Friday, August 07, 2009
At the 2009 MUFON UFO Conference
Okay, I'm here.
We arrived in Denver around 10:30 am yesterday, August 6, and survived an hour-long shuttle ride to the Marriott. We then needed coffee desperately, since we had left Winnipeg at about 8 am and needed breakfast too. Of course, we missed breakfast so we went to a place called the Paradise Bakery near the hotel and had very good roast beef "sliders" that hit the spot.
We then poked around teh hotel and found some UFO types, including Nick Roestler and Terry Groff, both Facebook buddies, and caught up on things.
Since the conference registration isn't officially until Friday, we figured we'd go off exploring Denver in search of bookstores. Everyone kept telling us that we should go to one called Tattered Pages, but no one could agree on how to get there from the hotel. It took a shuttle, a train, a bus and a cab to find it, and it wasn't worth it. Sure, it's a nice retail store, but selection was nowhere near as good as McNally and frankly, we were expecting soemthing more. I picked up a nice pulp reprint of the fisrt two Doc Savage stories in print, though.
We then were exhausted in teh 30C+ heat and decided to head back to the hotel, but noticed a store literally next door to the bookstore called Twist and Shout. Wow!
We scored some major finds. I had never seen a Sun Ra CD bin as large as that. Donna found a remote-control zombie, some Day of the Dead parephrenalia, and I found a DVD copy of Plan 9 From Outer Space and a documentary about the Sun Ra Arkestra, post-Sun Ra, with a nice flying saucer on the cover. Lots of other stuff, too. Amazing collection of pop culture.
We took two buses then a train to the hotel, held up by a power failure on the train because a huge lightning storm knocked the electricity out.
After a brief shower, we went to the lobby and found Nick and others again. I talked with Kim Combs, the MUFON marketing exec who explained the layout for tomorrow. It seems that they are overwhelmed by the response. Pre-reg is over 250 and the are now expecting more than 500 attendees.
We went to the bar and met more MUFOnites, such as the MUFON rep from Florida (can't recall his name), and others from Pennsylvanis, Texas and a woman named Marlene from Oklahoma who said she had a photo of a cow in mid-air being abducted aboard a UFO.
Then, it was off to meet Stan Friedman and Kathleen Marden (Betty Hill's neice) for dinner. We walked across to a Mexican restaurant called Garcia's which had great food and soon was taken over entirely by the UFO crowd.
Dinner conversation flowed until it was time to go back to the hotel so I could dial in to the UMFM radio show Mysterious, co-hosted with Chris Reid, on which I would be interviewing Stan live on air. I appreciate his taking the time to do the interview as he and Kathleen had lots of things to do before the conference.
Then it was down to the bar again to mingle with the UFO types. In a nook just across from the lobby, however, there were about 15 MUFONites in deep discussion about something. It turns out they were the STAR team, the ones who will actually be funded to go out and investigate UFO cases in depth as needed, largely at the direction of millionaire Bob Bigelow.
Need sleeeeeeep...
We arrived in Denver around 10:30 am yesterday, August 6, and survived an hour-long shuttle ride to the Marriott. We then needed coffee desperately, since we had left Winnipeg at about 8 am and needed breakfast too. Of course, we missed breakfast so we went to a place called the Paradise Bakery near the hotel and had very good roast beef "sliders" that hit the spot.
We then poked around teh hotel and found some UFO types, including Nick Roestler and Terry Groff, both Facebook buddies, and caught up on things.
Since the conference registration isn't officially until Friday, we figured we'd go off exploring Denver in search of bookstores. Everyone kept telling us that we should go to one called Tattered Pages, but no one could agree on how to get there from the hotel. It took a shuttle, a train, a bus and a cab to find it, and it wasn't worth it. Sure, it's a nice retail store, but selection was nowhere near as good as McNally and frankly, we were expecting soemthing more. I picked up a nice pulp reprint of the fisrt two Doc Savage stories in print, though.
We then were exhausted in teh 30C+ heat and decided to head back to the hotel, but noticed a store literally next door to the bookstore called Twist and Shout. Wow!
We scored some major finds. I had never seen a Sun Ra CD bin as large as that. Donna found a remote-control zombie, some Day of the Dead parephrenalia, and I found a DVD copy of Plan 9 From Outer Space and a documentary about the Sun Ra Arkestra, post-Sun Ra, with a nice flying saucer on the cover. Lots of other stuff, too. Amazing collection of pop culture.
We took two buses then a train to the hotel, held up by a power failure on the train because a huge lightning storm knocked the electricity out.
After a brief shower, we went to the lobby and found Nick and others again. I talked with Kim Combs, the MUFON marketing exec who explained the layout for tomorrow. It seems that they are overwhelmed by the response. Pre-reg is over 250 and the are now expecting more than 500 attendees.
We went to the bar and met more MUFOnites, such as the MUFON rep from Florida (can't recall his name), and others from Pennsylvanis, Texas and a woman named Marlene from Oklahoma who said she had a photo of a cow in mid-air being abducted aboard a UFO.
Then, it was off to meet Stan Friedman and Kathleen Marden (Betty Hill's neice) for dinner. We walked across to a Mexican restaurant called Garcia's which had great food and soon was taken over entirely by the UFO crowd.
Dinner conversation flowed until it was time to go back to the hotel so I could dial in to the UMFM radio show Mysterious, co-hosted with Chris Reid, on which I would be interviewing Stan live on air. I appreciate his taking the time to do the interview as he and Kathleen had lots of things to do before the conference.
Then it was down to the bar again to mingle with the UFO types. In a nook just across from the lobby, however, there were about 15 MUFONites in deep discussion about something. It turns out they were the STAR team, the ones who will actually be funded to go out and investigate UFO cases in depth as needed, largely at the direction of millionaire Bob Bigelow.
Need sleeeeeeep...
# posted by rutkows @ 5:28 AM 
