A Festival of Freaks
It’s scary to think that it’s exactly 6 months between last Christmas and the next one. At least the weather is gorgeous and there’s no chance of the mercury melting at 40 celsius at this time of year in Oz.
There’s just too much weird stuff and so little time to squiggle about it.
The fun started last Wednesday with an invitation to a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. It was a fund raising event for the Alzheimers Association. It was the perfect opportunity to dress up as Dolores Umbridge and wear one very special Cthulhu hat. It’s a tough job being the Queen of Hearts but some one has to do it.
The boss dressed up as a Disney Alice complete with chequered stockings and a blond wig. There were lots of fluffy bunny toys to be hugged.
There were A4 sized playing cards adorning the walls and the tables were all in one very long line decorated with an assortment of tea pots and china cups and large paper Top Hats with feathers and pictures of fluffy bunny rabbits. It’s far more fun to make your own crazy hat than to go to those costume stores where a tiny purple mad hat costs a ridiculous 32 silver sickles and is made in China.
Got to thinking that “Alice in Wonderland” will be 150 years old next year and she’s still got lots of life left in her. The story has such a cheap twist for an ending but the craziness of the characters and weirdness of the words more than make up for the one big glitch at the end.
The strangeness is so compelling that you could fill several school buses with the Alice fans at last weekend’s Supanova convention. Been in Oz nearly 20 years and never went to a single one and this year managed two in the space of three months. Such events are always held on weekends and was never able to find out dates far enough in advance to take time off to indulge such curiosity.
It turns out that the most fun to be had is not being squished to death by the hordes in aisles drooling over their favourite comic artists, actors or plastic toys but sitting in some strategic location near the entrance and just watching all the folks coming and going with their crazy costumes and trying to guess what characters they were. There were lots of the Walking Dead with some seriously cool zombie make up and a veritable legion of archers and Robin Hood lookalikes. Maybe they were elves or from some new cult show. I seen only one Katniss from the Hunger Games. She wasn’t dressed to kill but in that silly wedding gown that did not have the amazing flaming features from the books.
That is exactly what the Izzie did on Saturday. The original sunset solstice party planned for the day was off the agenda as it was raining most of the weekend. So why not make the most of the freak show? After all it does not cost anything to just go and watch the characters coming and going. I did attend the actual event on Sunday. Did not manage to see the woman from Weta workshops demonstrate her hobbit wizardry but did get to hear a bunch of writers talking about bumping off their characters. The place was invaded with Game of Thrones junkies but even they had to admit the kill rate is way overdone. People get seriously pissed off when you nuke too many of the characters they’ve become so attached to.
It was strange being the impartial Martian and watch folks hand over huge wads of cash (or more often the plastic fantastic) for trashy trinkets made in China along with the usual comics, graphic novels and trading cards.
There was some seriously gorgeous steampunk jewellery, binoculars, top hats, corsets and pocket watches. For some inexplicable reason, many of the steam punk sort seem to be not so secret squid worshippers. Most of their stuff looked locally made although there was one stall with some ‘old’ Soviet Red Army caps. All these young things who think such stuff is cool probably would not notice that the hats were adorned with bright and shiny suspiciously new looking GDR insignia (their only communist credentials being manufactured in some factory in China) and the hats likely came from the same source.
Aside from the assorted Cthulhu brooches, pins and necklaces, the main source of serpent drooling were all the gorgeous ticking tocking things and the scrap metal merchant with sculptures of daleks, dragons, dogs and assorted superheroes made from spark plugs, cogs, nuts and bolts. For the amount of work required to make them, the prices were reasonable which meant they just had to be made in China. The little signs looking for distributors and the big 30% discount at the end of the day confirmed this suspicion.
So decided that next year’s adventures will consist of being a cheapskate watching the carnival of crazy costumes. Unless Alan Rickman or Johnny Depp are the star attractions, it is simply not worth paying $30 just to be pushed around inside a giant sardine tin with squealing kids and tons of tempting toys. But it is definitely worth watching the rainbow parade of colourful craziness and amazing attire. And that can be had for free.
There’s just too much weird stuff and so little time to squiggle about it.
The fun started last Wednesday with an invitation to a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. It was a fund raising event for the Alzheimers Association. It was the perfect opportunity to dress up as Dolores Umbridge and wear one very special Cthulhu hat. It’s a tough job being the Queen of Hearts but some one has to do it.
The boss dressed up as a Disney Alice complete with chequered stockings and a blond wig. There were lots of fluffy bunny toys to be hugged.
There were A4 sized playing cards adorning the walls and the tables were all in one very long line decorated with an assortment of tea pots and china cups and large paper Top Hats with feathers and pictures of fluffy bunny rabbits. It’s far more fun to make your own crazy hat than to go to those costume stores where a tiny purple mad hat costs a ridiculous 32 silver sickles and is made in China.
Got to thinking that “Alice in Wonderland” will be 150 years old next year and she’s still got lots of life left in her. The story has such a cheap twist for an ending but the craziness of the characters and weirdness of the words more than make up for the one big glitch at the end.
The strangeness is so compelling that you could fill several school buses with the Alice fans at last weekend’s Supanova convention. Been in Oz nearly 20 years and never went to a single one and this year managed two in the space of three months. Such events are always held on weekends and was never able to find out dates far enough in advance to take time off to indulge such curiosity.
It turns out that the most fun to be had is not being squished to death by the hordes in aisles drooling over their favourite comic artists, actors or plastic toys but sitting in some strategic location near the entrance and just watching all the folks coming and going with their crazy costumes and trying to guess what characters they were. There were lots of the Walking Dead with some seriously cool zombie make up and a veritable legion of archers and Robin Hood lookalikes. Maybe they were elves or from some new cult show. I seen only one Katniss from the Hunger Games. She wasn’t dressed to kill but in that silly wedding gown that did not have the amazing flaming features from the books.
That is exactly what the Izzie did on Saturday. The original sunset solstice party planned for the day was off the agenda as it was raining most of the weekend. So why not make the most of the freak show? After all it does not cost anything to just go and watch the characters coming and going. I did attend the actual event on Sunday. Did not manage to see the woman from Weta workshops demonstrate her hobbit wizardry but did get to hear a bunch of writers talking about bumping off their characters. The place was invaded with Game of Thrones junkies but even they had to admit the kill rate is way overdone. People get seriously pissed off when you nuke too many of the characters they’ve become so attached to.
It was strange being the impartial Martian and watch folks hand over huge wads of cash (or more often the plastic fantastic) for trashy trinkets made in China along with the usual comics, graphic novels and trading cards.
There was some seriously gorgeous steampunk jewellery, binoculars, top hats, corsets and pocket watches. For some inexplicable reason, many of the steam punk sort seem to be not so secret squid worshippers. Most of their stuff looked locally made although there was one stall with some ‘old’ Soviet Red Army caps. All these young things who think such stuff is cool probably would not notice that the hats were adorned with bright and shiny suspiciously new looking GDR insignia (their only communist credentials being manufactured in some factory in China) and the hats likely came from the same source.
Aside from the assorted Cthulhu brooches, pins and necklaces, the main source of serpent drooling were all the gorgeous ticking tocking things and the scrap metal merchant with sculptures of daleks, dragons, dogs and assorted superheroes made from spark plugs, cogs, nuts and bolts. For the amount of work required to make them, the prices were reasonable which meant they just had to be made in China. The little signs looking for distributors and the big 30% discount at the end of the day confirmed this suspicion.
So decided that next year’s adventures will consist of being a cheapskate watching the carnival of crazy costumes. Unless Alan Rickman or Johnny Depp are the star attractions, it is simply not worth paying $30 just to be pushed around inside a giant sardine tin with squealing kids and tons of tempting toys. But it is definitely worth watching the rainbow parade of colourful craziness and amazing attire. And that can be had for free.