Groovy!

So, like I said earlier, I went up to Albuquerque last night to see Bruce Campbell. He was in town on a tour to promote his new book, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, which seems to be a semi-autobiographical comic novel, and looks like a lot of fun. So I snagged me a copy of the book and got it signed, then went to a special screening of his new movie The Man with the Screaming Brain at the local indie theater. Bruce did a Q&A session with the audience before the movie, and was really, really cool: hysterically funny, full of great stories, not in the least afraid to express his opinions, and possessed of a surprising amount of energy after having just sat in a bookstore signing his name over and over for three hours.

As for the movie... Well, it was a "Sci Fi Pictures Original," which, if you're at all familiar with the Sci Fi network, probably tells you something. (Well, technically, it was a theatrical cut of the movie, intended for overseas release, which apparently means there was more sex and swearing than you'd see on Sci Fi.) It was at least somewhat ahead of most Sci Fi productions, in that it didn't have any giant killer animals in it. Actually, it had kind of a fun (if goofy) premise, involving bits of different people's brains being spliced together, and some laugh-out-loud funny moments, but it worked best when it was really going almost over the top in parodying B-movie conventions, and I can't help but think it would have really improved it to play up that type of humor more. Also, apparently it was originally supposed to be set in LA, but Sci Fi insisted on producing it in Bulgaria, because Bulgarians will work for next to nothing, so they had to re-write the script to set it in Bulgaria, leading to a certain "WTF? Bulgaria?" quality. If I'd come across it flipping channels on Sci Fi, I suspect I'd quite likely have changed the channel, but in a theater full of Bruce fans, having been warmed up by his terrific intro, and having gone in with the full expectation of getting a B-movie, it managed to be an entertaining experience.

Plus, I had good Chinese food, and got to hang with some friends I don't see nearly as often these days as I used to, so it was a good night. I'm callin' it my birthday present to myself, I think.