Cave Women on Mars is the third in an ongoing series of loving homages to 1950's B sci-fi/horror films directed by Christopher R. Mihm.  So far this is our favorite one.  I'm done with cosplays right now, but this is for the next time we'll see him, whenever that ends up being.  Probably not till next year at Waxacon.  But whenever that day comes, we're so gonna do this.  Maybe even in B&W!

The impetus for this post happened way back in 2013 a full year before I entered the 21st century and started this blog.  Rob and I went to Aggiecon to see George RR Martin.  It was our first comic con together and we were super excited to be there.  We did our first cosplay, a hurried attempt at Steampunk, and we went to several panels, the most interesting of which was "Fake Geek Girl" presented by Dr. Nerdlove aka Harris O'Malley.   He's a blogger from Austin who does a podcast where he gives dating advice to nerds.  His panel was about the recent and troubling "fake geek girl" phenomenon that had been plaguing comic cons.  He wanted to weigh in on it and hopefully help to stop it. As part of that discussion I stated that my first Aggiecon was way back in 1993 when it was still tiny and held on campus, and that I hadn't felt any animosity to my gender way back then and I certainly hadn't felt any today.  Oh how naive I was back then. 

​*****Not to go out on too long of a bunny trail, but why is it that only girls are decried as FAKE?  The fact that we're even having to have this discussion about how to stop the harassment of girls at cons should have been enough to clue me into the fact that my gender has always been discriminated against and is still being discriminated against even if I was previously unaware of it, but that's another post for another time.  I will say one last thing about this topic of gender discrimination.  Since 2013, the number of cons I have been to where there is significant and prominent signage warning attendees that "Cosplay is not consent" is very telling.  All of the big cons-- Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio have this signage. *****

Anyway, after what was a great two hour long discussion among like-minded people, he handed out these hilarious bumper stickers that were designed to be a joke.  I took one and immediately stuck it on my office door and it's been there ever since. 

Because the discussion had riled up my social justice warrior instincts, Rob and I talked about it all the way home.  I had a lot of ideas about how a woman (or anyone) could go about proving that they weren't a fake geek.  I got so into the whole idea, that once I got home I wrote a whole essay about it and then like some ridiculous fangirl, I emailed it to Dr. Nerdlove!  Yes, I did!  Of course I didn't hear anything back from him at all, I didn't expect to, and once I'd sent it off I forgot about it until we started going to more cons and I started to become more interested in cosplay and my family wanted me to make them costumes from comic books that I hadn't read and I had to start reading comic books to push back on the nerd rage I was experiencing from my step son. 

Seth has been reading comic books his whole life, like his dad.  Unlike his dad, he didn't have the social skills to talk about superheroes with me without it coming off as super insulting and treating me like an idiot.  Granted, he was nine years old when they moved in with me and my nine year old son didn't read comic books so all I had as reference were the movies and tv shows that I'd seen growing up.  I soon learned that Superfriends was NOT at all the same thing as Justice League of America.  I had SO much to learn and Seth's intellect and appetite for reading was voracious.  This became the impetus for me to explore Supersuits and get Seth to help me so we could finally be on the same team instead of on opposite sides of every argument that came up.  The first argument we ever had was whether or not Buffy was a superhero.  That one turned bitter really quickly and I can now freely admit that I was on the wrong side of it, but it took years and 18 tons of research for the Supersuit blog in order for me to see the error of my ways.  So yes, I did all this just to form a better relationship with Seth.

Flash forward to 2018 Dallas Fan Expo.  Dr. Nerdlove is a vendor and we just happen to spot him as we are cruising up and down the convention floor.  I stop to say hi and tell him how we saw him back at Aggiecon and I still have my Fake Geek Girl sticker.  He then tells me that it's probably one of the last ones in existence and proceeds to tell me the story of what happened at the very next con he attended after Aggiecon.  He had been handing the stickers out like he did before, but this time some jerk took them seriously and went around slapping them on the butts and backs of women at the con.  Of course Dr. Nerdlove was furious that his art had been used to harass the very people he had made them for.  He struggled with his feelings, but felt he had to quit making them so that  it wouldn't happen again.  The incident made the news and you can read about it here.  

So why am I bringing all of this up today?  I was looking for a power point I'd made back in September and I couldn't remember where I saved it. As I was searching through folders I hadn't opened in years, I happened to come across the essay that I wrote five years ago.  Naturally I opened it up and read it because although I remembered the fury I'd written it in, I couldn't remember what I'd written at all.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that it still feels timely and accurate so I thought I'd go ahead and publish it.  You can decide for yourselves if you think I'm onto something.  I still wish I had a math friend who would do a lovely Venn diagram or flow chart to accompany my essay.  I just love visual aids.

Professor Kathleen Laundy                                                           3/25/2013
​
Abstract: ​This paper explores the phenomenon of the Fake Geek Girl and presents a theory on how one becomes a Geek and how to measure said Geekiness in order to put to rest the “fake” epithet currently in use.

At Aggiecon this weekend I went to a panel called "Fake Geek Girl: A discussion about the fear and loathing directed towards geek girls decried as fake". Having been self-identified as a band geek since 1982 I was curious about this phenomenon where people were apparently hating on girls who did not display (to their critics' satisfaction) enough "geek cred". The 2 hour exchange of ideas really opened my eyes to an area in which I was previously unaware that bigotry and misogyny existed: at the Conventions whose sole purpose is to celebrate all things geeky. It made me really think about what it is to be a geek and how an individual became one. Here are my thoughts.  There are two aspects of geekdom: how one becomes a geek and ways to identify just how geeky you are.  The first aspect I call Geek Matriculation, the second measures your Level of Obsession with all things Geeky. 

Geek Matriculation:
From the time we are born we are constantly processing information, growing, changing, and incorporating the world around us into our own personalities.  The process of Geek Matriculation begins in Elementary School and continues throughout our adolescence culminating in College/University when we finally graduate from Life with our degree in Geekiness that accompanies us into the “real world” and is perhaps the only fundamentally unchangeable thing about the rest of our lives.  There are two aspects to Geek Matriculation and they can be found at every level of our educational system.  These are Inclusive and Exclusive traits.  Let me define my terms.  An inclusive trait is one that includes you in a certain group, like a skill or ability that you inherently have.  An exclusive trait is something that you may or may not have control over, but that others use as a justification to exclude you from their social circles.  Much like the DSM, Geekiness can be measured on a scale.  If you check more boxes than not, you are probably a fully-matriculated Geek. 
Here are a few examples of how Geek Matriculation looks:

Elementary School

• Inclusive traits: advanced intelligence for age, well-developed language skills, higher than grade level reading ability, all A report cards.
• Exclusive traits: all manner of physical “defects”, inabilities or lack of skill.  For example asthma, allergies, braces, glasses, fat, slow, picked last for team sports.

Junior High

• Inclusive traits: Skill with fine arts emerge.  You play an instrument, your drawings actually look like the subject, you do the school play, etc…
• Exclusive traits: Your fashion sense is out of step with current trends. If you are a boy you might be made fun of for still wearing power ranger gear; if you are a girl you might be made fun of for not wearing makeup yet.  You are certainly made fun of for not wearing “the right clothes” or liking things that are now considered “for babies”.  This would include your music, movie, TV show preferences as well.

High School

• Inclusive traits: Club memberships.  This includes but is not limited to Band, NHS, AV, Chess, Science, Robotics, OAP, Computers, Journalism, Photography.
• Exclusive traits:  Your level of social awkwardness and your hobbies.  This includes but is not limited to things like taking your cousin to Prom, playing D&D at lunch, reading comic books, graduating with your virginity intact (esp. if male), and all other sci-fi/fantasy related interests you might pursue in your free time.

College/University

• Inclusive traits: Your major and your grades.  The list of majors includes all Sciences (except Pre-Med), Math, Computers, Art, Music, Theatre, Philosophy, Creative Writing, and perhaps History (but not Government). Grades would include the Dean’s List or graduating with a “Laude” behind your name, and would go on to include graduate work, Master’s and PHDs but not MDs or EDDs.
• Exclusive traits:  Your social commitments such as NON-MEMBERSHIP in or downright protesting/mocking of the BIG THREE: Greeks, Jocks, and Student Government.  All other social commitments are considered grounds for an exclusive trait.

Level of Obsession:
So now that we’ve discovered how one becomes a Geek, let’s take a look at just how Geeky you have become throughout your Geek Matriculation.  I call this aspect Level of Obsession.  If I were a Math major I would draw you either a lovely Venn diagram or at the very least a graph that would illustrate my point.  In my head I imagine a simple graph showing on the left an arrow rising vertically measuring Time Spent on Obsession and another arrow travelling right horizontally measuring Percentage of Take Home Pay Spent on Obsession.  The graph would include the following nine categories (much like the nine rings).  I would state emphatically that it is not necessary to possess a High Level of Obsession in all nine categories to be considered a “true geek”.  One may either have a moderate level of obsession in several categories or a high level of obsession in only one category or any combination thereof.

1. Consumption of sci-fi/fantasy related entertainment media.  This includes books, movies, TV shows.
2. Comic books/graphic novels
3. Gaming including tabletop, PC, online, and video.
4. Anime
5. Music
6. Collectables
7. Creating your own Writing/Art.  This includes everything from trying to get your novel published all the way to writing fanfic about the last novel you read.  This category also includes writing blogs about the novels, critiquing the novels, and all time spent arguing about the novels on discussion boards, in chat rooms, and fan-related websites like Mugglenet and RedHen (my personal decade long obsessions).  On the Art side, same thing all the way from illustrating your own comic books down to putting your work up on DeviantART.
8. Cosplay.  This includes anyone who makes and/or wears costumes, costume accessories, weapons, armor, props, etc….
9. Personal Interaction with the Maker.  This includes convention attendance, readings/book signings, hanging around the stage door waiting for the chance to get an autograph, stalking.

 
Again, if I were a Math person, I’d place various specific examples on the graph showing Low Obsession like buying one cheap Star Wars toy, taking it out of the box immediately, and playing with it…  compared to an example showing High Obsession like buying 3 of the same expensive Star Wars toys so that you have one to take out and play with immediately, one for “display purposes only”, and one to NEVER open that gets put away in a dark closet so that it may remain unspoiled and therefore its value will remain undiminished for future generations.
Using my method to rate another’s Level of Obsession in these nine areas, you will find that it becomes very difficult to berate another’s “Geek Street Cred”. For example, my personal Comic book, Anime and Gaming score is so low it is non-existent, but my scores in the other 6 areas are in the moderate to freakishly high range.  If the suspected “fake Geek” spent the time and money in order to attend a convention, in a costume, and is currently standing in line to meet an author, that person IS NOT A FAKE GEEK.  “Not cool, dude.”
 

UPDATE
It was suggested to me by Jason Sanchez that I should do this as a panel at Epically Geeky Expo (EGX), formerly known as Geekfest, this coming May.  Toward that end I am in the process of doing some more research into this topic as it is very wide ranging and complex. I want to both expose the negative as well as tout the positive. For example, I plan to explore the #gamergate  controversy of 2014 and how the common portrayal of women as sex objects or damsels in distress contributes to the latent misogyny, racism, and homophobia in the online gaming community.  I also want to put together a substantive list of the many important women in geekdom who have successfully navigated the misogyny to both break into a male dominated industry and then continue to produce quality work.  My hope is to educate and inspire our diverse Geek community to become more inclusive, diverse, and accepting, and less divisive.  Feel free to comment with any examples, suggestions, sources, or advice as I continue to research, compile, and edit.

We love Game of Thrones, although we don't let the kids watch it.  We're very excited for the final season to come out next year.  We've read all the books that have been released so far (before we broke down and got HBO to see the series).  But the real reason we're doing this cosplay is that we need Renfaire costumes to wear to TRF for Black Friday.  We normally go in our Celtic Christmas costumes, but I've been wanting to do this one for awhile now and get our pictures taken professionally, so this is the year.  Unfortunately, I have less than 3 weeks to put this together and I'm in tech for our second show this week.  Fortunately, I've already got everything I need for John Snow from stuff we had around the house.  None of this is going to be screen accurate, that would take way more time than I have, and money that I already spent at Waxacon.  But it will be good enough to get a nice family photo.  I've got a lot of things I can use at school.  Probably the only thing I'll have to make it Dany's top and cape.

He has brown boots, a belt, and I have plenty of crowns.  He just needs a purple doublet and brown pants.  I can maybe throw that together.

I found a skirted doublet that I can use as well as the extra fabric it was made from so I can add extra room at the side seams for his tummy. I had to slit up the CF seam and add a panel to provide the extra room.  I also cut out the armseye to give him more freedom of movement.  I removed the purple sleeves and cut a new set of sleeves in gold and I added shoulder wings out of the purple fabric.  He still needs a wig because he's shaved off all his hair and I'm going to have to regrey his beard after he dyed it black for Ming, but that's OK.

I spent about four hours this weekend finishing up all the alterations on this costume.  I did a self-casing with elastic for the waistband of the pants.  Then I removed the collar, cut the neckline down on the doublet, cut the collar height down as well, added about 3 inches to the CB seam of the collar and then reattached it.  I had to re-attach most of the gold trim as well since removing the collar also ripped most of the handsewing out.  I also removed the cuffs from the old purple sleeves and attached them to the new gold sleeves.  I found a crown that fits and a grey wig.  I found grey hairspray for his beard and it's done.

I made a dress for Lady Capulet a few years back that's almost the right color and exactly the right shape.  My hair's not long or blond enough, but I can buy another wig.

​I found the dress, of course it's too small, and the big sleeves are missing.  I'm still looking for them.

Wednesday during cosplay club meeting, I ripped the skirt off the bodice, removed the inner sleeves and the upper sleeves, removed all the gold trim, took out all four darts and had Jason fit it on me.  I ended up adding two panels in at the side seams made from the upper sleeves.  That made it big enough in the bust and rib cage measurements to close in the back.  But my cup size was much larger than the girl it had been cut for originally and I needed to extend the length of the bodice so that the waistline seam didn't cut me across the nipples.  It had been hemmed twice because it was originally made for a very tall actress and each subsequent time it was used had to be hemmed even higher.  I let out all the hems to find out that it had originally been cut at 52" long.  I was planning on cutting some fabric out of the hem to use to extend the bodice, but then realized that I could cut it from the waist instead and there would be less wasted fabric because the skirt at the waist was the same measurement as the bodice at the waist (the skirt was originally gathered and should have been longer but since I added the panels in at the side seams, it turned out to be the same length.  I used the top 7" of the skirt  to extend the length of the bodice.   I also raised the shoulder seam 1 1/2" which had the added bonus of covering more of my ample bosom.  I cut the armseye lower and re-serged the raw edge.  When I fit it back on my size 16 mannequin, I then repinned the four darts but only in the additional piece.  The darts end at the seamline.  Cerci's neckline is a V, so I still need to recut the neckline. Because I ripped off all the gold trim, the hem is now coming out and has to be redone anyway.

I gave up looking for the sleeves, so I've found the same fabric in gold and will cut new sleeves out of that.  I found a gorgeous red upholstery fabric with a floral pattern that I am using for trim.   I spent a good 4 hours Tuesday making mostly 3" bias for the sleeves and skirt hem, as well as 1" bias for the neckline edge.  I rehemed the skirt, cut the Vee neckline and hemmed it, and attached all the bias trim on Wednesday.  I still need to attach the sleeves, which I will do tomorrow morning, yes I know it's Thanksgiving, but since Seth has football practice anyway and we're going to Rob's relatives' house for dinner, I can totally spend the morning sewing without feeling guilty.  I still have so much work to do.

On Black Friday I finally got my sleeves sewn in and bought a blonde wig.  It's not really long enough or curly enough, but it'll do.  I only paid $32.00 for it from Beauty Mart.

I made Rob a black doublet out of my grandmother's black leather trenchcoat almost 10 years ago that will work perfectly.  Rob already had black period pants and a shirt.  I've got boots at school.  Rob has a sword.  And I've got two different capes.  We just bleached his hair for John Constantine, so now I'll have to dye it black again.  Plus it's a lot shorter now, but it grows fast.  The only thing I ended up sewing was attaching the fur collar to the cape.  Until I decided that he needed a better cape.  So I made a new one on black Friday out of black corduroy.

I made red leather doublets for Richard III almost 20 years ago now.  I just need to find one that's large enough for him.  Black pants and shirt are all he needs.  He already bought a flask and knows his one line, "I drink and I know things."  He's bald right now from being Deadman, but it'll grow some in the next three weeks.  I can always put him in a wig.  He'll hate it, but it'll keep his head warm.  I found a great ginger wig.

I gave up on the red leather doublet idea, because none of the ones I made for Richard are large enough.  So luckily he fits into Rob's Celtic Christmas doublet.  He's supposed to have a grey tunic underneath with long sleeves and a skirt.  I pulled out the coat I made for Malcolm in Macbeth.  I made it with donated fabric and there was never enough for sleeves which always disappointed me.  I pulled two other grey fabric scraps and cut sleeves from the denim, and lining for the pre-existing shoulder wings out of the upholstery sample,   The collar is perfect, but the whole thing is too small in the chest and the peplum is too long for anyone other than the guy it was made for.  So I cut 7 inches off the hem and used it to extend the CF closure and create a new peplum for the new extended CF. I got the entire sleeve treatment cut, stiffened with horse hair, lined, and sewn in this morning.  Now we just need to do another fitting.  I spent almost 7 hours working on it Monday. 

I went in to work on it Wednesday (the day before Thanksgiving.)  I spent about 4 hours on it.  I had to recut the red doublet's armseye to enlarge it, esp underneath, and I had to take in the CB seam.  The hook and eye tape had been ripped off in the middle section at some point, (too much stress in that area) so that needed to be repaired.  I had to restitch the collar lining on the grey tunic, hem and stitch the new CF peplum pieces in at the waist and then attach them to the former CF peplum pieces by hand.  I hemmed the sleeves too. All it needs now is some closures.  He can wear his black dance pants and I found him some black boots today, but they need insoles.

I'm going to have to make her top and cape.  She needs grey pants and boots.  And a dragon.  No problem.  We'll have to bleach her hair again.

I found pants and boots.  The boots I actually made 23 years ago in graduate school.  I found some lovely blue fabrics for the cape, lining, and her bodice.  The cape fabric is an upholstery grade fake crushed velvet.  It's more like it's velvet pile that's been flocked onto a canvas backing.  But I washed it and it didn't fall apart and it's got a much softer hand now.  I'm lining it with a poly wrinkled taffeta.  The pattern for the cape is a standard semi-circle with a separate piece in the front that has a dart in the shoulder area so it sits comfortably on her shoulders and hopefully won't pull back on her neck and choke her as a lot of capes are wont to do.  I finished the cape Tuesday.

​The bodice is a heavy sateen/lycra blend.  It has a two way stretch.  I draped the pattern on my size 6 mannequin (the smallest I have) which is still 6 inches too big in the bust and 4 inches too big in the waist.  This was all on Tuesday.  I got her in a for a fitting on Wednesday and the length is fine as is the back.  It's mostly a problem of the bust that Sarah doesn't have yet because she's just 11.  However, I've cut it on the 6 anyway and will make adjustments with the darts so that she can still wear it next year after what I'm sure will be the first of many a growing spurt.  It's a complicated pattern due to the overlapping asymmetrical nature of the skirt and it ended up being 10 pieces.  Hopefully I'll get is sewn together this morning.  So Thursday morning I got the 10 pieces all serged and darted and Friday I combined the 8 skirt pieces into 2.  I can't do anything else until I have a fitting, which I'm hoping to get done this weekend.

After the fitting I sewed up the darts in the front, attached the skirt pieces and hemmed everything.  I also lowered the armseye a bit.  It's ready to ride!  I just need a pin for the cape and we ordered a prop dragon from Amazon.

We're super unhappy with it.  I'll never pay anyone who's not Briumbra Photography to take our photo ever again.

Sarah's photo is better although the dragons they photoshopped in are lame.

We were super excited to attend this con (in only its second year) because we found out Briumbra Photography was going to be there.  I planned a new cosplay for it--Justice League Dark-- and we were even more excited to find out that they were having a costume contest both days so that we could enter two sets of costumes.  The tickets were a sweet deal 4 adult tickets for both days for $100 plus kids under 12 got in for $5 on Saturday and were free on Sunday.  We bought the tickets, booked a hotel (more about that later) and I started sewing, this was back in June.  I sewed for 4.5 months on this new cosplay and wasn't finished till 4pm on Halloween.  There weren't really any guests we were excited to meet except for this one filmmaker that we'd never heard of, Christopher Mihm.

We redid Flash Gordon on Saturday with no wig for Seth, a wig for Sarah and more bling for Ming.  At Greater Austin Comic Con, Seth forgot to wear his Timex watch and Sarah forgot to wear her white plastic belt.  Her white shoes literally fell apart as we were walking in, so we had to get her new ones after the photo.  And because I was sewing right up to the last minute, I didn't get any of the gold trim on Ming before the con, so I did it all afterwards.  I also didn't like the way the weight of my belt was making it fall way down over my tummy so I safety pinned it through the elastic on my skirt to the keep it up high.  Seth had a pants-tastrophe because his pants from June didn't fit anymore, so we had to go to Walmart and buy him a new pair that morning.  But we entered our costumes in the costume contest and Ming won first place and Aura won second place.  They wouldn't let us enter as a group since they didn't have any other groups enter.  Maybe next year.  Ming's prize was 6 free two day passes to next year's con and a free photo session with Briumbra Photography.  Aura's prize was 4 free two day passes to next year's con and another free photo session with Briumbra Photography. Of course we'd already paid for our photo that morning, so we used it the next day to get our photo of JLD.

Sarah helped me do everyone's makeup and hair and then went around taking photos to document.  Unfortunately we were so busy trying to get packed up and check out of the murder  hotel before we were murdered, she didn't get one of me.  We were going to compete in the costume contest with these costumes as well on Sunday, but since we already won 10 passes for next year and one more Briumbra session than we had costumes for, we decided we'd rather just get back to Waco as soon as possible and maybe get some sleep in our own beds, since no one slept a wink in the murder motel either  night.

We got to meet the director/writer of a series of 13 amazing homages to 1950's B movies.  We were able to see three of his films and we were so tickled, we bought all thirteen of them and crowd funded the upcoming fourteenth one.  Christopher threw in a free poster.  Over the course of two days we saw The Giant Spider, The House of Ghosts, and The Monster of Phantom Lake.  We talked to him and his merch team a lot and he's going to be coming back through Texas in January is looking for another date to go in between two cons he's already set up to do.  I mentioned we have a theatre in Waco that does stuff like this, The Hippodrome and that friends of mine are in a shadow cast of Rocky Horror that perform there sometimes.  I thought it would be great to get the two of them together and have an all day science fiction double feature of his films and then Rocky Horror at midnight.  I'm trying to set that up for him.

Lone Star Wars does Star Wars art out of Lone Star boxes and cans.  Rob bought a T-shirt from him.  Here's a link to his website.  They travel to a lot of cons, including Alamocity and Bell County.  Rob spent a lot of time talking to the artist.

 Art REDO and Canady's Wands share a space in the old Unfinished Furniture building on LaSalle in our hometown of Waco.  It's funny how sometimes you have to travel to another city to find people in your hometown.  Dylan Canady and David Jacobs were great fun to talk to and have really cool things to sell you.  They are open every day except Monday.  David at Art REDO collects junk and turns it into functioning sculpture like ray guns, Robbie the Robot, clocks, fans, and lamps.  Dylan Canady works in wood to make beautifully handcrafted Harry Potter wands and other magical items like Daenerys' dragon eggs, potions and spells.  This is where I spent most of my time.

The reason we chose this hotel is because we normally cram all 5 of us into one hotel room with two queen or king beds and a pull out couch.  We are always stepping over each other's stuff, there's never enough room, and the kids make us super grumpy arguing all the time.  So after last time, I decided we'd just stay at a cheaper place and get two rooms instead so everyone would be more comfortable, even if the rooms weren't as nice.  I did check reviews online and the ones for Executive Inn and Suites were better than the ones for Motel 6, plus you got a free breakfast.  The EIAS were slightly further away from the con location than Motel 6 but we felt that the free breakfast would more than make up for the extra half mile of driving.

​The Executive Inn and Suites in Waxahachie that's right off I-35 is a home for meth heads, Stephen King's Pet Semetary, and a burial ground for potential murder victims.  People who are unhappy with the state of their hotel room clearly don't survive long enough to post a bad Yelp review.  Don't stay here.  The free breakfast is just three different types of cereal and a honeybun.  It's not worth it.  We were lucky to escape with our lives!  I'm not even kidding.  We took photos of all the things wrong with the room when we arrived after dark.  The parking lot was full of a  herd of feral cats all fighting with each other and yowling like they were being murdered themselves.  The stairwells were full of garbage, the steps were broken, the landings were uneven and made you feel like you were drunk trying to walk around up there.  The door lock was half pulled off and then screwed back down.  There was no dowel rod for the toilet paper, the toilet seat was the wrong size for the bowl, the knob on the bathroom door didn't work and we were afraid to pull the door shut because we weren't sure we'd be able to get back out.  The mirror was cracked, the "repainting" was sloppy.  Sarah said everything was red to hide the blood.  The enamel was peeling off the tub, there were stains on the walls, the furniture, the carpet, and the ceiling. There were live bugs in the drawers and dead bugs behind the furniture.  Sarah never got in her bed, just slept on top of it with her blanket and pillow that she'd brought with her.  Sylvan brought a sleeping bag and just slept in it.  The beds were hard as rocks, they felt like they'd been stuffed with hardback books and sawdust and they creaked really loudly every time you sat on them.  The boys beds were short-sheeted.  The phones were from another chain of motels--in our room it was from Knight's Inn and in the boys room it was from Hampton Inn.  The bathroom floor was the only thing I felt clean standing on.

Because we got there after dark, we didn't see the rest of the grounds until we got up to get our free breakfast the next morning.  There had been a pool, but it had been filled in with dirt and someone left a shovel in the middle (for digging your own graves) and many black plastic garbage bags (filled with dismembered body parts).  God knows what was in the pool shed that was locked and moldy, but the rest of the rooms facing in towards the pool were also moldering, crumbling, and falling apart.  There seemed to be a crematorium on the grounds and more trash than the city dump.  Feral cats were still there in the morning, probably feasting on all the new bodies that had been thrown out during the night.  Sarah pointed out the large variety of red mushrooms that were growing by the crematorium, probably soaked in blood.

No one slept the first night what with the filthiness of the room, the howling of the cats, and the midnight banging on the walls coming from next door.  We were looking forward to the free breakfast, but it was literally only three kinds of sugary cereal, bad coffee, and pre-packaged honeybuns. We had a cup of the free coffee, (it was bad) and the boys got honeybuns (they were in cellophane which is the only reason I let them have one) and then we high-tailed it out of there and went to IHOP for real food with protein.  We went back to the room, managed to get ready quickly, and spent the rest of the day somewhere else-- at the con, eating out, driving, literally anywhere but at the motel.  We wanted to go see Bohemian Rhapsody, but didn't make it out of El Fenix in time to catch the 7:30 show, so we ate as leisurely as we could and sadly went back to the hotel.

The second night we had a giant thunderstorm and that's when we realized that there were holes in the roof because the rainwater dripped on Sylvan's bed all night.  No one wanted to sleep so we ended up watching The Simpson's Treehouse of Horror, a Samantha Bee rerun, and SNL.  We slept badly, but not as badly as Sylvan, who slept like a victim of Chinese water torture with rain water dripped on his head all night.  Of course the time changed this weekend, which is really what we'd been looking forward to, an extra hour of sleep at our nice hotel, but it just meant an extra hour of no sleep at our murder motel.  We ate breakfast at Waffle House, a place I generally avoid because of all the drunks, but was a welcome alive and happy place comparatively.  We had a fantastic waitress who took care of us very well.  We rushed back to the room, got ready, packed our crap as quickly as we could and got the hell outta dodge before the meth heads killed us for our stuff.

2018 was the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley's novel, so the National Theatre screened another encore version of their production in the U.S. so viewers could see both versions. Yes, there are two versions of the play because the director, Danny Boyle, thought it would make the show more interesting to have the actors playing Victor and the Creature switch roles every night.  You need two amazing actors to be able to pull that off, which is why Benedict Cumberbatch was cast.  I hadn't heard of Johnny Lee Miller then, but I'll definitely look for him in other things now.  They were both so phenomenal that they jointly won the Olivier Award for Best Actor.

I got tickets for the whole family to see this production​ for my husband's birthday.  On Oct. 22 Benedict Cumberbatch played the Creature and on Oct. 29 he played Victor Frankenstein.  We had originally planned to see the Oct. 22 version which was my husband's actual birthday, however, Seth having football practice that night was going to make it difficult for us to get there on time.  Fortunately, the next week was a bi week and Seth didn't have practice on Monday, so we bought tickets for the 29th version instead.  The tickets were $14 each, so twice as much as a regular movie, but so worth it.  We didn't get to see anything at the National when we were in London and this definitely made up for it.  I wrote a whole blog about the tour of the National that you can reference.  

Here are the two official trailers you can watch:

Because the National Theatre is committed to teaching and allows all British schools to show the movies of their plays for free, they also make accompanying educational videos.  Before our screening they played all of these.

Here's a few selected reviews of the original production that I thought might be of interest to you.  The Tumblr reviewer Another Boy Who Lived, also saw both versions and all the educational materials and goes into quite a bit of detail about how the actors performances were either different or similar in each role, but focusing more on The Creature. The NASSR graduate student review is more focused on the production's relationship to Romanticism and how the playwright and director use the themes of the novel to make statements about our current political climate and the place of science in it.

Director Danny Boyle worked closely with Nick Dear, the playwright, to bring this version of Mary Shelley's novel to life.  It is not surprising that he put together a design team of people he'd worked with before: Costume Designer Suttrit Lalab, Scenic Designer Mark Tildesley, and Score Composer Underworld had worked with him on Sunshine and done two other films with him separately before Frankenstein and went on to do the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony with him afterwards.

Although the scenery seemed to be very minimal at the time, in retrospect, there was a lot going on.  It's a huge space and most of the time it was fairly empty, but there was always something in the space to look at and for the characters to interact with.  Besides the incubator, there were tracks that held a steam train, which later contained a patch of grass.  there was DeLacey's house that was built like a scrim and could be seen inside of,

 there was a wooden quay across  Lake Geneva (another great lighting effect) that descended in two parts from the fly.  ​

Suttirat Larlarb is an American costume designer.  Her parents are both Thai and came to the US as Fulbright scholars.  She attended Stanford where she majored in studio art and then received her MFA at Yale School of Drama where she studied under Ming Cho Lee.  She's on faculty at Carnegie Mellon since 2013.  She met director Danny Boyle when she moved to London after graduating and worked on three of his films including Sunshine, Slum Dog Millionaire, and 127 Hours.  Here's an interview with her from 2011.

The costume design was consistent with the date of the novel's publication.  Men in three piece suits with hose and pumps, and women in Empire-waisted dresses.  Much like the scenery, the costumes seemed minimal at the time because you're so focused on the Creature's journey, you forget that there are other characters in the play.  The first group of people that The Creature encounters are laying track for a steam train, a prostitute entertaining them, a couple of beggars cooking dinner, and eventually DeLacey and his family.  After killing Delacey he seeks out Frankenstein and inserts himself into his family by killing William.  Each character seems to stay in one costume for most of the show.  Elizabeth has two costumes--a green dress, and her wedding dress that she takes off to reveal a nightgown.

I actually had to do some research to get the name of the person responsible for the special effects makeup for The Creature.  IMDB doesn't list the creative team, just the actors and camera operators who were involved in the filming.  The National Theatre's archive doesn't list makeup and hair on the program in their own archive, so I emailed the archive and they actually got back to me with an answer in less than 24 hours!  This is the answer I got: "The make-up for Frankenstein (2011) was designed by our in-house NT Wigs, Hair and Make-Up Department which is managed by Giuseppe Cannas".  So thanks, Fran Horner, for answering my question.  It still doesn't give me the name of the makeup artist or the prosthetics designer, but hey, it's something.  

There is however, an article in the Daily Mail that at least gives us more photos of the makeup process, but still doesn't mention the name of the designer nor the artist who worked for 2 hours every night getting the boys into their makeup and 40 minutes taking it off.  I can tell you that Benedict wore a bald cap as The Creature, due to his commitments to Sherlock he was unable to shave his head, while Johnny Lee Miller shaved his head and wore a wig as Victor.

The special effects makeup on the Creature were outstanding.  He was clearly stitched together, bloody and bruised from surgery.  The other great fx makeup that we get is his Bride who shows up in two scenes: one clothed and one unclothed.  Contrary to other representations of the Bride, she is not more finely put together than The Creature.  She is just as scarred and bruised and bloody with equally litte hair.

Photo credits: Simon Annand

Photo credits: Catherine Ashmore

Jamie and Jason Price were two of the best students the MCC Theatre Dept. has ever had.  I had only been teaching two years when they came to school here from Canadian, Texas, a little country town north of Amarillo.  They were twin brothers who were pursing theatre as a major but also still wanted to do music.  I first met them because I was on the Tartan Scholarship committee and they had applied so I was conducting their interview.  I was excited to learn that they were going to be in my department, so I took a special interest in them.  They were perhaps the hardest working students I've ever had.  So I was delighted to find out that they had  jointly won MCC's Distinguished Alumni award and that Dr. SoRelle had asked me to help her present them with their awards at the special luncheon that they have for all the Foundation donors.  Dr. SoRelle asked me to put together a slide show of all the stuff they had done while at MCC (1999-2001) as well as tell some humorous stories about their time here.

They were not able to come to Waco to receive their awards, Jamie teaches in New York and Jason teaches in England, but they sent videos of their acceptance speeches for us to watch.  Here's their lovely twin statuettes that Cindy and I got to accept on their behalf.

The McLennan Community College Foundation's Highlander Alumni & Friends Association recently presented two prestigious awards to alumni of McLennan Community College: the Distinguished Alumni and Distinguished Leader awards. 

Twin brothers Jamie Cacciola-Price and Dr. Jason Price are the dual recipients of the 2018 Distinguished Alumni Award. The brothers, who are from a small town in the Texas Panhandle, Canadian, TX, attended McLennan as Theatre majors from 1999-2001 as Tartan Scholars.

Jamie Cacciola-Price currently is head of Theatre at the Frank Sinatra School for the Arts in Queens, New York. In 2016, Jamie received the prestigious Empire State Excellence in Teaching Award from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. He was also a runner-up for the 2018 Tony Awards high school teacher of the year. Jamie is pursuing a doctorate in education at the NYU Steinhardt School of Education. 

Dr. Jason Price currently serves as the Senior Lecturer (Professor) at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, where he has earned a reputation as an esteemed theatre scholar. Jason published the well-received book, Modern Popular Theatre. He has also published Contemporary Theatre Review, Comedy Studies, Popular Entertainment Studies, and Studies in Theatre and Performance. 

The Price brothers will visit Waco in mid-November, when they will present several theatre workshops for MCC students. 

You can buy Dr. Jason Price's book right here on Amazon.  It's only $27.99 in paperback.

Jamie Cacciola-Price and Dr. Jason Price, twin brothers and recipients of the 2018 Distinguished Alumni Award from the MCC Foundation's Highlander Alumni & Friends Association, will return to Waco Nov. 12 for a series of Guest Artist Workshops hosted by the McLennan Community College Visual & Performing Arts Division.

A Q&A session with the Price brothers titled "The Road from McLennan to Successful Careers in Industry and Theatre Education" will be held at 2 p.m. Nov. 12 in room 110 of the Music & Theatre Arts building on the MCC campus. The event is free and open to the public. Each of the brothers will also present in-depth theatre workshops earlier in the day for MCC students.

The Price brothers attended McLennan as Theatre majors from 1999-2001 as Tartan Scholars. Jamie Cacciola-Price currently is head of Theatre at the Frank Sinatra School for the Arts in Queens, New York, and is pursuing a doctorate in education at the NYU Steinhardt School of Education. In 2016, Jamie received the prestigious Empire State Excellence in Teaching Award from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. He was also a runner-up for the 2018 Tony Awards high school teacher of the year. 

Dr. Jason Price currently serves as the Senior Lecturer (Professor) at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, where he has earned a reputation as an esteemed theatre scholar. Jason published the well-received book, Modern Popular Theatre. He has also published Contemporary Theatre Review, Comedy Studies, Popular Entertainment Studies, and Studies in Theatre and Performance. 

For more information, contact Visual & Performing Arts at 299-8283.

Geekfest is my favorite local comic con and this year is its 10 Year Anniversary.  Our first Geekfest was back in 2012.  All we did was show up, meet Peter Mayhew, and go see Jason's panel on "Intro to Cosplay", but we were hooked.  I became a presenter the very next year and a costume contest judge the following year and I've been doing it ever since.  I have 13 of these badges in my collection now.

First and foremost, Geekfest is a wonderful opportunity for me to recruit theatre majors for MCC.  I have a table set up every year in the hopes of finding potential students and luring them to my school with scholarship money.  I met two seniors and two freshman this year who are very interested in coming to school with me.   The MCC theatre department has a Facebook page that you can like and follow to get all the latest info about our upcoming productions.

New for this year I was able to tell everyone about the McLennan Alumni Cosplayers group that I started this summer.  Right now we are made up of 12 former students from the last 23 years of my teaching who are into cosplay.  We meet in my costume shop on Wednesday evenings and help each other out with our costumes.  This is the first event that we have appeared at and only 6 of us managed to attend, but that's OK.  We're brand new and it was our first ever convention together.  We have bigger and better things in the works for next time.  We have a Facebook page that you can like and follow to get all the latest info on our next cosplays.

I did two panels.  This one is "Where's My Supersuit? Part 2 Supervillains".  Catwoman presented this panel.
​Sunday I presented "How to Cosplay" as Squirrel Girl.  You can view both of them on my website under Presentations.

Lauren has won trophies for her Hawkgirl and Maleficent wings that she entered in our costume contest in 2017 and 2016.  This year she judged the Kids' Costume Contest and presented a panel on how to make moveable wings.  She took her audience through the process step by step starting with Maleficent and moving on through two different builds of Hawkgirl.

Besides recruiting and doing panels, my main job for Geekfest is to help judge the costume contest.  You can pre-register online or sign up on site.  This is my fourth year to be a judge.  The contest is run like a well-oiled machine.  Jason Sanchez is the head of the committee as well as Judge #1.  I am Judge #2.  We get guest cosplayers to fill in Judge #3-#5 depending on how many Cosplay guests are in attendance.  The two amazingly organized folks who do all the form generation, spreadsheets, data entry, tabulation of scores, and man the registration table are William Priest and Lindsey Packett.

Our special guest, Miss Cynthia Lee Fontaine, did a special performance to get our costume contest started and then also helped MC the contest.  She was wonderful to work with and made the contest so much fun!

This is Lindsey showing off our trophies for the contest.  She is cosplaying Francine Smith from American Dad.  Below is a photo of our wonderful Costume Contest Committee.  

From left to right are: Brice Garcia as Elizabeth Swann, Kathleen Laundy as Batgirl, William Priest as Quail Man, Jason Sanchez as Sailor Uranus, Lindsey Packett as Jem and guest MC Miss Cynthia Lee Fontaine.

​Here's all the winners in a giant group photo!

We had 33 entries in this category.  Most unusually this year we had ties for all the places.  I'm not sure about the order, so here are just the characters who won. 

Winners:
Frank Zapp as The Joker
Nikita Tomlin as Officer Judy Hopps
Kori Camp as Negasonic Teenage Warhead
Izabel Weaver as Rose Quartz from Steven Universe
Jacob Fonseca as Jason Todd "Red Hood"
Terrence Moon as Eternal Sailor Moon

We only had three entries in this category so they all won trophies.

​1st Place:  William, Nick, and Koa as Halo
2nd Place: Jaylon and Val as Howl and Sophie
3rd Place: Mia, Mariah, Allie, Mika as My Hero Academia

We had 10 entries in this category and almost half of them won trophies for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, as well as Judge's Choice and Best in Show.  
​
Best in Show: Valerie Marten-Ellis as Fiona from Borderlands
​Judge's Choice: Kayla Robertson-Jones as Okoye from Black Panther

1st Place:  Allysa Garcia as Maki Nishikino
2nd Place: Rhiannon Schlicheiser as Dr. Strange
3rd Place: Mary Ann Mervin as Neopolitan

We had six entries and awarded three trophies.  

1st Place:  Reina Webly as Queen Vexus
2nd Place: Caitlyn Victory as Garyl
3rd Place: Taia Mitchell as Inuyasha

Here's our MC and contest chair Jason Sanchez.

Captain Jack Sparrow and Anna from Frozen judged the Kids' Contest.  

The costume committee did a different cosplay every day of the event.  We also took photos of other cosplays that we loved.

Next year, CTC is renaming Geekfest to Epically Geeky Expo.  Here's the new logo.

To date, Batman has the largest Rogue's Gallery on film.  The original gangsters made famous in the 1966 movie were Joker, Catwoman, Penguin and Riddler, but Batman also fought Scarecrow and Two Face in the 1940's.  In the 50's Deadshot and Mr. Freeze were introduced.  In the 60's we got Poison Ivy, followed by Ra's Al Ghul in the 70's, Killer Croc in the 80's, and Bane and Harley Quinn in the 90's.  These villains make up the complete Rogue's Gallery on film.

"A Visual Guide to all 37 Villians in the Batman TV Series"   
By Scott Neumyer

Yes, in the three seasons of the original TV series, there were 37 different villains.  I'm not going to bother covering all of them, just the ones who had more than one appearance. ​  Some Villains were created just for the TV show.  Of those,  Egghead and Bookworm are my personal favorites. 

Vincent Price as Egghead​ ​​and Roddy McDowell as Bookworm.

For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to discuss the 13 most iconic Batman Villains represented in TV and film: Joker, Catwoman, Scarecrow, Penguin, Two Face, Riddler, Deadshot, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Ra's al Ghul, Killer Croc, Harley Quinn, and Bane.

The Joker was created by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson. The inspiration for The Joker was Bill Finger's image of Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine (a man with a disfigured face) in the 1928 movie The Man Who Laughs.  Jerry Robinson created a playing card sketch in 1940 based on the photo of Veidt.

The Joker is a criminal mastermind; a psychopath with a warped, sadistic sense of humor.  He's an expert at chemical engineering. The Joker is responsible for the murder of Robin #2 Jason Todd, and the paralysis of Barbara Gordon.  He is Batman's Arch Nemesis. 

Cesar Romero as the Joker, costume designed by Pat Barto, makeup by Ben Nye, and hair by Margaret Donovan.

Compared to the 1966 TV series, these four Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher films are even more colorful and saturated, with really overblown production design all around.  To fit in with that world, Bob used a variety of color on the Joker costume. Jack's Joker suit is purple, but they've switched the colors of the vest and the shirt from the comic book costume.  Instead of pinstripe pants, Jack wears plaid pants.  The fabrics used on his shirt, vest, and cravat are very shiny and make the center of his body pop to reflect more light on his face.  The surrounding fabrics are matte and absorb light. His coat is wool, wool felt hat, and suede gloves, leather shoes with built in spats.  

The only two episodes that Joker appears in references the events of The Killing Joke by Alan Moore, in which Joker shoots Barbara Gordon, paralyzing her and forcing her to continue her crime fighting from a wheelchair as Oracle.

Roger Stoneburner resembles The Killing Joke Joker, but his costume resembles the Jack Nicholson costume: purple suit, orange shirt, green tie. 

​​​Roger Stoneburner played the Joker in the pilot episode (Mark Hamill did the voice). ​His costume was designed by Chris Karvonides-Dushenko and Sara Markowitz.

Interview with Lindy Hemming:
"What we were searching for at the very beginning of how to do this Joker, were images. I was looking through images of people who might have dressed like that in the pop world and the fashion world. You can imagine Vivienne Westwood meets Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Pete Doherty. You think of all those people who dress themselves up and are very interested in their appearance — and then we added into it the life of him. So whatever it is that's wrong with him — made him be like this — means he doesn't care about himself at all, really. He's very sweaty and he probably doesn't have a proper home. We were trying to make him sort of a... I don't want to say vagrant... But a back-story for him that he really doesn't look after himself."

​"The idea was to create someone, as you can see with these different sketches, who would dress so not because he is a clown, but rather because he's more like an eccentric modern punk, a bit like Keith Richards, far from the usual versions of the character. I looked at what Alexander McQueen was doing, for example. His hair is green because his dye messed up and turned green for no reason. All this was to make him modern and not just the caricature of a clown. In fact, actually making the costumes wasn’t that difficult, but visualizing them was. He’s a kind of dandy: the leather shoes look dandy, but they go up a bit at the tip. It's subtle, but we can see the clownish side right there."

Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight. designed by Lindy Hemming.  

​Heath's Joker wears a long purple coat, purple, pin-striped pants,  a hexagonal patterned purple dress shirt, green vest and tie, multi-colored socks, with brown leather shoes.  His makeup continues the tradition of white skin, green hair, red over-large smile.  

Interview with Lindy Hemming:
"The Joker's shoes are from Milan and were selected by the costume designer because they had an upward swoop at the toe, which she thought was reminiscent of clown shoes. His tie was fashioned from a fabric that was specially woven to Hemming's specifications by Turnbull & Asser, a London-based clothier better known for dressing British royalty and the like. "Heath wanted it to be thin, so it's a '60s tie but in a Turnbull & Asser fabric. I dare say it's the weirdest tie that Turnbull & Asser has ever made," Hemming laughs.

"When Heath came in and we showed him all the bits and pieces of the costume, he thought it was fantastically original and just went for it."

Joker Costume on Display at the DC Experience London, 2018.

Contractually, Jerome is not the Joker, however, he's got everything but the name and the green hair. That's why Jerome is a ginger and wears an orange jacket instead of the purple.  DC is reserving all Joker characters for the big screen so no small screens can use the name.

Cameron Monaghan as Jerome Valeska, designed by Lisa Padovani.​Prosthetics Makeup designer David Presto

Left: Joker graphic novel, 2008 written by Brian Azzarello and Illustrated by Lee Bermejo.
​Right: Joker Concept Art on display at the DC Experience London, 2018.

Kate Hawley:
"They're all wearing Versace and Balmain and all of that. David wanted that world. When we go into this club scene in his and Harley's world, they're not the only freaks in there. There's this high end, almost like a Studio 54 thing. It's like everyone's [****]ed up in this world and there's a normality to it. There's that beautiful book which actually i based some of the jester stuff we were playing around with."  

​Jared Leto in Suicide Squad, designed by Kate Hawley.

Alessandro Bertolazzi designed the hair and makeup for this film.  Rob Coutts designed the tattoos.

Alessandro Bertolazzi:
"Joker is the guy with the green hair. This is what I knew. Then I started looking around, and I saw Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, and everything else. I wanted to do something that was not the same, and Warner Bros. said, "OK, do your Joker." Usually with a big movie studio, people suggest things, have an opinion or give me guidance. With this, nothing! 
They give me Jared Leto, a guy with hair and a long beard. A month before starting, I studied The Man Who Laughs, the 1928 film from which the Joker was inspired. It's so beautiful.
I ask David, "Who is this guy? What is his story?" David says to me, "He's also a poet." He's in love. It's a sick love, but still love. I tried to find something to make him super scary, but at the same time, a romantic.  I always loved that contrast. I want a guy who is a poet, a romantic, and a devil all at the same time. He is completely sick.
Then we start painting in the face. And we do the skin. We work a lot on the skin, because the skin is the most important. I wanted it to look like a really dirty, really sick. It's three hours of makeup, with six or seven layers. With the pale skin and the veins and a wound —  I make it dirty.  He's a guy who hasn't taken a shower in forever. This is The Joker.
Then he needs something else. David said, "Why don't we give him a scar?" That's interesting. Then I decided to do seven scars. This guy is completely crazy — I imagine him in front of the mirror in the morning, where he never brushes his teeth, but instead he might take a blade and he cuts his face. Just for fun.
This is my process.
During the shoot, every day, every single shot, we changed something. I have more details or I have less, depending on the moment.
What was incredible, Warner Bros. and DC Comics are obsessed about everything, but they never asked me to change anything in my makeup. Not one single thing. They let me do everything I wanted.
Jared had to be completely in connection with me. Jared was amazing. We had a special makeup department only for Jared. When he arrived in the morning, he'd come straight to the makeup department without seeing anyone else and we'd start the process of the transformation. The Joker's part of the film, it's like another movie inside Suicide Squad. So we decided to keep him completely separate. He had the whole makeup department and it was just me and him alone for three hours.
It started in silence. During this process he slowly, slowly he started to act like the Joker. And then … "Oh my god!" He becomes the Joker for real.
For a month, Jared had no contact with any actors except as the Joker. You know how actors go to the lounge and get coffee? Not Jared. Never. He was the Joker, 100 percent. Margot Robbie and everyone saw him only as the Joker for the whole shooting. This makes the difference.
People look at me and say, "Oh my God. It must have been so tough for you." No. It was amazing. Because I made the Joker."

Catwoman was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane.  Her real name is Selina Kyle. She is a jewel-thief and has a love/hate relationship with Batman. 

There were three women who played Catwoman in the Batman TV Series: Julie Newmar did the first season, but couldn't do the movie, so Lee Meriwether stepped into the role for a one-off.  Newmar came back for Season 2. Then Eartha Kitt took over for Season 3.  Pat Barto made all of the Catwoman suits from lurex.  It was the height of technology infusing a stretch knit with a metallic fiber overlay.
​
Designed by Pat Barto.

Michelle Pfeiffer played Selina Kyle in Batman Returns, designed by Bob Ringwood. Her suit was made from latex.

Interview with Mary Vogt:

"Tim is a very visual director who's involved in everything, including costumes. As an artist, he's able to provide sketches of his basic idea, and gives you the freedom to take off from there.

In the plot of Batman Returns, Selina Kyle makes her Catwoman costume herself after she's been brought back from the dead by a coterie of cats. As a result, Catwoman's suit has large, visible white stitches to reveal its homemade origins, becoming more ragged and torn as the film progresses. These ragged stitches are also intended to function as a visual suggestion that Selina has been sawn back together again in an act of physical regeneration.

Halle Berry played Catwoman in her stand alone movie, designed by Angus Strathie.

He designed a new silicone fabric for part of her suit.  The rest was leather.  Halle's suit bared way more skin than previous suits.

Anne Hathaway played Catwoman for Dark Knight Rises, designed by Lindy Hemming.

"The catsuit worn by Anne Hathaway is actually a two-piece, separated by a low slung, fitted utility belt; her serrated heels double as weapons. The suit’s outer material is polyurethane coated Spandex with an embossed hexagonal pattern. Catwoman iconography is referenced subtly by night vision goggles (also functioning as a jeweller’s loupe) that flip up to form ‘ears’ when not in use."

​Camren Bicondova as Selina Kyle aka Catwoman in Gotham designed by Lisa Padovani.​

“Even though it’s not a period piece, per se, it’s a concept piece, so everything is very particular,” Padovani says, admitting she tries to produce the majority of the show’s costumes in-house.  For inspiration, Padovani focused on the “timelessness” of the story. “I took the idea of the original graphic novels mixed with elements of ‘Blade Runner.’ And punk rock actually played a big part in it,” she notes. 

Scarecrow was created by Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, and Bob Kane.  His real name is Dr. Jonathan Crane.  He is an ex-Professor of Psychology who used experimental drugs and psychological tactics to exploit the fears and phobias of his victims.

Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in Batman Begins, designed by Lindy Hemming.

Charlie Tahan played Dr. Jonathan Crane in Season 1 of Gotham, designed by Lisa Padovani.

Penguin was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane.  The inspiration for Penguin was the advertising mascot of Kool cigarettes--an Emperor penguin in a top hat and cane.  Penguin's real name is Oswald Cobblepot. He owns a nightclub called the Iceberg Lounge which is a front for his criminal activity.  He uses high tech umbrellas as weapons. Unlike other villains, Penguin is sane and in control of his actions.

Original Concept art for Penguin, 1940.

​ First appearance:  Batman #58, December 1941, but he didn't make the cover.  Here's a later issue.

Burgess Meredith played Penguin in the TV Series.  This costume is very accurate to the comic.  Black tailcoat, pinstriped pants, white shirt, purple top hat and bow tie, white gloves, black shoes and white spats.  He had a variety of specialty umbrellas for all his Bat-fighting needs.

Danny Devito played Penguin in Batman Returns, designed by Bob Ringwood. 
Interview with Bob Ringwood:
​"For the Penguin, costume designers Ringwood and Vogt not only had to develop original costumes, but also the character's body shape, which differs radically from that of Danny DeVito's. They created a body 'shell' for DeVito to wear, and for his actual wardrobe, they chose a strange Victorian look that's markedly different from the tuxedo of the comic book representation. Bob Ringwood commented: ''It's almost like something out of Charles Dickens.''

Stan Winston designed The Penguin's makeup.  Greg Cannom did Penguin's hands.  Ve Neil was the makeup supervisor.

Robin Lord Taylor played Oswald Cobblepot aka Penguin on  Gotham, designed by Lisa Padovani.​

Lisa Padovani:
"There have been so many different renditions of The Penguin, I tried not to be too stuck on what has already been done and tried to look at his character in a fresh way. I am a big believer in mixing up eras and that’s what I did with his costume- he’s a complete custom build except for some accessories. He wears a one-button tux jacket influenced by the ‘20s, a vest based on a teens tux vest, a tux shirt based on a ‘70s model and a cross over tie that was based on early ‘60s rock and roll groups from England. I am not afraid to use color so his jacket lapels are an acid black/green with a reptile green vest. Purple was also a color we used on him in the vests and bow ties. The idea was to show a progression of his look- he is still not completely The Penguin everyone knows. He’s a very odd character with a painful past, so he needed to look unusual and individual without sticking out as a complete freak. That will come later."

Two Face was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane.  His real name is Harvey Dent and he was Gotham's District Attorney. He was hideously scarred on the left side of his face during a criminal trial by a mob boss who threw acid on him, which made him insane.  He is obsessed with the duality of good and evil and this he makes all decisions by flipping his two-headed coin, which was also scarred by the acid on one side.

1989: Billy Dee Williams played Harvey Dent in Batman, designed by Bob Ringwood, and was supposed to continue in the role and become Two Face in Batman Returns except that didn't  happen, because Joel Schumacher took over the production and cast Tommy Lee Jones instead.  We finally did get a Billy Dee Williams Two Face in 2017's Lego Batman.

Tommy Lee Jones played Two Face in Batman Forever designed by Bob Ringwood and Ingrid Ferrin.

He had two suits.  One business and one formal.  

Aaron Eckhart played Harvey Dent aka Two Face in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight designed by Lindy Hemming.  

Nicholas D'Agosto played Harvey Dent aka Two Face in Gotham designed by Lisa Padovani.​  We have yet to see Harvey turn into Two Face on the show.

First appearance:  Batman #140 October, 1948.

Frank Gorshin played The Riddler in the TV series, designed by Pat Barto. He had two costumes:  The suit when he was plotting and the unitard when he was out committing crimes.

John Astin stepped into the role for two episodes, but he's clearly wearing the same costume.

Jim Carey played The Riddler in Batman Forever, designed by Bob Ringwood and Ingrid Ferrin.  Carey had three different costumes: one sequined suit and two different unitards.  The suit lit up so he could go jogging at night.

Rick Baker did the makeup and Ve Neil was the key makeup artist.

Cory Michael Smith played Edward Nygma aka The Riddler in Gotham designed by Lisa Padovani and John Glaser.

First appearance:  Batman #59 June, 1950.

1977: Detective Comics #474 Deadshot got a costume makeover.

Deadshot was created by David Vern Reed, Lew Schwartz, and Bob Kane.  His real name is Floyd Lawton. He is a deadly assassin and never misses his shot. ​

Bradley Stryker played Floyd Lawton on the Smallville TV Series in Season 10, designed by  ​Caroline Cranstoun and Melanie Williams.

Michael Rowe played Deadshot on the Arrow TV Series, designed by Colleen Atwood and Maya Mani​.

Will Smith played Deadshot in Suicide Squad, designed by Kate Hawley.  This is the first on screen design to even come close to getting Deadshot's costume right.  They eye-piece and his mask are spot on,  She's turned his red outer garment into an undersuit and put tactical, black Kevlar armor over it, essentially replacing all the white areas in the costume with black.  This is a good transition from page to stage, in my opinion.  I feel like Hawley looked at what Marvel had done with Falcon and went down that path.

First appearance:  Batman #121 February, 1959.

Mr. Freeze was created by Dave Wood and Sheldon Modoff.  His real name is Dr. Victor Fries and originally he was called Mr. Zero.  He is a cryogenics expert who was involved in a lab accident while attempting to cure his terminally ill wife Nora. The disaster lowered his body temperature so much that he must wear a cryogenic suit to survive.  He uses a freeze ray gun freezes his victims solid. ​When he made his first appearance on the TV series, the producers renamed him Mr. Freeze.  At that point his costume in the comics was changed to be more in line with the TV show costume.

There were three actors who played Mr. Freeze--George Sanders in the 1st season, Otto Preminger and Eli Wallach in the 2nd Season, all designed by Pat Barto.  

​Sanders' costume looked more like an astronaut suit.  Otto gets orange eyebrows, and no hair.  He wears the same grey jumpsuit and silver gloves, but they changed the helmet and gave it dials. ​Eli gets grey hair and eyebrows. Because all three actors who played Mr. Freeze used German/Austrian accents, Mr. Freeze became fixed in the public's mind as being Eastern European, which is why it should be no surprise that Arnold Schwarzenegger was cast as Mr. Freeze thirty years later.

 Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin,  designed by Ingrid Ferrin and Robert Turturice.  Arnold had two costumes: his supersuit which looked a lot like his Terminator body from 1984, and a smoking jacket.  His Mr. Freeze suit was powered by diamonds which apparently made it glow. It was fabricated by Terry English.  They made four suits out of aluminium.  It weighed 45 lbs and made Arnold claustrophobic. Each suit was powered by a back pack and had 2500 LEDs. In the first action sequence it also had wings. 

Arnold's costume is a major improvement over the 1966 version, although it's so high tech that it looks a lot like Tron and Terminator had a baby and now it's a teenager that has a Playstation.

I have a particular fondness for this costume.  The silver/blue fabrics are beautiful and the pajama pants have bears on them.  Together with the polar bear slippers, and the fact that he's watching Mr. Snow Miser on all his TVs is  hilarious!

Nathan Darrow played Mr. Freeze in Gotham designed by Lisa Pardoni and John Glaser.

First appearance:  Batman #232  June, 1971.

Liam Neeson played Ra's al Ghul in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, designed by Lindy Hemming.

Peter Robb-King designed makeup and hair for this film.

Matt Nable plays him in Arrow, designed by Colleen Camp and Maya Mani.

Alexander Siddig played Ra's al Ghul in Gotham designed by Lisa Padovani and John Glaser.

First appearance:  Batman #181 June, 1966

Although the TV series premiered in 1966, the same year that Poison Ivy made her debut, and ran for three seasons and a movie, Poison Ivy did not make it onto the small screen.  It's a shame.  The closest we got was Glynis Johns playing Lady Penelope Peasoup for three episodes.  

Uma Thurman played Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin, designed by Ingrid Ferrin and Robert Turturice.  Uma gets three different Poison Ivy costumes and a lovely red wig. Her leaf eyebrows are prosthetics, however she only wears them with the first two costumes. 

Clare Foley, Maggie Geha, and Peyton List appear as Ivy "Pamela" Pepper aka Poison Ivy in Gotham, designed by Lisa Padovani ​and John Glaser.

​Clare Foley

Lisa Padovani:
​"Ivy Pepper's look was inspired by punk rock god Johnny Rotten.
"I'm personally very inspired by early punk and new wave and rock and roll, and it's very much a part of my life, and how I think, and how I dress, and how I live every day. So I saw the actress that they hired, and iI was happy to see that she was a real redhead. And Johnny Rotten just immediately came to mind."
She saw the spirit of Johnny Rotten in the character.
"I just thought, this is a street urchin that runs wild, does whatever she wants, and has got this edge to her. And I thought, let's put the holey sweaters on her that Johnny used to wear, and let's mess her hair up, and just make her look like an anarchist. So, she loved it. Everybody else seems to have loved it, so I think yeah, he was a great role model for her."

Maggie Geha's costumes are in a range of green high fashion clothing and accessories.

Peyton List

Peyton took over from Maggie Geha at the midseason break and appeared in her first episode in March without red hair.  However, this photo was released as a tease for its upcoming 5th and final season in 2019.

Harley's first appearance was on Batman: the animated Series in 1992.  She was created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm.  Her real name is Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel. She is a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum and falls in love with The Joker.   They have an abusive love/hate relationship.

​ It wasn't until the next year that she appeared in the comic book.
​Batman Adventures  #12 August, 1993.

In the New 52, Harley's origin story was ret-conned and they had Joker throw her in to the same vat of acid that bleached his skin and turned his hair green.

2002: Mia Sara played Harley Quinn on the Birds of Prey TV series, designed by Chrisi Karvonides-Dushenko and Sara Markowitz​.

​Harley Quinn concept art on display at DC Experience London, 2018.

Margot Robbie played Harley in Suicide Squad, designed by Kate Hawley.  Rob Coutts designed Harley's tattoos.

Harley Quinn Costume on display at DC Experience London, 2018

His first appearance: Detective Comics #523 February, 1983.

Killer Croc's  real name is Waylon Jones, he was a side show wrestler. He has a rare genetic condition that gives his skin a crocodile-like appearance. He is a member of the Suicide Squad and is the lover of Enchantress. ​

​Concept Art on display at the DC Experience London, 2018.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje played Killer Croc in his only film appearance to date in Suicide Squad Designed by Kate Hawley.

Alessandro Bertolazzi was the makeup and hair designer on the film. Greg Nicotero was the Killer Croc makeup supervisor. KNB EFX Group were the prosthetics manufacturer for Killer Croc. Sean Sansom was Adewale's makeup artist.

First appearance:  Vengeance of Bane #1 January, 1993.

Jeep Swenson plays Bane in Batman and Robin. designed by Ingrid Ferrin and Robert Turturice.  His costume is inspired by the stereotypical Luchador wrestling costume.  Jeep was 6'4" and weighed over 400 lbs.  He had been a professional wrestler before he was cast as Bane, unfortunately, he died right after the movie was released.

I'm not sure where the idea for green skin came from, other than he was created in Poison Ivy's lab.  But he looks a lot like the Hulk in a mask.

Bane Concept Art on display at the DC Experience London, 2018.

Tom Hardy plays Bane in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Rises designed by Lindy Hemming.

"The padded vest was made as it would have been in the story, from a collection of surplus tent canvas, old webbing belts, metal plates from the door of a jeep, military meshes etc., and was designed to be worn both with and without the leather and canvas back support belt, which Bane needs due to his torture in prison as a child/teenager. These pieces were also needed in exactly identical multiples, and were a very important part of achieving his extreme silhouette; tinkering with his proportions to help make him look more bulky, animalistic and aggressive. Bane’s costume is intended to resemble a hotchpotch of influences from different parts of the world he has visited as a mercenary. The mask’s design is intentionally animalistic but functional; it masks his identity but also keeps him alive by pumping a painkilling gas into his body. It was digitally mapped to Tom Hardy’s face as a prosthetic but intended to look metal. It had to appear completely different to Batman’s cowl and could not be black."

Bane Costume on display at the DC Experience London, 2018.

Pat Barto:
A Closer Look: The Classic Batman TV Costumes
​
Bob Ringwood:
​Reinventing the Batsuit for the Modern Era
​
​Masterful Batman 1989 Costume Concept Art by Bob Ringwood
​
​Batman Returns

​Angus Strathie:
Catwoman's Suit's a Ripper

​Lindy Hemming on The Dark Knight Trilogy:
The Making  of Heath Ledger's Joker
​
The Dark Knight: Ledger Takes the Joker to a Whole New Level

​Making the Joker: Heath Ledger and Jared Leto's Makeup Artists on the Job of a Lifetime

​​Costume Designer Lindy Hemming Talks Catwoman, Redesigning Bane for Nolan's Universe, and More on the Set of the Dark Knight Rises

Costume Designer Lindy Hemming Talks in Detail about her work on the Film

We Chatted to Batman's Costume Designer, The Woman who Inspired a Generation

​​Birds of Prey:
Retro Review: Birds of Prey

​Gotham:
Gotham's Costume Designer Lisa Padovani Describes Her Process
​
Gotham Costume Designer Lisa Padovani Create Villainy With Style
​
Gotham Costume Design Origins
​
Gotham costume designer Lisa Padovani is totally fine with being called a control freak

Suicide Squad:
Esquire Interview, Aug. 2, 2018 ​

Making the Joker: Heath Ledger and Jared Leto's Makeup Artists on the Job of a Lifetime

Suicide's Squad Margot Robbie and Costume Designer Kate Hawley on Harley Quinn and Joker's Mad Love
​
Suicide Squad Joker influenced by Joker Graphic Novel

Joker's Tattoos Define the Character in Suicide Squad

We were so excited to make our annual pilgrimage to Kilgore for the fourth summer in a row.  It's been a crazy summer and I almost waited too late to book our hotel and tickets.  We ended up not being able to stay in our favorite hotel, Holiday Inn Express and ended up in Best Western instead.  Best Western is much closer than Holiday Inn, but the breakfast isn't nearly as good and the rooms open to the outside which I don't like because there's too much noise from the street.  Plus I really hate sweating on my walk down to breakfast every morning.  For our seats, we ended having to get tickets on the padded bench for both shows Friday.  The padding on the bench is adequate, but there's no more rake there and I'm so short already, that not having the extra height means I miss a lot of the stage due to the usually taller person sitting in front of me.  Saturday our seats were much better.  We had front row seats for the matinee and center seats in row G for the evening performance.

The costume designers for this season are Angelina Herin, returning for her third season with TSF. This year she designed 110 in the Shade and King John. Last year she designed Richard III and The Marvelous Wondrettes, the year before it was Henry V and Carousel. She is the professor of costume design at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. 

This is Christopher Metzger's first season with TSF and he designed Love's Labour's Lost and Tartuffe.  Christopher is based in Brooklyn and is a member of Local USA 829.  I have included a link to his website below.

The Tyler Morning Telegraph did an article on the costume department.

This year, the lobby display paid tribute to Val Winkelman who received her 30 year award from the Festival. Val has been managing the festival since 2008, but she used to be a costume designer, having designed 26 productions throughout her career for the festival.  These costumes are from the early 2000s.

​Costume design by Angelina Herin

I had never seen a production of this musical before, although I had seen The Rainmaker, once a long time ago. The script is interesting because the Sheriff, File, is revealed to be a divorced man (his wife left him) which is unusual for the time period.  He's afraid to let anyone get close to him, not the town-folk and especially not any women-folk.  The lead female role, Lizzy, is approaching spinster-hood even though she is a great home-maker, keeping house for her father and brothers.  Her flaw is that she is both plain in appearance and honest to a fault in personality.  Men don't like women who come right out and say what they're thinking so she's been unable to attract a husband, a fact that makes her family sad, but that ultimately her father is OK with.  Better to be honest than fake.  When a mysterious stranger, Starbuck, comes to town (a con-man who is supposed to make it rain) he is the first to find her attractive and show her how to see herself as such.  When her brothers find out that she's gone off with Starbuck, her father stops them from rescuing her from making (in their opinion) the biggest "mistake of her life".  Her father tells them that this may be the only time that she's happy with a man even if it only lasts one night.  The attitude toward women in general and sex out of wedlock in particular are very unusual for a father to have in this time period, which is what makes this play much more interesting than Carousel (to use an example from last season) or Oklahoma!, or any other dust bowl era play.

Unfortunately, the Festival hasn't posted any photos of this show yet.  I've inquired about it, so hopefully they'll post them soon. The costumes were typical 1930's fare.  The town is in the middle of the drought so colors were faded and dusty.  Starbuck was in equestrian pants, a pink, bibbed shirt with white cuffs and collars, worn with black accessories of a vest, riding boots, and bowler hat.  He looks a bit like a circus ringmaster.  Lizzie starts the show in a green suit and then changes into a white dress for the picnic.  I bought the note cards again this year so I do have a few of Angelina's renderings of the costumes to show you. 

Costume design by Christopher Metzger

I had also never seen a production of LLL.  Normally I'm upset when Shakespeare is moved to a more modern period because I miss the extravagant costuming, however, since I had nothing to compare it to, I did not mind the show being set in the 1920's jazz age.  I felt that the music added a lot to the show and I didn't miss the play within a play element being replaced by a dance.  One of the remarkable things about the casting at TSF is that so many of the actors play musical instruments.  This production had it's own jazz combo with a piano, stand up bass, guitar, drum kit, trumpet, and saxophone.  Only the pianist was a professional musician, rather than an actor.

The King and his boys get most of the costume attention for this show, changing costumes five times.  They start the show in all white sweaters and pants looking like frat boys, then ditch the sweaters for white dinner jackets and bow ties, then ditch the white costumes for black tux pants and maroon smoking jackets, then green and red Russian "muscovite" jackets with black furry hats and fake beards as a disguise.  They ditch the Russian disguises for the rest of the black tie, tux ensemble.  The Princess and her girls only have two changes, cool colored day dresses which they change for evening gowns in the same color palette: baby blue, mint green, purple.  The only other female character in the play is Jacquenetta, a "base, country wench" that the Spanish Don Armado is in love with.  She is played in this version as a cabaret singer.  I couldn't find any reason for her to be in the play other than to sing songs and be swooned over.  Shakespeare probably doesn't have a reason either.  However, her costume is deliciously flapper-esque: long bias cut pieces in various shades of pink with an oversized velvet coat in green with a pink floral design.

Because the boys are trying to trick the girls with their silly Russian disguises, the girls are supposed to don masks to fool the boys into wooing the wrong girls.  The boys have given the girls tokens of their love (a brooch, bracelet, necklace, and gloves) that they expect the girls will wear and that's how they will identify them but the girls outwit them by trading the love tokens in order to tease them with their own words later.  Unfortunately, the girls didn't have time to leave stage and change or add masks or anything that would have actually served the purpose of disguise.  Instead they use the net veils on their cloche hats to hide their faces however, their very distinctive dresses were obvious clues as to who they really were.  So that bit didn't work for me.

Photos by John Dodd

The talk back we attended was for this show.  In the previous years, the talkbacks had been held on campus in one of the two buildings right behind the theatre.  This year the talkbacks had been moved off campus to a lovely little bookstore/coffee shop called The Coffee Cherry.  They had just opened less than a year ago in what was once a rather large house.  It just so happened that the morning of the talkback they were also having a book signing and the author was the father of the festival's choreographer, who played the Princess in LLL.  

Matt introduced the panelists and told us a little bit about his approach to the script.  LLL isn't nearly as produced these days as it was back in Shakespeare's day when the French people he was making fun of with the characters were well known by his English audiences.  The other institution that Shakespeare was attacking was a recently formed School for Atheism, in which students were required to leave the company of women and were expected to hate Shakespeare.  There are two characters who argue with each other and are endowed with the biggest use of language for language's sake that Matt cut from their production.  Matt had two reasons for these cuts: there weren't enough actors to play two more characters and their arguments didn't contribute to the romantic comedy or satire that Matt felt were the most important attributes of the play.

Matt spoke about his idea to turn the play into a musical and replace the play within a play with a dance.  Originally, he wanted one musician to do all of the songs for the whole show.  An actor was given a contract early on to do just that, but the actor ended up turning it down probably due to being offered a better contract at another theatre.  Once that happened, Matt had to scramble during casting to make another plan.  Fortunately his wife Meagan is the casting director for the festival so while she was still in process Matt was able to let her know he needed actors who could also play instruments and that he was specifically looking for a bass, drums, guitar, trumpet, and sax.  Luckily he got exactly what he wanted.  The pianist, Arnold Sherman, had already been hired to be the music director for 110 in the Shade and was available to become the music director and play piano for LLL.  Matt does not read music, so he would find the versions of the songs he wanted in the show and send them to Arnold and Arnold would write out the arrangements for the actors in his jazz combo.  There were 16 songs in the show. The actor/musicians only had one rehearsal to incorporate their songs in to the show before they opened, which is insane to me.  When we do musicals our orchestra has three rehearsals with the cast.  So kudos to those actors!

Cadence Lamb, who played the Princess, was also the choreographer.  She was told that she was being given actors who could move well, rather than dancers.  She was not daunted because one of her past gigs was to choreograph elementary school children. She taught the cast the Charleston and the Lindy Hop and then let them improvise their own dancing to begin with.  After that, she began to reign them in during the rehearsal process, when finally she gave each of them specific things she wanted them to do during various moments of the play.

Rick Higgenbotham told us that he used the Paul Meyer dialect tapes for his Spanish accent.  The vocal coach for the festival, Jennifer Burke, then helped him figure out when and where to use less of it so that the audience could still understand all the words.  There were certain words that Rick had chosen to mispronounce as a character choice and Jennifer helped him with that.

Then Matt opened it up to questions from the audience and someone asked about the budget for the festival.  Matt said the budget is $760,000 annually which Kilgore College gives them up front and then the festival pays back at the end of the season.  Of that, $500,000 is spent on staff, 75,000 is spent on the productions, $25,000 is spent on meals, and $8,000 is spent on travel.  If you keeping track (and good at math) that leaves another $152,000 unaccounted for. Matt also mentioned that this year they began renting a warehouse to build all the scenery in so that the technicians aren't building outside in the heat, like they had been doing the last 32 years.  So rental fees for the warehouse are coming out of the budget too.  My guess is the rest of the budget is spent on a combination of housing, publicity, and administrative costs, which Matt didn't mention.  Matt did mention that it saves the festival money if Matt and Megan don't act because they are Actor's Equity members, they must take a paycheck for acting, but since they are not members of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Union, they don't have to take a paycheck for directing.  

Another thing that came up in conversation was the unexpected crisis of having to replace an actor at the last minute during a performance.  Tim Sailer had been sick and was losing his voice after the shows began their run.  He was cast in 3 of the 4 shows.  During intermission of July 15th performance of Tartuffe, where he played Cleante, the SM told Matt that Tim had completely lost his voice and asked what was the protocol for replacing him.  In 33 years of the Festival they had never cast any understudies (because they couldn't afford to hire extra actors) and in 33 years no actors had ever had to be replaced.  However, the protocol was the Matt could cover for the male roles and Meagan could cover for the female roles, so as Matt was too big to fit into the Cleante costume, he went home, dressed in all black and came back to go on for Tim.  Matt stood at the side of the stage and read all of Cleante's lines, while Tim wore the costume and did the acting and blocking.  After they got through that show, Tim was put on vocal rest and luckily his voice healed before he had to perform LLL on Thursday afternoon, four days later.

​Costume design by Christopher Metzger

I have designed Tartuffe twice in my career; once at UTEP and once at MCC, so I am very familiar with the show. This production was excellent in every way.  I loved the costumes.  Christopher kept his designs in the Cavalier period with corsets, hip rolls, petticoats, and cartridge pleating galore.  Mdm. Pernelle was in black, Elmire was in gold, Marianne was in blue and pink, Cleante in purple, Damis is blue, and Orgon in brown and black stripes, Dorine in blue and brown stripes as his foil.  Lots of prints on all the fabrics and a lot of contrasting fabrics in each costume.  I love that. 

Some things that this production did that I'd never seen before.  When Orgon first gets home, Dorine undresses him, taking his hat first, then his jacket, then finally his boots which made for a funny bit her trying to pull them off.  Then he changed into a lounging gown and matching hat with slippers that he wore for most of the rest of the show.  Tartuffe wears a monk's robe throughout most of the show until he boldly kicks the family out of the house, then apparently goes shopping for some new threads and comes back resplendent in red and gold feathery finery complete with periwig and beauty patch.  The shoes were the best bit, red with enormous gold buckles.  The other interesting acting bit that I'd never seen before was Micah's choice to play Tartuffe as a con man who is ready to give up when he gets caught by Orgon in the table scene until he realizes that Orgon is so stupid he won't believe what he's seen with his own eyes.  Then you can see Tartuffe getting bolder and really coming into his stride as he takes possession of the house.  It's almost like he's shocked that he's evicted them, but also super pleased with himself that he came up with the idea, so pleased in fact, that he goes out and buys himself a fancy new outfit, all pretext of religious modesty gone.

Photos by John Dodd

Costume design by Angelina Herin

I had never seen a production of King John, much less designed it. I hadn't even read it before.  In fact, the Festival had never staged King John in its entire 32 year history.  In the Director's Notes, James Dean Palmer says that King John was very popular in Shakespeare's time but wasn't much done after 1900 and has since fallen into obscurity. "However, the story is finding a resurgence in the new millennium.  Perhaps it's telling that a play about feeling powerless in a world of fickle and futile politics is finding current resonance....King John is a burning homage to the frustration and sheer absurdity of living in a broken political system"

If you're not familiar with the history of the English monarchy, Lion in Winter is a good place to start.  King John picks up after Henry's death and Richard's disastrous reign. Richard died making his youngest brother John, his heir instead of Geoffrey's son, Arthur. Geoffrey died before Arthur was born.    John is a man of 32, Arthur, a twelve year old boy.  Hearing this news, Arthur's mother Constance, takes him to France to Phillip II, who is now king, with the intent of using the French forces to raise an army and take the English throne for Arthur.  Phillip backs this plan because he intends to, in the resulting squabble, get all of France's territory back from England.  Because France opposes John's Kingship, the French and English forces fight and in the fight Arthur is captured and taken back to the tower to be killed but instead falls to his death in an escape attempt.  Constance, in her grief, tears out her hair and dies of a broken heart.  John maintains the throne in spite of his nobles leaving him to back France.  John is poisoned by the Cardinal sent from Rome to keep John in line.  John dies and his son Henry III becomes king at the tender age of nine, three years younger than Arthur would have been had Richard made Arthur king.

There's two subplots.  One involves Richard's bastard. IRL, Richard was homosexual and never had a legitimate heir, much less an illegitimate one, a fact Constance knew and was counting on to win the throne for her son so this bit is something Shakespeare completely made up. The bastard fights for John against France and in doing so, manages to kill Austria, then man who is blamed for killing The Lionheart and bragging about it by wearing Richard's lionskin cape around his neck ever since. IRL, Austria most certainly did not kill Richard, although he did hold him for ransom awhile in his dungeon during the crusades. The other subplot involves the peace treaty called for by the people of Angiers for the Dauphin Louis to marry Blanche, John's niece, in order to stop England and France demolishing their town in the fight.  In the play Loius and Blanche are adults, but IRL they were 11 and 12.  That's really all you need to know about the plot.

The costume design had a very Game of Thrones feel to it, specifically the House of Stark with all the layers and fur.  All the men and most of the women were in long, lace-front wigs.  The wig master for the production was Nicholas Jones, and the wig stylist was Ryan Sozzi.  The armor appeared to be mostly leather pieces and John even begins the play in a crown made of black leather, which is both elegant and frightening.  Later he dons what is supposed to be a black metal crown studded with red jewels.  It too is beautiful and frightening.  My guess is that it was 3D printed.  John has a wonderful leather armor piece that looked like a cross between a corset and a girdle that he only wore for one scene and no one got a photo of it, so you'll just have to imagine how lovely it was.  He spends most of the show in his soldier tabard of red and white with the lions passant and the rest of the show in one courtly gown or another.  There was a lot of red and brown used on the English characters and a lot of blue used on the French, as it should be in any play about English history.  Constance and Arthur were in pinks and purples;, the Cardinal in  white and gold with the largest egg-shaped hat I've ever seen.  I did some research on my own about that hat, because it's not the traditional shape or color (red) for a Cardinal's hat and I discovered that Innocent III didn't make an official decree dictating the Cardinals costume until after John died.  So  they may have worn all white with egg-shaped hats before then, as far as I know but I didn't bother doing any more research to find out.

Photos by John Dodd

The gift shop has new shirts this year.  We both got new ones.

Seth is really into Justice League Dark right now, so Rob and I watched the movie before we went to GACC.  There's exactly the right number and gender of characters for us: Seth really wants to be John Constantine, Rob really wants to be Swamp Thing, Sarah's going to be Zatanna, I'm going to be Black Orchid, and Sylvan's going to Deadman.  As an added bonus, we already have most of this stuff.  

We already own a London Fog trench coat, so I still need to Goodwill shop for him a white dress shirt, and some brown dress pants.  Rob has tons of ties.  He does need a new belt, though and new dress shoes.  He's worn out his Joker dress shoes.  Maybe something more hard wearing this time.  I think it's funny that John Constantine cosplays are super hard to tell apart from Castiel cosplays these days.  Castiel totally stole his look.

For Seth's birthday, I bought him pants, shirt, tie, and shoes.  He still needs a belt.  We need to do a fitting because the pants are unhemmed.
Fitting took place Tuesday night.  The only things that fit are his shirt and tie.  That's the problem with buying clothes for someone for a surprise.  The pants are too small and the shoes are too big.  so it's back to the Goodwill.
I got another pair of pants and now he just needs a pair of shoes.  He says he's willlng to cut and bleach his hair, so we'll see how that goes when I remind him later on this month.

As you can see he did cut and bleach his hair.  Halloween (yesterday) was the test run and everything seems to be fine.  He still can't tie his own tie by himself and he doesn't understand that dress pants are supposed to be worn around his belly button and not down around his hip bones.  But whatever.  His tie is way too long in the photo.  We didn't spike up his hair either, but we will. 

total cost: $42.00 including hair cut and color.

Sarah already has the black tux jacket, white shirt, vest, gloves, and bow tie, and black top hat that we were going to use for her Penguin cosplay until I found a lavender one on Amazon. Instead of buying her a black leotard (which would make it extremely difficult for her to go to the bathroom) I'm going to use the black tux pants that came with the jacket for Penguin $33 from Amazon, and just cut them off into shorts. I ordered  her black fishnets $7 from We Love Colors, and she already has black boots, they're just not above the knee.  I could easily make her black boot covers that go above the knee, but I don't know that it's that important to me, especially when it only serves to overly sexualize the character and Sarah's 11.  Then all she needs is a red carnation.  Sarah says she's going to wear a wig rather than dye her hair, again.

Total cost: $41.00

I ordered the red unitard $56 and gloves $16 and extra fabric $18 from We Love Colors last night.  It's going to take a couple of weeks to ship because they don't have the extra fabric in stock right now.  I have white fabric for the D already.  The problem will be when I wash it I don't want the red to turn the white pink, so I'll have to wash all the red first, before I add the D.  Sylvan is totally willing to shave his head bald to do this.  He hates having hair in the first place.  I still need to order clown white makeup for him Mehron $12 from Amazon.

So I was going to be Black Orchid, but Rob likes the JM DeMatteis run better, so Nightmare Nurse it is.  I already have purple gloves from We Love Colors. I have plenty of left over purple fabric from my Batgirl cosplay.  I have super tall brown boots that I can either paint purple or make bootcovers for, I haven't decided yet.  And since she's a ginger with a short bob, and I need a new Squirrel Girl wig anyway, I'll buy one that I can use for both.

 I draped a pattern for her dress last night.  I'm going to ruche the front panel like it seems to be in the comic.  I cut out the pieces last night as well. Today I ruched the front panel and sewed the other pieces together.  I will have to wait for the next MAC meeting on Wednesday to get someone to fit it on me.
Wed Oct. 17: Jason did my fitting at Cosplay Club. I completed the alterations, which was just taking in the CB seam a bit.  Then I hemmed it all over and cut the straps to the right length and attached them.  I also did one coat of purple acrylic on my brown Sarah Jane boots.  I mixed two different purples with iridescent extender to get the right color and shine.  By Friday I'd done three coats and then finished with mop and glow for the top coat.  They look great.

I started on the nurse hat on Friday.  I've made nurse hats before, so I just used on old one to pattern the new one in the same purple lycra.  The lycra was much heavier than the cotton I'd used previously, so I added both interfacing and craft foam in the middle to help it stand up better.  I need to made a Joanne's run to get grosgrain ribbon trim for it and the cross on the dress.  I also need wired ribbon for the ace bandages to keep them standing away from the gloves.  I still need to buy a wig.  I got the rest of what I need to make the hat and the cross on the dress today at Joanne's for $10.99  i still need a white headband to sew the hat onto.

I couldn't find a white (or purple) headband for the hat, so I gave up and got a maroon plush one at Target for $9.99 that I covered in lycra.  Handsewing the lycra on sucked even with a curved needle.  Then I attached the hat to it, also handsewing, which also sucked.  I stuffed water bottles into my gloves and wrapped wired white ribbon around t hem and hand sewed that on as well to make the bandages.  I got the red wig today at Beauty Mart on Waco Drive.  It was the floor sample so I got it for 10% off.  It was $19.99 at the register.  It got the velcro sewn on the dress this morning and just used tacky glue to glue the velcro on the cross.  I used white hook velcro for the cross and black loop velcro for the dress, so it won't ruin it when I wash it.  I am totally done with this costume and will be road testing it on Halloween.

I bought white tights to wear with it and ordered some earrings from Amazon that got here yesterday.  They are not the Rod of Asclepius which is what she uses to identify an illness and cure it, because I couldn't find any, so they are the Staff of Caduceus, which is also used interchangeably as a medical symbol even though it's actually a symbol of commerce.  They are silver and cost $9.90.  I didn't road test my costume for Halloween like I intended because it was too cold and rainy.  We didn't even go out, we just stayed at home and gave out candy.

​Total cost: $69.90

I thought about getting a green unitard from We Love Colors, but I think it would be more comfortable and easier in the long run just to make him pants and a shirt from a less stretchy, sturdier fabric  that I can sew other bits of fabric too to create the viney look.

July 17: I started on Swamp Thing today.  We bought camo fabric from Joanne's a while ago 5 yards for $10.19 a yard.  It has a slight two way stretch to it.  I cut out pants with a high waist, a shirt and sleeves.  First fitting happens this afternoon.  It totally looks like Duck Dynasty right now, but that's OK.  It's a process.  I also cut out a hood and a collar.

Monday July 30: Sarah came to help me dye all this polyester trim green for the viney bits of Swamp Thing.  It took 3.5 hours. 
Tuesday July 31: Today we're doing more of the same.  We dyed the cotton trim pieces brown.
Wednesday Aug. 1: I started by sorting the trim into short, medium, and long pieces.  The short pieces will go on the hood and collar, the medium pieces will go on the shirt, and the long pieces will go on the pants.  I started with the medium pile and began applying the trim to the shirt.  All that took 4 hours this morning. Tonight I went back and got more trim on the sleeves and the hood and just barely started on the pants.  That took 2 hours.  Right now the whole thing is looking more like Ron Weasely's dress robes than anything else, but it's a process.  At least doesn't look like Duck Dynasty anymore.

I have been adding the trim to the costume slowly but surely.  I got a lot done the week of Oct. 16.  I spent another 7 hours over the weekend adding even more trim and I mostly had to hand sew it on the pants.  I still have more to sew on esp. the sleeves of the jacket look bare.

I'm making him a mask from thermoplastic with the mouth cut out.  I got that molded on Saturday.  I wanted to paint it on Sunday when the weather was nice, but ended up missing the daylight due to errands that had to be run.   Hopefully the rain will hold back enough this afternoon so I can get at least one coat of plastidip on it. Three coats of plasti-dip later and I can now use my acrylics to paint it.  Finished that on 10/24.  Now it needs elastic.  Did that 10/29.  I spent most of last week sewing trim on the boot covers and now today (10/29) I'm going to add pockets on the inside of the bootcovers so he can keep his phone, keys, and money in them.  Also, this weekend we went to Michael's and bought some greenery plus the red flower for Zatana's lapel ($67.06) to add to the collar finally and I'm sewing that on today.  I also bought some moss so i might add that to the mask.

​He needs green makeup for his goatee still.  I plan to finish this costume so that he can also road test it for Halloween, which is Wednesday, so I have to hurry!

The mask at this point is black with 3 coats of plastidip on it.  I used acrylics to paint it for real. Then I added moss and other viney things from Michael's.  The photo on the right is how he looked for Halloween.  I had to cut a bit more out of the right eye hole  and trim down some of the moss from around his eyes and mouth.  The only other issue is that his boot covers are swinging around on his feet as he walks, because I didn't put elastic around the bottom yet.  But I think a better solution is to velcro the pant legs to the boot covers since there are pockets inside and that would keep his stuff from accidentally falling out.  But since Con is just two days away now, I'll probably just safety pin them.

​Total cost: 118.06

We were invited to this con because of our Batman 66 cosplay that the con organizers saw us do at Fan Expo in April.  They gave us five free two day passes.  We knew we'd be doing Batman again because the reason they invited us was because they were going to have the 66 Batmobile and Commissioner Gordon's cars there.  We knew we'd need one more cosplay for the other day, because we get too sweaty and do not want to repeat costumes in Texas in the summer ever.  We checked the guest list and saw that Melody Anderson and Sam Jones were going to be there and that's when Seth suggested we do Flash Gordon.  That is one of my all time favorite costume designs so of course I said yes even though I knew (because of my production schedule and our college trip to the UK that I'd only have four weeks to do five costumes. It would be difficult, but I was willing to take on the challenge, which you can read all about here in a previous blog.

​Flash Gordon cosplay: Seth is Flash, I am Aura, Rob is Ming, Sarah is Dale, Sylvan is Dr. Zarkov.  ​Photography and graphic design by Briumbra Photography.

Batman 66 cosplay: Sylvan is Riddler, Katryna (Sarah's friend) is Catwoman, I am Robin, Rob is Batman, Seth is Joker, Sarah is Penguin. ​Photography and graphic design by Briumbra Photography.

We wore our Flash costumes Saturday and got our photos taken first,  then immediately went to get Melody and Sam's autograph.  We paid extra for the photos with them.  Melody in particular loved our costumes.  The best part was that NO ONE ELSE dressed as anyone from the movie.  Sam Jones got a big laugh out of Seth's wig. Later, while we were waiting in the line for Doug Jones, John Wesley Shipp (The Flash) walked up to us to tell us how awesome our costumes were.  It was a Flash moment of awesomeness!

The Flash panel was at 1 that afternoon.  I got to ask the first question which was, "What was it like working with the costume department?" Melody talked about there being a roomful of old Italian women hand sewing on thousands of bugle beads and how heavy all of her costumes were.  Her wedding dress weighed 33 pounds!  She talked about how her orange headdress (that she disguises herself in to get away from Ming's bedroom) was made out of leather and bugle beads and it was super heavy and kept falling forward onto her face so that while she's doing her fight scene if you keep your eye on the headdress it moves forward and backwards on her head everytime they cut to a different angle. 

​Sam talked about how Max Von Sydow would get fully dressed in costume and makeup just to do Sam's close up shots when Max would never be on camera.  He told Sam that any considerate actor knows that it's your job to give your fellow actors everything you can so that they can give their best performance even (and especially if) you're not even on camera in that scene.  It's advice Sam took to heart and continued to do throughout his film career.

Rob and I are huge Star Wars fans, so Rob's made it his mission in life to collect all of their autographs on one poster.  We were really glad we finally got to meet Paul Blake who said definitively, "Han shot first!"  He was a super nice man and I loved his green glasses.

We have seen almost every movie Doug Jones has ever made plus all of his guest appearances on Face Off.  He is such a talented actor.  My husband compares him to Boris Karloff for being able to act so well under all of whatever appliances he's wearing.  He gives super great hugs too!

From left to right: autistic intern Tabidi Elkhalil, celebrity advocate Tony Todd, Sylvan, creator and certified social and cultural anthropologist Yvonne Wan, and  main artist Douglas Herbert.

I had seen an advertisement on facebook for this comic about an autistic superhero before we left for the Con.  So I made sure we went by their booth with Sylvan to check it out.  We made it there on Sunday and learned they were having a coloring contest so Sylvan entered.  You had to color in one of the variant covers of the comic book and everyone who entered won a bookmark with art drawn by the comic creator, Yvonne Wan, featuring Tony Todd (their celebrity advocate, who also played Candyman).  I told them that Sylvan was autistic and they wanted a photo with him.  We bought him the first issue.  They had 16 variant covers (which Office Depot sponsored getting them all printed).  Sylvan picked his favorite which was drawn by Tabidi Elkhalil, one of their autistic interns.  He's the man on the far left in the photo.  Then they told us there would be a panel at noon where the prizes would be announced. I would have gone anyway, even without the lure of prizes for Sylvan. 

We went to the panel and we listened  to what they had to say and it made me cry.  The main artist, Douglas Herbert, is a K-8 art teacher in Arizona who has had many autistic students over the years and who understands just how difficult it is for them in school and how much art helps them to realize their potential.  Tony Todd is involved because he was taken away from an abusive mother at 3 years old and then helped raise his younger brother who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18. The autistic intern who did the cover Sylvan chose, Tabidi Elkhalil, talked about how diversity should be celebrated and how important art is to him and how he hopes that this comic book would help other autistic kids to realize that they are not alone.  Then they told us about the internship program being run by the main artist, Douglas Herbert.  Each kid is paired with one older intern, both of them autistic and lessons are done through Skype. This year Malekith George (12) was paired with Tabidi Elkhalil (21).  Now Tabidi has been promoted to regular artist.  

​From their website:
"Focus is an autistic super hero, founded and created by Yvonne Wan (A Social Cultural Anthropologist & Autism Documentary film maker).  We have a large creative team who have previously done work with DC Comics, Marvel, Universal Studios and more.
Artist Douglas Hebert (Award winning artist, and Elementary school art teacher with experience in teaching some autistic kids) and Artist Yvonne Wan (Award winning artist) are leading the creative team and autistic internship program."

As it turned out, Sylvan won the coloring competition. He won a free night in a hotel in Cedar Park, a gift certificate to Office Depot, and a pad of Strathmore Comic Book paper, as well as a goody bag full of chips and soda.  That's Douglas Herbert  holding up Sylvan's cover that he colored.  Afterwards, I asked Douglas about the internship and Sylvan can apply online for next year.  Sylvan was really excited about that.  He loved art all the way through elementary school, but Rapoport didn't have an art elective while he was there, so he was in band.  I had given him one of those "adult" coloring books of cats for Christmas, so now he has a reason to get it back out and start coloring.  Maybe when it's time to apply for the internship, he can email them some pages.

We saw some great cosplays this weekend.  My favorite was the Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy girls.  Those characters were the reason that we did Batman 66 in the first place.  Long story short, I saw them on Spongebob years ago when Sylvan was little and thought they were hilarious.  Rob's favorite superhero is Batman and Adam West and Burt Ward were going to be at Fan Expo two years ago.  We both wanted to meet them so I thought we could cosplay them, except that in the back of my mind my subconscious was telling me we were too old and too fat to be them.  But then I thought of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy being old and in the nursing home together and still a team, and somehow that made it all OK.  I think this may be a problem only women make for themselves.  My husband certainly never thought he was too old or too fat to be Batman.  So there you go, I am forever grateful to the Spongebob team for dreaming up Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy so I could allow myself to have all kinds of fun after 50.

We also saw another husband/wife Batman/Robin team up.  They spotted us across the concourse and came running over so we took a bunch of photos together.

When I was in conversation with Vo Nguyen, one of the organizers, I offered to provide a full ride scholarship to MCC for majoring in theatre.  Unfortunately, that didn't pan out for this first year.  When I made the offer I asked to be allowed to choose the winner of my scholarship so Vo said I could be one of the judges, which is why I didn't enter my family in the costume contest.  Then we went off to the UK and none of that materialized.  If I had known that I wasn't going to be a judge, I would have signed us up for the contest.  Oh well.  Maybe next year. 

Here are the photos of the four winners as well as the other really great costumes (IMO), Two of them I'd judged before at Geekfest.  Lauren Knowlton as Hawkgirl (Best of Show) and the man who does Captain Jack Sparrow.  Their awards were trophies for Best Pop Culture (Cpt. Jack), Best Anime (Sailor Jupiter), Best Comic Book (Shredder).  There were maybe 20 entries total.  They had the judges on stage with the contestants, which blocked the audience's view of them. There was no pre-judging or any inquiry of the build process before or during the contest.  The other three cosplays that I really liked but didn't win were Dark Pit from Kid Icarus, whose wings were articulated and were made entirely with real feathers. If there had been a video game category, she should have won it.  The other was Silk Spectre from Watchman, which wasn't as complicated as Hawkgirl or Shredder, but still great.  The African guy was not a character from Black Panther, but I didn't catch what the MC said it was.  But it was also good.

​My angle for photos was not good since I was seated right behind the judges who were all crowded over into the corner which was the side of the stage that the contestants entered from so they mostly stood there in front of the judges who were on raised stools.  By the time they were done, they were walking away from me with their backs toward the camera.

I thought it was very successful especially for a first year con.  The costume contest could use some work, but at least it started on time, which is a rarity.  The HEB Center in Cedar Park is a lovely facility with plenty of spacious bathrooms for costume adjustments.  The parking was $5 a day, but there was plenty of it. The food was very overpriced, so I recommend leaving for lunch.  The air conditioning was cranked up and I was cold in my Aura costume but just fine in my Robin costume.  My husband never broke a sweat and he sweats all the time. The only annoying thing was that you had to have both your ticket and your wristband to leave and get back in each day. We were afraid they weren't going to let us leave to go back to Waco Sunday afternoon because we couldn't find two of our five tickets by that point. They said it was a fire marshal thing so that they could keep track of how many people were in the building at all times.  They finally did let us leave and weren't too terribly unreasonable about it, seeing as how it was 4pm and the con was ending at 5. We had to go through a metal detector every time as well as having our bags searched.  Also, there were no backpacks allowed but this fact wasn't publicized by the con, so a lot of people were turned away to go put them back in their cars.  One kid had been dropped off by his parents and had nowhere to leave his backpack, I have no idea how that worked out.  All in all we were really pleased and had a great experience. We will definitely be going back next year! 

The Tartan Weaving Mill is right next to the entrance to the Castle, which we had to pass up that day because of the crowds.  So we finally got back up there two days later and it was totally worth the climb up the ginormous hill.  Here's a very short advertisement from their FB page:

We didn't actually buy anything from the 5 floors of merchandise, but if I had the money and it was ever so much colder in Texas year-round, I would have bought this:

It's an officially recognized tartan designed by Brian Wilton in 2017.  I can't find it anywhere else online so I'm guessing it must be exclusive to the store, which doesn't have a website, only a FB page.

This was a mural at the entrance to the mill so that as you walked in you were reading the panels in order from right to left.  But I've put them in order from left to right, so it might seem confusing.  The first panels are the history of tartan and they lead into the loom viewing area which is in the basement.  The looms are very loud, even though they are behind walls and glass, you can still hear them.  The employees have to wear hearing protection when all four of them are going at once.  Outside of the loom area but still in the basement were seamstresses who were busy sewing bespoke kilts.  The UK word "bespoke" means made to order.

Here's a view from above the basement level of one of the looms.  Even the stairs are tartan!

Check out the giant cones of thread!

Here's another video from their FB page of one of the looms in action.

And again the display is set up so that it reads from right to left as you come into the room.  So the figures on the right are the oldest.

The individual figures in the correct order:

The artists' renderings also read from right to left as you walked into the room so that the figures as I've listed them below start in 1910 and go backwards till 1200 is at the end.  I apologize for the confusion.

Rob did get a scarf in his actual Murray tartan, but not at the TWM.  They were way out of our price-range there.  This came from Prestige Scotland, which was also on the Royal Mile, but cheaper.  The address is 187 Canongate and the guy who was working there was super helpful and nice.

We walked past The National Gallery every day and it took till the last day before we went in and explored it.  It's free like all the museums we saw in London.  We walked through the permanent collections and they allowed photography, so we took a lot of photos of the French Impressionism gallery.  I was also interested in the Scottish painters, so I took photos of that.

We didn't pay for the tour, so this is as much as we got to see for free.  If we'd had Edinburgh Passes like we had London Passes, then the Palace and the Castle would have been free.  As it was, we chose the Castle and paid for that.

Here's the inner doors behind the archway.  The unicorn is the symbol of Scotland and the lion is the symbol of England.

I don't know who Wullie is but he sure likes sitting on his bucket.

A Cow in a Kilt.  Edinburgh really likes their coos.  I guess the coo is Wullie's friend.

Here's another one on the roof of the building we were standing by.

And here's an aptly named pub.

Speaking of weird pub names, here's some weird pub signs.  Apparently Edinburgh has a problem with wild animals?

Because, yes, it really was that cold all the time.

And if that's not weird enough, here's two cigar store Indians.

Once we discovered this tea shop, we ate there every day.  It's WAAAAY better than Starbucks.

Four cups of tea in the pot and scrumptious desserts to boot!  I had an apple tart and Rob had a strawberry gateau.  It's more expensive to eat in the restaurant than to get it as take-away, but you can't take four cups of tea back to your hotel room so we paid the extra sitting down fee.

Because it was a school trip they weren't allowed to serve us whiskey, even us adults, so we got irn bru instead.  Irn bru is basically orange crush/big red.

Here's our entertainment.  It was Am-Dram at its finest.

Here's the haggis.  I ate it and it wasn't that bad, but I did get sick later.  Also, there was shellfish in the fish course even though the waitstaff said there wasn't and I was already sick from that.  

This is the mousse fantoosh.  It was good.

 And that was it.  We walked back to the hotel, I took a benadryl to combat the shrimp allergy and went to bed to combat the naseau from the haggis.  Rob went back out to take more night time photos.  We woke up the next morning, had our free cornflakes, and got in the van to take a death defying, way too fast and reckless, ride to the airport.  24 hours later with no sleep we were eating Tex Mex at Rosa's in Killeen. 

 I have never been happier to see a breakfast taco in my life. ​ 
​Rob got migas.

Founded in 1582, it is the 6th oldest university in the English speaking world.  The bit of it that we saw was built by architect William Henry Playfair starting in 1817, who did everything but the dome which was added later.  There's a statue of him out on the street.  Also, those horrible steps we had to climb every day were named for him, because he designed most of the buildings in New Town and they needed a way to get from Old Town to New Town, thus the steps.  We went there after supper and right before we went to see the opera.  They were getting ready for an event out on the quad, setting up tables with lots of food and champagne glasses.  Maybe graduation?  They didn't mind us looking around and snapping a few photos.

Here's the entrance to the art gallery at the University.  We visited it once accidentally looking for a toilet.  There wasn't one.

Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse by Pushkin, that was turned into an opera by Tchaikovsky.  Here's the wikipedia article on it if you'd like a plot summary.  I had never read it or seen it before.  It was performed in the Edinburgh Festival Theatre, which was built in 1892.  There was a fire onstage in 1911, in which eleven people who had been backstage died, but all 3,000 audience members got out safely.  The theatre reopened just three months later and continued to host opera, ballet, and concerts. There was a decline in the 1960's where it became a bingo hall and only had concerts after the bingo was concluded.  It was remodeled in 1994 and given a new glass fronted entrance, with the interior being restored to its former glory.  The theatre is said to be haunted by a magician, Sigmund Neuberger, who died in the fire.

Our seats were extremely house right and it was difficult to see the action on stage.  There were two intermissions, so we moved to seats that were further back and more center during the first one.  There were very few characters, a huge chorus, and a horse on stage.  The music was beautiful, of course, but the action was slow, because of course, it's Russian.  It was sung in Russian but there were supertitles projected above the stage.  Rob LOVED IT and even cried a bit.  I confess, I was bored.  I didn't really like the Russian literature that I read in college.  Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, etc... just didn't do anything for me. It's a slog to read, all the characters have very long names, and at least with Chekhov he keeps changing their names as you read.  But I had no problem understanding the plot of this opera.

The opera was performed in the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh. The scenery and costumes were designed by Annemarie Woods.

All photos are by James Glossop and are from the Scottish Opera website linked above.

The pub is named for all the public executions that took place on this site in the 17th Century.  Most of the people were Covenanters who were hanged for being Presbyterian when that religion was illegal during the reign of Charles II.  In 1937 a memorial was erected on the site of the gallows with the names of all the people who were wrongly executed during the twenty year period known as The Killing Time.  However, the last public execution in Edinburgh was in 1954 when George Robertson was found guilty of the brutal murder of his ex-wife and two children.  The death penalty was abolished in the UK in 1965.

Deacon Brodie was the real life inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Ironically, he made a cabinet for the Stevenson family that was in young Robert's room growing up and is now in the Writer's Museum that we saw the day before.

Scotland has a strong literary tradition.  This is the day we visited all of the things in Edinburgh that had literary ties.

The exhibition that was on while we were there was "Illustrating Scottish Poems".  Here's a link to the description.

Also on display were 5 book sculptures inspired by specific novels and done by cutting into pages of the book to create scenes from the book.

The Writer's Museum has very limited hours which is why we had to wait so long to go there.  It is mostly about Robert Burns, Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson, although there is a little bit about Muriel Sparks and JK Rowling.

These quotations are on paving stones outside the Writer's Museum.  It is a National Literary Monument.  "Makar" is Scottish for author or writer in much the same way the suffix "wright" implies crafter of a thing, makar implies crafter of words.  The quotations are from famous Scottish authors.

Rob wanted  to see a Hedgehog in a hedgerow the whole time we were there, but this is as close as he got.

Just so you know, I LOVE the HP books.  I started reading them when my friend Monique gave me the first one as a present, back in the summer of 1999. Our friend Heather was visiting me in Waco, so Monique had mailed both of us a copy to give us something to read by the pool. It was so good, I read it a second time as soon as I finished it.  Then I went down to the bookstore to buy Chamber of Secrets, which I read immediately, and later Prisoner of Azkaban, which came out after school started.  It was a long wait for Goblet of Fire to come out, but I busied myself with the new website Mugglenet, which was quite different in the early days than it is now.  I got into fan fiction (reading it, not writing it) and really enjoyed the Red Hen website.  I was sad when the series was concluded and, although I enjoy the movies, they are not nearly as good as the books, not many movies have that distinction.  So, to finally be in the town where it happened (thanks LMM for that song), I was flushed with fangirl excitement!  But before I can tell you about all the awesome Harry Potter related sites we saw, I have to tell you a story about a dog, Greyfriars Bobby.

Greyfriars Bobby was a dog who sat on his master's grave for 14 years until his own death on January 14, 1872.  People in the town felt sorry for him and started feeding him and he became welcome at all the local establishments.  A baroness had a monument established to Edinburgh's most faithful dog.  It was originally atop a water fountain that served people as well as a ground level one for dogs.  His collar is in the Museum of Edinburgh that we had visited the day before, along with a copy of the statue and a whole display on his history.

Greyfriars Bobby has been the subject of a 1912 book, a 1961 Disney movie, and a 2006 film starring Christopher Lee.  For another pop culture appearance, watch Burke and Hare on Showtime.  The dog is shown sitting on his master's grave  at Greyfriars Kirkyard in the scene where our infamous protagonists are attempting to rob a grave.  The pub right across from the statue is where Bobby would go for his luncheon upon hearing the 1:00 gun.  There's a plaque on the outside of the pub commemorating that.

Harry Potter tours were free and left every day from the statue of Greyfriars Bobby at 3pm sharp.   Our tour guide was Sam, a Slytherin.  This was the best thing we did in Edinburgh and especially for the money we paid for it which was nothing.  The tours are free but they pass the hat at the end because the guides don't get paid, they are doing it for the love of Potter, so cough up some galleons, sickles, and knuts!  I think we gave him a couple of pounds, as did the other 20 or 30 people in our group.  Not bad for a couple hours of work each day.

We started off at the Greyfriars Kirkyard.  Kirk is Scottish for church (Did you know that, Trekkies? I didn't) so essentially a kirkyard is a graveyard. JK spent a lot of time there.   We entered through the back fence behind Greyfriars Bobby. We went there to see the real life versions of three things:  Tom Riddle's grave, Professor McGonagall, and Hogwarts.  The tour was during the day, but we totally went back at night, for the atmosphere, and  to see if we could see any ghosts.  More about that later.

​1. Tom Riddle's grave
The plaque on the left belongs to Tom Riddell Esq. and reads, (sic)
"Sacred to the Memory of Thomas Riddell Esq. of Befsborough in the County of Berwick who died in Edinburgh on the 24th of Novm. 1806, aged 72 years.  ALSO of Thomas Riddell Esq. his Son, Captain of the 14th Regiment, who died at Trinidad in the West Indies on the 16th of Septm. 1802 aged 26 years. AND of Christian Riddell,  his Daughter, who died in Edinburgh on the 29th Oct, 1808, aged 31 years, ALSO Maria Jane Riddell, his daughter died 5th Sept. 1819, aged 47," The plaque on the right belongs to more five more Riddell relatives who died later on.

Nearby graffitti.