Another Year of Flashback Fun!!!

First- thanks for all the nice comments regarding "The Creature Walks Among Us"-once again, it's confirmed by you viewers that the Creature from the Black Lagoon is truly a top favorite among the Universal monster roster. I am really leaning towards running all three films of the Creature trilogy in a row sometime next year, once our Universal contract is worked out! It's nice to see that the Gill Man gets his props from our Sven viewers... Earlier Saturday, we made our annual visit to the Flashback Weekend horror convention, and, believe me, it never disappoints! With the help of our old friend Don,we easily travelled through the hotel to the room where I'd be doing the signing- and, again, a huge line of nice (and patient) people was waiting for me! We took lots of photos, signed various items- the Horrorbles comic book for which I wrote the intro was a pretty popular item to get my signature on-and , as always, got some great artwork to be shown on our future shows.There was also a really amazing huge painting of me that the creator kept, but had me autograph! Another visitor brought something pretty cool to show me- a photo of "The Deadbeats",the band from Chicago's 1950s horror show "Shock Theatre", signed on the back by one of the band members! The gentleman's mom had asked him to bring it to show to me, and I was happy to see such a cool artifact! We had several fans who make a point of coming to see me every year- including a couple guys who bring with a photo of us from the previous year, holding a photo of us from the year before, etc! It looks like this infinite "photo within a photo" tradition will be continuing! I have to tell this story- the last folks we saw at the signing were a charming couple- Angel and Ted- dressed as Eddie Munster and Wednesday Addams. They had come up from South Bend, Indiana- then realized they had forgotten their costumes! They immediately TREKKED BACK to South Bend ( a two-hour trip!) to retrieve the costumes and drive back to suburban Chicago to meet me, in costume! Angel also made a really cool depiction of Doug and I as anime characters- be watching for that on a future show! There's always a lot to see and do at Flashback- we had a brief encounter with director John Carpenter, which you'll also see on the show in the future.I wish we'd had the chance to see Linda Blair, who told one of our fans that she wanted a rubber chicken- she knows all about us!(I need to get a contact for her- how can I refuse her?) We were preparing to m.c. the costume contest, as usual- but the panel previously in the room was running late; fortunately, we ran into our friends from Janet Davies' WLS-TV "190 North" show, who asked me to do some cameo appearances in a piece they were shooting for just before Halloween-that also included our friend "Kitty Zombie"- a fun, friendly, child-like zombie guy who's very popular at these conventions! Finally, it was costume time-our pal Nick Digilio was kind enough to,once again, introduce us to the audience- and the contestants again came up with some inventive costumes! Among my favorites were the young lady who protrayed the afore-mentioned Linda Blair's Reagan character from "The Exorcist"- complete with spewing some nasty green liquid- a woman who portrayed a rotting tree (you'd have to see that one)- a towering demon who was "the lord of chaos"- and a winged female demon! There were some I can't even describe- you'll have to wait to see some of the footage on our show in the future! Flashback Weekend successfully wound up its tenth year- I can hardly wait for when "this one goes to eleven"!