Am I a dolt or what? Thank you so much for the enrichment of my life on this day. And I mean that!

Doug, there have been occasions when this forum is almost like Instant Messaging when two members are on at the same time. I see that you are right now. If so, please respond to this note.

I will sign out so that you can respond, or at least I think that is what I have to do.

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:
Elucidation: Terry is playing the part of William Lantry on this board. (snip)

When I signed up for this board I was this close to using the nickname, Uncle Einar, but realizing I did not have an eight foot wing span decided not to add to the confusion.

quote:

Originally posted by biplane1:
I see that you are right now. If so, please respond to this note.

Responding. What can I do for you?

quote:

Originally posted by jkt:
When I signed up for this board I was this close to using the nickname, Uncle Einar...

That would have been a great name. It's not too late. Go change your profile.

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:

quote:

Originally posted by groovista:
Is there a Forrest J Ackerman Award for something?

Yes. It's a hand. <snip>

How utterly fitting -- a profound conceptual pun, both concrete and abstract at once!

There have actually been three different Forry Awards over the last thirty or forty years.

One was given for years at one of the Midwest science-fiction conventions (I'll have to check and see which con it was -- I have the documentation somewhere, and I don't want to guess off the top of my head), but it hasn't been an "active" award in years. I do know that Ray and Julie Schwartz were both proud recipients of that award in its early incarnation.

The Forry Awards that John posted (the Forry "Hands") began with Forry's big 85th birthday bash at the Friars Club. Those awards are presented by the Bat Pack (Forry's "inner circle," for want of a better term ...) to those who have contributed over the years to Forry's welfare in some way -- either through celebrating/perpetuating his legacy and/or through loyalty and personal friendship. Or by buying him lots of dinners at the House of Pies.

Ray, Jim Warren, Joe Moe, Anne Hardin, Brad Linaweaver, John Landis, Joe Dante, Bill Warren, Lee Harris, Scarlet Street magazine and the Monster Bash convention are among those Forry Award recipients. They awarded two or three every year through the 90th birthday party in 2006. I was highly honored to receive one the third year (along with Jim Warren), in 2003. (It's proudly displayed here in my library at this very moment.)

A third "Forry Award" was inaugurated at the Monster Bash convention (one of "4E's Faves") in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2007. It's a ghoulishly handsome-looking statue of a Frankenstein Monster figure with Forry facial features (including the glasses, of course). I have photos around here somewhere of Forry and myself with one of the hands (I was "menacing" Forry -- and he was properly hamming it up -- for a Scarlet Street photo shoot) and a photo of a frail but beaming Forry holding one of the Monster Bash Forry Awards. Forry himself received the first, and my friend Bob Pellegrino (a fellow journalist and one of the hard-working labor-of-love forces behind Monster Bash) received the second. I believe that producer and 4E friend Richard Gordon (in spite of his friendship with the Tom Weaver) received one last year. I was at the con but didn't attend the awards presentation.

I doubt that the Bat Pack awards will continue now that Forry is gone (in fact, I think a few of the more recent recipients still haven't received their "hands"), but the Forry Awards at Monster Bash will probably continue for the life of that classic-monster convention.

Long may they live ...

Terry Pace
"I Am the (William Lantry) Walrus"
pillaroffire@bellsouth.net

"God, here and there, makes madness a calling." -- Ray Bradbury

Here's the photo of Forry with the Monster Bash award from 2007.

Terry Pace
pillaroffire@bellsouth.net

"God, here and there, makes madness a calling." -- Ray Bradbury

Marveling_Over_the_Monster_Bash_Award_(2007).jpg (139 Kb, 7 downloads)

quote:

Originally posted by William Lantry:
Or by buying him lots of dinners at the House of Pies.

Hey - I bought him two. I guess that's not enough to get anything. Other than his charming company, and that really was a prize!

If anyone watched TV's game show, 'JEOPARDY' today, May 26th, they saw a category where there was a Forry Ackerman 'answer'. It was along the order of, "Forrest J. Ackerman is known to be the one who coined this term.

The answer, which no one got, was SCI-FI.