Since 2002, every January, I have made a 1400 mile round trip to the Chicago suburb of Evanston for B-Fest: A&O Film's annual film festival and celebration of all things cinematically challenged, where you're ensconced in a theater for a full 24-hours, locked in a Nietzchien battle of wills with whatever films they drudge up to try and kill you with. No. This is not prim and proper screening venue. If you want that, sorry, look elsewhere. This is B-Movie Nerd Thunderdome. You dig? I dig ... Anyways, by my math, so you'd better double check it, that'd be eight years in a row, and I have the scars of Hieronymous Merkin and Breakin' 1 and Breakin' 2 to prove it. And if you would have asked me six months ago I would have told you, sadly, that there would be no way in hell I could make it nine in row.

It began earlier than that, when my tax return went belly-up last spring due to a clerical error when I reapplied for my job when my company was bought out that left me, at least, breaking even. However, my annual return is an essential nest egg, what I like to call "my stupid money", meaning I stash it away to use for things other than essentials, like road trips to Chicago. I also work for a newspaper, and if you've been paying attention you know the industry is a dinosaur already  fossilizing as I type this up. 2009 saw me endure a pay cut, followed by a series of unpaid furloughs. And to top that off, my house payment inexplicably jumped up about the same time the plumbing went to hell, and things had snowballed so badly that by August going into September I caught myself trolling the yellow pages for a bankruptcy attorney ... Fortunately, the ship has righted itself since then; it's still taking on water but is in no imminent danger of sinking -- and man, is it hard to type with your fingers crossed. Regardless, the forecasted doom has been postponed, allowing me just one silver lining amongst all the number-crunching and creative financing, and, dammit, come hell or high-water, I was going to B-Fest. 

The line-up for this year looked fantastic. Dare I say it, but to me, the previous year's line-up was an absolute joy to sit through, a total breeze, and a welcome respite; but this year promised a couple of "treats" that would stretch us over the anvil of Sextette and smite us most verily with the hammer of Heartbeeps. And to help save costs I, and several other regulars, switched hotels to one suburb over, to scenic Morton Grove, and so excited was I by the hotel expenses being cut in half that I almost accidentally booked us a single, which means Mike Bockoven, my constant B-Fest companion, and I could have done a road show of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

This was gonna be the greatest B-Fest EVER.

At the appointed hour, Mike wakes me up and we congregate with the others in lobby. The BMMB Irregulars Roll Call: Josh, Tim, Sean, Ed, Ray, Jacob, and Brian and Mal Ragnarok. Also on board for the first time, Kevin from Minneapolis and the Battling Rob brothers from New Jersey. After a bit of catching up, the group then scatters to find some grub before heading to the Hala Kahiki to drink some rum through a straw. Chicago native Ed leads a large contingent to find some Thai food, but Mike and I peeled off and decide to follow our noses to a place called Paddy's that was a lot like Al's, a magnificent beef eatery we ate at last hear, only Paddy's was even greasier. And it was awesome. Stomachs distended, we pressed on into Des Plaines, and followed the familiar route to our tropical destination amidst the frozen surroundings.

When we walked into the bar, a waitress immediately asks if we're part of the movie group -- are we that obvious? Answering affirmative, we're led to a private side room, where we find Paul (-- you need to get back on the board, man --) and Skip, who once again served as our ground agent and secured our tickets. Thanks, m'man. More folks started trickling in, including Scott and Dripdry, whom I didn't recognize without his glasses and whose name I've forgotten again. Much drinkin' and volcano lighting ensued, with rousing talk about the ball-breakers in this year's line-up, B-Fest line-ups past, the re-watchability of Paranormal Activities and, well, Godzilla's sexual organs. 

Several rounds later, we headed back to the hotel. Mike's finally got the TOM TOM working but we ignore it's suggestions to "Turn left now" and just retraced our steps back home. I seem to a recall a room party, where I drank too much, on top off all the rum already consumed. It had been a really long day, I was pooped, so I bowed out early.

G'night folks.

The original plan was to sleep in late Friday morning and then tour The Field Museum before heading over to the campus. I say that was the original plan because some idiot decided to text Mike at 7am and his phone's chirping woke me up; and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't fall back asleep. [Note to self: Remember to kill Sheard for sending that text.] And if my faulty math is correct again, if I managed to pull another 24-Hours at B-Fest, that means I will have been awake for 42 of a 48-hour period. Wonderful. [Sheard, you're a dead man.] Still, it was nice to lounge in bed for a few hours. We checked out around 10, and after I did a Snoopy Dance in response to seeing the cheaper bill, we loaded up and headed downtown. But first, a slight detour. Seems Mike needed a football for a skit and I remembered seeing a K-Mart on Harlem that we passed the night before. We found it, and a football, and a Pot-Belly Deli for lunch. Then, to get to Lake Shore Drive, we took Belmont, which led us through several scenic ethnic neighborhoods, which had us doing Blues Brother's riffs with each colorfully named shop passed.

Aside from one highly illegal U-Turn we made it to the Field easy enough, but parking was another story. And after a 30 mile hike back to the museum, once I caught my wind, I could feel myself regressing as we took in the exhibits, including getting shrunken down to get a bug's eye view of the world. But the highlight of the excursion was the trip through time that tracked the evolution of life on planet Earth. OooOOOoOo ... dinosaurs!

I was very impressed with the layout of the Field. The place was like The Tardis, seemingly bigger on the inside than what appears outside. And after we had pretty much seen what we wanted to, with our allotted time running out, Mike hit the gift shop for some souvenir for his kids. While waiting, I looked over the Museum Map and spotted an exhibit on the Lions of Tsavo, which had served as a basis for Arch Oboler's 3-D classic Bwana Devil, and later, Michael Douglass' Ghost in the Darkness. We were on the right floor, and according to the map, near the exhibit, so when Mike returned we decided we had enough time to check it out. Barely, turns out. Our misadventure began when we first entered the wrong exhibit and got lost in a Pyramid mock-up, whose catacombs took us up one floor and then down three and dumped us out in the basement. We hit the elevators and tried again. This time we wound up in an African exhibit, seemed logical, but several wrong turns finds us going through the same slave ship exhibit twice, which provided a new slogan for The Field Museum: Come for the Lions, stay for the White Guilt. Finally working our way out of that exhibit, we officially gave up and returned to the main hall for the nearest exit and passed a HUGE sign [pictured above] pointing us right to the display. *sigh*

Where the hell was that TOM TOM when we needed it? Anyways, with that small victory notched, we needed to get going. We gots us some movies to watch.