By the way, if you’re at Balticon this year, come by the Chesapeake room at 2:00PM for the live “Calls For Cthulhu” taping. Meet the creator, buy the DVD, and be one of the first to get the new format.
 

Last year, this was a blast. We had a great time and we posted the episode fairly recently (I’ll be re-posting it on YouTube in the coming weeks).

Now, remember, this is the hidden event, so there’s no mention of it on any of the handouts or schedules. You have to be there when it happens to be part of this. So if someone you know likes the show, tell them the secret, and get them to Balticon fast!

Hope to see you there!

Well, good news. We now have a real phone number. It’s still not live (you’ll have to wait for the Balticon episode for that), but it is a real phone line that you can call and leave a message for the show. If we like your question, we will put your voice on the show, and answer you there. So now, Cthulhu is as close as your nearest phone line (let that sink in and shiver with fear).

Here’s the number:  646-495-9203 x 00964

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Still, we played to a packed room, and for the first time ever, I had to slow down Cthulhu’s responses, because people were laughing too loud ( I guess one could have worse problems ). I think everyone had a great time, me most of all.

I’ll have more information about Balticon later, but I wanted to show you guys this picture, taken by Tee Morris, writer, actor, and podcaster extraordinaire.

Click here for Flikr Pic

This picture shows Cthulhu sitting at his bluescreen desk, with me in the obscured distance (as it should be). Tee waxes philosophical about the picture, but even being the pragmatist that I am, there is a lot of coolness to this pic.

Anyway, had a great time at Balticon, and more information to follow!

Here is the Link.

In addition to having a great rising tension music, he has a chorus saying “Cthulh Fhtagn”. Might make a nice ringtone . . .

Now, this isn’t a full report on the festival (I hope to do that later, with pix and everything), but I wanted to share a great moment with you guys.

Now, I’ve been very surprised by the reaction I’ve received from people at the fest. Several people have asked for my autograph, and a couple wanted to take a picture of me with the puppet.

There’s a film producer (Edward Martin III, he makes real films, not just hand-puppets) who was really excited to meet me. Turns out he’s a fan of the show. I gave him a DVD, and he put it on his DVD player in the merchant section (which was really kind of him). After a few hours, he asked me if I had any other DVDs, because passersby were asking him where they could buy it. I had brought about ten with me, and he was kind enough to make a place on the table to display them.

A couple of hours later, I walked past the table, and saw that my DVDs weren’t there any more. I figured he moved them to make space for something else, but then he caught my eye and said, “Hey, you sold out! Way to go!”

He started counting out money for me while I just shook my head in disbelief. Then he smiled at me and said, “You really don’t get how popular this show is, do you?”

That was a really cool feeling. Right up there with the girl in the full-body Cthulhu suit saying, “Hey, you’re the Calls For Cthulhu guy? I love that show!”

Don’t worry, I’ll have pix of her as well as a full report as soon as the fest is done and I pull all the images off my camera.

Well, a few days ago, someone handed me a copy of “The Book of Legion” by Victor Heck.

I know my way around Biblical angels and demons, so the idea of the demon Legion didn’t really surprise me. In fact, just thinking of the character, you can imagine a demon which is slowly amassing souls to the point where he can destroy all of creation. The story practically writes itself.

That’s what I love about this book. The writer isn’t going in that direction at all. I don’t want to give too much away, but in this story, Legion is gathering minions and taking over Earth just as a stepping stone for bringing about an all-out assault on Hell. Just the idea that you could take that character, and use his innate power not as an end, but as a means to something larger, is pretty impressive to me.

Also, the writing itself is very good. Not exactly buckets-of-blood stuff, nor is it all psychological torture (although both elements are in there). The characterization is good, the story is powerful, and I like the pacing.

Anyway, I went looking for it online, and found it here: The Book of Legion. At fifteen bucks for a signed copy, it’s well worth the money.

Here’s the part I thought was really cool. On the back of one of these pendants, they write “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”. Now that’s classy.

We just received word that “Calls For Cthulhu” will be featured in this years H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. So, if you go out to Portland, Oregon from October 5-7, you’ll be able to see C4C on the big screen, with lots of other quality Lovecraftian films.

Here’s a link to the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. Hope to see you there!

Click here to listen to or download the ringtones. They are all free for download, although I would ask that, if you really like one, you make a donation to the squid-headed lord.

By the way, all of these files are rendered as MP3s. If you need a different file format, just tell me and I’ll try to convert to that format.

Also, if there’s a sound you were looking for, but didn’t see, tell me and I’ll be glad to put it up there for you.

In other news, It’s been almost two months since the last C4C episode, and I apologize for that. I lost an entire week to this weird debilitating flu, and I’ve spent a lot of time on rendering the head of a new trapped God who will be a guest on the show. However, I think all the renders are in place, the audio has been recorded, I just need to do a whole lot of mixing. Hopefully, we’ll have Episode 6 ready by the end of this week.

This is only the English version, but we hope to have an international version available later this month.

The link to order is here.

So, in short, people like the old intro, and they like the long format. They like the Rapid Fire Round, and they like the rants.

In a way, this is endearing. I guess we were doing the right thing all along.

We’ll still experiment occasionally, but we’ll keep with the original format in general.

Thanks for your help!

So, I put it to you, gentle reader. Which do you prefer?

Help guide the direction of Calls For Cthulhu by voting for your favorite intro (in the upper-right side of this page).

Thanks.

P.S. And yes, I also know the viewers thought the last episode was too short. My goal was to make it more YouTube friendly (most of those videos run 3-5 minutes). I guess I underestimated just how much people wanted more Cthuhlu.

The mistaken numbers never point to some other business, or to somebody’s house. . .

Anyway, when we started this show, we announced Cthulhu’s phone number as 1-800-SOL-EATR, which was supposed to just be a funny little pun. Of course, it never occurred to us that we should call the number and see what was there. . .

I guess you see where this is going.

For the first time, we checked it out, and found that it goes to a redirect number leading to phone sex. Now, in our defense, we did ask that nobody call in (“Previously recorded. Please do not call.”) but we still feel a responsibility to point out that, if you do call, you won’t get Cthulhu.

And the ladies that you do get won’t swallow your soul. However they will . . . Hmmm . . . probably best that we don’t go there.

In other news, I just got in the mail our new DVD from the Obelisk group, so all I have to do is finish the design for the cover, and buy some blanks, and I’ll be able to start pressing disks. Once I’ve got that up and running, I’ll post something up here, and I’ll put up a link to buy the DVDs from.

The DVD has the first four episodes in as high a resolution as we could manage (some of them had to be upsampled, because they were originally mastered in low-res), as well as the extra Halloween message, and the hidden video that was previously only available to people who cracked the Cult of Cthulhu code (from Episode 3).

This first version of the DVD is only going to be available in English, with no subtitles. But once we get the translated versions, I’ll make sure that future DVDs have all the subtitles, including English subtitles.

And don’t worry, we are still working on Episode 5. It’s going to be a shorter show, with a new intro, and more of the ranting that people seem to love so much.

fhtagn!

We thought this was a great idea. We made high-res versions of all the episodes, and mailed him a disk, complete with scripts, to ease the project. However, we did it on one condition. When he finishes with the translation, he’s going to send us a copy of the Spanish-subtitled version. That way, we can add him to our credits, and publish a Spanish version of C4C.

But then we started thinking about that. Now we have high-res versions of the show, hidden episodes (you knew about those, right?), scripts, and alternate language subtitles. Sounds like we’ve got enough there for a DVD!

So, in addition to working on Episode 5, we are also putting together a DVD. The first version, which should be available in the next couple of weeks, will only have the English version. However, we’re hoping to have alternate languages available soon after that.

This also brought up another idea. Are you multi-lingual, and wish that you could help spread the joy of Cthulhu with your friends and family? If so, write us a note, and we can make arrangements for you to translate C4C to your language, and be added to the credits for the show. We would love to start showing C4C in Spanish, Dutch, Italian, German, Portugese, and as many other languages as we can.

We look forward to hearing from you.

The video is here.