The Thursday Weekender for June 26th, 2008 - Fur and Three Whole Days of Fear, Seminars, and Joy

If you’re reading this blog then you must be a haunted house and Halloween fan. If you are then unless you live under a monster mud and PVC fake rock built to house hidden speakers and pneumatics you undoubtedly have heard of Ironstock. If not, then read on you n00b.

Never has there been a gathering of haunters filled with more sin, debauchery, and plenty of good old fashioned family fun. Despite being talked about on virtually every list ad infinitum and thus causing many a haunter to have to add an email filter just to screen out all the chatter about it, this is still the gathering that has been around since Jesus was a trick-or-treater and shows no sign of stopping now. While I personally have never made it - the thought of spending a weekend out of doors in the high heat and humidity of the Midwest makes me want to openly weep - many, many haunters do and find a wealth of knowledge in the seminars, comradely from their fellow Halloween fans, and plenty of booze at the party. Check the Ironstock site for full details.

And now for something completely different. Anthrocon is the world’s largest convention for those fascinated with anthropomorphics, which are human-like animal characters. So, do you keep a fursuit in your closet you don’t share with your neighbors? Then this is the con for you. I actually found out about this years ago when I was researching the folks from Thrillvania that make those wonderful werewolf costumes for their haunt. Yes, some of them go to Anthrocon as werewolves - how frakin’ cool is that. Anyway, you can find all the info at the Anthrocon site.

Now For The SciFi Geek In Yinz

Here’s a list of other cons for the fans of speculative fiction. C’mon guys - just call it scifi and stop being so damn pretentious.

Hypericon (Jun 27-29 ‘08) Days Inn Stadium, Nashville TN. GoH: Joe R. Lansdale; Artist GoH: Alex McVey; other guests: Sherrilyn Kenyon, Glen Cook. Website: http://www.hypericon.info/.

ConRunner 2008 (Jun 28-29 ‘08) Britannia Hotel Wolverhampton, UK. A convention for UK/European convention runners from all the communities SF, Fantasy, Anime, Horror etc. Details and online membership http://www.conrunner.org.uk.

June 26th, 2008