Happy March and Happy Birthday, John!

If it's March, can John's birthday be far behind? The answer to that is no. John's birthday is on the second (which, coincidentally, happens to be today), so if March has just started, it's got to be near John's birthday.

Maybe I should wait until I'm really awake to finish writing this.

Anyway:

Happy Birthday, John!

I got on Facebook earlier to wish him a happy birthday on his Facebook Wall, and stumbled around a little bit because they're always changing things around on Facebook. I clicked on "Friends" because it was in the location where I could click on it and get a list of my friends, but instead I got a list of people that are friends of my friends, and discovered my own, private "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon."

People on the list were absolutely amazing! Here's a partial list:

• Gore De Vol--Horror personality
• William Shattner-- Needs no introduction
• Nana Visitor--From Star Trek Next Gen
• Ben Bova--Science fiction author
• Michael Okuda--Science fiction TV props and design
• David Gerrold--Science fiction writer
• Walter Koenig*--Checkov on Star Trek
• Nichelle Nichols* (see photo above)--Uhura on Star Trek
• Norman Spinrad--Science fiction author
• Bill Mumy--Actor
• Arch Cambell*--Movie reviewer
• CJ Cherryh--Science fiction author 
• Diane Duane--Science fiction author 
• Susan Sackett--Behind the scenes in Star Trek
• Richard Hatch--Apollo in Battlestar Galactica (original)
• Jody Lynn Nye--Science fiction author
• Steven Hickman*--Science fiction artist
• George Stover*--Actor in all of John Waters' films, Invader & New Genesis
• Stan Lee--Famous in comic book circles
• Dave Bischoff*--Science fiction author (and past roommate of John's)
• Jackie Lichtenberg*--Science fiction author and introduced me to John
• Barbara Hambly--Science fiction author
• Linda Bushyager*--Science fiction author
• Katee Sackhoff--Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica
• Paul Williams--Singer, songwriter, star of Phantom of the Paradise
• Larry Niven--Science fiction author
• Gerry Anderson--Created Space 1999
• Joe Haldeman--Science fiction author
• Charles de Lint--Science fiction author
• Jonathan Winters--Comedian

The further I scrolled down, the more people Facebook kept adding. I have at least two friends in common with all of these people, and the ones with an asterisk are people I've either met or are friends.

I'm writing about all this because it amazes me!

It's really fun to be friends with John! I say that because most of them are friends with John. I also got to meet Sam Rami and a lot of other fun people because of him.

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In knitting news, Knitting Daily has free knitting patterns listed! Scroll down to see the free patterns. You may have to sign up to get the patterns, but it's free.

Vogue Knitting has put up their fashion preview!

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Blogger is acting wierd, and I want to get this post up before it eats the whole post.

I hope you have fun on John's birthday!

More Star Wars!

I know I just did a Star Wars post the other day, but I have some photos for you, thanks to my friend, Tim Davis.

The first one leans a little more toward Star Trek than Star Wars. My friend , Tim Pace (who is a very interesting character in his own rite) used to own a van that was very science fictioney. It had "Klaatu Barada Nikto"" inscribed on the side (from The Day the Earth Stood Still), but was modeled more on the Enterprise on the inside. The dashboard was an array of switches and controls that certainly was more complicated than the space ship. The controls turned on sound effects, lights and other miscellaneous effects, and many fen enjoyed it at various SF cons.

Here it is parked on M Street in Georgetown.

This van was featured in a TV show about the Star Trek phenomenon that was done by BJo Trimble, which showed Tim Pace and Jan Cox in the van, with Tim giving orders and Jan flipping switches and turning on and off sound effects.

Here we see Tim Pace himself (seated toward the back of the photo) with the copy of R2D2 that he built.

R2 was wonderful because he was remote controlled, and could travel around on his own. It was really fun watching him "walk" around a con with a group of people. I was at one con, where some of us were helping Tim pack up everything at the end of the con. Tim walked R2 out to the parking garage, where people were arriving for a wedding celebration, and the non-science fiction people would walk up to R2 and start talking to him, and posing for photos with him while we were loading stuff into Tim's Star Trek van!

Here's a photo of Tim Davis with Bruce Rauscher.

Bruce was a science fiction con regular back at that time, and later was in John Ellis' movies Invader and Twilight of the Dogs.

Tim Pace is an interesting person. He used to own (and possibly still does) a stage lighting company called Light Works, and his equipment cases list his address as "Planet Earth." I've seen some of his home movies, and they're amazing. There are movies of The Rolling Stones, and most other large bands of the time taken from back stage! He also did lighting for science fiction conventions and Invader and Twilight of the Dogs, and stage lighting for The Bayou in DC.

Tim Davis did special effects makeup for the same two movies, and many others. When we were working on Twilight, I pointed my camera at him and told him to look mean. He pasted a mean expression on his face, and pointed a spray bottle of fake blood at me!

He's currently working on his movie, Nudist Camp Zombie Massacre, which, incidentally, stars Bruce!

Have a marvelous Monday!

A Sunny Sunday

The snow stopped sometime last night. I think we got about 4 inches. And it's been clear, sunny and beautiful today.

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For all you Steve Canyon fans out there, there's a new post up on the blog, all about George Stover and his help with the project.

So, get on over to the Steve Canyon blog and read all about it!

George was in Invader, which I worked on, and he sat in front of me in a scene in New Genesis (aka Twilight of the Dogs).

Here's George in Twilight. He's the second from the left in the front. My friend, Wendy Joines is directly behind him from your viewpoint, and I'm to your right of Wendy.

It's funny about the names of films. Every film has a working title, and when it's done it gets a final release title. Sometimes the final title sticks, sometimes it doesn't. The working title for Invader was The Killing Edge. The moment I heard the name Invader, though, I stopped calling it anything else.

Twilight, on the other hand will, it seems, always be Twilight to me. When I do refer to it as New Genesis, I always have to stop for just a second and think first before I say it, whereas Twilight just pops out with no thought whatsoever!

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Speaking of names, here is a batch of the funniest jokes about the most famous name from the last week. All this was hysterically funny earlier in the week, but it's wearing thin already.

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Io9 has a post up about the Dollhouse finale on Friday. They don't seem to think that Dollhouse is over.

I hope they're right!

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The CW will be showing two episodes of Legend of the Seeker tonight. The first one will feature Jolene Blaylock, and, judging from something on Attack of the Show, the second one will, too. Check your local schedules and check it out!

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Everett sent me six emails, each with 50 photos (that's 300 photos, folks!) of the RenFair and other stuff. Once I have a chance to wade through them, I'll start getting some of them up on the blog.

Hope you had a great weekend!

Brace yourself! Here comes the week and a new month! May you have a wonderful one!

Happy Birthday, Invader!

Twenty years ago, on the first of November, principal filming started for a movie that had the working title of The Killing Edge. It was released in theaters all over the world with various names, but eventually came out on VHS as Invader! Later (much later), it was released on DVD.

Here you see the German cover.

This is the Japanese Cover.

And here we have the British cover.

Here's my story on the film.

I headed down to Virginia on Halloween, and somewhere in Maryland, the drive chain on my car broke, leaving me stranded. A state trooper came along, called a tow truck, and I wound up in a motel on Halloween night. The only good thing about that was that the motel had cable, and I got to watch Evil Dead, a film by John's friend, Sam Rami, who I was later lucky enough to meet at the premier for Invader!

The next day, I finally got down to John and Cindy's house, and started my part on the movie, which was, initially, to do all the computer work and hold down the fort and do administrative things for two weeks while everybody else was on location.

They started off the location shooting with one of the crew running an errand with John's car and crashing it. This movie was hard on cars at the beginning. There was another car it was hard on, too, and that was a little yellow sedan, which we put bullet holes in during filming. Later on, John became the hero of all the little kids in the neighborhood when he drove up in a car full of bullet holes.

While everyone else was on location, the Berlin Wall fell, and when they came back, everyone was asking about it. They were asking because other people were talking about it, and none of them had heard news reports or done anything but film a movie for two weeks.

Most of the film was done on location, one way or the other. The place we filmed in most often was the Prince Georges County Film Office, where we got into some really interesting things at one point with some dueling videotaping. Except for the initial two week location shoot, one of my main jobs was to document the making of the movie on videotape. But while we were at the Film Office, they wanted to document the making of the movie, too, and the video cameraman was blown away that we were also videotaping it, so he took a lot of footage of me, and we eventually got into a game of taping each other. The film office got a batch of this footage broadcast on TV, so I got to be on TV along with everyone else. There were some shots of me applying makeup to some of the actors in what looked like a glamorous dressing/makeup room, but was really the men's room at the Film Office. Of course, they interviewed John and Phil, and showed lots of action shots, which made it a fabulous trailer for the movie.

One interesting day, we were filming at some government office in PG County, and it was supposed to be a cafeteria in the Pentagon. It was memorable for several reasons.

First of all, we shot Robert Biederman.

Walter Suarez, who did all the explosive special effects for Invader and New Genesis, rigged Robert for it, and Robert was really nervous because he had never done it before. But Jack Lane fired a prop pistol at Robert, and he and Walter did a fabulous and very visual job of showing him getting shot!

Hans learned CPR especially for the occasion, right before we filmed him doing CPR. One of the "medics" that showed up to take over from him was a real paramedic, and was the one who taught Hans how to do it.

The other "medic" was a friend of John's who wanted to be in the movie. He was supposed to be in the military, but he showed up with hair so long that he could almost sit on it! Not something that anyone in the military would be allowed to have (except a woman who kept it up when in uniform). John gave him the choice of not being in the movie or of cutting his hair. He finally agreed to get it cut, but didn't know where he could do that. So, John had me cut it for him. I left it longer than was regulation military, but soaked it with water, and plastered it against his head in the back so it would look shorter. I heard later that his mom was delighted with it because she had been trying to get him to cut it for a long while. I heard that he even liked it, once he got over the shock.

That same day, I got to stand on a table with the video camera and pretend I was a surveillance camera and film a fight in the cafeteria.

We did one marathon day and night at the Film Office. We initially did a lot of filming in a conference room there, and one of the actors involved was George Stover, who has a cult following due to having been in all of John Water's films.

Later on, we did some shots that were part of the night scene in the film where the prototype fighter tries to kill everyone. During breaks in the filming, Hans Bachmann, Al Smith and Rick Foucheux did a little chorus line number, kicking up their feet. While they were doing that, Phil Cook grabbed the smoke machine and ran around behind them to add more foul-smelling "smoke" behind them. He came dashing back and dropped the smoke machine to the cement floor of the sound studio, where it struck a spark and burst into flames.

Matt Herath, who was slouched down in his chair, and looked like he was asleep, was actually totally awake, and yelled "fire!" before I could manage to, and I was paying attention. I guess Matt was, too. Phil skidded to a halt, ran back and grabbed a cardboard box, which he upended over the flaming smoke machine. Luckily, the lack of oxygen put out the fire before it could ignite the box. Matt yelled across the room at him "Oh, very good, Phil! I always use cardboard to put out fires!"

Right after I met Steve, who I later married, we needed to do some pick-up filming. Principal filming was over and we were in the process of editing it, so it was a bit later. I asked Steve if he wanted to be an extra in a film. He, and a bunch of his friends showed up to be in it, and we all played soldier for the day.

Well, there are a lot more stories I could tell, and I'm only telling stuff I saw with my own eyes, so it's only one person's view of the filming. There's so much more to say.

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The Librarian trilogy is currently playing on TNT. Quest for the Spear is almost over, and Return to King Solomon's Mines is about to begin. But if you enjoyed the New Orleans parts of my Halloween post, check out Curse of the Judas Chalice later! There's a lot of good New Orleans stuff in it.

I hope you've been having a great weekend!

Hi, Jean and Harry!

My sister got an email from my aunt and uncle, (Jean and Harry) who have moved and wrote to let her know. She forwarded it to me, and I sent an email to them with my information, and they checked my blog!

Unless Harry's interested in science fiction, I expect him to be bored with this pretty soon. But I think Jean will be interested in the knitting and what's going on with the family.

Jean and Harry met because of a different historical reenactment group, the N-SSA (the North South Skirmish Association). They reenact the Civil War. I used to go to the events with Jean, and that's how I met Harry, too. He was in Hampton's Legion. Every once in a while, I see a car or (more usually), a truck or van with a Hampton's Legion sticker on one of the windows, and I feel nostalgic.

I may not have mentioned to them that I went to some N-SSA events after I stopped going with them. 

One day, a friend of mine, Randy, showed up all happy. He said that he was tired of me knowing all about everything, and he was sure that he had found something that I didn't know anything about at all.

He went into a long description of guys getting dressed up in Civil War gear and going and shooting muskets and cannon in competition. I said, "Oh, the N-SSA!" He looked a little confused, and said something about "Yeah, I think that's what Doug said."

At the first event I went to with him, we were signing in, and I looked over my friend's head, awestruck and said "Oh, wow! A Gatling gun!" Someone really did bring a Gatling gun!

Anyway, I went to a few skirmishes at Ft. Shenandoah in the Virginia hills out West from here. As usual, it was loads of fun! I love shooting black powder!

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I thought I was going to have the glow-in-the-dark Christmas stocking done today, and I probably will have it done later today. But no photo yet. Tomorrow.

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My TV watching (Fringe and Eureka) was interrupted last night by a phone call from John Ellis. That's always a happy interruption!

If you click the link for John, you'll see information about some of the things he's done. I also worked on Invader and New Genesis. New Genesis had the working title of Twilight of the Dogs.

He wanted to alert me to the fact that we will be doing covers for new Steve Canyon DVDs real soon now. Well, I knew that, but it's always fun to talk to him. He was trying to see how many Steve Canyon episodes he could fit on one DVD without losing quality while he was taking to me. There is some new technology he's trying out. Unfortunately, it all went horribly wrong while he was talking to me and he had to hang up to go fix it.

You can see the cover I did for the first Steve Canyon DVD at the site above and order a copy there, if you want.

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I've been thinking for a while that I might like to write a biography. As biographies go, it doesn't have much in the way of a plot.

But then, I thought it might be interesting to somebody if I wrote a little bit of a biography one day a week. Just a post about something that happened to me.

When I was 17, I thought about what I might want to do with my life. And I thought about all the fun things that I could do if I wanted to. And I resolved to have an exciting and fun life. I think I've done well at that goal, and I'd like to share the fun.

So, what I want are opinions. Does this sound interesting? Do you want to read about it?

Let me know.

Have a great Wednesday!