As regular ZONErs know, it's become a Zablo family tradition to attend the annual Heroes Convention in Charlotte. I start talking up the show each year as the date for the convention gets closer and new guests are announced. Usually my hype begins about six months before the show.

This year I'm starting a bit early.

Like NOW.

WizardWorld [a big company that puts on conventions all over the US] has purposely scheduled their convention in Atlanta the
same weekend as Heroes.

Coincidence you say? Nope.

You see, Shelton has made it an annual tradition to announce his next convention
date a year in advance [and his show has always been held in mid to late June].

This year, because there were rumors that Wizard was looking at Atlanta, Shelton wrote them to find out the date that they were looking at. Shelton even offered to support their show as long as their schedules didn't fall on the same weekend.

You can imagine everyone's surprise when Wizard announced that their Atlanta convention would fall on the same weekend as Heroes. You can read the details
here and here.

Well, I'm happy to say that pros and fans have rallied around Shelton's show.
Casey Jones, Tony Harris, Bryan Hitch, Greg Rucka, Joe Pruett, J. Michael Straczynski, Cliff Chiang, Mark Bagley and Ethan Van Sciver all quickly
announced that they'd be at HEROES and NOT the Atlanta convention next year. Additionally, Cully Hamner, Brian Stelfreeze and Karl Story who live in Atlanta
have announced that they will be at Heroes as well!

Heroes 2006 may end up being the best Heroes ever. My hope is that the folks
running the Wizard show will reconsider and reschedule. They've already
started a bit of backtracking...

At any rate, if Wizard changes their date or not, I'll be at Heroes in '06.

Hopefully you will too!

In the movie DeNiro keeps waking up at 2:06 AM. The first time that this happens,
he discovers his wife has committed suicide. As the movie progresses 2:06 AM
becomes a significant plot point and the audience is left wondering [until the
resolution] why DeNiro wakes up at 2:06 AM.

It was pretty creepy. Especially late in the movie, as Deniro searches for a killer
in the house and suddenly Dakota holds up a child's clock set to 2:06 AM. Now
THAT was very creepy, but it's still not the creepy moment I'm leading up to.

Overall the movie was a fun way to spend a couple of hours and I really enjoyed
how the dvd set up the alternate endings [there were several]. Ah, but I digresss...
so on to the REAL creepy moment...

Later that night I woke up feeling the need to go to the restroom. Now most nights,
I sleep through until the morning. Occasionally I'm compelled to get up in the middle
of the night for a trip to the john, so it's not totally unusual that this would happen.
Last night when I woke to go, I looked to see what time it was... and you guessed
it... the digital clock read 2:06 AM.

Now THAT was creepy!

Remember when I told you that I thought that Mariah Carey looked like she had painted on her abs for her 4th of July Macey's performance?

I thought it was just a funny little item and was surprised when it was picked up here, here, here, and a bunch of other places.

The July 25, 2005 issue of US Weekly even has the story in it's This Minute You Want to Know About section.

The piece, Did Mariah Fake Her Six-Pack? brings everyone up to speed: "Sure, Mariah Carey's back on top of the charts, but who knew her stomach muscles were also making a comeback?" The author then asks a make-up expert and a rep for Mariah Carey to weigh in on the subject.

The make-up artist [Sally Blenkey-Tchasova, owner of one of the places that started the whole "spray-on" craze] was quoted as saying, "It looks like she was helped by make-up or air-brush tanning. Even if a woman is really ripped, abs are generally not that symmetrical."

You're probably as surprised as I am [meaning not very], that Mariah's rep denies that the abs are fake without every really saying their not. "This is ridiculous. She has been eating right and working out for three hours a day. Mariah has never looked or felt better.

The picture to the right was taken about three weeks before the one at the top of this post. So, ZONErs... what do you think?

Way back in April, I posted an
item about the return of Jason Pearson's "Body Bags."

At that time Jason said if the
response to the reprints was good enough, we'd see the return of Mack and Panda.

Today it was announced that two
new Body Bags projects are in the works.

In November we'll get Body Bags:
3 The Hard Way, which will include a new 20 page story called “Hit ‘Da Switches,” along with two older short stories that will be re-printed in color for the first time
ever. Then in January, Jason will follow up with an all new 48 page Body Bags
one-shot.

Ah, life continues to be good!

Michael Golden art day. No more words are needed.