Day one... the convention.

We finally arrived at the convention.  We were weak from hunger and sleep deprivation.   Walking through the entry way to the convention was an overwhelming sensation.  A giant room dedicated to horror... it was like my dreams had come true.  We had entered about an hour after the doors had opened, so there were still a lot of empty booths, and several guests who hadn't arrived.  We had really been in a hurry because on the website for the convention it had listed a screening for Mother of Tears at 5 pm and we had entered at 4 pm.  Once we found a list of events at the convention we found that the screening had been moved to the next day.  That was a huge relief because we would get an opportunity to get a bite to eat before it was too late.

We did a preliminary walk around the floor to examine what was there. There were horror toys, posters, props and movies as far as the eye could see.  There were people dressed up as zombies and other horrible, wonderful things. I was immediately able to achieve one of my goals by purchasing a couple of issues of HorrorHound that I had missed while on store racks. One of which I was able to get signed by Pinhead/Doug Bradley...

A lot of people complained that Mr. Bradley was rude and not very receptive, but I found him to be very nice and polite.  He told us that he was going to be in Clive Barker's film for the Books of Blood.  It was amazing to be in the presence of a horror icon.

Prior to meeting Doug Bradley we came across several tables put together for the Dawn of the Dead cast.  I thought more of the cast and crew would attend considering the screening that was going to be held the following night.  I was still happy, though, to meet the members that I did.

The first person I met from Dawn of the Dead was David Early (pictured above on the far left).  He was a very nice man.  Tammy and I were able to tell him that we really enjoyed his work. We both thought he did a wonderful job of helping to establish a tone early in Dawn of the Dead.  Next we met Mike Christopher a.k.a. the Krishna Zombie (pictured far right).  He was a really wonderful guy.  We were able to get to his booth and talk to him early in the convention before it became very crowded.  We were able to tell him that we enjoyed his part in the movie, as well. He told us that the print we chose to have signed was his favorite, and that he picked that one out himself while his agent had picked the others.  We agreed that it was the best of his selection, and moved on to the rest of the convention. We ran into Tom Savini later in the convention, but he was kind of short with us.  It was still nice to get to meet him.
Prior to meeting Savini we stopped at Bill Moseley's table.  He was probably the friendliest guy we came across at the whole convention.  He was happy to take the time to talk to us, and was happy to pose for a picture with Tammy.
 

After the first round of purchases and signings, and Tammy almost being accidentally run down by John Landis, we decided it was time to end our hunger and check out Monroville Mall.  We stopped by the mall to buy tickets for the screening the following night.  The place that was selling tickets in the mall was probably the most amazing toy store I had ever been to.  It was called Time and Space Toys, and they had a wonderfully diverse selection of toys and comics from all time periods.  Their items were also reasonably priced.  After a very brief tour of the mall we got a little bit of food, went back to our room, and got some rest for the next long day ahead.