Random crap with Uno.

[Unorthodox]

So, there's this new guy at work.  About a month. 

I don't think I've ever heard him have a conversation where he doesn't start arguing.  It doesn't matter the subject, doesn't matter whether it involves him, he knows better. 

I mean, he was arguing about growing plants. 

I knew this day was coming with October here...

Yeah, he started up an argument about Halloween. 

My screensaver and wallpaper are a slideshow of pics.  Yeah, this one here can't be real, I stole it off the internet, it's clearly some CG rendering. 



The fact the creature is on google maps street view of my house doesn't deter his arguing.  The lighting is too perfect, and smoke machines don't make smoke like that. 

[Buster's Uncle]

You poor guy, finding out this way that your life is CG.  You gonna be okay?

[E_T]

Kool pic!!  I showed it to someone and he at first thought that it was some form or art and was surprised that it was real.  I would argue that the picture IS a work of art.  It is an artfully taken picture of an artfully done Halloween display.  It might not be CG art, but it IS art, IMVHO!!

[Geo]

Sounds like some guy needs to work on his social skills.

[Unorthodox]

Silly early from my norm.  Horribly redneck fence for what's going to be in the graveyard, but the fence is a can I'm kicking down the street a year or two for budget reasons.  Pallets are free. 



Hot chocolate for the party.  Candy for Halloween night...

[Unorthodox]

Just wanted to compare, this corner from last season got most of the coconut last year.  The grass thin, yellowing, stressed.  The pic really doesn't give a full sense of the improvement. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I wonder if you could swing something like I saw a renfair in Florida do - he threw an art contest for local schools.  It was to paint something on plywood, I heard the prize was worth something like $200, and he got thousands of dollars worth of plywood fence sections out of it.  Sounds like a big win to me, and some of the paintings were pretty good, too.

[Unorthodox]

Oh, there's a future plan, and like most of the 3 year plan is very marketable once I'm done, it's just not feasible this year. 

So I'll take free.  Plus the pallets act as a big shelf for kids to put pumpkins on right now, and that works well for the party. 

[Geo]

Horribly redneck

I knew it!

[E_T]

The Flaming Pumpkin Ranch...

[Unorthodox]

As with Ed from last year, neighbor cuts tree, I go start piecing things together without a pre-formed plan.  So, sticking to Ed's naming conventions, Banzai is getting formed.  It's going to play as a test bed for future concepts on top of just being another monter. 



There are plenty more branches.  I haven't ruled out Shenzi. 

[Unorthodox]

Lashing more bits, Banzai is starting to come together. 

[Buster's Uncle]

And the head?

[Unorthodox]

You may have dropped an s there. 

That's the experiment on this guy, and it'll be a while...

[Unorthodox]

Went down to Fearcon with the boss.  https://fearcon.com/

I'm not much of a convention person to be honest.  I don't do the cosplay, and I couldn't give a rodent's rectum about celebrity [nonsense], so the draw for me boils down to the entertainment and potentially the panels. 

We went Friday specifically because the freak show was on Friday. 

It was a combo of shock magicians and working acts.  And while I can admire the working acts skill, I really don't get the same shock that most people do (unless it's something with eyes, because I have an eyeball thing...).  There was a very detailed documentary not terribly long ago that showed the science and biology behind all the working acts as well as how they were done.  Much like seeing how magic is done, it kinda ruins the mystery a bit.  So, I look for quality of the actual performer more than the actual tricks as the tricks are all the same.     

Vendors were largely artists.  A surprising amount of art, really.  Some of it good.  Some of it striking.  A few great.  One piece was quite interesting, and if it wasn't a work in progress, we might have purchased...but it was pretty much a rendering of my bifurcated pumpkins. 

Similarly on the prop side of things, someone was selling a rather poor Trevor knockoff.  Too small, only a skull on top, but in their favor they had riddled out the collapsible nature and had a brilliant means of snapping it together.  They were using a softer foam, like really super thick foam floor tiles that snapped together like puzzle pieces.  $800.  Didn't appreciate me poking too much. 

Other than that, the ubiquitous stiltbeast method of corpsing abounds...I really dislike it.  Far too muddy and unrealistic, but cheap and easy, and doable on the pose n stay skellies, so super cheap.  I really need to modify the skullnbonez method to work with pose n stay, but I haven't had a need for a corpse in a while.   

There's one of the immersion haunts opened up in SLC.  I might take the kids to that this year.  I'm at least curious in the new style. 

There's also a headless horseman haunt a little ways further.  I'm a sucker for the headless horseman. 

The panels while we were there were proper haunt lighting....

Which, the guy was more trying to sell his controllers and dmx programs than talking about how to actually frame and light a scene.

And projector use...

which the guy had a whole bunch of off the shelf solutions, wasn't selling anything, and was actually talking about how to stage and hide the projector. 

"Home haunting on a budget" and "how to make ordinary objects into halloween props" were clearly panels I needed to sit and listen to on the schedule for today.