For anyone who's never been to a Goodwill where you pay by the pound, let me tell you it's an interesting experience. For any small town people like myself, there are Goodwill Thrift Stores that bring everything out in large totes, people swarm these totes as they bring them out like vultures grabbing what they can. They continuously rotate out the totes. When you're done shopping/brawling you roll your buggy onto a scale and pay 59 cents to $1 a pound for everything. It's craziness. We visited one of these in Indianapolis last year and another one in Nashville. As well of other local thrift places. We bought a few things for ourselves but we mostly bought to resale stuff back home. So far the best buy we made was an Ipad case that probably cost 25 cents and we just sold on ebay for $35.
My buddy also found a nearly new and complete Quija Board. He took it as a sign that he should have Linda Blair sign it when we got to the convention. More about that later.
My buddy was into building custom cars in his youth. Besides taking pictures of random statues he also likes taking pictures of ridiculous cars. He posts them on his motorcycle/car forums for everyone to laugh at. We found this beauty outside a thrift store where it belonged. I don't know, I think it's funny.
After some thrift shopping we hit a tourist site while we had some daylight left. This is the Parthenon. An exact replica of the temple to Athena that stands in Athens, Greece.
A Statue that stands outside the Parthenon
They wouldn't let us take picture of the inside.
As we were leaving we heard a strange noise and decided to investigate. The area is a large park with lots of people just outside Vanderbilt University. We discovered a college girl taking a sander to a plastic cooler. We had to ask her why she was sanding a cooler. She apologized for being loud. She told us some story about being in church and how they give out these coolers to guys who meet them at games. They paint the coolers so they recognize the guy at the game. They whole thing sounded like a shady prostitution ring or something. She kept asking if the sanding was loud and saying that her dorm room wouldn't allow it so she had to do it in the park. My buddy (who's not quite as much of a southern gentleman as I am) told her that it just sounded like she was using a vibrator under the covers which made us seek out what was going on. But that it wasn't overly loud. The girl was obviously put off by the comment but didn't let that stop her from apologizing. I tell that story because I thought it was funny and it was part of the trip for me. I wish I had a picture of her. She was a cutie.
After the Parthenon we went back to the hotel. We were pretty beat from the drive in. Easter weekend traffic was horrible. Prince's chicken had also kicked our ass by this point. I've had my ass burn before but I never had it go numb and yet still hurt until I tried Prince's
After some rest and recovery we went for some food. This is the Athens Family restaurant.
As Seen on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives
We both decided to try the bacon, lamb burger because it looked so good on tv.
I really wish I'd ordered the meatballs. The lamb burger was not good. It tasted like something from a cafeteria. The fries were probably the worst fries I've ever had in my entire life. We also ordered a couple of slices of gyro meat to try. I will say that if you like gyro's, there gyro meat was good. The idea to have food was not so good. The Prince was not too happy with us.
That was Day one in Nashville.
Day two started with a hotel breakfast. I'm not usually into hotel breakfasts but a bagel was about all we could handle. The revenge of the Prince was still upon us. Next we headed to the convention.
It was small in terms of Horror guests, but with the Anime and Tattoo fest included it was as large or larger than any convention I've been to. The Horror Convention guests were,
Linda Blair (Exorcist)
Sean Patrick Flannery (Boondock Saints)
David Della Rocco (Boondock Saints)
Norman Reedus (Boondock Saints & The Walking Dead)
Lew Temple (The Walking Dead)
Theodus Crane (The Walking Dead)
The Devil's Rejects
Sid Haig
Bill Mosely
Tom Towles
Also Included,
Wrestlers,
Diamond Dallas Paige
Jake the Snake Roberts
Raven
Rhyno
4 Men who Played Jason Voorhies,
Steve Dash (Friday the 13th Part II)
Richard Brooker (Friday the 13th Part III)
C.J. Graham (Friday the 13th Part VI)
Ken Kirzinger (Freddy vs Jason)
Adriane King female star of Friday the 13th Part I & II
Randall Archer (The Collection)
Amy Nicoletto (L.A. Ink)
3 Zombies from the Walking Dead
J Larose (Insidious & Saw 3)
The Boondock Saints Crew had their own room with a ridiculously long line. We met these guys at a previous convention so we didn't set in the line for them this time.
We did see this guy,
Who is not Norman Reedus (Darryl) from the Walking Dead. But a good costume.
His costume wasn't the best horror costume though.
This was the winner in my opinion,
It might have even been from the anime side of things but it's still an awesome horror costume.
We did stand in an hour and a half long line for Linda Blair to get her to sign the Quija board I mentioned before that my friend found at the thrift store. We were actually close to the beginning of the line but Linda Blair was late getting there and then took off to do a Q&A or something.
This is the ass of the woman who was standing in front of me in line. I won't post a face picture out of respect for privacy and all. I will post her ass though because she kept rubbing it on me. I swear I almost got a lapdance in a Horror convention line to meet Linda Blair. Now I'm faithful to my girlfriend at home. I'm so faithful I wouldn't pay for a lap dance or anything. I couldn't help it though while I got an unexpected one standing in line. The girl wasn't amazing or anything but she was attractive. She tried to get us to go out to a bar with her and her much shorter and not as attractive friend after the convention. My friend knows I'm a completely faithful guy. Neither of us drink either. However he is recently single after being with the same girl for 10 years. So he tried to get the one rubbing on me's attention. Apparently he wasn't good enough for her or something. Anyway we had to decline their invitation because I'm an honorable guy, line lap dance or not.
So here are some things from Linda Blair's table that she'll sign for people for $25. She'll even let you take a picture of her for another $15. Or get both for $40.
She'll sign a titty picture or a picture of her from one of her titty movies. She'll sign stuff from the Exorcist. Or stuff with her dogs. As if anyone would want that. What she will not sign is a bible or a cross (understandable) or a Quija Board (ridiculous).
Th only way you're allowed to take a picture of Linda Blair is if you pay her $15 a photo and let her manager/guy take the picture. I still managed to take a shit ton of pictures of her without her knowing, while she was rudely explaining to my friend that if she ever signed a Quija board it'd be worth a million dollars. And that all the bibles, crosses and quija boards out there with her autograph were all fakes.
The Blair Bitch was nice enough to tell him she'd take a picture with him and the board for $25.
Now, I'm not trying to be unfair. It wasn't my Quija Board or me who wanted to meet Linda Blair. I was there to take pictures for my buddy. When we met Elvira, she had similar rules. She was a little late too. Though Elvira probably would have signed your cock if you asked her nice enough. Her prices were higher then anyone else at $30. She charged extra for pictures and all of that. But Elvira was very polite and awesome to meet. Linda Blair not only had the higher prices. She charged extra for anything that wasn't a picture or poster. She was kind of a bitch. She even had a security guard with her in uniform. She just gave off the aura of thinking she was better than everyone else.
The funny thing to me is that Sid Haig was the next person down from Linda Blair. He was there the entire time we were. He had a sign up $10 for autographs. He was taking pictures with everyone, cutting up jokes with his fans and Bill Mosely who was at the table on his other side. Sid Haig had a line just as long as the Blair Bitch and his was constantly moving the whole time because he was there for his fans the whole time. In my opinion Sid Haig is an awesome dude who to me is a bigger star than Blair Bitch. Sid was great when I meet him several conventions ago and was equally as awesome as we sat beside his table for an hour and a half waiting on Blair to show.
After we walked away from Linda Blair, I caught this picture of Bill Mosely.
We really didn't get a whole lot of pictures of the Horror actors. There really weren't a whole lot of actors at the convention and the ones that were there we'd mostly met before.
Our first convention was in a small Kentucky town. We went there specifically to meet Rupert Boneham from Survivor. While there my friend got his hockey mask signed by Ari Lehman the first actor to play Jason Voorhies. Since then we've been to several conventions. This mask has kind of been the center of these trips.
Since that picture was taken we added a couple of more autographs including three from this event.
Here's my buddy, the mask owner with Richard Brooker from Friday the 13th III.
He'd gotten the mask signed awhile ago but didn't have a picture. Brooker was nice as always and very accommodating.
Here he is posing with Steve Dash from Friday the 13th II.
Dash was great. He insisted we take multiple pictures in different locations and poses.
Here's my buddy with C.J. Graham from Friday the 13th VI.
He's one of the rarest Jason actors to get an autograph from. He's a millionaire hotel casino owner who doesn't do many conventions. We already knew all of this and were excited he'd be in Nashville. Graham also told us all about his hotels and how he doesn't do many conventions. He's was cool though. For overall size he was probably the biggest actor I've met, height and muscle wise who's played Jason Voorhies.
Here's Ken Kirzinger from Freddy vs Jason signing the mask.
He was the least busy of the Jason's, so we talked to him for awhile about his movies. He's also the tallest Jason we've met so far. The guy was huge. We mostly talked about Freddy vs Jason but also a lot about Wrong Turn 2 and he talked a little about his other stunt work. We also all complained about the remake and what timeline it was supposed to have taken place. Really cool guy. As far as quality of movie, I personally thought Freddy vs Jason was one of the best in the series. The 80's have nostalgia that goes a long way though.
I wanted to meet the wrestlers scheduled for this event. It was supposed to be Jake 'The Snake' Roberts, DDP, Raven and Rhyno. I don't know if some of them cancelled or what but Rhyno was the only wrestler I saw there. I'd only ever met four wrestlers in my time. Back in the day I met the Junkyard Dog and Al Greene when I was a teen. At a recent convention I met George 'The Animal' Steele and 'Diamond' Dallas Page. Now I've met Rhyno. I only recently got back into wrestling. So I remember Rhyno from his ECW days. He's a little balder but overall looks about the same as I remembered him. With his look and accent I couldn't help but associate him as an almost Jersey Shore type of guy. That's probably unfair of me to do though because he was really nice when I met him. I'm a little disappointed I didn't get to meet Raven or Jake Roberts. There's always next time.
My buddy stopped a fan at the convention. I had no idea what the hell was going on. The guy he stopped was James Yeager.
If you don't know who Yeager is (neither did I) he's a youtube celebrity who got into some trouble for posting videos like this.
After that video went viral, Yeager has made it onto The Colbert Report, Piers Morgan and I think Tosh.0 as well as other shows I'm sure.
There was a lot of cross over fans between the three conventions, Horror, Tattoo and Anime. A cross over celebrity was Amy Nicoletto, a tattoo artist from the show L.A. Ink.
she had her own boothe where she was meeting fans, signing autographs and also doing tattoos by appointment.
Here are some pics of the Anime Convention. The Anime convention was a separate price that we may or may not have paid. In all the confusion no one really noticed. I'd explain to you what's going on in these pics if I had any idea myself. I'm not an anime guy at all. My friend tried explaining some things but for the most part it was lost on me. I will say that while most Horror Cons are mostly dudes, this convention with the horror and the anime was probably 50/50 on gender. A lot of teenagers were there and every single one of them was dressed in anime outfits that made me feel like a pervert.
For instance,
I don't know what's going on but I like it and I feel like a pervert for liking it so much.
I feel like I should know what this character is but honestly who cares. I know it's awesome.
If Laura Croft were a real girl,
this young blue haired girl was very helpful when we were trying to find something. I'm sure her costume is very accurate but I have no idea what it is.
Red Heads and Blue Balls,
My Little Gansta Ponies?
Our Anime pictures weren't only of underage girls. We also have these dudes,
I thought a picture was warranted.
Like I said before, we only spent the better part of one day at the convention. When we left we both finally felt up to some food. There are several famous hot dog places in Nashville. I'm not big on hot dogs but getting in the spirit of things, First we tried Hot Digity Dogs. But they were closed for undisclosed reasons. We still took a pic.
So we moved on to I Dream of Weenie, a restaurant built from an old VW bus. Awesome!
We ordered three different dogs and split everything in order to try a variety.
The daily special a Buffalo Blu Cheese Dog,
It was gross. We each took a bite of our half and ended up throwing the rest away. I think it was the lack of Buffalo and the nastiness of Blu Cheese Slaw on top. It was the only dog neither of us finished.
Pimento Cheese is a thing of the south and supposedly very big in Nashville. I've never been a fan of it myself. But in the spirit of things we tried the Pimento Cheese Dog,
Surprisingly the best dog. Homemade pimento cheese isnt' too bad. I'd only ever had the processed stuff before.
Last but not least is the Jalapeno, Chili dog. Or at least I think that's what it was. I didn't order this one. I just got half of it. It wasn't too great.
Not the best dogs in the world but I Dream of Weenie was worth a visit just from being unique.
When we got done Dreaming of Weenies we checked out Antique Archaeology. Anyone who's a fan of the History Channel show American Pickers might recognize that name. Mike and Frank have two stores. One in their hometown of Iowa and their newest store in Nashville. I'm a huge fan of American Pickers so this was a thrill going in.
This is the old car manufacturing plant Mike and Frank put there newest store in.
The show made it look like they bought the entire building and were restoring it as their new shop. The truth is, this building has kind of been turned into a shopping mall. There are several shops in the building besides Antique Archaeology.
Antique Archaeology's store was actually very small in comparison to the building.
From a very recent episode this is the checkered guitar they got from Rick Neilsen of Cheap Trick.
Hanging Pig Head
Hanging Bike
For the most part it looked like the shop was there to sell merchandise like t-shirts and mugs. There was much more of that stuff than things like the Big Black Squirrel.
Various Motorcycles
Singing Tire Baby?
After paying our picker respects we hit this old time soda shop, Elliston Place Soda Shop,
Somewhere near that we found this painted on a wall. It is Nashville after all.
Next we hit the Nashville Strip. Now this is what I expected of Nashville.
I think this was the second or third Elvis statue we saw. It was the only one we seem to have gotten a pic of.
If we'd had known the circus was in town we would have gone.
Unfortunately all we got was this picture a day late.
On the Strip we found an interesting restaurant advertising the World's best burger. Later on we found out this place is kinda a stable in Nashville. The Paradise Park Trailer Resort Restaurant.
Advertising the World's Best Burger we had to try it. Especially since the Prince seemed to have released his control over us by this point.
If it doesn't look like the World's Best Burger that's because it wasn't. It was good though. The fries weren't disgusting either unlike the Athen's Family Restaurant of the day before. Oddly the inside of the Trailer Park Burger place looked like a cafeteria
but unlike Athen's the food didn't taste like Cafeteria food.
We rocked the Nashville strip until dark. We went the hotel and got some rest. That night we headed out for some famous Nashville BBQ. We tried 6 or 7 different BBQ places. All of them were either closed for the night, closed completely or not where the GPS said they'd be. It's like it wasn't meant to be.
One of the places in Nashville we most wanted to eat at was Mas Tacos. Simple Fresh and delicious looking.
Unfortunately we weren't up to going the first day we were there after eating at Prince's. The second day they closed before we could get there. They weren't open at all our last day there. After failing to find BBQ we did come across a Mas Tacos Taco Truck that night.
It was closed.... Food for the night was a fail.
The last day we left early to get home for Easter. We hit one last thrift store on the way out. Food had been such a fail for Nashville, we decided to hit a couple of Food Trucks on out way out. We don't have Food Trucks around here but we found out they are plentiful in Nashville. Here are some we tried.
The best was a taco truck near the hotel that we didn't take a picture of.
Overall while in Nashville I was rather miserable. We'd helped my buddies uncle move the day before. Our muscles were sore the whole time. It rained almost the whole time. The food was hit and miss at best. Linda Blair ruined a huge portion of the day for us. Watching young girls in anime outfits is about as painful as it is enjoyable. The same can be said for girls who rub their ass on you while you're waiting in line. Looking back though, I really enjoyed it overall. While not my best convention trip, it was another story for the books.