Pray, Misty, for me

This accursed sun is turning me so brown, I'm blending in with the furniture. During summer, I usually prefer to stay inside where the A/C ensures I won't sweat just because I'm standing there. I'm an autumn guy. But this summer has already seen me enduring the great outdoors a lot, and it ain't letting up anytime soon. Recently, I went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire for the first time in more than a decade. It was fun, although almost prohibitively expensive. I had to talk myself out of buying a Viking drinking horn. Most of my dough actually went to food (amazing garlic mushrooms, nasty-ass mead, a curiously crustless shepherd's pie, Ye Olde Teriyaki Beef Jerky), although I did come home with a packet of incense because the pleasant scent was dubbed "Elven Joy." While waiting to purchase it, I honestly overheard a clerk asking one customer, "My Lord, may I have your zip code?" In a shaky British accent, no less.

For visual evidence of the festivity, look at the comments on my MySpace profile, where anti-meredith has been so kind as to post a portrait of the Prez and myself capering about, as well as several attempted images of one of three hot bald chicks I spied on the premises that day. (Stick around and listen to the Man Man tune I have playing there. "Van Helsing Boombox" is one of the best songs I've heard all year. Pretty much says it all.) And speaking of pictures of me and of sexy ladies... we're blurry, but here's the ultimate beauty and the beast snapshot:

Remember last November's rant about "The Screaming Dead"? Its star, Misty Mundae (now going by her real name, Erin Brown) arrived late to the first night of Flashback Weekend 2006. It was my first time attending this local horror/drive-in movie convention. Although I'm much more of a geek about this sort of stuff than I am about knaves and wizardry, I found the level of dorkery on display at Bristol much less embarassing than it was at some points here - chiefly the dorkery coming from me. See, I'm usually either nonplussed or extremely self-concious around celebrities I admire. While I did resist the temptation to strike up a conversation with such cool cult movie folks as Ken Foree, Marilyn Chambers, Sid Haig, Adrienne Barbeau, Robert Z'Dar or even "Hostel" babe Barbara Nedeljakova, I could not pass up the opportunity to speak with the small screen's most gorgeous Scream Queen since the '80s reign of Brinke Stevens. Misty became famous for starring in Seduction Cinema's softcore parodies of Hollywood hits. You might have seen a few of these mega-cheap whimsies on Skinemax, such as "Playmate of the Apes" or "Lord of the G-Strings." She's also in a lot of horror flicks, having started making them on video as a teenager, and has already directed a couple of distributed features at age 26. Like Brinke, her appeal comes from her affable screen persona and her striking but natural appearance. I've never seen any of her straight-up nudie flicks, but Misty's so much hotter than the plastic doll-women that usually populate soft-focus "erotic" cinema, which as far as I can tell is still dominated by an ugly '80s Playboy mindset.

I think I offended her by saying I was hoping she would be selling copies of "Spiderbabe"; she stared ruefully at me for a second, then said I should just rent it and save my money. I mumbled something lame about wanting a picture and how I hoped she'd have a nice weekend in Illinois (she informed me that she's actually from here) and other embarassing nonsense before stumbling away. This sun-dried SoulReaper couldn't bring himself to tell Misty/Erin that he had just purchased a bootleg with every "Masters of Horror" episode for the same price as she was asking for Anchor Bay's official release of her single Lucky McKee-directed segment. Other scores: a sweet Blind Dead t-shirt with art by Wes Benscoter, every episode of "Thundarr the Barbarian" burned onto four DVDs and Mikita Brottman's "Hollywood Hex: An Illustrated History of Cursed Movies" - bringing me one volume closer to my dream of owning every title in the Creation Cinema Collection.

I could not return for Flashback Weekend's more substantive second and third days because I was busy roasting outside. I was covering the Pitchfork Music Festival, a big to-do indie rock marathon tucked into a neighborhood park near United Center. Despite the heat and some technological complications, the story got filed and I had a hell of a good time - especially Sunday, when it was less hot and a bunch of people I knew were also attending. View a sketchy rundown of the musical offerings I witnessed here, and recoil at my attempts to describe bands I know little to nothing about. I must reiterate how totally beyond awesome Man Man was, and having picked up their first disc at the fest, I am now super psyched about their return next month at the Logan Square Auditorium. Still, between Peeping Tom last Thursday, Pitchfork last Saturday and Sunday, Genghis Tron tomorrow, Lollapalooza all weekend and Dr. Octagon next Thursday, I may soon be concerted-out for a while.