Ookla pranks
Finally got to do two things I always wanted to do if Ookla the Mok were the GoH at Consonance, as (some version of them) were this weekend:
- I demanded my $5 back for the Rand and Adam Tape, which I bought from them in 1994 when I met them at FilKONtario. I had one of the first 50 copies, the ones that Rand and Adam and Luis had hand-painted (just about 20 years ago -- the subtitle is Poor Man's Copyright, 1993) with flames on the Hot Side and with frost on the Cool Side. It turns out that the other 49 people all tried to play it in their car stereos and that the acryllic paint softened just enough in the heat that it stuck inside the stereo. They credit their early success with the fact that all those people couldn't listen to anything else in their car. I, however, have no car, but do have a safe deposit box, which is where it spent the last 19 years. (I'd made a copy and wore that out.) Adam as excited as I'd hoped to see a pristine copy, and asked if he could hold it. I said, "You can do whatever you want with it, as soon as you refund my five dollars." Eventually, after people came to their dealer's table and expressed interest in buying it, Adam reluctantly decided to part with it and donated it to the Interfilk auction. (That was my guess beforehand of what they'd decide to do with it.) I would have gone to the auction just this once if I'd only known. I'm told it went for $250, exactly fifty times what I'd paid for it, to Joey. Ironically, to a employee (officer, I think) of the same bank whose local branch I'd been storing the tape in. So I guess he could have helped him to it anytime, unless you really believe that thing about safe deposit boxes needing two keys to open.
- Many years ago, learned of the (true) urban legend about the brown M&M's when I overheard Adam talking to a then-GoH at a con who was griping about some technical glitch or other. Adam told him to story and said that if Ookla was ever GoH somewhere, he was thinking of having a contract with some litmus test equivalent to "there shall be no brown M&M's in the bowl". It was easy enough that I thought at the time, "Yeah, right! Like Ookla's going to be GoH anytime soon. But someday, if they ever are GoH, especially at Consonance, I'm going to make sure they get a bowl of just brown M&M's." Since then, they invented this thing called eCommerce and search engines, so it was easy to find an online store that would ship me some bags of M&M's of just one color. I donated several bags to the con suite, and then slipped a bowl onto the stage that was 99% brown M&M's.