Favourite Things: Donna Bites her Lost Boys (er, sort of)...

Yeah, yeah, I know... you all thought I'd forgotton about this feature, yes? Well, no.  At least, only for a little time while I was snowed down with study and books and, y'know, life.  However, it's back and I'm back having extracted myself from academia for the summer and settled down to read, review and ramble right here.  You lucky ducks, you!  Just now, though, I'm handing over to Donna from Bites (not to mention my fellow Lady YAcker (more on that another time).  Donna is here to share with you here favourite things... Enjoy - and thank you, Donna.

When I was 11, back in 1994, I was up late one night.  It was summer vacation and there wasn't much else for someone my age to do.  Being an only child, I had some added luxuries in my room that many of my friends didn't.  This included a TV, complete with cable.  So it's probably about 1 or 2 in the morning and I'm flipping stations.  In the mix I catch the beginning previews of a vampire movie that the channel, TNT, was about to show.  The whole ordeal was hosted by two of the stars, whom I came to know as Corey Haim and Corey Feldman.  It looked interesting and this was at the beginning of my VAMPIRE CHRONICLES/general vampire obsession so yeah.  They got my attention.

As soon as the vampires made their appearance, we're talking in the opening scene and they're not even in fang, I'm hooked.  And not just like little hooked.  I'm hooked in a major way.  There's just something about this flick that's pulling me in in ways that not even Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise could do in INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE.  And that's saying something.  I was OBSESSED with that movie.  But this new one?  This LOST BOYS?  What the hell was this?  Where the hell is it?  And how the hell can I get more of it?

I didn't care if it was an outdated 80s movie with somewhat cheesy effects (I say somewhat because they're subtle), mullets and horrible, horrible clothes.  This movie just rocked my world like nothing else.  I rented the shit out of the VHS at Blockbusters until I was finally able to buy my own copy maybe a year later.  When I was 13ish we got the internet hooked up to our computer, all dial-up and everything.  Since no one I knew liked THE LOST BOYS anywhere near as much as I did (my friend did watch it and they did like it but apparently I was a bit bat shitty for it), the internet opened up a whole new avenue.  I could look up the actors.  There were fan sites with photos.  And a mailing list.  A phenomenal mailing list.

For those of you that aren't this ancient, before forums really took hold, people with common interests joined mailing lists where everything was communicated via email.  If a number of people were online at a time, or wanted to set something up, a chat room was booked somewhere, Yahoo! let's say, and we would meet up.  But it was generally kept to email.  So I found this LOST BOYS mailing list and the people I met!  They were just as nuts about this movie as me!  How awesome!  I wasn't the only one with a wall in my room dedicated to this epic 80s movie!  Score!

Time carried on and eventually I gravitated away from the mailing list but my love of all things LOST BOYS never wavered.  Especially when I started collecting.  My first real piece of memorabilia was an original UK movie poster, already laminated.  It currently sits framed over my bed.  Enter me turning 18, getting a credit card and eBay, and I was in for a world of hurt.  Let the hoarding begin.

Years later, a couple months after I came home from study abroad in 2006, I found out that Corey Haim was going to be signing at a horror convention in New Jersey.  Want.  I goaded my cousin into coming with me and we made a long weekend of it.  Shitty thing was Corey ended up backing out of that event.  But who ended up being there?  Chance Corbitt (Laddie), Brooke McCarter (Paul), Billy Wirth (Dwayne) and Jameson Newlander (Alan Frog).  Thus began a friendship I never thought in a million years I'd ever get the chance to have.  I ended up meeting up with them again at the 20th anniversary of the movie's release in Santa Cruz, California, where the movie was filmed after initiating the steps to get them involved and signing for the event.  This was also my first trip to Santa Cruz, the LOST BOYS mecca.  To say it was an experience is an understatement.  We met up again in 2008 at the same convention I originally met them at and had a blast of a weekend.  This one included Gerard McMann aka G Tom Mac, the musical awesomeness behind the LOST BOYS theme song, Cry Little Sister.  Really, it was all a blast.  You can see pictures from the events and Santa Cruz itself here.  They're having another huge event in Virginia next month but unfortunately I'm unable to attend.  Planning a cross-country move can really sap one's funds.

In the middle of all of this I got into writing fanfiction, for some the bane of writing's existence.  I dabbled in it a little when I was active with the mailing list but thankfully that's been thoroughly sucked into the internet void.  I remember bits and pieces of what I'd written and it haunts me still.  My work's kind of known in the fandom (as a result of kind of a small fandom and writing kind of prolifically, I don't intend to sound full of myself) and I've been writing the current stuff since 2007.  You can find all of it on Fanfiction.net.  I also got involved with the fandom again and that led me to meeting some wonderful new people that weren't around in our little LOST BOYS internet bubble back in the day and some that were.  That was pretty cool, getting to run into those people again after ten years.  And the new people I met, well, I'm still friends with most of them.  Such close friends, in fact, that in 2010 a bunch of us got together and rented a beach house in Santa Cruz for two weeks and just chilled.  Quite possibly the best vacation ever.  And my collection grew.  And grew.  And grew.

In 2007 I started compiling and scanning all of my stuff onto my own fan site.  I had one years ago, again when I was part of the mailing list, on a free site called Acme City now long defunct.  It was small but it was mine and when they purged their server, my site was lost with nothing more than an "oops, sorry" from them.  I was discouraged and I stepped away.  When I picked it back up again I wanted something different than the token red and black sites common with LOST BOYS fan sites.  I wanted something unique.  The movie mentions a hotel that used to stand on Hudson's Bluff, home to the band of vampires in movie time.  When the giant earthquake of 1906 hit, the ground opened up and the hotel sank, creating the lobby they now occupy.  That was my site.  That is what I wanted because there was nothing else like it out there.  So I started building and I had something pretty nifty on the little free site I was on.  But I wanted more and I had reached my file quota so I bought my own space, my own domain and started to build.  And collect.  And build.  And collect.  And I am so, SO proud of what I've built.  I can rightly say I have one of the largest LOST BOYS collections in the world, especially when it comes to images.  I may not have Marko's jacket (which was up on eBay a few years ago and sold for $3,000) but I have some pretty rare stuff that I hold close to my heart.  And it's all on my site, Santa Carla Twilight.  No, it has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with Twilight.  It's actually from a song by Tiger Army and is 100% about the LOST BOYS movie.

In 2010 I made the ultimate fan sacrifice: I got a LOST BOYS tattoo.  After 16 years of LOST BOYS love, fandom ups and downs, epic friends, epic events and epic vacations, I felt it was finally time.  It's not an obvious tattoo but it's obvious to the fans and that's what I was going for.  I had it inked on my left thigh and it's an image of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk at sunset.  The Boardwalk is a mainstay in the movie and nearly the central force of the city of Santa Cruz.  I felt it was the perfect homage to all that has been LOST BOYS in my life.  It's infested my brain for more than half of my life on this planet.  It's introduced me to some amazing people and given me experiences that I wouldn't have had otherwise.  For just a movie, I'm so glad to have it in my life and it's something that will stay here forever.  Hell, Jameson Newlander even dubbed me the Official Lost Girl at our first convention.  I'll take it.  I think I've earned that title and I wear it proudly.