Two Cities, No Waiting
I extended my stay in the Greater Minneapolitan Area by a day to hang about with John and Michelle Nephew, friends and publishers, and as a great bonus, got to share two meals (one of them the Mandatory Breakfast) with jtidball. Before then, Michelle and I strolled through the Science Museum of Minnesota studying its devolution (common to museums of the Middle Holocene) from museum to playground. We took in the "Star Wars: The Science of Merchandising" exhibit, which had the impressive original four-foot Millennium Falcon model, among other neat props and robots and such, but the real highlight was the extraordinarily magnificent dinosaur collection, featuring as its crown jewel this Triceratops, the best one in the world hands down. Not least because Richard Wagner's grand-daughter gave it a magic ring whilst christening it "Fafner" in 1969. No lie.
But only such direct contact with a mythic entity could rival CONvergence, which was my main reason for being in the area, and oh boy, did I have a grand time. I'd like to extend special thanks to weasel_king for inviting muskrat_john as a fellow Guest of Honor, since I never get to see him at conventions any more. muskrat_john led mollpeartree and myself into the mean streets of South Minneapolis for a Jucy Lucy (a hamburger cooked with a molten core of cheese), and it did not disappoint. Other culinary highlights included the "tasting tree" at La Fougasse (where John and I regaled a thunderstruck Trace Beaulieu with tales of Hot Doug's) and the lobster corn dogs at Ike's (where cajones and chebutykin regaled us with tales of the lobster corn dogs at Ike's).
Other highlights almost too many to mention: I was on fifteen panels, plus the one I crashed ("Game Design"), plus attending opening and closing ceremonies. Some I may have monopolized (though I prefer to say "heavily seasoned") in my Chicagoan-amongst-Twin Citizens fashion, while on others I was one attraction among many, and on the "History and Future of Star Trek" panel I had the rare (for me) experience of being a relative (and relatively silent) mundane as Robert Meyer ("Free Enterprise") Burnett and Daren (scarily uncanny impression of Lenore Koridian) Dochterman led us where no panel has gone before, past the barrier of nerd at the edge of the Galaxy. Mention must also be made of the "Breakfast Cereal Mascot Smackdown" panel, at which petsnakereggie tried his very best to destroy the pancreas of myself, Mark Evanier, Len Wein, cajones, and three members of the Soylent Theater troupe -- we were ordered to consume all defeated cereals, and the most excellent Soylentist Joe Scrimshaw, seated to my immediate left, nearly suffered the fatal consequences of Too Much Science when he combined the lot of them with whiskey.
I only goobed out like a big fanboy goober for Marv Wolfman, but I defy anyone who appreciates the true Dracula to remain unmoved in his august presence. Plus yes, yes, Crisis on Infinite Earths. Whatever. Tomb of Dracula, man, that's where it's at.
Speaking of Dracula, mollpeartree and I watched (she for the first time) Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary at Cinema Rex, the great and powerful movie room of the con (complete with free Ike and Mike), where I also saw the premiere of local film-maker Bill Stiteler's hilarious film THAC0, perhaps best explained as Waiting For Godot meets AD&D. And I saw Daren Dochterman's The Empire Strikes Quack, a mashup of Star Wars First Trilogy footage to the soundtrack to Duck Dodgers In the 24th-and-a-Halfth Century.
But an award-winning panel schedule and a good-faith attempt to love Cinema Rex as it deserves meant that many other things could only be enjoyed en passant: I hardly got to any room parties at all (but you know I ate food out of a replicator and drank Romulan ale), missed Connie's Space Lounge almost entirely (thanks not least to the second set by Savage Aural Hotbed and then to fireworks the next night), still haven't seen Soylent Theater (Blue or otherwise), and barely exchanged two words with fellow GoH Eric Flint. I did get to talk with Mercedes Lackey a bit, which I had wanted to do all through the show, and I explained the secret truth of Wall-E to Len Wein (among others), and I talked with lots of other wonderful con staff, con attendees, and fellow panelists -- but not enough.
You know what this show needs? Another day.
Five days.
(Note to Anton: I made it home!)
But only such direct contact with a mythic entity could rival CONvergence, which was my main reason for being in the area, and oh boy, did I have a grand time. I'd like to extend special thanks to weasel_king for inviting muskrat_john as a fellow Guest of Honor, since I never get to see him at conventions any more. muskrat_john led mollpeartree and myself into the mean streets of South Minneapolis for a Jucy Lucy (a hamburger cooked with a molten core of cheese), and it did not disappoint. Other culinary highlights included the "tasting tree" at La Fougasse (where John and I regaled a thunderstruck Trace Beaulieu with tales of Hot Doug's) and the lobster corn dogs at Ike's (where cajones and chebutykin regaled us with tales of the lobster corn dogs at Ike's).
Other highlights almost too many to mention: I was on fifteen panels, plus the one I crashed ("Game Design"), plus attending opening and closing ceremonies. Some I may have monopolized (though I prefer to say "heavily seasoned") in my Chicagoan-amongst-Twin Citizens fashion, while on others I was one attraction among many, and on the "History and Future of Star Trek" panel I had the rare (for me) experience of being a relative (and relatively silent) mundane as Robert Meyer ("Free Enterprise") Burnett and Daren (scarily uncanny impression of Lenore Koridian) Dochterman led us where no panel has gone before, past the barrier of nerd at the edge of the Galaxy. Mention must also be made of the "Breakfast Cereal Mascot Smackdown" panel, at which petsnakereggie tried his very best to destroy the pancreas of myself, Mark Evanier, Len Wein, cajones, and three members of the Soylent Theater troupe -- we were ordered to consume all defeated cereals, and the most excellent Soylentist Joe Scrimshaw, seated to my immediate left, nearly suffered the fatal consequences of Too Much Science when he combined the lot of them with whiskey.
I only goobed out like a big fanboy goober for Marv Wolfman, but I defy anyone who appreciates the true Dracula to remain unmoved in his august presence. Plus yes, yes, Crisis on Infinite Earths. Whatever. Tomb of Dracula, man, that's where it's at.
Speaking of Dracula, mollpeartree and I watched (she for the first time) Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary at Cinema Rex, the great and powerful movie room of the con (complete with free Ike and Mike), where I also saw the premiere of local film-maker Bill Stiteler's hilarious film THAC0, perhaps best explained as Waiting For Godot meets AD&D. And I saw Daren Dochterman's The Empire Strikes Quack, a mashup of Star Wars First Trilogy footage to the soundtrack to Duck Dodgers In the 24th-and-a-Halfth Century.
But an award-winning panel schedule and a good-faith attempt to love Cinema Rex as it deserves meant that many other things could only be enjoyed en passant: I hardly got to any room parties at all (but you know I ate food out of a replicator and drank Romulan ale), missed Connie's Space Lounge almost entirely (thanks not least to the second set by Savage Aural Hotbed and then to fireworks the next night), still haven't seen Soylent Theater (Blue or otherwise), and barely exchanged two words with fellow GoH Eric Flint. I did get to talk with Mercedes Lackey a bit, which I had wanted to do all through the show, and I explained the secret truth of Wall-E to Len Wein (among others), and I talked with lots of other wonderful con staff, con attendees, and fellow panelists -- but not enough.
You know what this show needs? Another day.
Five days.
(Note to Anton: I made it home!)