Kyle and I spent last night at our friends' place drinking and playing Betrayal at the House on the Hill. The game ended in a draw, but the haunt we received to battle was nearly unbeatable anyways, so nobody winning was sorta OK.
Haven't done an outfit post in a while, so here's what I ended up wearing for the night. Nothing too fancy since our friends have four dogs that love to sit on laps and tear stockings/snag leggings, so yeah. But on a happy note - it's finally jacket season so I can break out all my fun jackets and blazers. I'm really into blazers lately, especially the ones with draped and triangular hem fronts with cropped backs.
Vest - eBay; High-low tunic - Forever 21; Spike necklace - eBay; Boots - New Rock
Studded stocking - Hot Topic. I'm a fan of mismatched stockings and socks and it's finally cold enough to layer them!
Pleather cropped moto jacket - GoJane. I love cropped jackets with a super draped back hem peeking out from underneath.
I'm busy preparing for upcoming press coverage of the Skinny Puppy and Birthday Massacre shows. Snow White Smile managed to get on the bill for the Birthday Massacre performance, so it should be a fun night! Only two weeks left for them to practice.
After leaving Los Angeles, Kyle and I headed to Anaheim to spend a few days at the happiest place on earth. We finally invested in some annual passes, so we got to experience Disneyland at a slower pace than we're used to. It was such a different feeling to take our time and eat at fancy Disney restaurants and just kind of wander around the parks. Also, it was weird to leave before midnight because it was off-season and the parks closed at 8:00 pm.
It's kinda boring to tell the story of what we did at Disneyland, unless the audience happens to be a bunch of Disneyphiles (which I highly doubt). So, I'm not really going to talk much about what we did, I'm going to share a bunch of photos with captions instead. Makes for a much more interesting post I think. ;-P
So, here goes! Oh, and by the way - they are in no particular order.
Kyle eating his first Starbucks treat from Main Street. We hadn't been to the park since the Starbucks got put in.
Kyle enjoying a beer at Carthay Circle in the early afternoon.
The salad that was served with our meals at Carthay Circle. Just delicious.
We both ate salmon for lunch at Carthay Circle. It was such a great way to fuel the rest of our day until dinner.
Carthay Circle dessert. We're not pigs and can't eat this much, but the meal package we ordered to get good seats for World of Color included a three course meal, hence the appetizer, entree, and now, dessert. It was some sort of chocolate flan BTW.
I took this photo in the Carthay Circle bathroom because it's probably the nicest bathroom in all of California Adventure. It was such a slow day that I had the whole bathroom to myself.
Radiator Springs Racers. My hair is going crazy.
First Tower of Terror ride of the trip. It's funny because you can tell who the Disney regulars are based on if they're posed in the photo or not.
Kyle's drawing a cartoon in the animation building in CA Adventure. You put the cartoon in the spinner and it shows you the picture in action.
Urusula on the Little Mermaid ride.
"Frozen" is so popular that Disney apparently has to limit the number of items guests can purchase. I found that amusing.
I got a vegan burger at Carnation Cafe on Main Street. It was really good. Plus it's good to know that Disney is taking into account all the diets that people have.
You better believe I had my mid-day Dole Whip. You buy one of these babies and head into the TIki Room when you start to get tired and it gives you a second wind.
Disney makes "Frozen" everything, even rice crispy treats!
Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy. Again, you can tell the Disneyland people because they pose in their photos.
We had a fancy dinner at the Blue Bayou, which is inside of Pirates of the Caribbean, in case you didn't know. It's pretty romantic in there, especially when you get a seat close to the water…which we did not. Haha.
Kyle ate a steak at Blue Bayou. No surprise there.
Disney has really upped their game when it comes to salads. Every salad I had at the park was delicious and perfectly balanced between sweet, acidic, and savory flavors.
My dinner at Blue Bayou was some sort of mushroom and spinach thing with couscous underneath. It was very good. I took a gamble ordering it because I had never ordered anything like it before, but I'm glad I tried it.
We got to enjoy the Halloween decorations because we went the day before they took it all down and started putting up the Xmas stuff. It literally happened overnight. Each day we went, there was a bit more Christmas sprouting up at each location.
Toy Story ride.
He always beats me at the video game interactive rides. Not fair.
Second go-round on Tower of Terror. We ran into our sister-in-law who works security at CA Adventure and she gave us a pass to get to the front of the line because we chatted so long with her that we missed using our fast pass. *wink wink* Not that it mattered much. The park was so slow, the wait time was only like 20 minutes anyways.
Radiator Springs area looks so pretty at night.
Ghostly travelers on our way back to our hotel.
Kyle's caption for this one on Instagram was, "You must be this tall to take a selfie." Haha. I tried to tell him I wasn't tall enough, but he didn't listen.
Kyle had a chocolate parfait, which was also super good. Pretty much everything we ate this trip was delicious.
Pirate's booty.
Lookit all that treasure!
The treats inside the Starbucks. Yum!
Just looking at this photo makes me want to eat it.
Mickey bat cookies?!? Yes please!
The Mickey ferris wheel at night. Always makes for a great photo.
Our final day before we flew back home, we made a small drive to a restaurant run by ex-Orgy member Ryan Schuck (he's now part of Julien-K, who we saw perform live back in July). He has a few restaurants in the area and we went to the one called Gypsy Den. They had vegan and vegetarian food (mostly) so I was so happy to eat there, never mind the fact that it's owned by Mr. Schuck.
Kyle was taking a picture of the art on the walls, but he captured me looking bored instead. I wasn't bored, just intently trying to figure out what to order since I was able to eat pretty much everything on the menu. It made my choice super hard!
I wound up ordering a vegan chipotle chicken wrap with fries. It was seriously so good. I wish I could make food this good at home.
We also had hummus and pita, which is always a good choice. I don't think I've ever met a hummus I didn't like.
Exterior of the restaurant.
It was a super fun trip, but we were thankful to get home to our kitties.
We started off our Saturday by heading to the LA Convention Center in our miniature car (the rental company gave us a Chevy Spark and they are funny-looking!). Surprisingly, it wasn't hard to find parking, but when we pulled into the area it was very intimidating because people in cosplay were migrating en masse to the Convention Center for Comikaze, which is LA's version of Comic Con.
After snapping some selfies out front of the venue, we braved the crowd and headed inside. Neither of us had ever been to a convention of this nature before and it was certainly hectic! It was stimulus overload because every direction we looked there was something interesting and amazing to stare at - cosplayers, booths, events, stages, and replicas galore. A nerd's paradise. I felt like I had come down with a case of ADD because as soon as I started to investigate something, I would immediately get distracted by something equally as cool.
Across the street from the Convention Center as we were approaching it. Food trucks and cosplayers galore!
This is what greeted us as we entered the venue. So many people and fans of all sorts.
Meet Baymax from the new Disney flick "Big Hero 6." We saw a preview of this movie at Disneyland and it looks adorable. The Baymax guy is so cute. This replica was pretty big.
Kyle and some R2 units.
This is what we saw when we entered the main hall where all the exhibitions and booths were located. Just overwhelming!
What would a comic convention be without a giant wall of comics for sale?
R2D2!
I'm not enough of a Star Wars nerd to know this little droid's proper name, but he was black, so of course I took his picture.
All the Marvel super heroes were present. Here's the Incredible Hulk.
Iron Man, who is my favorite of the Avengers.
Thor and his hammer.
Captain America.
JURASSIC PARK!!!!!! Kyle and I are seriously soooooo excited for the new one. Hopefully it's a good reboot of the franchise.
A bust from "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back."
Horror movie busts!!! Yes!!
Shit Demon from Kevin Smith's "Dogma." More on Mr. Smith later.
A bust of Lucifer from "The Devil's Carnival." I have interviewed the creators and directors/stars of this film, so I liked this one a lot. It's also cool to see it because the second "Devil's Carnival" film is currently in production.
A bust from the newest "Thing" movie, which had good effects but sucked overall as a film.
After taking a quick tour of the floor and getting our bearings, we decided to take a photo with Tommy Wiseau, who is the director and star of the classic cult film "The Room." If you haven't seen the film, I recommend it. We bought a blu-ray copy of it and had Wiseau sign it for us. Awesome.
"To: Kyle + Chelsey. Love is Blind. Love, Tommy Wiseau."
Oh hai guys. Also, we were tossed a football when we approached his booth, which is an amazingly hilarious inside joke for if you've seen the movie.
Being that it was our first Con, we overall felt a little lost. We didn't have much time to wait in line hours to meet celebrities, plus we didn't really want to pay $20 for an autograph each time, so we skipped that portion of the Con and headed to some panels. The entire reason we were going anyways was to catch Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman's Hollywood Babble On/Fatman on Batman podcast.
Screen when we walked in. We got good seats because we sat in on the previous panel and moved up a few rows when the panel ended.
The room was full and people ended up standing in the back.
Mr. Ralph Garman. Garmy strong.
I caught Kevin mid-laugh.
Burt Ward, Ralph Garman, and Kevin Smith.
At the Q&A session at the end of the panel, Kevin kindly agreed to sign ONE dude's DVD or t-shirt or whatever, and he immediately got MOBBED by people wanting him to sign things.
The panel was very interesting, even to someone like me, who is a fan of Smith and Garman (and therefore HBO), but not too much of a Batman fan in general. Burt Ward had some very funny stories to tell about life on the set, getting sent to the emergency room each of the first few days of filming for completely different injuries, and about how he learned he had the part of Robin weeks after he had been casted for it. The three of them had some very humorous banter and the panel went by so fast. I'm sad I didn't get to hear many Ralph Garman impressions, but we will come back for HBO at a later date I'm sure. I've posted some videos below from the panel if you're interested in watching.
Directly following the Fatman on Batman panel was a panel on a documentary about the Superman film written by Kevin Smith and directed by Tim Burton that never happened. The film is called "Superman Lives," and Mr. Smith returned to introduce the panel of filmmakers. It was very interesting to hear the challenges the filmmakers faced and also to learn more about how much money can be thrown at something that ultimately never saw the light of day. The movie is to be released in 2015 and based on the previews and clips we saw, it should be very interesting.
Kevin Smith introducing the filmmakers of "Superman Lives."
Before we headed to Universal Studios for Halloween Horror Nights, Kyle wanted a photo with Slenderman.
We made surprisingly good time to Universal Studios where we met up with some old friends from Davis that now live in Southern CA. It was nice to see them and spend time getting scared and spooked in the haunted houses and mazes.
Kyle and I have gone to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal for four years in a row and I think this year was the second best year so far. My favorite haunted house was "The American Werewolf in London" one because there were a lot of oversized and scary animatronic werewolves (that looked just like the ones in the film I might add!) that jumped out at you as you turned corners. Runner up was the "Alien vs. Predator" maze because it had a 15 - 20 foot tall alien queen animatronic as well as animatronic aliens. I wasn't even really scared in that one, just in awe because it was so cool. We invested in front of the line passes and we were thankful we did because it was a sold out night and the lines were around two hours long per maze. Crazy!
Us before entering the park and before it got dark.
The park's front entrance.
People being chased in a scare zone. Love all the fog!
A view of the city at night from a look out point in the park.
Kyle, myself, and our friends Krystel and Jonathan in front of the "Psycho" house. I'm so glad they got to enjoy the scares with us.
This is what you see when you go through the turnstiles. Fog, go-go dancers, and 90s metal music (i.e. Rob Zombie, Rammstein, Dope, etc.)
The Munsters house! Love this show!
A scene in one of the scare zones.
The Simpsons area.
The entrance to the American Werewolf in London maze.
A spooky clown maze with music by Slash.
Go to Terminus…and be eaten!
The entrance to the "Dusk Till Dawn" maze.
The entrance area to the "Walking Dead" maze.
AVP. Yes. Please.
One of the creepy monsters running around that popped out of corners and scared people.
A scene set up in the scary Christmas scare zone.
Krampus came to get me. Guess I was naughty. You can tell by my expression that horror makes me feel delighted rather than frightened.
Babies that Krampus kidnapped.
Demented Xmas gnome.
That's me waiting in line for the "Despicable Me" ride. I liked it better as "Terminator," although the technology for the new ride sure is cool.
It was a super late night and we didn't get back to the hotel until around 2 a.m. What a great way to spend a Saturday!
Next up - our Disneyland adventures…we bought annual passes finally!!!
