Inspector Clay is Dead... Murdered. And Somebody's Responsible!

Just in case you were wondering where Shakes is going to be for the rest of the day, she and I are heading up to Evanston to sit through B-Fest, the annual 24-Hour Crap-A-Thon hosted by Northwestern University. You can see Shakes' roundup of our experience last year here.

The picture to the left shows one of the B-Fest traditions; the great paper plate fracas. See, every year, the classic Ed Wood masterpiece, Plan 9 from Outer Space, is shown at midnight. Every time the wobbly flying saucers appear on screen, people throw masses of paper plates into the air... think of the toilet paper gag when people see "Rocky Horror." Of course, the witty B-Movie scalawags have written hilarious quips on the paper plates, so it's always fun to quickly read them before you whip them up into the air in the next flying saucer scene. (The plate in the picture, by the way, reads "what we have here is a failure to communicate." My favorite one of the evening had a large, lizard-ish footprint drawn on it, with the warning, "Gojira!")

One of the tricky things about B-Fest is figuring out when you're going to sneak in a few winks. Staying awake for 24 hours is a bit much for my tired old ass, so usually there's one or two flicks that you don't have much interest in, where you can snooze for a bit before waking up for something you really want to see. (Last year I konked out for most of Gas-s-s-s-s! and Tromeo & Juliet; although I did catch bits of the latter and enjoyed what I saw.)

The problem is, this year's lineup is so incredible, I have no idea where I'm going to get any sleep. Around 3AM is where I usually start to slow down... but I can't possibly miss Street Trash at 4:45! And at 6:15, we have The Hypnotic Eye, a movie that I've been dying to see for years. What to do, what to do?

Invasion of the Star Creatures, a painfully bad sci-fi "comedy" is at 3:15... I actually own this on DVD (shut up), so I'm hoping to get a quick nap in there. But... it'll be on the big screen! Oh, the temptation!

Anyway, we're going to try and get some photos and maybe even a video clip or two of our experience. Have a great non-geeky weekend, and we'll see you on the other side!

UPDATE: Shakes & I will try to get to a computer to add the Virtual Pub this evening; if we're not able to do it, feel free to use this post as a pub/open thread. The virtual pub will run as scheduled; Mister Shakes will be posting it later!