Con Story Part II: Friday: allah

allah_sulu

Con Story Part II: Friday

May 26, 2009 16:21

The first part of the con story details, in brief, some of the happenings and goings-on during the days and hours leading up to the Celluloid Jam convention in Cincinnati two weekends ago (15-16 May 2009). Since I've already displayed the pictures that I took on Friday, and I don't want to be repetitive, for this post I'll be mostly stealing borrowing pictures that other people took, mixed with a few new ones of my own that haven't been shown yet.

Here's an external shot, taken by my castmate

Σοφωκλεσ. The Drawbridge Inn was a really nice place, although the interior was a bit labyrinthine for mine and

Q's tastes (blessed, as we are, with no sense of direction). In fact, we drove past it once because there was road construction right in front of it, so we missed the turn completely… and then took a while figuring out where we missed the turn and how to get back to it. At the same time that we were having a Rocky Horror convention, another convention hall in the same building was being used for a knife show. Not as scary as the time we shared the Cashman Centre in Las Vegas with Soldier of Fortune magazine; but still, we have to wonder why we keep getting placed alongside groups with a lot of weapons.

Speaking of weapons, the hallway walls were covered with decorative pikes, swords, pole-axes, and all sorts of other medieval weapons which I only vaguely recognized from playing Dungeons and Dragons over two decades ago, part of the whole middle ages motif of the inn. I remarked more than once that this would be a great place to be during a zombie uprising, with all of the easily-accessible defensive weaponry. (I took this picture on Sunday on the way out.)

As you can see from my badge, I was designated "Convention Bartender". (

Q's badge bore the same legend.) The reason for that is that we were amongst the guests who had rented rooms on the Citadel Tower Section of the Drawbridge Inn; a floor exclusively for people 21 and older which had its own commons area (including a bar!) Q and I were going to take care of the inebriatory needs of the congoers there, with my infamous punch; and Q had also brought along all of the hardware necessary for her PlayStation2 and for karaoke (with over 20,000 songs!) Sadly, the commons area had been trashed the night before, and was locked up and inaccessible on Friday night, so we had to improvise. The punchbowl was kept in our room, where many visitors came for free samples; and we also brought some of it down to the con areas in bottles.

For our bartending duties,

Q and I had matching pink and black vests and garters which we were planning to wear as part of our bartending uniforms. Here, in one of

Σοφωκλεσ' pictures, you can see him modeling the vest and garter as part of a completely different ensemble.

This is another one of

Σοφωκλεσ' pictures, taken in the lobby of the Drawbridge Inn. Seriously, it was a nice place. Seated on the bench, from left to right, are

Skanky,

Jason, and

Σοφωκλεσ.

After we checked in the hotel, and got all of our various and sundry items up to our room (and the first batch of punch created), we socialized for a little while… and then remembered that our son was back in Cleveland with his grandparents, and disappeared back into our room for a couple of hours. (I took this picture later. No, I'm not posting pictures from the two hours in our room!)

I went through several outfits Friday night, and I don't know if they were all caught on film (or memory card). The first was the lucha libre outfit I first wore on my birthday. I didn't stay in this one for too long, though, since it was hot and uncomfortable - and didn't have a mouth hole for drinking! (This picture was taken by

Σοφωκλεσ.)

BMajors captured me (and many other people) on her polaroid camera with

Bradwinkle for five dollars a pop. (Bradwinkle is a stuffed moose.™)

HilaryMax took this picture of

Q playing Irwin Lapsey in Shock Treatment. (That's the same costume that I wore a few years ago for a Cleveland Shock Treatment floorshow.) I wasn't scheduled to perform Friday night, but whoever was supposed to play Kirk didn't show up, so I got pulled into the part. (If anyone got any pictures of me doing Kirk, I didn't notice.) I didn't have a screen-accurate Kirk costume (nor would I have been allowed to make one out of wrapping paper), but I at least changed into something more fitting for the role than the lucha libre. (There were multiple red and blue Star Trek shirts being worn, but no gold command shirts; otherwise I would have borrowed one of those to play Kirk - with a Shatneriffic interpretation, of course.) It's not the first time I've played a Shock Treatment character at a convention, but I still maintain a perfect record of never being part of the Rocky Horror floorshow at a Rocky Horror convention.

Another character I played for a while on Friday night was this guy's interpretation of Ringo Starr. (You can see me to the left rear in this photo taken by

MarkyD, or in this one from my camera.) Let me just mention again how many awesome costumes there were; see the other pictures by me and other people.

Q, of course, was Doctor Who; a role for which she sacrificed greatly. There have been three Doctor Who movies (starring Peter Cushing or Paul McGann in the title role), so he is a movie character; but Q was dressed as the David Tennant incarnation. Someone, possibly

sarahkucera (who posted this pic), photoshopped the text onto the Doctor's psychic paper.

This red shirt was the most popular and most commented-upon of all the outfits I wore on Friday, possibly due to the fact that the new Star Trek movie had just come out (and was a hit with everyone I heard discussing it). As you can see, I wasn't the only one wearing a something Trek-related; pictured here with me is

RonMaxwell, and his wife

HilaryMax (who took this picture) were also among the Starfleet attendees.

This is the only recycled (from my picture dump) photo on this page. Until the wee hours of the morning, we hosted karaoke in our room, which people on both sides of (and below) us heard through the thin walls (and floor, apparently). Various people came in for the punch or the singing; the Goblin King naturally belted out a David Bowie tune.
EDIT: What the heck - This post didn't originally have color-coded borders, but I came back and added them since I used them in all of the subsequent Con recap posts.
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