This now being my second time to Texas Frightmare Weekend after such a fun & successful adventure last year.
Having never been much of a horror fan but have loads of respect for the genre.
However as a fan of cons & fun I’ve been intrigued but it wasn’t until last year’s lineup was announced that sealed my participation.
Texas Frightmare Weekend 2019 – May 3rd – 5th – Hyatt Regency Hotel – Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport
Things took an interesting twist this year to say the least – And just like last year, that held TFM the same weekend as another major event, making it even more complicated as it was like-minded con that appeals to a large percentage of the same demographic.
Last year I was covering the Dallas International Film Festival concurrently as this & now this year they decided to have it the same weekend as the biggest Dallas comic con of the year Fan Days Expo.
So initially I wasn’t even gonna bother, I’m not a horror fan the location is very impractical – However I knew that Charlie Benante & Scott Ian from Anthrax were gonna be there & that intrigued me. In the year since the last time I was here, I’m now the Writer/Director/Producer of a feature length documentary on the band King’s X. In the few weeks leading up to this event, I’d been texting with Charlie about being in the film to which he was very excited about.
PLUS – the lineup for Fan Days Expo this year was STAAACKED – so stacked that I didn’t even bother looking up the rest of the lineup for Frightmare. I figured I’d be too busy with Fan Days plus, I was gonna send a car for Charlie to come to our studio downtown Dallas which is also right where Fan Days is & that would take up my whole weekend.
Well as fate would have it, I never get sick, but with all the traveling I’ve been doing lately it was bound to happen so I ended up having to blow off the first day of Fan Expo, then on Saturday, Charlie said that Frightmare had him too busy to leave to come do the interview for the film. Saturday was also Free Comic Day (big weekend for nerds eh?) – So I just did my best to enjoy that & told Charlie I’d come up to Frightmare so that at the very least we could get some face to face time.
Day 2 –
So I head down there just to hang with Charlie for a bit again not knowing of any of the other guests. Before I leave a friend asked if I was attending “The Anthrax Panel” – well hell I didn’t know they were even gonna do a panel, so I decided last minute to look at the panels they had scheduled and I couldn’t believe my procrastination – Well holy shit, why didn’t I look up the lineup earlier?? -With last year and now this year’s INSANE lineup, you don’t have to be a horror fan to enjoy this festival and in spite of it’s impractical location & setup, it offers something super intimate and with this year’s lineup, it’s becoming my most anticipated event of it’s type. Dude, Jenna Jameson & Traci Lords! Anthrax! Meatloaf, the cast of Evil Dead! – Cmon!
Then this happened…..
Meat Loaf while leading a Q&A session tripped over some wires onstage. Footage of the incident below show him stumbling while attempting to regain his balance, before ultimately falling off the stage, behind curtains.
Meat Loaf was then taken to a local hospital, where he was treated for a broken collarbone. Was a weird scary moment & I was there next to Charlie & Scott from Anthrax (Meatloaf is Scott’s father-in-law).
Meat Loaf previously collapsed on stage in 2016 after suffering from “severe dehydration.” His last album was that year’s Braver Than We Are.
Following that was A Tale of Two Sisters screening followed by Q&A with director Chris Roe, and another ultimate crush Traci Lords! How could I not know that both Jenna AND Traci were gonna be here? haha
Traci Lords
Day 3
So I returned the next day for it’s final day of programming to discover that Jenna Jameson was here & doing a panel. She didn’t have anything immediate to promote & the Horror/Comedy Zombie Stripper was over 10 years ago so I didn’t know if it was some 10th Anniversarry or what the deal was.
Only one way to find out – Now, I have quite a bit to say about this so let’s unpack shall we?
First of all Jenna & I are almost the exact same age & both now newly 45. If you were a 20 year old male in 1994 as I was, you knew who Jenna Jameson was even if you’d never seen any of her videos. She was just THAT popular. By 1997 after she was in Howard Stern’s Private Parts movie she had successfully (& thankfully) replaced Ron Jeremy as “that-one-porn-star-everyone-knows”.
Whereas Traci Lords (see above) became successful IN SPITE of her porn career, Jenna became famous outside of the adult industry BECAUSE of it & to this day though she has long stopped performing, everyone still knows who Jenna is.
Jenna Jameson
Appearing make-up less and a noticeable almost disturbing amount of surgical enhancements to her face she didn’t exactly look like the Jenna I remember & that’s some idealic take that I’m expecting woman not to age, she’s 45, I haven’t seen her in person in over 20 years, but this was something different. What I learned later is that she had really let herself go after her pregnancy in ??? and this was her back down over a 100 lbs that she credits to a stricy Keto diet. Enough judging her on her looks alone as what makes Jenna, Jenna is that she is irrisistable & her appearance her is one thing that has not changed, especially when she was talking about fanning out over Bruce Campbell earlier in the day.
What apparently has changed for Jenna is her political views, if that’s even what you can call them, which is to say that nothing has changed.
She has flipped back & forth so many times that it makes her opinions of the matter so instantly dismissable, not because she’s a former porn star but it’s clear Jenna is still addicted to attention & this is how she gets it. I’m no liberal, but here parting words at this panel of “I live to crush liberals on Twitter!” seemed more steeped in a newfound pleasure of smiting without giving it any real thought. If she had theirs no concernable reason to trust that a smart woman like Jenna would support a party that has done nothing but try to tear down her gender, her right & her former profession.
Scott Ian & Charlie Benante
of Anthrax
The Evil Dead
Elvira
