Midwest Furfest 2010
Whenever I go to a convention now, and people ask me, "How many conventions have you been to?", the answer should be something along the lines of, "Enough so that the combined mass of all my souvenir con books is sufficient to sink the North American continent." As such, writing a con report seems almost superfluous. But what the heck ... I'm stuck on a plane, and my phone still has 81% on the battery meter. Please forgive the smartphone spelling correction oddities if I don't catch them all. :)
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Back in the 1980s, Bob Newhart starred in a sitcom that was modestly titled "Newhart". While Newhart was the star, the minor characters who stole the show were three dimwitted brothers: Larry, Darryl, and their other brother Darryl. This joke was endlessly funny, both because the actor who played Larry delivered it so well, and because I was of an age where the same bad joke could be funny over and over again.
MFF, if it had a theme, could be the Drinking Con. As such, Saturday night I met a number of very friendly people, mostly in fursuit, who were suspiciously suffering from the Darryl Problem.
Person in wolf suit: "Hi!"
Kaysho: "Hey howdy!"
"I don't know who you are!"
"OK, that means we're even. Hi, I'm Kaysho."
"Hi Kaysho, I'm Drunk!"
"Aha! Yes, I just met your other brother Drunk a few minutes ago ..."
If I recall correctly, their badges often had names other than Drunk on them, but who am I to argue, especially with someone who is obviously having so much fun?
Or perhaps I just wasn't understanding something correctly. I'm not sure.
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Sunday morning I woke up at an appropriately late hour from an odd dream. I was standing in one of the hotel corridors where a bunch of fursuiters had congregated and were standing around, and I was watching them while my dream's background soundtrack (which was omnipresent and emanated from nowhere in particular) played a mashup of "Mad World" and Hooverphonic's "Club Multipulciano" that was working far better than it had any right to.
Suddenly, time slowed, and from each suit a whole bunch of paper butterflies, each one the same colour as the suit that had spawned it, began to circle in the air, co-mingling and hovering above the assembled throng ... and I felt a heavy sense of melancholy watching this for a reason I couldn't grasp.
Then I woke up and laid in bed much too long, telling one of my roomies that I felt really weird.
Later that evening, as things at the con were winding down and we were being given the boot from the Dead Dog, I was walking along with a friend and heard someone playing the piano that was at the end of the long Grand Ballroom hallway. As we got closer, it turned out to be a suiter taking a little musical break outside the headless lounge.
I had to stop and comment as I recognised the song he was playing:
It was Mad World.
As a result, now I have had my mashup stuck in my head for two days.
And now I feel really really weird, as though I'm supposed to have experienced some kind of epiphany but can't quite tell what it is.
If I start telling y'all about the multi-coloured paper butterflies that I'm seeing, you are welcome to have me committed.
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I realise that it galls a number of artists that fursuits get a lot more attention in the fandom now than the art does, but I suppose it's understandable, especially where the general public are involved. It may be completely unfair, but the 2-D characters in the fandom live mostly in binders and on art show panels in areas of the convention that the public can't get to ... while the 3-D characters get to parade around the lobby and be seen by everyone. As such, the 3-D characters have become the public face of the fandom.
At a hotel the size of the Hyatt, we were going to be sharing the space with a number of other groups. This year we got some kind of conference that was advising people how to get into PhD programmes ... which was at least a nice departure from the usual fundamentalist religious groups. And in another nice departure, they LOVED us, to the point where I was almost wondering if some of them were going to change conferences and join ours.
If you are not a member of a group and don't have any experience of it, your natural reaction is to presume that every member of that group must be pretty much the same ... and be like the first member of that group that you saw. And since their introduction to the group was the fluffy hug-crazy costume characters wandering the lobby ...
I cannot tell you how many times I was asked, "Where's your costume? Why aren't you wearing your costume?"
Oh well ... it's much much better than the usual question: "Aren't you hot in there?"
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Never let it be said that I have not gone to Chicago in November to enjoy the nice warm weather, when I could have stayed in California where it was cold and rainy.
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I don't have a "bucket list" (a list of things to do before I kick the bucket). But if I did, "eat a duck sausage covered with truffle mustard and foie gras from a famous North Side hot dog emporium" would have to be on it. Consider this unfortunate oversight to have been both corrected and fulfilled.
Nom. Superb investment of nine bucks, a twenty-dollar taxi ride, and a few hours away from the con.
Oh, and after four recent trips to Chicago, I have finally unlocked the achievement of having both Chicago pizza and a Chicago-style hot dog on the same trip.
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After years and years of admittedly not trying too hard, I have finally won a piece of "bedroom art" in a convention art show. It's a Dark Natasha original pencil of a husky male in repose ... and although I can't provide a link to it, since she's not put it up on her FA page yet ... I rather like it and am quite happy.
Also, considering the people who were bidding against me on it, I probably "paid too much", but I don't care. :)
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As I was walking down the concourse at San Francisco airport on the way back from Chicago earlier today, a not-prerecorded voice came onto the PA system and announced that that minute (3:46pm) was the 75th anniversary, to the minute, of the time that the first Pan American Clipper seaplane had taken off from the Bay Area en route to Manila, inaugurating trans-Pacific air service. And here I just casually flew most of the way across the country for a weekend-long party. How far we've come, so fast.
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Three years ago, I was sitting in the airport in Pittsburgh waiting for a flight to Newark. As is typical for flying to New York, everything was delayed and overbooked, and the airline was looking for volunteers to be bumped to a later flight. The offer, right from the start, was the gold standard of such offers: a free round-trip flight to anywhere in the U.S. With flights from PIT to somewhere in the New York area departing almost every hour, and with my suffering a bit of PCD after AnthroCon ... and with my having heard very good reviews of a con I'd never been to called MFF, I decided to go for it. If I got a free flight, gosh darn it, I was going to MFF.
I didn't quite "woohoo!" in the middle of the airport when I actually got bumped, but it was pretty close. Goodbye, PCD! Hello, MFF!
Since then, I've told myself every year, "Well, maybe I'll go to MFF this year, maybe I won't. We'll see." And every year since then, at the last minute, I've ended up going.
I think it's finally time to admit to myself that this is one of my regular cons and actually start, you know, buying a plane ticket for it more than two weeks before the fact. I love this con. Thank you to the staff of MFF for your efforts in helping li'l ol' me have a wonderful time.
Now to make sure I start answering the phone with my real name when I go back to work tomorrow ...