O.J. at a Slasher Con, a Porn Star’s Ill-Fated Memoirs, and a Seriously Pissed Off Wednesday Addams
Los Angeles can be a hell of a town.
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September 30, 2005. In what was billed as the San Fernando Valley’s 10th annual NecroComicon, a horror convention, a “special guest” was announced the day before the event: O.J. Simpson.
The news immediately hit the national press, boosting the promotion from a usually modest affair to now something notorious — something that minutes after the announcement had been widely re-dubbed as a slasher con.
O.J. Simpson had been acquitted of the deaths of Ron and Nicole on October 3, 1995, nearly ten full years earlier. The passage of time did little to assuage anger on the part of guests and many paid attendees alike.
Like most, I found O.J.’s inclusion at NecroComicon to be an exploitive, loathsome affair. The promotors of the event smartly found a way to enter the national conversation, if only for 48 hours, and yet this was a perfect example of short-term gain thankfully not superseding long term loss.
The convention did not return the following year.
When I entered the building, “The Addams Family’s” original Wednesday Addams, Lisa Loring, caught my attention. I walked over, and though we had never met we started chatting like old friends.
“Isn’t is disgusting?” she asked.
“What’s that?” I responded.
She pointed to a stairwell just feet from her table. Press, including CNN and local news, were gathered in a line waiting to interview the disgraced football icon. O.J. was secured upstairs, away from the other guests who had planned for months to attend the event and yet found out only the day before with whom they would be sharing a bill.
“O.J. It’s disgusting. I’m infuriated.”
We spoke for a few more minutes, when I was informed some other announced guests either canceled or did not show as a form of protest.
When I left Lisa’s table to look around, the guests who remained all seemed to be chatting about the outcast upstairs. A fan line ran parallel to the press line. Curiosity got me. I went upstairs … and walked right…
