lobolance | Entries tagged with cons

I'm pleased, my panels are all on Fri and Sat. Leaves me free to take Sunday as it comes. I'm not planning on staying over on Sunday night.

5/25/07, 19:00, Drama Llama Protection w/ Heather Stern
How do you deal with the drama llamas? How do you avoid picking up the negative energy they emit? Listen to our panelists as they expound upon the ways to shield yourself and not feed the drama...
-- I'm a wee bit concerned this isn't a very strong concept. No context is given, though I imagine fandom will be it. The other panelist sounds really interesting. :-)

5/25/07, 21:30 Page 119, w/Kage Baker, Kathryn Daugherty,Christian McGuire
Now that you've picked up that book, is it something you'd really like to read? Can you tell by reading any page at random? Our panelists will do just that, reading selected pages aloud, and you can vote: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?
-- Sounds silly and fun. I presume the con is providing the books and pages...

5/26/07, 10:00,Auctioning off Star Trek, w/Alan Dean Foster, Tom Galloway, Carlos Pedraza
Christie's (the famous auction house) sold over 1000 pieces of memorabilia during the 40th anniversary of Star Trek. With Star Trek off the air, are these items more or less valuable? How much would *you* bid for DeForest Kelley's original Dr. McCoy uniform? Are you willing to rearrange your living room to include the Bridge set? What item would you really want to have in your home?
-- ok, this is a piece of heaven. Can't wait!

Current Mood: awake

to the IMsL crud. Actually, with the help of Airborne early on, I seem to be moving through it pretty quickly. Oooky chest today. ah well. Such is often the result of a con, however said con is defined. :-)

Got a lot of stuff done at home over the weekend, since I was home a lot of the weekend (see above note). Sadly, the Sharks weren't playing! They are tonight.

Unexpectedly, there were two episodes of *Dresden*. The finale was pretty good. I like that the show does little unexpected things pretty regularly. Saw most of the first episode of *Drive*. Nathan Fillion being very wound up. The teen daughter doesn't look so teen to me. ;-) I have the second recorded, and the next is tonight. I really enjoyed Tim Minear at Worldcon this year, and have always liked his quirky tv work. Here's hoping this one is good. It's certainly intriguing. Being Fox, it will likely be canceled in three weeks, but who knows. ;-)

Finished the first Nevada Barr Anna Pigeon mystery novel. It was good. There are lots more to read. Of course, I need to get Hugo reading underway.

Current Mood: sniffly
Current Music: Noam Chomsky

*It Seams to Me* it's too long a wait between Costume-Con 26 Progress Reports #1and #2! Hence, we hereby place into your (figurative) hands: *It Seems to Me:CC26 Progress Report 1.1*!

Check it out at http://www.cc26.info/progress_reports/CC26_PR_1.1.pdf

Read up to get the latest tidbits about Costume-Con in Silicon Valley. You will need a copy of the free Acrobat Reader to view the report.

Please forward to all of your interested friends!

Big thanks to our editor, Denisen!

I had a very unexpected and kinda nifty Harlan Ellison track in my Worldcon experience this year.

To start with, yes it was entirely inappropriate (shock value monkey tho he is) for Harlan to grab Connie Willis at the Hugo ceremony. That was not cool. I don't condone it. The man can be an idiot.

I first encountered HE's work when I was in junior high. SF for me started with a few kid's books in grade school (only a very few were to be had!), then I found Asimov in particular by late grade school, and also Heinlein and Clark in early junior high, etc. Great stuff.

Around late junior high, I discovered a bunch of short stories that rocked my world, and gave zing to my ideas about writing (yes I was writing even then). They were by Harlan Ellison. 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream'. 'Pretty Maggie Money Eyes' *Deathbird Stories* and so on and on! (yes I first found him for writing 'City on the Edge of Forever'; *Star Trek* was pretty much the source of everything for me, after all it came on when I was six.)

I'm not exactly sure what convention it was at that I first saw Harlan. Somewhere in Seattle, certainly. A Puget Sound Star Trekker's (PSST) con? An early Norwescon? (I could probably look at my photos and figure it out.)

But I do remember waiting outside the speaker's hall after first seeing him, heart pounding, waiting for an autograph, trying to think of something wise to say. A typical story I know, but still, it's mine. I heard him read works in progress (including the hysterical sex aliens...), rant at the Glass Teat, etc etc. Words!

August 2006. It had been a LONG time since I'd last seen HE at a con. So it was a wonderful surprise when I got the schedule and saw he was gonna be at LAcon, and do a talk. I confess I was initially a bit disappointed by the "lecture"... because it was all stories, answering questions; I'd wanted to hear what was on his mind now, what he was thinking about (criticizing). However, some of the stories were great. I actually felt honored when at the end of the talk he spoke about never being a victim, about choosing action, about writing... Powerful stuff. He said this was likely his last con.

I have some sense of the circle of time, from my early cons (including LAcon2; I wore Reynolds Rat on my backpack, and no one seemed to know who he was....) to now. Harlan spoke of seeing the early greats (like Isaac Asimov) age, and he and his contemporaries moving into the 'most active writers' slots... and now I see him aging (and so of course myself). Not entirely comfortable stuff, but immensely real and human and vital. I still love the way words roll off of his tongue.

I wish him lots of peace and a continued flow of words from his house on the hill.

I loved that, hours after his talk, Harlan still sat behind a long table and signed books and talked with fans. Mr. Prickly. Uh huh.

I loved that he received as well as gave an award (yes again he was an ahole in the process) at the Hugos... and actually seemed touched by it. All told, this was a much happier, more relaxed man than the one I first saw 25 years ago. I am happy for him.

Nostalgia, inspiration, thinking... and a love of words. Thank you for being there, Harlan.

PS Yes I know he was an ahole on stage.

Current Mood: calm

--it's been a hectic few weeks. The SCCLA anniversary party was excellent (thanks

kingwyatt). ... Enya broke my iPOD, but I conquered her, and have plenty of tunes for the LOEG party. Lots of shopping last weekend with

bovil to get ready for Baycon. It was pretty fun. Winetasting the next day with he and Kevin was nice... I have a coworker who volunteers at Solis, and it was fun to finally get down there, and generally scout out the area (vintacon?). I have much, much haulage to do today and tomorrow. I'm taking some time off work to get it all done! --

Wile E. Coyote!
You scored 57 Aggression, 100 Sophistication, and 85 Optimism!

You are intelligent, sophisticated, and the physical personification of the can-do attitude. No matter how many times something blows up in your face (figuratively or literally) or prized project collapses around you, you will pick yourself up and try, try again. There is a good chance that you are very skilled in problem solving and would probably make a fine engineer. Your main weaknesses (and this is likely obvious to everyone but yourself) are your overconfidence and complete lack of perspective. When you inevitably fail at a task (you can’t possibly achieve all of the lofty goals you set for yourself), you tend to take it personally. If you are not careful, you can become thoroughly obsessed with what is not really a very meaty goal. Try taking a step back from time to time and figure out for yourself if it is really worth it, or if your talents could be best put towards a more rewarding goal. Also, your desire for things to work out the way you’ve planned can make you a bit gullible.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 45% on Aggression
You scored higher than 92% on Sophistication
You scored higher than 71% on Optimism

Link: The Which Looney Tune Are You Test written by coolguy3000 on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Current Mood: good

aka as the Seattle Hyatt and ghods be kind, a Quality Inn, in part.

I heard at the BASFA meeting last night that Last Guest Con just took place; the last sf con at the ol' Seatac Hyatt, home of many an early Norwescon and other cons. Ah, nostalgia for the old clashing carpets and the skyway fill me!

In that hotel, I first

Went to a not-just-Star-trek science fiction convention (ok, it was like my third con - an early Norwescon- but it was very exciting)
Found a fanzine room, where I got to handle ancient mimeo'd zines
First put my own fanzines out in a fanzine room
Helped a friend with movies, one of which was filmed in a long hallway, as the rug pattern was particularly good for making it look like it went on forever
Sat in a hall party, and ate a couple of everclear cherries. I was underage and not fond of maraschino cherries, but two of those things made me very relaxed indeed!
Sat in a casual party in an open area, discussing being bisexual for the first time in my life, with strangers around
Found connections to other parts of my life (note, being queer, and also being poly, as well as into science and history)
Hung out in an elevator party. like hall parties, these no longer exist (IME)
Hung out on the skybridge between hotel wings to See and Be Seen in costume
Walked from the hotel to nearby restaurants/fast food in costume

I can't say I'll miss the place, exactly, but I had a lot of good times there. May other hotels serve new generations of fen just as well.

Fri. evening I took a bit of time at home to eat and chill, then went off to the Doubletree for Further Confusion 2006, aka Furcon.

I found

bovil and

kroche pretty directly,finishing their dinner, so I sat with them for a bit. From there we went to the party room (which had changed location a time or two...) to finish the prep work for our CostumeCon-promoting League of Evil Genius' party, along with help from a couple of other guys (I entirely missed the main part of setup).

bovil had procured a number of frightening candies to be used for Lab Rat testing (said rats were rewarded with a party ribbon). One LOEG friend in particular spent a lot of time offering evil concoctions for folks to earn their Lab Rat ribbons. His technique was a joy to watch. :-)

I tried a truly awful tamarind candy squeeze that bovil offered. It was evil fun to be offering bad liquor at the party, too, a Chinese spirit. And it got rid of half the bottle, which was good too! I checked ID, mostly w/out actually being able to read the date ;-). Taking that role offers me a chance to interact a little with people. I wasn't very 'on'. Still, I did flirt a bit with a few guys.

I cruised the parties once, then headed to to the dance; the 'chill out area'. All the night events were pretty lightly attended; a lot of
room parties I guess. I did dance for a time, which was really fun. I went back again and danced some more on Sat. night. Had to talk myself into getting out on the floor each time, but had fun once I did. Sat. night I worked some with Peacock God energy, which was pretty cool.

Sat. I slept a bit late, intending to take it all slowly… but found my friends Rod and Allen called while I was showering, going off to the con! They've never been to such an event before. We'd had dinner earlier in the week where I'd suggested they might enjoy the event; the pure cuteness factor cannot be denied! And they did enjoy the event. :-)

I found them at the con pretty quickly. We chatted a bit, then off I went to first spend a chunk of time helping clear out the party room, then ran through the dealers room, followed by the art room, which took a fair amount of time. Furcon is pretty big.

There was not much SM porn to be found, though lots of vanilla naughty stuff. ;-) Lots of interesting art. The art show was pretty nice, and big as ever. There is a lot of looks-the-same stuff (and I do respect the reality that folks have to start somewhere), but also some that was more individual. I was startled by some of the stuff in the adult section; because of content yes, but not what one would guess... it was the complete lack of adult content in a lot of it. Maybe if the artist had any adult content in any work all of their work was in the adult section? Between that and the hoopla around the bondage workshop (how it was referred to or not referred, that it was canceled on its day, and finally reinstated...), the con seemed extraordinarily anti adult content.

(Yes, furcon is family friendly and rightfully careful re the presentation of adult content, but it is possible to circumspectly admit adult stuff exists so that those who want it can find it.)

The day passed gently enough. Lots to look at, folks to pass a moment with, though a bit lonely for me. I had dinner with

bovil and

kroche at the sushi bar; Rod & Allen went off site. The sushi was good, the bar waitresses sucky as usual.

Afterwards, I changed into my ren faire shirt and one of

bovil's belts, then we all headed to the costume contest. We sat near the back. Such an event as a furcon is closer to a cosplay event than a science fiction costume event; it's mostly folks jumping around being cute in their fursuits (pease don't be offended anyone, I do admire the worksmanship and appreciate the intentions as well as the guts it takes to get up on any stage, it's just a different type of event). There was also some professional level stuff, very amazing animatronics; I loved the fox who could show and hide his teeth! There were a few skits, but mostly one could've been in the lobby watching fursuits (which I admit is a fun way to pass some time! I caught part of a monsters interaction doing that, which included a very young Godzilla; too cute for words :-) ).

In the course of the day, I did manage to talk to a couple of leather wolves (plus the one I already knew!), and invite them to the SCCLA St. Paddy's Perverted Pet Parade event. yea! One agreed to let me use his photo on the advertising post card I want to create, which is great- solves my art problem, I hope. I'd like to work on that tonight.

At 9pm, Rod and Allen and I managed to find the bondage workshop our friends were doing. I got volunteered to pair with a pretty new guy; it was fun helping him out. We ended up benig one of the last pairs to finish, taking our time with stuff. He was very straight, but it went well, even with
crotch harness and such. I let him take and keep a picture of my back in the harness he'd done. I heard some conflicting stories over how the event had been canceled and reestablished. ;-) Anyhow, the workshop was well attended and well instructed.

All told, Furcon for me is a nice place to foster fannish connections and have some fun fun, but it is not so personally involving as an sf con. I just think it rocks this entire huge separate furfan universe exists. I know there were a number of people I know at the con that I somehow never saw. :-( Our paths will cross another day.

Yesterday I elected to stay home. Gorgeous day. Got roses pruned and a lot of cleaning up done in the apt. VCR issues remain.