By Assistant Editor Lindsay Sauvageau

I grew up in a family of seven: my parents, two sisters, a brother and a VCR. We were a family that loved movies. We still are.
    I would say each one of us watches at least one movie a day if not more. We’re not always watching new movies – things we’ve never seen before – but that’s because we’re loyal to our favorites. We’re repeaters. We’ll watch a movie so many times that we can quote it. Sometimes all of it.
    We communicate in quotes. Dad comes home from work, “Here’s Johnny!” Mom makes breakfast in the morning, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Someone hears a noise in the other room, “They’re here!” When my sister’s are fighting, “Mae! Mae! Don't use my bat! Use Marla's. It's heavier.” When someone finishes up a particularly long stay in the bathroom, “I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat.” When we sit down for dinner on holidays there’s usually a rousing tribute to National Lampoon and a ‘round the table back-and-forth about who’s going to say grace, even though we all know she passed away thirty years ago.
    You see where I’m going with this.
    We all have our favorite genres, myself, I like horror movies and kids movies. Yeah, seems kind of strange to say it like that. It’s also kind of strange when people ask me what I did over the weekend, “Oh, I watched The Lion King and Night of the Living Dead Saturday night. Sunday afternoon I kept flipping between Stephen King’s It and Baby’s Day Out.” I suppose I like extremes.
    The funny thing is that I was never scared of horror movies as a kid, I always found myself frightened by something I watched in an otherwise innocuous film. For instance, when I saw the movie Alien and watched the dinner scene where the alien bursts through the guy’s chest cavity, I was unphased…on the other hand, when I watched the Spaceballs parody of that scene, where the alien bursts from the guy’s chest, grabs a cane and top hat and starts singing “Hello my baby” while tap-dancing across the counter, I had nightmares for weeks.  
    I can’t explain it.
    For the last few years my siblings and I have been going to an event in Worcester that allows us to revel in our love of movies and also, meet some of our favorite movie icons.  Every October there is an event called Rock and Shock at the DCU Center in Worcester. It’s a gigantic horror movie convention/rock and roll concert. It’s a three-day event that includes movie screenings, meet and greets, lectures, discussion panels and rock music. Not to mention a gathering of vendors selling everything horror and movie related under the sun – movie props, artwork, comics, DVDs, posters, toys, games, books, special effects, makeup, oddities and more.
    We’ve never been necessarily excited about the music portion of the event, although Alice Cooper and Rob Zombie performed last year and that was a trip. We love going because we love looking at all the stuff the vendors have for sale and we love getting autographs and pictures with all the celebrities. Over the past few years I’ve met George Romero and John Landis, Malcolm McDowell and Margot Kidder, Scout Taylor Compton and Tom Savini. I don’t know if you know who all of those people are but trust me when I say they are some of my idols.
    We have so much fun when we go, we laugh and joke and spend the day talking in cryptic movie-speak that perhaps only Mr. Moviefone would be able to decipher. This year’s event has another killer lineup – don’t mind the pun. On the guest list are fun celebs like Gary Busey and his son Jake and Robert Englund otherwise known as Freddy Krueger. Also, legendary guitarist Ace Frehley, WWE star Roddy Piper and, (I know this is going to seem weird given everything I’ve just said, but apparently he was just in a horror movie) Joey Fatone of the NSYNC.
    My Friendly Suggestion this week is to check out rockandshock.com and see for yourself what the event has to offer and if you love movies, or B-list celebs, or Insane Clown Posse (they’re performing this year) then get down to the DCU Center this weekend.
Take it from me, it’s the very best of the strange and unusual, “and I myself am, strange and unusual.”