Not long ago, during my post on Jim Cornette’s appearance at The Squared Circle with Svengoolie, I mentioned something really amazing that happened later at the event that I couldn’t go into any detail about at the time. Well, it’s now official and I’m happy to report that October 31st, 2014 will officially be Rich Koz Svengoolie Day in Illinois!
Photo by Jim Roche
With just a few days recovery from mine and the other Terror Dave’s vacation/road trip, it was time to resume my favorite Chicago past time…keeping up with national horror host, Svengoolie! We enjoyed seeing him at Brookfield Zoo for my AAZK Chapter’s annual Vital Grounds fundraiser (which David covered HERE) and were honored when he agreed to also have dinner with us the following evening (this time as mild-mannered Rich Koz) along with Jim Roche at The Squared Circle restaurant.
It was Wednesday April 9th, the final day of our momentous two week vacation/road trip with my plane slated to leave for Chicago that evening. Originally we were planning on getting a tour of The Stone Zoo in Massachusetts (courtesy of a zookeeper friend of mine) but after hearing that it would involve dealing with some rough Boston traffic, decided it was best to play it safe and stay close to Providence. We watched “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” (which tied into the Captain America: Winter Soldier film we’d just seen the Friday before) before heading out to Rhode Island’s capital city. We only had one thing on the agenda before whiling away our final hours…visiting the grave of the legendary horror and science fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft.
Welcome to another edition of our monthly Horror Host Report! While the past month our site has been dominated with stories from our epic road trip, there’s some upcoming horror hosts posts on the way. Both Daves were happy to see our childhood host, Svengoolie, together at a zoo fundraiser (covered HERE) and Terror Dave Fuentes has attended two more since. We’ve also heard some great feedback regarding Count Gore De Vol’s appearance at Awesome Con and hope we can get some pictures from our pal, Brian Maze!
As our trip was winding it’s way down, we found ourselves with some extra time in New England. In a former life I used to be an Assistant Activity Director for a home that served adults with disabilities, so planning trips and activities is something I’m pretty good at and really enjoy (and, yes, that’s an open invitation for anyone who wants to whisk me away from my crap day job and hire me as their travel agent) . Anyway, I had this whole vacation worked out including driving times, fun restaurants, and goofy attractions. Looking back I’m pretty proud of myself with the exception of the Maryland Aquarium (which was a total rip-off as David mentioned in his last post) and also going too cheap on hotels.com. Believe me, some of the dumps we stayed at could have warranted horror blogs of their own!
The day after we visited Baltimore, we toured the Maryland Zoo with some pals before crossing the New Jersey state line. New Jersey is one state that seems to find itself the butt of jokes and get a lot of crap from the rest of the Union but I have to say, it’s really quite beautiful (Snookie not withstanding). I remember the first time I drove through was on Labor Day Weekend 2012 en route to see David. Despite being sick of driving and eager to reach my destination, I pulled over twice to take in the scenery. We’d managed to finish seeing the zoo by noon and found ourselves with extra time on our hands. This provided us with the perfect opportunity to do something else we’d discussed but weren’t sure how to fit in.
Terror from Beyond the Dave 