The Fest for Beatle Fans

Dateline March 28 - 30, 2008 (wow...I'm almost a month behind)

In all the 30+ years the Fest for Beatle Fans (aka Beatlefest) has been going on, I had never been. I probably could have participated with Starart since Klaus Voormann was one of the artists and there is a lot of Beatle related art in the book. But I didn't. And it turns out that Mark - the guy that runs/owns the Fest - attended the gallery opening of Starart on Klaus' invitation. What the hey?

We were up fairly early - ten-thirty is early if you didn't get to bed until 3am, right? - on day one of the Fest and on the road in our SUV to pick up the Everybody I Shot Is Dead display prints and books at Fed-X somewhere in New Jersey. That was easy-peasy with the help of my iphone GPS mapping feature. We arrived at the hotel in Seacaucus around 1pm giving us four hours to set up before the doors opened. Seems like a long enough time to set up one 4x6 table...maybe even long enough to catch some lunch and a beer in the hotel bar?

Wrong.

It turned out there was no wall behind our table as I had been promised, meaning I could not display any of my prints. So we had to hi-tail it over to the local Home Depot (thanks to iphone we found one in a jiffy) and pick up a couple of plywood panels to prop up behind the back table. of course we didn't cut them down enough so they had to be taken back for a trim. Then we had to get some white sheets to wrap them in and some bungee cords to hold them in place.

As the five o'clock hour rolled around and the throngs of Beatle fans stampeded through the doors, we were still setting up. It really pissed me off that our neighbor to the right showed up at 4:45 and was set up and ready to sell promptly at 4:59. Meet my neighbor:

Not in a million years did I think I'd ever live next door to a Munster. Even if it was only for three days. My close proximity to Butch made Rob (see the guy three posts down with the cucumber in his mouth) extremely jealous. Seems that cucumbers aren't his only fetish!

The three days pretty much blurred into one long stretch. Long hours, a lot of talking, meeting lots of very nice people, eating crappy food, selling some books and prints and tee shirts, eating more crappy food, meeting more nice people, talking and talking and talking.

This was our table. That's Tyler helping out a customer. I couldn't have managed without him.

We shared this delectable delight...two times...yikes.

Snack time.

My lunch on day two. It was very good. Thank you, Tyler.

Too many Beatles. They were everywhere. Why?

That's me onstage speaking about my many Beatle-related experiences.
The photo is not blurry...I am.
Never looked better.

Overall I had a really good time and as I said, met many wonderful people. It's nice to get out of my lonely lair every once in a while. I thinking about going to the next Fest for Beatle Fans. It's in Vegas at the end of June. I can drive there. And I can play blackjack. That might be fun. Oh yeah, Rob's going to be there. I can spend three days taking the piss out of him. That might be even more fun.

See y'all on the Strip.