Day 3

We started by breakfasting, then headed to the Hyatt to panel to our heart's content. I found several today that looked nifty. The first was "General Film II", and I really went there for a paper titled "Post 9-11 Zombies: Unpredicatbility and Complacency in the Age of New Terrorism as Seen through Dawn of the Dead (04)" - this talk was almost embarassingly close to mine *at first*, as the speaker began with ackowledgement of several different filters for recent zombie cinema, and she mentioned epidemic disease in there. But then she went into post 9-11 American culture (complete with security theater and color-code paranoia stimulators) and wove it with the 04 Dawn. Really cool - I took some notes, for the heck of it - her tack didnt' go near mine, but I love hearing more interps than I can come up with.

I stayed for the whole panel, which consisted of two other papers, one dealing with the portrayal of Asian males in "Back to Bataan", and what I believe was the interplay of modernity and local culture in Latin films. Aside from the film aspect, I don't see how these 3 fit together, but I liked them.

Next up was a bigger departure for me, a panel on "Classical Representation in Popular Culture" - I'm not terribly into Classical studies, but life's short and my attention span's pretty forgiving. I was lured into that one by the second paper presented, titled "Echoes of Virgil: Pastoral Melancholy in Pan's Labyrinth" - a movie I'm in complete love with. I learned enough about Virgil to get by in high school, but this was new territory for me, and really cool - the speaker paralleled/contrasted the land/scape-related melancholy in the Eclogues with Del Toro's. Her thesis was so cool I must re-create it here (if not thesis, than one of the more salient points) - basically, she held that both texts concerned themselves with the place of creativity and imagination at times of civil war, and that Virgil depicts art as loosing to strife, while Del Toro, for all the sadness in his film's ending, leaves something of a place for it - eg, Ofelia's dream sequence/death scene as creativity continuing in the face of disaster.

I'll spare you the other two talks - neat as they were, I didn't take notes for them. I'd love to do something on Del Toro's work, so I was all edge-of-my-seat there ;)

After that came lunch at a tasty little cafe across the street in what I must assume is a mall of some sort. There's a nice open noshing area, so I had my handmade bread-and-roast beef/pesto pasta salad side in peace in the shade. There were fountains:


Nice smokestack look....And there's my other complaint about the esthetics:

So beige! So flat! I like the lack of billboards and such, but I dunno about the monochrome. Anyway....

After lunch, I scoped out the Grand Pavilion hallway (the room I was going to present in was a Grand Pavilion room. Not that grand, really, but the name's funny.)

Came out a little blurry, but hey! There were pretty pots, though:

Felice - if you're peeking in at all, you'll love these!


Gotta love the "under glass" setting on the camera...

At this point, I settled in for a panel of all Romero, all the time. There were 3 talks, all on Living Dead films (titles snipped)- one was "Zombies with a Conscience: Historical Perspectives" for Night of the Living Dead; another was "Media and the American Dream" for Dawn and Diary
; and "Media Democratization and Perceptions of Reality" for Diary. I was too caught up to take many notes on these, sadly. I liked the commentary on the problem of the American Dream, and what it does to those pursuing it, how it jars with reality, and of course how it all plays out on film.

The third paper was delivered in wonderfully cranky, near Louis Black style, railing against the "zombification" engendered by the orgy of media outlets we're surrounded by - the dependency, the egoism, the general adoption of relativism which almost becomes nihilism, and yet the yammering about the preciousness of truth and trust.

Quite, quite fun! :) And a good way to warm up, as our presentations were right after. Those went really well. I of course tripped over my own tongue a couple times, and had to sacrifice two non-essential paragraphs for the sake of timing (we had more time than I planned for, so I slowed my speech rate and ended up filling my 20 minute slot!) Dr. Sutton went next, and his went over well - lots of poise, better intonation, and laughs thanks to the Harry Potter fanfic connection. Our panel chair wrapped up for us with "Zombie Sociology and the Politics of Survival" and we had a nice Q&A period after. Dr. Sutton was nice enough to steer an audience question towards me fairly early on, then we all three of us had a nice volley going. I feel like I redeemed myself there - actually felt more relaxed there than presenting. I figured i'd stammer at any direct query, but all was well. No pissy replies, no attack questions - good vibes all round!

I shall wrap up with snaps of the victory dinner. Dr. Sutton treated me in celebration - it was a Brazilian place, so we were happy with meat on sticks. I got some bananas and rice'n'beans on as well....After that we pretty much rolled ourselves back to the hotel to digest.


A wonderfully politically-incorrect salad (well, maybe not that bad - corn, beans, cheese, field greens, spinach...honey mustard dressing;)

Rice, beans, pineapple - awaiting the young men with the giant meat skewers....


The turning of the meat indicator was quite an event....

*UURRRRP!*

The bill was delivered on what I thought was a thick plastic tray, but ended up being this calculator looking thing with a survey on it. I found the questions too funny, especially this one:


In the interests of propriety, I kept the barrage of double entendres to myself, but I did not restrain a single Beavis and Butthead chuckle at this one ;)