Dragon*Con 2006, Part 3 and final
I'm writing this in a state of mild deadline-hysteria; I have to catch a flight to my next destination in the morning, and damned if I'm going to try to hold two cons in my head. And the cat seems to have been reading Transmet as much as I have, or just making an editorial comment on my travelling--she pissed in the suitcase with a working handle, and, while I've cleaned it, it's not dry yet. So the other one it is, and a Young Frankenstein "walk this way" through the airports...
In contrast, Sunday started a bit slow. I think I hit the dealers again, did some wandering around the art, but the first thing I remember was yet another game of phone-assisted Convention Tag, not helped one bit by poor reception here and there, not by the existence of two dealers' rooms in the Hilton, one above the other. While searching, I spotted the table for The Devil's Panties, but the crowd was thick and I was trying to find Crystal. Finally, though, she and I caught up with each other in the Hilton lobby, and shared a wrap from the lobby restaurant. The paper had gotten folded into it, and guess who found himself stupidly chewing on it? It was still another rare peaceful moment, and Pinkerton of COG came by out of costume and chatted for a while. He was the one who dropped the "can't say no" quip...
Eventually, Chad caught up with us after his own lunch, and we hit the upper Hilton dealers. It was sardine time again, all the more because they were in the same room as the "Walk of Fame" for autographs--we briefly encountered Sci on his way to get alison_sky Alan Tudyk's. We also ran into someone familiar from Frolicon--the amnesiac girl's boyfriend, this time without her, though due to ordinary sickness, not another bad accident. He still looked absurdly young, especially to be on staff, and he still wore rabbit ears and rather realistic "rabbit-foot" slippers... Crystal also found, there, some interesting jewellery, and some of her favourite coffee--"Coffee Shop of Horrors" tours the con circuit, and their product is anything but horrific. I sampled one, and Crystal many, and she ended up buying a substantial amount. Somewhere in the Hilton, too, I had someone ask what character I was--when, besides my constant hat and sunglasses, I was just wearing black jeans, a black tee with a yellow design, and my trenchcoat. I shot back, "A lazy goth--just me!" and a voice, not sure if it was the same one, said that I would make a good Ozzy Osbourne. It makes me want to lose weight...
We left the Hilton in time for an earlyish dinner, and hit a mixed-Asian buffet about halfway between there and Crystal and Chad's hotel. The food was decent, but the watress plain forgot to bring our bill back, and we had to ask someone else to sort it out... Still, we had time to hang around at their room and sort out some beers--some for the evening and some for me to stick in my car and take home. Again, thanks! Then they dressed up for the con...I stayed the Lazy Goth, but Chad was a Major Asshole again, and I have to say I'm damn proud of the job I did lacing Crystal's corset for a witchy outfit...if you've seen her current cleavage-icon, that's my work, and I'm sorry that Photognome didn't stop by at least for a similar closeup...
We came back in in time to catch some different and longer sets of funny music in the filk room. This always has existed at this con, and most with an SF and fantasy emphasis, but this time it happily coincided with the emphasis on musical dementia, and most of the funny singers came out of the filk tradition. But what is filk? The term comes from a typo for "folksong", and in its essential form, it is the folk music of fans, sung, with whatever accompaniment you care to bring in, by turns around a circle or in even less organised form. Such an "open filk" is the main event of con filk rooms, and was where Sci spent his nights. The content is often reworded parodies of the Tom Lehrer-Weird Al-Capitol Steps sort, but there are original tunes too, and more serious pieces (sometimes outright ose, ose, and morose) although these still tend to prize cleverness and referentiality. Tom Smith was on again, and then the Boogie Knights, a group in bright Rennie-wear doing harmonised pop parodies, and the Brobdingnagian Bards, a slightly more usual but just as comical folk group. The latter two had only got one song each the previous night, and I was grateful to see full sets. We'd been thinking of seeing Rocky Horror, but it was already just as late starting as the filkers were finishing, and we decided against it--thankfully, as it started a full hour and a half late, due to yet another band overrun.
As far as I know, though, there wasn't a repeat of last year's ugly scene. Then, Gene Loves Jezebel had come on a full forty-five minutes late but finished their setlist on time. Most of the room was occupied by Rocky Horror fans by then--and the waterheads on stage decided to play encores. The first couple, we just sort of squirmed in the seats, but it soon started looking like GlJ wanted to play out the whole "lost" time. And danikitty182, next to me and like me plastered, wasn't having it. Right out of the typical RHPS audience lines, she yelled "Start the fucking movie!" And damn if more and more of the crowd didn't join in this, as well as chants of "Rocky Horror!" and "Get off the stage!" And the dumb bastards up there forgot that they were there for the audience, and tried to filibuster, playing a medley of everything they knew, including the worst version of "Pretty Vacant" I've ever heard. Punk, they are fucking not. I, and several others, had now stood up in place and turned our backs on the stage, and the mood was edging towards riot. I was starting to think of bribing the techs to do what they already should've and cut the goddamn sound, but before they did, or anyone started throwing shit, GlJ left the stage with a loud "fuck you."
In the absence of such Interesting Times, we went downstairs for a while again. There, we saw some girls and a version of Guilty Gear X's Faust posing with a fibreglass Jabba the Hutt, and a large assemblage of superheroes and villains posing together for pictures. However, the chairs we'd used before were occupied, so we went back up and sat down at the table that was Luke Ski's during the day, drank Chad's brews (them from goblets, me from a plastic cup--they'd given me one, but it was heavy and I'd left it in the room) and watched the crowd. The costumes were even more varied than before; the masquerade had been earlier that night. I saw ones as clever as a walking electric chair and condemned convict, and ones as misconcieved as a bearded male Leeloo. And I steadily got absolutely blasted--by the time I got up to pose for a picture with two HSTs, I was doing the Jack Sparrow hands involuntarily. We also had a visit from one "Dr. Skull", a bodypaint artist with mad-science style who, like Crystal and Chad, hailed from Florida, and was an instant convert to the COG, to the point that he wanted to know if he could audition. And then some bastard sat on the table. He chattered at us in a way that was supposed to be funny, but mostly varied between sexist and just stupid...and then he pulled out one of the pins holding on the table skirt and punched a hole in my cup. He offered a "solution" by putting his punched cup in mine. I let my opinion be known--"You owe me a new cup, shiteyes." And I stuck them down the back of his shirt. Now, why did he clear out after some passing female ass shortly thereafter?
I talked military history and reenactments for a while with an Englishman who regretted being one of only three he'd seen there, and had another near-miss with a flogger...one woman was looking for volunteers, but reconsidered it after hearing something about police. I don't quite know what the fuzz were up to, but I also heard, the next morning, "the cops saw what they wanted, and then told everybody to get dressed." Eventually, I went to the other side of the hall for some reason or another, and quickly started talking to someone next to a small pirate ship on wheels. By the time I wandered...well, staggered...back, Crystal and Chad had to go, in order to get enough sleep to safely make it back to Florida. So, I poked around a brief while longer, bought a CD on drunken impulse (which, surprisingly, turned out to be good), and stumbled into the filk room.
At first I apologised for turning up drunk, but it was the ideal state to start in, because I was actually willing to sing. We went around the circle (though I more often tossed out a topic than had a song to hand) several times, until several people had left and it was 7 AM--we had officially filked all night. What was left to do but get breakfast? The hotel buffet was greasy and institutional, but the conversation was good, ranging from con history to the Israel-Lebanon conflict. The latter part was also much clearer than anything I'd heard in the news, as several of the people present were from Israel. Finally, though, we dispersed before anyone fell asleep in their plate, and I caught a couple hours' sleep before packing up--this time getting all of the nearly-untouched booze in my suitcases--and leaving. There were things still scheduled, but the exodus had plainly begun (many people still far more costumed than I expected to see on the way out) and I wanted to get home before my depleted energy hit zero.
So, how was it? It still fell on the fun side, but if the crowd density gets worse, it won't. And, next year, more notes. Of what I see during, and of some programming choices before.
In contrast, Sunday started a bit slow. I think I hit the dealers again, did some wandering around the art, but the first thing I remember was yet another game of phone-assisted Convention Tag, not helped one bit by poor reception here and there, not by the existence of two dealers' rooms in the Hilton, one above the other. While searching, I spotted the table for The Devil's Panties, but the crowd was thick and I was trying to find Crystal. Finally, though, she and I caught up with each other in the Hilton lobby, and shared a wrap from the lobby restaurant. The paper had gotten folded into it, and guess who found himself stupidly chewing on it? It was still another rare peaceful moment, and Pinkerton of COG came by out of costume and chatted for a while. He was the one who dropped the "can't say no" quip...
Eventually, Chad caught up with us after his own lunch, and we hit the upper Hilton dealers. It was sardine time again, all the more because they were in the same room as the "Walk of Fame" for autographs--we briefly encountered Sci on his way to get alison_sky Alan Tudyk's. We also ran into someone familiar from Frolicon--the amnesiac girl's boyfriend, this time without her, though due to ordinary sickness, not another bad accident. He still looked absurdly young, especially to be on staff, and he still wore rabbit ears and rather realistic "rabbit-foot" slippers... Crystal also found, there, some interesting jewellery, and some of her favourite coffee--"Coffee Shop of Horrors" tours the con circuit, and their product is anything but horrific. I sampled one, and Crystal many, and she ended up buying a substantial amount. Somewhere in the Hilton, too, I had someone ask what character I was--when, besides my constant hat and sunglasses, I was just wearing black jeans, a black tee with a yellow design, and my trenchcoat. I shot back, "A lazy goth--just me!" and a voice, not sure if it was the same one, said that I would make a good Ozzy Osbourne. It makes me want to lose weight...
We left the Hilton in time for an earlyish dinner, and hit a mixed-Asian buffet about halfway between there and Crystal and Chad's hotel. The food was decent, but the watress plain forgot to bring our bill back, and we had to ask someone else to sort it out... Still, we had time to hang around at their room and sort out some beers--some for the evening and some for me to stick in my car and take home. Again, thanks! Then they dressed up for the con...I stayed the Lazy Goth, but Chad was a Major Asshole again, and I have to say I'm damn proud of the job I did lacing Crystal's corset for a witchy outfit...if you've seen her current cleavage-icon, that's my work, and I'm sorry that Photognome didn't stop by at least for a similar closeup...
We came back in in time to catch some different and longer sets of funny music in the filk room. This always has existed at this con, and most with an SF and fantasy emphasis, but this time it happily coincided with the emphasis on musical dementia, and most of the funny singers came out of the filk tradition. But what is filk? The term comes from a typo for "folksong", and in its essential form, it is the folk music of fans, sung, with whatever accompaniment you care to bring in, by turns around a circle or in even less organised form. Such an "open filk" is the main event of con filk rooms, and was where Sci spent his nights. The content is often reworded parodies of the Tom Lehrer-Weird Al-Capitol Steps sort, but there are original tunes too, and more serious pieces (sometimes outright ose, ose, and morose) although these still tend to prize cleverness and referentiality. Tom Smith was on again, and then the Boogie Knights, a group in bright Rennie-wear doing harmonised pop parodies, and the Brobdingnagian Bards, a slightly more usual but just as comical folk group. The latter two had only got one song each the previous night, and I was grateful to see full sets. We'd been thinking of seeing Rocky Horror, but it was already just as late starting as the filkers were finishing, and we decided against it--thankfully, as it started a full hour and a half late, due to yet another band overrun.
As far as I know, though, there wasn't a repeat of last year's ugly scene. Then, Gene Loves Jezebel had come on a full forty-five minutes late but finished their setlist on time. Most of the room was occupied by Rocky Horror fans by then--and the waterheads on stage decided to play encores. The first couple, we just sort of squirmed in the seats, but it soon started looking like GlJ wanted to play out the whole "lost" time. And danikitty182, next to me and like me plastered, wasn't having it. Right out of the typical RHPS audience lines, she yelled "Start the fucking movie!" And damn if more and more of the crowd didn't join in this, as well as chants of "Rocky Horror!" and "Get off the stage!" And the dumb bastards up there forgot that they were there for the audience, and tried to filibuster, playing a medley of everything they knew, including the worst version of "Pretty Vacant" I've ever heard. Punk, they are fucking not. I, and several others, had now stood up in place and turned our backs on the stage, and the mood was edging towards riot. I was starting to think of bribing the techs to do what they already should've and cut the goddamn sound, but before they did, or anyone started throwing shit, GlJ left the stage with a loud "fuck you."
In the absence of such Interesting Times, we went downstairs for a while again. There, we saw some girls and a version of Guilty Gear X's Faust posing with a fibreglass Jabba the Hutt, and a large assemblage of superheroes and villains posing together for pictures. However, the chairs we'd used before were occupied, so we went back up and sat down at the table that was Luke Ski's during the day, drank Chad's brews (them from goblets, me from a plastic cup--they'd given me one, but it was heavy and I'd left it in the room) and watched the crowd. The costumes were even more varied than before; the masquerade had been earlier that night. I saw ones as clever as a walking electric chair and condemned convict, and ones as misconcieved as a bearded male Leeloo. And I steadily got absolutely blasted--by the time I got up to pose for a picture with two HSTs, I was doing the Jack Sparrow hands involuntarily. We also had a visit from one "Dr. Skull", a bodypaint artist with mad-science style who, like Crystal and Chad, hailed from Florida, and was an instant convert to the COG, to the point that he wanted to know if he could audition. And then some bastard sat on the table. He chattered at us in a way that was supposed to be funny, but mostly varied between sexist and just stupid...and then he pulled out one of the pins holding on the table skirt and punched a hole in my cup. He offered a "solution" by putting his punched cup in mine. I let my opinion be known--"You owe me a new cup, shiteyes." And I stuck them down the back of his shirt. Now, why did he clear out after some passing female ass shortly thereafter?
I talked military history and reenactments for a while with an Englishman who regretted being one of only three he'd seen there, and had another near-miss with a flogger...one woman was looking for volunteers, but reconsidered it after hearing something about police. I don't quite know what the fuzz were up to, but I also heard, the next morning, "the cops saw what they wanted, and then told everybody to get dressed." Eventually, I went to the other side of the hall for some reason or another, and quickly started talking to someone next to a small pirate ship on wheels. By the time I wandered...well, staggered...back, Crystal and Chad had to go, in order to get enough sleep to safely make it back to Florida. So, I poked around a brief while longer, bought a CD on drunken impulse (which, surprisingly, turned out to be good), and stumbled into the filk room.
At first I apologised for turning up drunk, but it was the ideal state to start in, because I was actually willing to sing. We went around the circle (though I more often tossed out a topic than had a song to hand) several times, until several people had left and it was 7 AM--we had officially filked all night. What was left to do but get breakfast? The hotel buffet was greasy and institutional, but the conversation was good, ranging from con history to the Israel-Lebanon conflict. The latter part was also much clearer than anything I'd heard in the news, as several of the people present were from Israel. Finally, though, we dispersed before anyone fell asleep in their plate, and I caught a couple hours' sleep before packing up--this time getting all of the nearly-untouched booze in my suitcases--and leaving. There were things still scheduled, but the exodus had plainly begun (many people still far more costumed than I expected to see on the way out) and I wanted to get home before my depleted energy hit zero.
So, how was it? It still fell on the fun side, but if the crowd density gets worse, it won't. And, next year, more notes. Of what I see during, and of some programming choices before.