NecronomiCon 2013

Anyone else besides bertilak attending NecronomiCon 2013 in Providence this week?

http://necronomicon-providence.com/

What, no takers? Now that is just Weird.

Today I just walked in Providence to places not covered in the walking tour I am taking tomorrow. But I did stumble on The Shunned House accidentally. Wow, it really is a sore thumb ! (carboys of acid will do that)

So far, I have met the director of The Earth Rejects Him, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2091978/

I told him his film was my major WTF experience of 2013.

I also saw Bryan Moore's 1999 Cool Air which features a superb performance by Jack Donner as Dr. Muñoz.

The short film Frank DanCoolo: Paranormal Drug Dealer wins my informal prize so far for attitude and going for it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1515062/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Thanks for the heads-up on The Earth Rejects Him. Not available on Netflix yet, but I'll keep it in mind. I have that version of Cool Air on a dvd collection of short HPL adaptations.

Hear any good talks/panels (I think Joshi is there) or score any good, weird volumes?

> 3 You are most welcome. The NecronomiCon proper does not start until tomorrow AM. I will be taking 'Le Tour de Lovecraft' first thing, then diving into panels.

I watched The Earth Rejects Him the first time at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcDXYYPhdAs

I just returned from the first ever screening of James Bentley's short film "Miskatonic University", which is quite a nice Lovecraft pastiche. The ending seemed a bit abrupt and the climactic scene was rather too obviously CGI. This is a work in progress (from Kickstarter) so expect these problems to be solved. This film is ahead of the Lovecraftian adaptation pack because it has high-quality cinematography and good acting.

Next at the RISD auditorium was the director's working cut (no music and certain special effects not done yet) of The Ancestor, a feature-length film of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. This is director Dan O'Bannon's cut, before it was hacked up by the producers and released as The Resurrected (as explained by Mrs. O'Bannon, who had been on-set during the filming). Too bad: it was a smart adaptation.

Unfortunately I am missing the HPL Historical Society's only screening of their new film of The Whisperer in Darkness, which was too late for me (I'm old: sue me). I definitely want to catch up with this one.

>4 bertilak:

Thanks for the YouTube link! My blu-ray player can stream that to the TV.

Are they planning on releasing O'Bannon's original cut? If so, that's really great news. I always forget about The Resurrected for some reason, but even truncated, it's one of the better feature films based directly on HPL's work.

The Whisperer in Darkness is worth the purchase price, or if you have Netflix you can save it to your future release queue - it might be available from them eventually.

Keep the reports coming - the Con hasn't officially started and you've already provided a lot of good info!

Yes, I'm reading this thread with interest. (My con-going for the summer was a couple of weeks back for a different focus.)

> 5 There was no mention of releasing O'Bannon's working cut of The Ancestor. I expect they think a version lacking music and having titles saying 'SPECIAL EFFECT MISSING' or 'SCENE MISSING' would not be commercially viable. It does not appear to be strongly in demand by fans as would be, say, partially-preserved Troughton episodes of Dr. Who.

It was interesting for two reasons, though. The visual style, clothing, and hairstyles made it seem like a made-for-TV special: Kolchak the Night Stalker or some such. Also, the missing FX actually gave it a Val Lewtonesque aesthetic, like not showing the creature in Cat People

> 6

Today was very eventful and I will file more data after I rest my tootsies from the walking tour.

Friday Part 1/3: Walking Tour.

I commend this tour to anyone whose legs have not completely morphed into tentacles or fins. It would be pretty difficult in a wheelchair as some of the streets up College Hill are steep.

Here is a sample itinerary: http://www.hplovecraft.com/creation/sites/walktour.aspx

We did not follow this exactly. For one thing, the John Hay Library at Brown is closed until September 2014 for renovations. Some of their Lovecraft material is on display at the Providence Athenaeum including the manuscript of The Call of Cthulhu and Lovecraft's sketch of Cthulhu: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hydepodcorner/65129807/

When I re-read the stories it will be helpful to be able to visualize the buildings. The guides on the tour were knowledgeable and helpful.

Friday Part 2/3: Sessions

Academics 1, 2, and 3.

Archaeoastronomer John B. Carlson presented his thesis that the name Cthulhu was at least partially suggested by the Aztec rain god Tlaloc. He remarked that Sonia Green gave HPL a copy of Herbert J. Spinden's Ancient civilizations of Mexico and Central America, which mentioned Tlaloc. He also showed slides of images of Tlaloc as a crouching figure with something tentacular around the mouth (a representation of a beard?) and mentioned that HLP had access to these images. HPL also had access to Zelia Nuttall's works on Mesoamerica: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelia_Nuttall . He pointed out in closing that Lovecraft's favorite painter, Nicholai Roerich, retired to the Kullu Valley in India (!).

Planetary Astronomer Rachel Klima explained why and how she had a crater on Mercury named Lovecraft. The crater is permanently shadowed, very cold, may contain ice, and is near Mercury's South Pole.

C. Morgan Grefe told us about the history of Providence and its growth and prosperity due to several factors: Roger Williams's principle of separation of church and state, the destruction of rival port Newport during the American Revolution, and exploitation of slave labor. In particular, how John Brown (not the abolitionist -- quite the reverse) figured out how to open trade with China. He figured out what they wanted: ginseng. JB figures in HPL's work as one of the conspirators who defeated Joseph Curwen.

Readings.

Wilum Pugmire started before the scheduled time, so I missed the first part, but caught up with his reading from Some Unknown Gulf of Night, part of which is a prose poem which replies to HPL's sonnet 7 from Fungi from Yuggoth. Unfortunately his reading was very hesitant with many flubs and restarts. Here is a sample of a related passage which shows him in better form: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDFAeZdvAis. I hope he was not exhausted or ill. He told how he wrote his latest 3 books in a hurry because he expected to die soon from congestive heart failure. But, as he then said, "Alas, I did not die!". May he not anytime soon.

Fashion note: M. Pugmire was resplendent in plaid vest, black T-shirt, and kilt with a skull motif. His chapeau must have come from beyond space and time as we know it: I cannot find the words to describe it in familiar terms. I was taken by the tattoo of the Tetragrammaton on his left upper arm.

Pugmire then introduced "the delicious" Jason V. Brock who read several selections. I may have been worn out from the walking tour, but his work seemed to me to be routine pastiche.

Small Press Today:

Several publishers on the panel seemed not to understand what is happening or going to happen in publishing. I left early to go see some more films. More on this soon.

Friday Part 3/3: Films

It was back to the Black Box Theater at 95 Empire Street.

The short The Curse of Yig told the story efficiently in 32 minutes but suffered from sub-excellent acting. The ophidian makeup was pretty good. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1618475/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

The feature-length The Thing on the Doorstep was filmed on a microbudget over 6 years. The filmmakers were there and discussed continuity problems and why a lot of the scenes are grayish or over-saturated -- a choice to create the mood, not just poverty. I asked them if the scene with the eponymous mouldering Thing was a model or an actor in extreme makeup. Mary Jane Hansen, who played Asenath Waite, explained that she played the part in makeup done by her cousin. I commended the cousin's work. The acting is good in this one. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2193450/

Prequel to this posting: I picked up these DVDs from the HPLHS: The Call of Cthulhu, The Whisperer in Darkness, and The Colour out of Space (made in German as Die Farbe http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1756479/).

8-10

EXCELLENT reporting, bertilak. I feel like I'm there!

The lecture by John B. Carlson sounds really interesting. Did it seem feasible to you? The "Kullu Valley" bit puts a nice touch on it! Did not know that HPL had his own crater. I know he'd be amazed to hear it.

I've never heard Pugimire read, although there must be examples out there amongst his vast number of YouTube videos. He's mentioned his ill health before, but I hope he's with us for a long time to come.

If you see Jared Walters from Centipede Press, send him WT greetings! What does he have on display?

I watched The Earth Rejects Him last night. Very nicely done! I detected welcome echoes of Machen around the sheer surreality of the situation. Glad to hear that you picked up a copy of The Whisperer in Darkness. I think you'll enjoy it - let us all know. The Call of Cthulhu is arguably the best cinematic adaptation of HPL that I've seen. Nice to support the HPLHS!

> 11

I'm glad this is helpful. The Carlson thesis seemed at least worth investigating because he had done the homework of showing that Lovecraft owned specific books mentioning Tlaloc and that the iconography was close to that of the Cthulhu sketch in the letter to Barlow. I suppose the next step is to spend a few years exhaustively combing the letters ...

Saturday Part 1/3: readings

Joe Pulver was reading a very, very long poem when I arrived. I was not gruntled as I regarded this as taking time away from Laird Barron. Nobody else seemed to share my opinion, so I let it go.

Michael Griffin, Scott Nicolay, and Barron read "Diamond Dust", "Eyes Exchange Bank", and "D T" respectively. I think all these appear in anthologies edited by Pulver.

The Nicolay reading amused me greatly because he used Lansdale, PA as his degenerate, creepy setting. This is a borough near Philadelphia which I have often visited. It also figured in an episode of Fringe, in which it was a hick town with a sheriff and lots of corn, instead of a local railroad hub, which it is.

John Langan said he was Caitlín's warm-up act. He read from 'Bor Urus' from Shadows Edge edited by Simon Strantzas (I had to look this one up: with my bad hearing I thought the name of the story was Voorhees). Has anybody else noticed that John is starting to look like John Goodman in The Big Lebowski?

Caitlín Kiernan looked spiffy in grey slacks, hunter green blouse and tie, and gold lamé frock coat. She read "One Tree Hill" from the forthcoming The Ape's Wife and Other Stories in her fine tenor voice. I had not known that she does not do readings from any of her stories once they are published.

I don't know if this was planned, but lightning played an important role in both the Langan and the Kiernan stories.

Saturday Part 2/3: sessions

The 'Lovecraft's Influences' panel was chaired by Darrell Schweitzer and included S. T. Joshi. They imparted too much wisdom for me to transcribe about Poe, Dunsany, Machen, Bierce, Blackwood, Hawthorne and others.

The subsequent interview of Sunand Tryambak Joshi (S. T. to his friends) was the high point of the Con so far. S. T. always looked stern in his photos to me, as if he would jump down the throat of anybody who misquoted an HPL letter. In person he is quite genial and affable.

S. T.'s family moved to the US when he was 5, which is why he does not have an accent noticeable to me. As a young boy he loved football and did not like to read (!). His sister dragged him to the Muncie, Indiana public library and persuaded him to read. He read the Chronicles of Narnia and thought them an OK fantasy, but did not notice any of the Christian references.

He may have been introduced to HPL via a Scholastic 11th Grade Horror anthology, but this did not make a great impression. He did not get the HPL bug until reading The Rats in the Walls later.

S. T. attended Brown University because he wanted access to the HPL papers in the Hay Library. He did not major in English because he did not care for semiotics, deconstruction, or Theory, so he took Latin. This was beneficial for his HPL studies because he learned techniques of textual studies independent of the trendy stuff in the English department. It was amusing to hear how he got approval to have 2 books published by university presses by failing to mention that he was a 17-year-old high school student.

Saturday Part 3/3: podcast

I decided to skip the films this evening and attend the live recording of an episode of The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast (hppodcraft.com) with Chad Fifer, Chris Lackey, and Andrew Leman. Chris wore appropriate 1920s suit and rimmed glasses, with a period haircut and mustache. Andrew did not dress up but his voice is always formally attired.

The subject of the episode was The Fungi from Yuggoth. They discussed each sonnet and Andrew read half a dozen or so completely.

Andrew was choked up after reading this sonnet because it reveals so much about Lovecraft:

XXX. Background

I never can be tied to raw, new things,
For I first saw the light in an old town,
Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down
To a quaint harbour rich with visionings.
Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams
Flooded old fanlights and small window-panes,
And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes -
These were the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.

Such treasures, left from times of cautious leaven,
Cannot but loose the hold of flimsier wraiths
That flit with shifting ways and muddled faiths
Across the changeless walls of earth and heaven.
They cut the moment's thongs and leave me free
To stand alone before eternity.

During the warmup for the episode, they had the audience moan, boo, hiss, scream, and say 'Nooooooooooooooooo!' like Luke Skywalker and taped it for use in later podcasts. Listen carefully for my vocalizing when this podcast episode is released in October.

Chad explained that he sampled the characteristic scream on each podcast (after the announcer says 'hppodcraft.com') from a fan-contributed scream to an episode of The Greatest American Hero.

Before I head over for Robert M. Price's Cthulhu Prayer Breakfast, let me recount my Lovecraftian moment from yesterday.

I was sitting in the Grand Ballroom waiting for the first session to start when I glanced at the mirror and I saw myself. The does not sound too eldritch, so let me elaborate: I saw myself as I looked last year, before I grew a beard. So it was not merely my doppelgänger, but one displaced in time.

Of course I quickly realized that what I saw was a tall, gray-haired, clean-shaven man resembling me who was sitting in front of me. But the moment was real.

>13 bertilak:

I regard Laird Barron as the finest writer of weird fiction to emerge in the last 20 years, perhaps rivaled only by Michael Cisco. I finally, finally received Baird's new collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All in the mail yesterday (the first story is titled "Blackwood's Baby). It was packaged by brain-damaged simpletons and arrived damaged itself, but I dove in anyway. Replacement is on the way.

I know Lansdale PA - my Mom worked there for years. It's only about 30 minutes from here - pass the exit all the time on the way to Phila. Railroad is definitely heating up in eastern PA, to say the least.

>14 bertilak:

I should have gone to this con! I really like Darrel Schweitzer's work. His book Living With the Dead is a weird masterpiece. Joshi is Joshi, of course. He has always been quite cordial in my email dealings with him, even one time when I committed an embarrassing Lovecraftian faux pas.

>16 bertilak:

And Robert M. Price too! Be cautious around your doppelganger. The literature tells us they're almost always up to no good!

As my fevered brain seeks surcease, I wend my way whence I came, via Amtrak. I am returning mid-day because I made my reservations before I saw the Con program. I did not realize that they had sessions all day Sunday. Let my tragic error be a warning to all!

The greater tragedy is that NecronomiCon 2013 is officially just a one-off. There are no plans for another yet, though there is some talk about another one in 2015. Darn those stars! I think I may return on HPL's birthday next year on the assumption that something will be happening.

> 17

I agree about Laird Barron. I will have to check out that title. I did not bug him about his eyepatch, but his blog says "People, usually children, ask why I wear an eyepatch. I lost my right eye to cancer at age eighteen months or so. We think Dad got dosed with Agent Orange, but no one knows for certain.".

My doppelgänger was in the Providence train station. This is ominous!

Sunday Part 1/2: Cthulhu Prayer Breakfast.

The choir and organist were truly inspirational! The breakfast was fine but should have included sea food.

Dr. Price began with announcements. The Obama administration have a campaign to give politically correct names to Lovecraft characters. Here are a few which I was able to note down: The Delapoer cat is African-American-Male. The goat god is Shub-African-American-ath. Pickman's models are protein recycling exchange students. The Great Old Ones are The Great Seniors or The Greatest Generation. The Mad Arab is The Ammonite with an Alternative Worldview. The Necronomicon has been repurposed as a compendium of federal regulations and retitled The Necrobamacon.

Rabbi Lois advocated for Jews for Cthulhu, saying that the Chosen People should choose Cthulhu.

Deacon Cody gave the news from Dagon "where all the women are squamous ...", then, in a shocker, fomented a schism. He pulled off his be-tentacled miter and donned the regalia of Yog-Sothoth, while his minions asperged the crowd with soap bubbles.

Dr. Price preached his sermon on 'real sin' on a text from Machen: http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/websermons/real_sin.htm . I thought it was clever of him to insinuate real philosophy into a ludic occasion.

Finally, Dr. Price pronounced the demotivational dismissal: Cthulhu does not love us.

>19 bertilak:

You and Dr. Price have made my day! :D

If they do this in 2015, I shall make every effort to attend.

Sunday Part 2/2: Reading

W. H. Pugmire was back, wearing a black t-shirt with a portrait of his younger self and the caption 'W. H. Pugmire: Queen of Eldritch Horror". His jacket had a portrait of Oscar Wilde on the back. He read confidently while standing. I was glad to see him in better spirits than yesterday.

Pugmire began by explaining that Caitlín Kiernan might be late since she does not get up before 11 AM. He offered/threatened to perform a striptease to fill in the time.

First he read his poem "In Dark of Providence" which is printed on the last page of the souvenir program for NecronomiCon 2013. He explained that the reference to "no meaning" was for S. T. Joshi and did not reflect his actual beliefs.

He then read #20 from Some Unknown Gulf of Night. It appears that the entire book consists of responses to the sonnets in The Fungi from Yuggoth.

Unfortunately I had to leave for the train station at this time, so I did not get to see how bleary Caitlín might have looked so early as 11 AM.

Wrap Up.

An excellent Con! There were no disasters and only a couple of last-minute rescheds.

All the usual suspects were there and appear ready to return.

There was a horde of people in red shirts emblazoned with MINION who were all cheerful, friendly and helpful.

I thought it was kind of cute that there was no official lunch place for the Con in the hotel. One of the guides on the Lovecraft walking tour commended the food trucks in Burnside Park outside the Biltmore. This worked because the weather was perfect -- only about an hour of rain for the whole Con. I can personally recommend Mama Kim's Korean food truck.

Here is a first: I did not miss any sessions due to overcrowding. This may be because not enough people came or because the Con organizers did a superb job allocating spaces. I think the latter.

One more endorsement: The Cellar Stories Book Store on 111 Mathewson St (near the Providence Hotel, one of the Con venues) is a righteous used bookstore. By that I mean that it is well-enough organized to find things and messy enough to find things serendipitously. It's not in the cellar, it's on the 2nd floor.

"Andrew did not dress up but his voice is always formally attired" -- earns my nomination for Best of 2013 (in whatever category seems appropriate).

The Doppelgaenger Encounter(s) are amusing and menacing, mostly the latter. It reminds me of the Adrian Lyne film Jacob's Ladder (or perhaps a deleted scene from the Bruce Joel Rubin published screenplay) in which the protagonist looks in a mirror and sees himself from the back. Benign, and yet ... so horrifying.

ETA bertilak, another sincere Thank You for your stellar reportage, really first rate.

Yes, this was fascinating - many thanks.

Wanted to go to this one but we were already heading to the Worldcon in San Antonio which came shortly after so had to skip it. Thanks for the reports.

In his 8/31/13 blog post, S.T. Joshi remarks, "Let’s hope that in the 2015 convention I have a bit more time to sample other panels and events from the anonymity of the audience." Sounds promising for another NecronomiCon!

http://www.stjoshi.org/news.html

And 2015 is mentioned on the Con's own website too:

http://necronomicon-providence.com/

> 26

Splendid! The stars will be right again in 2 years. Now that I know the territory, I may go to Providence in 2014 on Aug. 20 for HPL's birthday. There is sure to be something eldritch happening then, even if not NecronomiCon.

BTW, I neglected a quote from Caitlín Kiernan reading. Who but she could have written "What is it that skies eat?".

Here are some videos from the Con: http://lovecraftzine.com/2013/08/30/videos-from-necronomicon/. Lucky me! They are almost all from panels I skipped.

How is it that I have only to-day noticed this discussion? This is the first time I learned that the podcast panel was devoted to Fungi from Yuggoth and that my all-time favorite reader of E'ch-Pi-El, the magnificent Andrew Leman, read some of the sonnets!!! Had I known, NOTHING could have kept me from being there. I was a bit depress'd after Friday night, as while my room mate and I slept, some bloke, noticing that our room's door was not securely latched, entered and stole my wallet. I saw the bloke as he waved his flashlight about, but I was half-asleep and thought he was some hotel security dude whut had entered the wrong room. So my wallet, with its credit cards and $300, was gone. Then I nearly broke my leg by walking off a platform where I was on a panel with S. T. and Caitlin concerning sexuality. But I really don't enjoy public readings. Caitlin never shew'd for her reading, so I got Cody Goodfellow and Peter Rawlik to read from their books instead.

We hope that there will be a NecronomiCon in 2015, but it is not yet a certainty.

Yes, SOME UNKNOWN GULF OF NIGHT is completely inspir'd by FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH, with each number'd segment a prose response to that number'd sonnet by Lovecraft. While writing it, I would listen to one sonnet read by William Hart on his YouTube channel, then I would read the sonnet silently to myself, and then I would write a prose poem influenced by the sonnet in which I played with the sonnet's imagery. I consider the book the best thing I've yet written.