The first couple hours went by and it was very slow. We only made one sale I think in the first few hours. Friday wasn't a very busy day for the convention, but things would pick up the next day, which I'll talk about later. The two DVDs that we were selling were, Bleed and Chameleon. Both discs had tons of extras, such as short films and trailers. The other booths were selling anything from comic books to Star Wars figures. The booth next to us was none other than Troma Entertainment. For those of you who don't know who Troma is, they are famous for making the cult classic The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuk'em High. In the 90's they made a bunch of films such as Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. and Tromeo and Juliet which starred Debbie Rochon. To may surprise, Lloyd Kaufman, who is founder, president, writer, producer, director, etc. to Troma Films was there. I've been a fan of his work for so many years I was thrilled to meet him. Jason introduced myself and Simon to Lloyd. It was an honor to meet him. We gave him a copy of our DVDs. The cool thing was he wanted us to autograph them. He was one of the nicest persons I ever met. He even said he would be in one of our films for free. He's also going to be in one of Jason's films as well. You may be seeing a cameo of Mr. Kaufman in an ICON film in the near future.

Half way into the day, Simon and I decided to walk around the convention. We saw a variety of sci-fi characters. Stormtroopers, Boba Fett, Super Mario Bros., Spider Man, Thor, X-Men, G.I. Joes, characters from all kinds of anime. The best were one guy who was Shaun from Shaun of The Dead, he walked around the convention posing for pictures with everyone. Another funny one was a guy dressed as Snake Plissken from Escape from New York, but the shape this guy was in, a cordoning to Simon it was more like he didn't Escape from the Refrigerator. We saw some more cool things as we wandered around. Then we walked over to where all the celebrities were. Looking around to see who was there, I saw Lou Ferrigno, The Hulk himself. I shouted to Simon, "There's Lou Ferrigno!" Simon was very surprised as well. We didn't know he was going to be here. We walked over to his table, the guy still is in great shape. Simon asked if we could get a picture with him and an autograph. He said sure if you buy one of his books or color pictures. We did but it was worth it. If we bought the book we got a b/w picture anyway. I was shaking giving the money to him. I can't believe I was meeting The Hulk. He signed the picture and the book and we got that picture with him. He was a cool guy. Also there was the cast of Buck Rogers. We didn't even recognize Gil Gerard. He needs to go back to the 25th century cause the 21st century hasn't been kind to him. Also there were Felix Silla who played Twiki, Erin Gray who you might know from the 80's sitcom Sliver Spoons, she played Wilma on the Buck Rogers series. And also Thom Christopher who played Hawk in the last years of the show. Other actors that we saw were Sam Jones and Melody Anderson from the 1980 film Flash Gordon and Richard Hatch who played Captain Apollo from the original Battlestar Galactica.

Later in the day, I finally got to met Katherine Leis, who is from the Orlando area and is an actress, writer, filmmaker. We've exchanged e-mails over the last year but never met in person. She wrote a great review on our film To Live Is To Die when it played at Saints and Sinners IV. Her film, Run played at that same festival and was playing at Megacon. We talked for a bit about different movie projects we worked on or that we want to work on. We also talked about working together on something in the near future. She was very wonderful and is very talented and it was nice to finally meet her. We also met for the first time, actress, model, writer, filmmaker, XZanthia. We have seen her in Other Side Cinema's Homeland Security and is featured in the up coming sci-fi film Unearthed. We talked with her and she was very nice. We talked a little about the films that she done and people she worked with. After that the convention shut down for the first day and Simon and I checked into are motel room and got some rest for the next day.

Saturday, the second day of Con. When we arrived back to The Civic Center, Andy was the first one there ready for another mega day. Soon after us, Greg walked in followed later by Jason and Debbie. It was very packed on Saturday. More people than the pervious day. We saw plenty of familiar faces come our way. The first was ED Tucker who writes sometimes for Crazedfanboy.com. This was the first time Simon and I have met ED. Andy introduced us to him when he stopped at our booth. Horror author, Jeff Strand stopped by next. This is the first time we met Jeff as well. He was at The Halloween Horror Picture Show last year but we didn't get a chance to meet. We've exchanged e-mails a few times in the past and Jeff remembered seeing some of our work.

Then we ran into our friend Nolan Canova founder of Crazedfanboy.com. Nolan told us he was going to come up to the convention on Saturday. He stopped by the booth and we talked for awhile. Jason and Andy also write for Crazedfanboy. Jason has been writing a fictional series called DinoSoldier and Andy writes a column called Oddservations. Nolan also got to meet Debbie and got a few pictures of all of us at the booth. We later ran into another Crazedfanboy writer, Brandon Jones who writes the Splash Page column. We haven't seen Brandon since last year at one of Coffeehouse Film Review in Ybor City. Also, Special Effects Master, Chris Polidoro stopped by and hung out for a little while. Chris did F/X for our film To Live Is To Die. We talked about what projects he's been working on lately and stuff we've been doing. Simon and Greg walked around the place to get some pictures with some Star Wars characters and other famous actors that were present. Jason and myself were walking around to try and submit one of our films and posters as a giveaway prize. But we got the run around from a few people and never found out who we had to talk to about that. Met lots of different people and made some connections. From actresses to special effects artist to writers to filmmakers.

Some other familiar faces stopped by our booth as the day went on. Actor Chris Brooks who played Leonard in Filthy came by to talk to Andy and show his support for the film. Drew Reiber another writer from Crazedfanboy came by to check the booth out. Katherine Leis paid us a visit. I gave her a copy of Bleed and Chameleon on DVD. She said she always wanted to check out Bleed. Actress, Nichole Peterson of Greg Rivera's Uninvited series came by the booth to hang out for awhile. She signed autographs and talked to the fans. Filmmaker Noeland Collins stopped by. I worked with Noeland on his film After Life, which I edited. It was good to see Noeland. He is now currently working on The Blade Runner Chronicles for a fan film on the web. We also saw Lonnie Dohlen, friend of Nolan Canova and Andy Lalino. Lonnie helps out with The Dr. Paul Bearer Database on Crazedfanboy. We got a picture of XZanthia walking around on stilts. That's one way to get around the convention. I also got to talk to Lloyd Kaufman again. I bought his book, All I Need To Know About Filmmaking I Learned From The Toxic Avenger and got him to sign it. Also got Debbie Rochon to sign one of her pictures. We also autograph our DVD for her. It was great meeting them and I hope all of us can work on a film very soon.

The end of Saturday came and Simon and I started to pack up. We couldn't stay for a third day. Simon had a long drive ahead of him on Sunday and had to be at work early on Monday. But the two days were worth it. We didn't sell much but we made allot of contacts and meet some new people. We gathered up our stuff and said our good-byes. Got some food, went to the motel, got a good night sleep, woke up the next morning and headed home. Megacon 2005 was a great experience. All of us had a good time at booth #721, The Florida Frights Booth. It was nice hanging out with friends and supporting something we love to do. Thanks to all the friends and fans that paid us a visit. Thank you, Simon, Andy, Greg, Jason, Debbie, Brian, Nichole, and Chris for coming together and supporingt each other on what we do best. I had an awesome time! See all of you at Megacon 2006!

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More Megacon pix and notes at these sites below:

Greg Rivera's Megacon pictures

Nolan Canova's Megacon notes and pictures

Andy Lalino's notes

Jason Liquori's notes and pictures

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