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It's been a minute! I've been grinding non stop to prepare for Saucers Over Appalachia and I'm happy to report that the event was a huge success! The turnout was amazing and it seems like all the attendees really dug the move to the park over the convention center.
I think I sold out of pretty much everything UFO and horror related I brought. Super stoked to see people get excited about VHS and see their eyes light up with nostalgia. Good thing I brought VCRs! My favorite thing about being there was hearing about people's favorite movies and UFO documentaries. Also it's great to hear that I'm not the only person that was terrified of the Unsolved Mysteries theme song as a child. A huge thank you to everyone that stopped by to chat!
Huge shout out to Starry Eyed Artist Designs for allowing me to set up with them. It's always so much easier and more fun to work an event along side friends. The extra hands and eyes on everything and someone to hang with when things quiet down is invaluable. Can't wait for the next event!
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I did manage to sneak a vacation in before Saucers Over Appalachia. We drove up to West Virginia to visit Point Pleasant for the Moth Man Museum as well as Flatwoods to see the sights and visit the famous Braxie Chairs. Happy to report that the Moth Man Statue's ass is even more glorious than in pictures and the Braxie chairs are a sight to behold. Beautiful communities, but with just the right touch of creepiness to affirm "yep, I could definitely see cryptids haning out here."
I recommend the trip for anyone with an interest in cryptids and their origins. Lots of beautiful sights to see and artifacts to discover. I'd love to go again in the future!
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I'm excited to announce I've been accepted as a vendor for Saucers Over Appalachia, on June 14th!
I'll be bringing many UFO and other paranormal documentaries to beef up your collection as well as the usual horror selection and art. Check out the website for more details on the event and follow my Instagram for a preview of some of the things I'll be bringing in the coming weeks.
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Work has been slammed lately. On top of my other commitments I haven't had much time to sit down and go through more of the mystery tapes from the estate sale until now.
The next tape was simply labeled "space" and is a good hour of shooting some model planets over a backdrop of stars. Some great miniature work that comes out well on the VHS format. Near the end the creator actually moves his hand into the shot to give some scale to the miniature planets and shows us that they've been suspended to the backdrop giving a little illusion of depth.
The next tape labeled "Skeleton Rider" shows us another puppet they were working on. So far I'm about a half hour in and it's just footage of this skeleton figuring swaying on this galloping furry creature. I'll revisit this one later to see if there's any other footage of note.
Finally, maybe the most noteworthy update, is we have the artist's name. This tape was labeled "The Art of Tim Smith." It starts as a bit of a room tour, silently moving around the space showing some of the puppets and sculptures we've seen previously before taking some extended shots of his various paintings. I enjoy his line work and subject matter, obviously a fan of fantasy and science fiction. It's nice to have a name now, though I'm not having much luck at all in finding out more about them on the web or social media. As you can imagine the name "Tim Smith" leads to a lot of dead ends.
I'll continue to watch the tapes for more content and clues. We may not ever know who this person was, but the content along the way is certainly interesting.
*Page updates*
I've added a knowledge library section to the site that will contain information on VHS care and maintenance, collecting, as well as creating your own tapes. I'm still working on building the pages within so it's an empty library at this point but stay tuned. I also found some of my files from my original Geocities Sonic fan page so I'm toying with uploading those in there as well.
Also cleaned up some links here and there and general tidying up. As always, thanks for stopping by!
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I love going through old tapes and documenting the finds, especially when it's actual video camera footage. I'll post updates as I view these. Judging from what I've seen so far I'm hoping they've stumbled upon a treasure trove!
The first tape seems to be sort of test footage. They made a logo reading "Talent Cave" and spend several minutes testing different lighting as well as the video effects included in their particular camera, such as mirror imaging and inverting colors. Some searches online haven't really yielded anything about what Talent Cave might have been, so it's hard to say if this was ever shown to anyone at this point.
After that we jump to a lengthy shot of a miniature castle and town set up in someone's back yard. The only audio is the occasional breathing of the camera operator as well as the chirping of crickets. Again they seem to be toying around with lighting options and camera effects. We do see as they're thumbing through the camera options a time stamp of 3/13/1999 pops up. So if that's accurate we have a time period at least.
Next we have some test footage of a sort of Xenomorph looking plant monster and a Dragon. It seems the artist had an interest in puppetry! The mouths of both creatures move and the Dragon seems to have full movement in it's head and arms as well.
Finally we have a message from the dark lord
The message being, check out my cool skull lamp!
These tapes have been a fun ride so far. I'll post more interesting things as I come across them.
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1/22/2025 - It's cold! We haven't had single digit weather around here in some time. As a result I haven't had much motivation for my art projects as of late, but some are trickling through here and there.
I put a page out at the Boo-tique to act as a guestbook for anyone that's visited my booth and I'm delighted to see it's looking like a 90's graffiti covered school desk!
Regarding the Boo-tique, I get emails here and there asking for certain projects to be created on VHS for the store. I can only produce and sell titles that have moved to the public domain. I can certainly assist in creating cases and VHS shells, but for copyrighted titles you'll need to do your own recording. If it's a title that you own I can certainly help answer questions about making VHS recordings but I'm afraid I must exclude myself from producing those for you. The titles you see on this site are from my personal collection and for my own personal use.
On that note, the *page updates* for today include some more tapes I've created in the video section I hope you'll enjoy!
Added some additional links to the links page and general clean up.
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1/14/2025 - Welcome to the blog space! I thought I'd start keeping a record of the projects I'm working on as well as website updates.
For the most part 2024 itself was a pretty rad year. I started selling my art at an oddities shop in town and have made an amazing group of like minded weirdo friends along the way! If you're ever traveling the eastern TN Southwest VA area stop by and check em out, or online here: https://bristolbootique.com/
Earlier in the year we got a dog! The kids named her Rocket (she's fast af). She's super smart, loves adventure, and bodies of water! I'll probably be mentioning her quite a bit.
*Page updates*
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