Spotted Dick and Duct Tape Body Casts

Instead of just having the two FX guys I had for The Forever Dead I now have have FOUR FX guys and one FX gal for our zombie epic Fistful of Brains! So it made sense that we should all get together and knock our heads together to see what kind of nasty stuff fell out that we could use for this zombie western.

Still head of FX is Bill Mulligan now teamed up with William Stine, PA guy Zach, Boom gal Brandi, and Brandi's brother Jason. We all met at my house this past Sunday.

I had a special treat in store for all. After spending an entire day during my trip to England looking for Spotted Dick, searching through no less than 3 grocery stores I finally found it in Cary, NC at the World Market! Bill constantly teases me about British food and the fact that we have a desert called Spotted Dick. I couldn't wait to make him eat it.

It's a very delicate process cooking this desert. Very gourmet. It's made by Heinz which is "the brand" in England. It comes in a short round can and you are supposed to boil the can in enough water to float it at least 2 inches from the bottom of the pot. It should boil for 35 minutes. Then you open the end of the can that clearly says "open this end first". I don't know what happens if you open the other end first. It expands in the can so it would probably blow up in your face or something which would be really nasty. No one wants Spotted Dick all over their face! It is served with hot custard. Yum!

You may wonder about the name. The spotted comes from the raisins. Dick comes from...well I don't know really. The British are fond of giving things silly names so who knows where it came from. Maybe some guy named Dick came up with it? It's basically a spongy spice cake with raisins.

You should have seen the look on everyone's face when I told them what I was serving them. William passed saying he'd just eaten. Bill was pretty excited. Brandi and Jason I'm sure were beginning to wonder just what they'd gotten themselves into. And Zach, well his alarm clock didn't go off 'til 15 minutes before the meeting was to start so he bowed out (we know it's really because he was out partying the night before and just couldn't drag himself out of bed with that killer hangover.) ;-)

We spent a good bit of time getting to know each other and talking about the challenges ahead and how we were going to get things done. Bill will be delegating a lot of the load so it's not all on his shoulders this time. He brought along a couple of coyote head skins that he'd purchased on e-bay. They should look pretty good for our people-in-the-woods. He'd also been busy creating plaster skulls that we can gore up, smash up etc. William brought two large rolls of duct tape that he was going to tape Bill up in so he could show us how to create a fake body. The conversation flowed, the spotted dick was eaten, served with a lovely full bodied Welsh tea for those that would have it. Our team bonded.

The end result was a very good duplicate of Bill's body that he apparently has lots of plans for. So every time you see half a torso or a headless corpse, think of Bill. I guess since I didn't give him a part in this movie this is his way of putting himself in it, sort of.

I think I've convinced him that British food is really pretty good. He cleaned his plate so I don't expect to hear any more digs about Spotted Dick!

It was a lovely Sunday.