 |
Beautiful Girls With Guns,
Thoughts About
Life, and Death, and ComicCon |
Well, 2011 has been a hell of a year. What can
I say about a year in which, within
weeks of each other, my mother's best friend and my best friend's
mother both died?
That actually happened, and they weren't the only good people I know who died this year. Good people getting sick, good people dying all year long. Some of the best people I know, including Pop.
My father, Eugene Brennan, developed heart trouble in March after undergoing a "minor procedure" (don't get me started). For the next seven months, he was in and out of the hospital several times and eventually wound up in a Surgical ICU unit, hooked up to a respirator and a feeding tube. God bless him, Pop never lost his spirit or his sense of humor. Whenever the family would go to visit him, he was the one who joked around with us, not vice versa. Even when the respirator tube made him unable to speak, he would write out notes such as "Escape!". Some day we though he wouldn't make it through the night, other days we thought he looked so good he would be home in a few days. Eventually we all realized he would never be coming home, and he was moved to the hospice wing of the hospital where, on September 7th, he passed away peacefully at the age of 81.
A little while after Dad passed away though, we all had to adjust to a new fact in life: we suddenly had free time again. After spending five months taking care of Dad and each other, we did not know what to do with ourselves. I knew one thing though, that I had to get out of the house for a while and just go somewhere and relax.
My friend, fellow Queens residence and actress Laura Aguinaga was going to be at ComicCon at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City in October to promote an upcoming movie she was going to be in. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to get out and relax after seven hard months. I bought my pass by mail and went there on Saturday October 15th, the second and busiest day of the three-day event.
I had never been to ComicCon
before. It is
a celebration of comics, graphic novels and anime, none of which are
really my thing. I am much more of a horror, sci-fi and
fantasy
guy (hence I created this site) but I figured there would be
enough weird and interesting stuff there to sustain my
interest
once I had finished visiting Laura at her booth.
Before I
found Laura - the Jacob Javits Center is
gigantic - I stumbled across a video seller hawking rare DVDs.
That is usually my first stop at any
convention. At Chiller shows in New
Jersey, I
have
picked up such films as the original The
Stepfather starring Terry O'Quinn years before he
finally gained fame on TV with Lost,
and Bad Ronald,
a bad but unforgettable old TV movie starring Scott Jacoby and Kim
Hunter. This is what I love about these conventions.
You can find stuff you just can't seem to find anywhere else.
At this seller's table at ComicCon, I
found one Walt
Disney film that seems destined never
to be released on home video: 1946's Song
of the South.
Held back from rerelease because of concerns that parts of it
may
be culturally insensitive to some African- Americans, Song of the South is
a
part live action, part animated adaptation of the "Uncle Remus" stories
of B'rer Rabbit by Joel Chandler
Harris. The movie's greatest claim to fame, aside from its
supposed
controversial status, is the happy little Oscar-winning
song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah!". Having
watched the film now in the comfort of my own home, I can say that,
while it is no classic and may contain a small handful of uncomfortable
moments (like many other older films that are out on home video), it
certainly deserves to be out on DVD. Release this film now, Disney.
Now onto the beautiful girls with guns.
I tracked down Laura a few minutes later at a
booth where
she was promoting the upcoming independent film S.E.A.L.S.
by ACS TrouperTouch Entertainment about a deadly all-female
task
force. Outfitted in her costume
for the movie (see the picture at the top of this page), Laura looked
amazing but was nervous because she was the only
member of
the cast who
was there at that time, and it was her first time promoting
her
own
work rather than working for others ."I was so
excited
yet having a heart attack at the
same time," she told me recently. "You are not only there to
promote your work, but you are also there to promote yourself as an
actor so you start thinking to yourself 'What if nobody shows up!? What
if nobody cares!?'. Then you have these people show up showing nothing
but love and support for you and that feeling was amazing!"
2011 may not have been a great year for me, but it has been an excellent year for Laura, and I am so happy for her. Not only has she been filming S.E.A.L.S. but she has also been interviewed twice by our local paper The Queens Tribune about her acting and has appeared as herself in an episode of Animal Planet's "My Extreme Animal Phobia". As she told me a little while after we became friends, she gave up her regular job to devote her energies to her acting career, which also includes modeling and promotion. She deserves all the success that comes her way, because she works hard at it and takes it seriously.
Laura told me that if I came back later, the rest of the S.E.A.L.S. cast would be there (more beautiful girls with guns!), so I moved on after having her autograph an 8 by 12 photo of her in character as "Li'l Bit" from the movie. I also took some pictures with her, most of them useless because (a) my camera phone did not have a flash and (b) I suck at using my camera phone, flash or no flash. This was a problem all the time I was at Comic Con. So many people walking around in outlandish costumes, yet two out of three times when I tried to take a picture, I would mess it up.
And that brings up Bigfoot! He (well, somebody in a costume) was walking around and spied me attempting to take pictures, so he moved toward me and gestured, in that clever, endearing way Bigfoot has, that I should take a picture of him. So I tried. It didn't work. I tried again. It didn't work again. So Bigfoot, detecting an emerging pattern, slowly walked away shaking his head in disgust at me! I'm there like the kid from Shane yelling "Bigfoot! Come back!" but it was no use. Bigfoot was gone. I silent cursed him out and moved on, hoping nobody saw the embarrassment that just occurred to me. Even today, sometimes I wake up thinking "Dissed by Bigfoot - dude, you've got nowhere to go but up now."
I did manage to take some fun pictures, such as these two girls
dressed as elves. I think that's what they're supposed to be.
I got a definite Lord of the
Rings
vibe from their costumes, but having only seen one of those films and
forgetting it immediately after, I can't be sure They kindly
posed while I took two pictures. By the second one, they
seemed
to be getting a little bored of me. First Bigfoot, now elves!
I just can't win with mythical characters!
There was so much to see and do at ComicCon, but there is a rule in life, my life at least, that goes "When you finally get to that day you've been waiting for, that will be the day the plumber has to fix your toilet." I was under the gun. I could only spare a couple of hours there before having to go home and deal with the plumber, who had a track record at successful plumbing on par with Curly from The Three Stooges. I figured I'd better get home before I had water gushing out of my television. Still, I had time left to check out some really amazing artwork on the third floor, talk with a guy dressed in an ancient Grecian costume who was selling what looked like a very cool video game about the art of war, and indulge in some overpriced food, a staple at any convention. A three dollar bag of honey roasted peanuts? Sure, I'd love some! I also almost knocked myself out by sitting down in a comfy chair in a lounge area. I won't even go into the details on that one.
Oh, and I took a picture of
Death. ("Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly
stopped for me" - Emily Dickinson) ("And let me take his picture!" - I
added that part). The
irony of taking a picture of Death
was not lost on me considering the events of the past few
months, but I did not let it bother me. The family
all
agrees that Dad would be the first to say "Hey, I'm gone.
Don't
just sit around moping and crying! Get on with your lives!".
We've all been dealing with our loss in individual ways, and
mine
is to remember the good times with him but to keep on keeping on.
Even my memories of ComicCon makes me think of
him. I know he would
have enjoyed watching Song of the South
- two of his favorite movies were Disney's Pinocchio and the Fleischer
Brothers' 1939 animated feature Gulliver's
Travels.
I know he would have been happy hearing that Laura,
whom I
pointed out to Pop in an episode of "Law and Order" once, was
going to be on Animal Planet, one of his favorite go-to
channels
when the Yankees weren't playing. Even seeing this picture of
Death makes me remember one of the last things he mouthed to us, a joke
about Death, on the day before they were going to remove all his tubes:
"You coming back tomorrow? Bring flowers!". Damn,
even when
the man gave up, he never gave up.
Before I left ComicCon, I did make it back to Laura's booth to say goodbye, but the other girls had not shown up yet and I didn't have time to wait. It's a shame I didn't go back the next day, because it was apparently "Insanely Sexy Dress" day for all the S.E.A.L.S ladies, judging by the pictures Laura shared. Oh, well, maybe next year, when I hope they will be well on their way to a sequel: S.E.A.L.S 2: Beautiful Girls With Guns VS. Bigfoot.
Laura promises me that she will
have a bazooka by then.
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Copyright © John V. Brennan, 2011. All Rights Reserved.
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Copyright © 2010 John V. Brennan, John Larrabee