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Ignorance of one's own culture is not considered cool
- The Residents
The Avengers Dead Man's Treasure Hunt
'To Catch A Rat'
We normally don't post events outside of the US and Canada, but this is an unusual event that has become world famous... and some of us are die-hard Avengers fans.
Every summer for the last two decades a group of fans of The Avengers have met up for a fun weekend visiting locations used in the filming of that iconic television series and other classic British filmed series, and to seek the treasure in a fiendish Hunt!
The weekend usually takes the form of a leisurely tour of filming locations during Saturday, then an evening of parlour games after dinner. The Treasure Hunt runs on Sunday morning until early afternoon when the attendees retire to a convenient watering hole for prize-giving. Each year the event takes its inspiration from an episode of The Avengers or The New Avengers, as well as the Hunt itself being loosely based on the episode entitled "Dead Man's Treasure."
This Hunt (the 22nd) will take place on Friday 29th to Sunday 31st August, as last year's change from the traditional June weekend was applauded as a popular move by many who attended. The decision in recent years to hire a coach for the location tour has also been commended so will again feature this year. Tradition will be observed by basing the event once again in the heart of Avengerland at the Toby Innkeeper's Lodge in Borehamwood.
Places on the Hunt are strictly limited and all applications will be treated on a first come, first served basis. Completed application and registration fee must be received by August 1st at the latest.
Accommodation at the Toby Innkeeper' Lodge is available from £55 per room per night, including a continental breakfast, and Sunday night is free if you book for Friday and Saturday. All rooms are non-smoking. Please book your accommodation yourself, as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. The Inn can be reached by phone at: 0845 11 26 120 (Don't forget to prepend the phone number with the country code). Or you can reach them through their web site at: www.innkeeperslodge.co.uk.
If by chance you have lots of time and money at your disposal and would like to attend, here's a registration form you can mail in. Just complete and return the form with your payment.
Coming Soon ...
Portus 2008
My Little Pony Fair 2008
- or -
Fear and Loathing on Spooner Street
I admit it. I drew the short straw. That's how I found myself driving south on I-93 to Providence to attend the "My Little Pony Fair" convention. On the way, fate cleverly diverted me to make a pilgrimage to the world of TAPS in Warwick, and to the location of 31 Spooner Street. In the end, however, and despite the kind assitance of road construction, bad instructions, and various street events, I finally made it to the Providence Civic Center.
The entire story will be up as soon as I run out of legitimate excuses to put off writing it up.
New England Reptile Expo 2008
A couple of weekends ago I went to my first Reptile Expo. As I walked throught the main entrance to the expo floor my eyes landed on a freezer draped with a big sign advertising frozen rats and mice for sale. "Here," I thought, "must be the origin of the urban legend about the Chinese restaurant that served fried rat." Once I got past that unexpected bit of humor, I was surprised by the variety of snakes, turtles, lizards, toads, and other unidentified creatures in the same kind of clear plastic containers that are used in the prepared food section of the local supermarket. There were tables full of snakes in the same containers that held potato salad, frogs in the same containers that held slaw, and lizards in the same containers that held whipped squash. By now the people around me were staring at that strange guy who was chuckling to himself like the cat lady on The Simpsons.
I was also surprised by the variety of people. I had expected to see mostly adolescent males, but the crowd was mostly families, couples, and even a few groups of adolescent girls. Yes, there were a few groups of adolescent males, but they were conspicuous by their absence. Old Cliches die hard.
The still pictures from the expo are finally up in the gallery, and the videos are up on the video page.
Coning soon: Paranormal Busters. An original (copyrighted) spoof.
HI, I'm Dr. Jim, the web guru and driving force behind this site, and I love fan events: cons, highland games, renfairs, pow-wows, UFO conventions, cryptozoology conventions, tattoo expos, fairs, memorobelia meetings, TV show fan gatherings, reptile expos... you name it, I want to go. Unfortunately, before I can go to an event, I have to know it exists. While it is true that these days most events usually have their own website, and there are a few sites that provide a list of one particular kind of fan event, it's also true that such sites are often hard to find, not up to date, or surprisingly user UNfriendly. Until recently, for example, I was not even aware of such fan events as Moosefest or the My Little Pony Collectors Convention even though they both have websites and lots of fans.
Several of us started this website to solve that problem. Our original idea was to collect information about every fan event of every kind anywhere in the U.S. and Canada and share the results with other "industrial strength" fans like ourselves. (If you see Porco Rosso or Lucius Malfoy or a guy in a kilt with a stuffed rabbit on his head at an event, take a close look, it cood be me!) This website is the result of all that work. So take a look around, let us know what you think, and watch our database grow! All we ask in return for letting you search through our databases is that you let us know if there's a fan event we need to include.
We also like CONTESTS. Do you have any videos of a really unusual event? Upload a copy to us. We will award $100.00 for the best entry, and put the winner our video page. If your video doesn't win, but we use it on our site, you will receive a $10.00 honorarium.
And finally,, become a member of this site and you can post ads and announcements in our "classified" section. We're also looking for members who would like to provide reviews, photos, video clips and the like of various events. There are, after all, more events than we could possibly attend, but we want to know about all of them! It's free to join and members who contribute recieve full credit for their contributions and retain their copyrights.