James Hannon's Tales From the Lantern

Part 2 of a segment about two consecutive weekends where I got to met THREE of my childhood heroes, and have a lot of other cool things happen at a pair of conventions.  This is in addition to the weekend earlier where it was Superhero Nirvana down in Flemington, NJ– October is a great month to be a costumer!

Well, this one is about the big boy of conventions in the New York City area – NY Comic Con!  Last year there were 96,000 or so attendees – this year 105,000.  According to Wikipedia, its been going up steadily since its inception…It sold out both weekend days this year, so I dont know how much higher those numbers can get…

Last year, Johnny Rox and I went to NYCC for a first time on the Saturday, and it was MOBBED (I’m not talking supermarket mobbed – I’m talking last train out of the apocalypse-mobbed!)…   We went in normal civilian clothes (as opposed to being costumed) and we had a great time.  Check out our experience last year here  (Lots of pix there too)

Anyhoo, so lets get on with the events of the individual 2011 days!

Friday Oct 14th, 2011 – Day #1 (for me)

Someone mentioned to me that since I was vacation on Friday, I should go to NYCC that day because it would be a LOT less crowded…  Nobody else was on vacation, so I had nobody else to go with, but I knew enough people there – so I headed into the city on Friday sans costume…

I got a call in the morning saying that the lines around the Javitz Center were insane but happily found out that these were people who had to pickup tickets.  Luckily I ordered my tix a few months ago and had them in hand, and didn’t need to wait in any lines..  But I got there after 2pm anyway to avoid the initial confusion that usually happen at these things.

I went in without any maps, or any idea what I wanted to do…  I said I wouldn’t do that again, and I actually created an agenda on the NYCC website, but I never printed it, nor did I remember anything on the list…   There’s a LOT to see, and there’s no way in hell I was gonna see 5% of what there was to see, so I just decided to let Fate be my guide…

So I walked… And walked…  And walked…  I zigged and zagged down aisles dodging human traffic looking for (more…)

During the course of two weekends in October 2011, I got to met THREE of my childhood heroes, and have a lot of other cool things happen.  This is in addition to the weekend earlier where it was Superhero Nirvana down in Flemington, NJ – October is a great month to be a costumer!

This was originally going to be one blog entry, but there were too many pictures to split out between the two events, so I figured I’d make two so it would be easier for my readers to digest.

During the 2nd weekend of October, 2011, a small convention down in Cherry Hill, NJ happened. It was called the Garden State Comic Con and it was run by a company named ZoloWorld.   Its not the biggest con I’ve been to, and it certainly is going thru some growing pains, but you know what? I had a great experience there, so I’ll cut them slack on the problems faced…

For a small con,they had some big con names appearing – Barbara Eden from I Dream of Jeannie, Hayden Panettiere – the cheerleader from Heroes, Davy Jones of the Monkees, Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Rusty Goffe and Bonnie Piesse from the Star Wars franchise.

One particular attendee – Jackson Bostwick, most people probably wouldn’t recognize, but he was the reason I drove an hour and a half to Cherry Hill to see.  Mr Bostwick played the original Captain Marvel from the 1973 live action Saturday morning show “SHAZAM!” which was my favorite show from when I was 6 years old.  I  dare say that this show may have been the early inspiration for the costuming bug I developed years later.  I remember yelling “SHAZAM!” and tying a towel around my neck and pretending to be Captain Marvel (or as I call him Shazam).

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Hey it’s almost time for another round of WIDOMW (What I Did On My Vacation) posts.  Last year was a flurry of events including events promoting my new book (at the time) – Lost Boys of the Bronx– The Oral History of the Ducky Boys Gang.  ( c’mon you knew I had to  advertise it at least once LOL),  NY Comic Con, an Irish-American Writers party with some big names, a Halloween Parade, and a few charity events – where one sparked one of the greatest nicknames ever – the Peeping Princess…  Click the WIDOMV category over there on the right to read some of those adventures…

Starting Friday (10/7), I’m starting another 2-week October vacation.   Now if you’re from my regular day-job, I will be in Cuba without phone or email and please stop reading right now however.

Ok, good it’s just my friends now, so I can be honest – I’ve got a few events lined up – NY Comic Con,  the annual Irish-American Writers & Artists Awards party, my best friend Jeff’s show down at the Brighton Bar, and God knows what else…  Check my Facebook or Twitter page to see where I’ll be, and check back here after the fact and I’m sure I’ll have a report of what happened…

But my biggest plans for the next two weeks may not sound thrilling to some, but to me it’s heaven.  For the next two weeks, I’ll be splitting my time between my home-office and the local Scotch Plains library working on taking a big chunk out of my new book.

“What new book?” Well, you may want to check out this link for a little better background on me and my project.  But, the short version is that for the last few months I have been interviewing some really cool & interesting people who get dressed up in costumes for various reasons and finding out what makes them tick.   The reasons people put on a costume are a lot deeper than you would think.

Well anyway, speaking of really cool costumers, I attended a really cool costuming event yesterday (10/1/2011) down in Flemington, NJ called SuperHeroes for Hayley.  It was a charity event set up by HomeTown Club in Somerset, NJ to benefit the family of a 12 year old girl with brain cancer.   The Star Wars costuming group I belong to called the 501^st Legion – NorthEast Remnant Garrison was requested by the fabulous Amber Love and we showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on Saturday morning.

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WIDOMV 2010 = What I Did On My Vacation 2010

Subtitled: Meeting Brian Dennehy and Being accepted into the Irish-American Writer community

Well, this installment of the What I Did On My Vacation series is one of the more awesome things that I have done… When I first got back from this event and shared the pictures on my Facebook account, one of my old neighborhood friends made the comment “I can’t believe a kid from Briggs Avenue was invited to an event like this”

And guess what?   I can’t believe it either…

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WIDOMV 2010 = What I Did On My Vacation 2010

Subtitled: Peeping Princess Leia traumatizes a civilian in distress

Ok, this installment will be a bit shorter than the rest.   This covers the first week of my vacation and after NY Comic Con, it was time to rest a bit, hit the beach in the fall (a GREAT time to hit the beach) an do a lot of behind-the-scenes promotional stuff for my  book

No time like the present for a shameless plug for the book…   I wrote a book called Lost Boys of the Bronx: The Oral History of the Ducky Boys Gang – It is about the real-life exploits of the gang that was so terrifying in the 1979 movie “The Wanderers” – they also happened to roam the neighborhood I grew up in in the early 1960s.

You can find more out about the book at its Facebook Fan Page or you can pick up a copy at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.  You can also pick up a signed copy directly from me at Lantern-Media.com

Ok, enough with the shameless plug, lets get onto the story you’ve been waiting to hear – How did sweet little Princess Leia traumatize some poor innocent soul at a charity event?

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WIDOMV 2010 = What I Did On My Vacation 2010

Subtitled: Spandex babes and getting robbed by the Incredible Hulk Lou Ferrigno.

Like I said in Part 1 of this series of my blog entries, this was originally going to be one document, but it got really long, and nobody was going to read that much no matter how much they like the way I write LOL

This entry is not so much Ducky Boys gang related, but more about one of my hobbies.   If you don’t know already, I am a member of the 501st Legion and Rebel Legion groups which are Star Wars costuming groups.  Now before you write them off as a bunch of geeks and nerds, realize that these groups do a helluva lot of good.   During this particular series of blogs, you will see that I have gone to two charity events to entertain the crowds and help raise money for good causes like the Miracle Walk and Safe in Hunterdon woman’s shelter in NJ.  But you’ll see that in later version of this series of blogs.

Now that being said, this particular blog is purely about geek nirvana…  And getting robbed by Lou Ferrigno…

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WIDOMV 2010 = What I Did On My Vacation 2010

I started typing this as one document that covered two weeks, but it got really long…So I’m going to break it into sections for both your and my sanity…  I’ll back-fill the “/?” part of the title when I figure out how long I end up dragging this out…

Well, its Sunday October 24th, 2010 and its the last day of my two week vacation – Its back to work tomorrow.  And while I didn’t “go anywhere” for my vacation, I did seem to do an awful lot of stuff if you believe the pictures I took from the last two weeks…

My vacation officially started on Friday,  Oct 8th, but I can’t talk about that week without telling of something really cool that happened on Monday of that week…   I did an interview on TV for my book Lost Boys of the Bronx – The Oral History of the Ducky Boys Gang !!!

It was for a Bronx community access show called BronxTalk with Gary Axelbank and it was my first real interview on TV…  (There was something on Scotch Plains TV a few years back for my RYL Documentary, but we don’t talk about that anymore)   Bronx Talk is a show on the BronxNet network, and everybody in the Bronx (estimated population 1,411,654 people) with cable gets this channel so its not small potatoes…  It was also repeated 3 times a day – every day for the week.  In addition it was also simulcast on the http://www.bronxnet.org/tv/bronxtalk website — What I’m saying is that a LOT of people had potential to watch the show..

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