Wed Oct 31, 2007 Halloween

Today is Halloween and as is our tradition lately, we have a Fan Flick night. It all started since not everyone wanted to watch horror movies during Halloween. Rich, Albie, Jim, Pete, Bob, and Gary all show as well as Gail and Albie who are newcomers to the club.

The party started at 530 for those who were interested in our Scotland vacation photos. Usually people aren't interested in vacation photos so I was hesitant about this especially since the video is an hour and a half long. It went over well. Some were interested in a class over the software I used. Others seemed interested in joining whatever trip we'll do next, so we invited them to the New Zealand 2009 trip, but maybe we'll do something like Ireland next year. CIE does a lot of Ireland tours.

The last guest arrives and the vacation DVD comes to end, so dinner is served. We've been pigging out on fruits and chips along with beer that Rich and Gary brought. Gary brought a blueberry beer. You can inhale and taste the blueberry at the beginning then you taste the beer. Mary served salad, a steak soup with potatoes, green beans, and lasagna.

Mary saw an interesting beer at Krogers when she went back to pick some up, she couldn't find it so she asked the manager. They had pulled it from the shelves since some people didn't like the idea of Satan beer, but the manager was willing to sell her some. No I didn't get a chance to try it.

I simplified my preparations for the fan flick tonight by running it on iTunes and created a playlist instead of burning it to a DVD.

Unfortunately, iTunes doesn't play AVI files, so Batman Dead End was played on Windows Media Player first then I swapped to iTunes. Our playlist tonight was.

• Night Shift - an Exeter skit
• Star Trek - World's End and Time - The first New Voyages Star Trek Fan Film with George Takei acting. They also have an Excelsior set now as well as the software models. The new models of the Enterprise seem washed out and not as crisp.
• Star Wars - Forced Alliance
• Star Trek Frasier - this skit was performed at a presentation show with Kate Mulgrew and the stars of Frasier.
• Star Trek Farragut - Intro. This intro provides insight into the Farragut group out of Maryland. From this video, we learn that they are recruiting old Star Trek stars for their films.
• Star Trek Farragut - The Captaincy is the first fan flick by this Maryland group. They bought their special effects which are fantastic by the way and borrowed New Voyages sets for the ship interior. Their other sets are not so hot. They already premiered their second film, but haven't released it to the net.

Rick and Kathy show up after the last video. They were returning from Kathy's father's funeral which was out of state. They already ate and just wanted to see everyone.