I-Con report
Last weekend was I-Con, a large convention out on Long Island, held on the campus of SUNY Stony Brook.
I-Con combines a general SF con, an Amine con, and a media con, and had a reported 6,000 members as of late Saturday afternoon. The dealer room is huge, taking the entire floor of one of the gyms. The convention is spread over 7 or 8 buildings, and there is usually a lot of walking involved. The media side always includes some special guests, who you'll have limited access to, and a handful of other guests (Apollo and Boomer from the old Battlestar, lesser characters from Stargate, and randoms are typical) that sit at tables, selling signatures for the bulk of the con. They take over a lecture building where every room has a projector of some sort, and usually run at least 10 different video and anime shows at a time, including Hentai late at night.
This year's trip got off to a much later than expected start (don't ask - this caused some strife). I didn't get to the campus until around 10pm, and after finding it hard to get a pickup game in the huge area allotted to gaming this year, I checked out some anime.
I started out Saturday by spending 3 1/2 hours listening to the Q&A's (these are almost exclusively question/response format, as opposed to a lecture/speech).
George Takei was one of the headliners for the con. He is a very engaging speaker, and still has that wonderful voice. He talked about a number of topics, including the things that were Science Fiction on Star Trek that are part of everyday life today, Star Trek memories, the departed James Doohan, his introducing sushi to Doohan and the rest of the Star Trek crowd back in the 60's, the Howard Stern show, and other current plans (which include acting in one of the online fan-videos, which sounds like it will be a full length feature film!)
For those that are unaware, Howard has played a couple of pranks calls to Takei. Then, when Howard moved to Sirius radio, he convinced Takei to be his announcer. Takei had hoped that this would allow him to "control" his appearances more, but Stern still managed to play a prank on him:
Celebrities call the show quite often. Takei publicly 'came out' to announce his disappointment with The Arnold's killing the Gay Marraige act, which had passed the CA legislature. Well, one day, The Governator called in, and Howard let Takei discuss the gay marraige topic with him. Except that after quite a while, Takei realized that this wasn't actually Arnold - it was an impersonator. The next week, the real Arnold called in, and Takei got another crack, and got him to agree to sign off on the bill if it came across his desk again. Oops - an impersonator again!
Next up was Kevin Sorbo, star of Hercules and Anrdomeda. Ok, this is a large man. He is 6'3 I think, and after Hercules, he went on a specific exercise regime to get down to 215 (down 20lbs from his Herculean physique). btw, he said that he made cutting his hair and losing the weight part of his contract agreement before he signed on to the Andromeda project. He's another good speaker with a good voice (although perhaps the least impressive of the 4). Sorbo spoke about his time and memories from both Hercules and Andromeda, and on some of his current projects. He also listed many of the people who worked on the Hercules series, honing their arts, that went on to receive awards for their work on LoTR, including WETA.
Ron Glass is known for his roles as Harris on Barney Miller and as Shepherd Book on Firefly. He too has a marvelous voice and a good laugh. He seemed a little less of a prepared speaker than the others, but was very willing to engage with the audience.
As with any star of a Joss Whedon series, he was unable to shed light on a number of questions ("well, we were working for Joss, and that means that I don't really know anything more about that topic than you do" along with one lonely "Joss actually did show us a little bit of mercy on that one" Joss promised that if there was another movie, Glass/Shepherd would be in it (and from the phraseology, Wash too). For those who want to know, he has cut his hair (just after filming the movie). What was his favorite scene from Firefly? Too many to chose from, but he has to give good credit to the "Special Hell" scenes.
Mark Singer is known for his role in the Beastmaster movies (and as a frequent guest on the tv series) and in V, as well as an assortment of movies - "Do You See What I Hear", an excellent film, was mentioned a couple of times too. He is an excellent speaker, and definitely was prepared for all the questions that came his way. Something I found interesting: while the Beastmaster TV series was filmed in New Zealand (Australia? I forget which), but the movies were filmed in Nova Scotia.
Here's my favorite of his stories: One day, filming Beastmaster, a camera guy was taking a shot of the lion (one of "the cats"), who was laying on the ground snoozing. He was at the (large) camera, which was on a (large) dolly, peering down at this 500lb lion while he was making his adjustments, every now and then turning and speaking with the people around him. Well, he tweaked something, turned around to speak to NO ONE BEHIND HIM????, turned around, and there was no "cat" on the ground. Nope, the cat woke up scared, and jumped up on top of the camera peering down at him. (no harm done!)
Here's another one: One day, one of the really annoying "know-it-all" execs came on set, and decided he wanted a picture. "Bring me the cat. Bring me the cat." (cat meaning 480lb tiger in this case). Ok, he's the boss. They bring him the cat. The cat has a large chain around his neck, and the exec wants to be photoed with him holding the chain. So he's standing there holding the chain, next to a pliant sitting tiger, who looks very bored. Looking around, yawning, etc. "But between the CL and the ICK" the cat jumps sideways. All that's in the picture is the exec, being yanked sideways, mouth agape. And there, 4 feet to the right, is the cat, sitting peacefully, yawning and looking bored.
You can see bad pics of Sorbo, Takei, and Glass here
I got to meet Sorbo, Glass, Singer, and Richard Hatch while I was walking the dealers' room, and sprung for signed pics of Sorbo and Glass. I also picked up a couple of games at a reasonable price - Alhambra and Jambo (see my Lunacon report for a little more details on them)
Then food, and a trip back to my room to retrieve my cell phone, since I was hoping to hear how wren13 was doing. Back to the con, but too late to get into any of the scheduled gaming before the "Texas Hold-em" tourney started, during which there were no scheduled board games (and I still had trouble finding pickup games).
There were 100 players in the poker tourney (no entry fee), and the first prize was a digital camera, second prize was two memberships to I-Con '07.
I got nothing for cards (my best hand before the end was a pair of 10's), and finally had to go all-in with with A-9 off suit. One other guy stayed in, and had - guess what? A-9 off suit. Push. Two hands later, I went all-in again with A-J of Diamonds. 2 people came along, and one stayed after the flop. He had K-8 off suit. The flop? A-K-x, with 1 diamond. Looking good, right? Next card? Yup, 8. The last card? Yep 8. So after dominating, not only does my pair of bullets lose, I lose to a friggin' boat. Ah well.
After losing at poker, I found a couple of pickup games. I learned a game called "Orientale" (iirc - I can't find it on google) It is a non-collectible card game based in medieval Japan. There are "role" cards with values from 0 (Ninja) to 7 (Shogun). The value means its value in battle, although each card has at least one special ability. 1 is the peasant, which allows you to foment rebellion and to trade a scored card with another player for example. You can perform an action each turn, in order based on a couple of things, including the ranking of the current roles. Your action can be to fight one of the other characters (if you win, you get to add their role card to your score pile - the loser draws a new one from the top of the role deck), to use your role's special ability, or to take the turn's prize card (money cards, mostly from 2 to 4 pts, to add to your score pile), if it hasn't already been taken. A Peasant can try to rebel, if he is strong enough, and this allows for a complete redistribution of the cards already scored - by those players who are currently Peasants. Anyway, you get the vague idea. It seems fun, although I am not sure how deep the strategy really goes. I also played Chez Geek, one I hadn't played in quite some time. We had a 4p game, and the "other" three of us got steamrolled. As it turns out, I realized I was playing with Alex Jurkat (sp?), who runs the company that does "All Flesh May Be Eaten" (as well as the game I talked with him the most about, the computer version of "Iron Dragon" (The fantasy crayon rails game).
Sunday, I just popped in to hit the dealer's room one more time, and then hit the road earlier than normal, in time to meet wren13 for dinner
I-Con combines a general SF con, an Amine con, and a media con, and had a reported 6,000 members as of late Saturday afternoon. The dealer room is huge, taking the entire floor of one of the gyms. The convention is spread over 7 or 8 buildings, and there is usually a lot of walking involved. The media side always includes some special guests, who you'll have limited access to, and a handful of other guests (Apollo and Boomer from the old Battlestar, lesser characters from Stargate, and randoms are typical) that sit at tables, selling signatures for the bulk of the con. They take over a lecture building where every room has a projector of some sort, and usually run at least 10 different video and anime shows at a time, including Hentai late at night.
This year's trip got off to a much later than expected start (don't ask - this caused some strife). I didn't get to the campus until around 10pm, and after finding it hard to get a pickup game in the huge area allotted to gaming this year, I checked out some anime.
I started out Saturday by spending 3 1/2 hours listening to the Q&A's (these are almost exclusively question/response format, as opposed to a lecture/speech).
George Takei was one of the headliners for the con. He is a very engaging speaker, and still has that wonderful voice. He talked about a number of topics, including the things that were Science Fiction on Star Trek that are part of everyday life today, Star Trek memories, the departed James Doohan, his introducing sushi to Doohan and the rest of the Star Trek crowd back in the 60's, the Howard Stern show, and other current plans (which include acting in one of the online fan-videos, which sounds like it will be a full length feature film!)
For those that are unaware, Howard has played a couple of pranks calls to Takei. Then, when Howard moved to Sirius radio, he convinced Takei to be his announcer. Takei had hoped that this would allow him to "control" his appearances more, but Stern still managed to play a prank on him:
Celebrities call the show quite often. Takei publicly 'came out' to announce his disappointment with The Arnold's killing the Gay Marraige act, which had passed the CA legislature. Well, one day, The Governator called in, and Howard let Takei discuss the gay marraige topic with him. Except that after quite a while, Takei realized that this wasn't actually Arnold - it was an impersonator. The next week, the real Arnold called in, and Takei got another crack, and got him to agree to sign off on the bill if it came across his desk again. Oops - an impersonator again!
Next up was Kevin Sorbo, star of Hercules and Anrdomeda. Ok, this is a large man. He is 6'3 I think, and after Hercules, he went on a specific exercise regime to get down to 215 (down 20lbs from his Herculean physique). btw, he said that he made cutting his hair and losing the weight part of his contract agreement before he signed on to the Andromeda project. He's another good speaker with a good voice (although perhaps the least impressive of the 4). Sorbo spoke about his time and memories from both Hercules and Andromeda, and on some of his current projects. He also listed many of the people who worked on the Hercules series, honing their arts, that went on to receive awards for their work on LoTR, including WETA.
Ron Glass is known for his roles as Harris on Barney Miller and as Shepherd Book on Firefly. He too has a marvelous voice and a good laugh. He seemed a little less of a prepared speaker than the others, but was very willing to engage with the audience.
As with any star of a Joss Whedon series, he was unable to shed light on a number of questions ("well, we were working for Joss, and that means that I don't really know anything more about that topic than you do" along with one lonely "Joss actually did show us a little bit of mercy on that one" Joss promised that if there was another movie, Glass/Shepherd would be in it (and from the phraseology, Wash too). For those who want to know, he has cut his hair (just after filming the movie). What was his favorite scene from Firefly? Too many to chose from, but he has to give good credit to the "Special Hell" scenes.
Mark Singer is known for his role in the Beastmaster movies (and as a frequent guest on the tv series) and in V, as well as an assortment of movies - "Do You See What I Hear", an excellent film, was mentioned a couple of times too. He is an excellent speaker, and definitely was prepared for all the questions that came his way. Something I found interesting: while the Beastmaster TV series was filmed in New Zealand (Australia? I forget which), but the movies were filmed in Nova Scotia.
Here's my favorite of his stories: One day, filming Beastmaster, a camera guy was taking a shot of the lion (one of "the cats"), who was laying on the ground snoozing. He was at the (large) camera, which was on a (large) dolly, peering down at this 500lb lion while he was making his adjustments, every now and then turning and speaking with the people around him. Well, he tweaked something, turned around to speak to NO ONE BEHIND HIM????, turned around, and there was no "cat" on the ground. Nope, the cat woke up scared, and jumped up on top of the camera peering down at him. (no harm done!)
Here's another one: One day, one of the really annoying "know-it-all" execs came on set, and decided he wanted a picture. "Bring me the cat. Bring me the cat." (cat meaning 480lb tiger in this case). Ok, he's the boss. They bring him the cat. The cat has a large chain around his neck, and the exec wants to be photoed with him holding the chain. So he's standing there holding the chain, next to a pliant sitting tiger, who looks very bored. Looking around, yawning, etc. "But between the CL and the ICK" the cat jumps sideways. All that's in the picture is the exec, being yanked sideways, mouth agape. And there, 4 feet to the right, is the cat, sitting peacefully, yawning and looking bored.
You can see bad pics of Sorbo, Takei, and Glass here
I got to meet Sorbo, Glass, Singer, and Richard Hatch while I was walking the dealers' room, and sprung for signed pics of Sorbo and Glass. I also picked up a couple of games at a reasonable price - Alhambra and Jambo (see my Lunacon report for a little more details on them)
Then food, and a trip back to my room to retrieve my cell phone, since I was hoping to hear how wren13 was doing. Back to the con, but too late to get into any of the scheduled gaming before the "Texas Hold-em" tourney started, during which there were no scheduled board games (and I still had trouble finding pickup games).
There were 100 players in the poker tourney (no entry fee), and the first prize was a digital camera, second prize was two memberships to I-Con '07.
I got nothing for cards (my best hand before the end was a pair of 10's), and finally had to go all-in with with A-9 off suit. One other guy stayed in, and had - guess what? A-9 off suit. Push. Two hands later, I went all-in again with A-J of Diamonds. 2 people came along, and one stayed after the flop. He had K-8 off suit. The flop? A-K-x, with 1 diamond. Looking good, right? Next card? Yup, 8. The last card? Yep 8. So after dominating, not only does my pair of bullets lose, I lose to a friggin' boat. Ah well.
After losing at poker, I found a couple of pickup games. I learned a game called "Orientale" (iirc - I can't find it on google) It is a non-collectible card game based in medieval Japan. There are "role" cards with values from 0 (Ninja) to 7 (Shogun). The value means its value in battle, although each card has at least one special ability. 1 is the peasant, which allows you to foment rebellion and to trade a scored card with another player for example. You can perform an action each turn, in order based on a couple of things, including the ranking of the current roles. Your action can be to fight one of the other characters (if you win, you get to add their role card to your score pile - the loser draws a new one from the top of the role deck), to use your role's special ability, or to take the turn's prize card (money cards, mostly from 2 to 4 pts, to add to your score pile), if it hasn't already been taken. A Peasant can try to rebel, if he is strong enough, and this allows for a complete redistribution of the cards already scored - by those players who are currently Peasants. Anyway, you get the vague idea. It seems fun, although I am not sure how deep the strategy really goes. I also played Chez Geek, one I hadn't played in quite some time. We had a 4p game, and the "other" three of us got steamrolled. As it turns out, I realized I was playing with Alex Jurkat (sp?), who runs the company that does "All Flesh May Be Eaten" (as well as the game I talked with him the most about, the computer version of "Iron Dragon" (The fantasy crayon rails game).
Sunday, I just popped in to hit the dealer's room one more time, and then hit the road earlier than normal, in time to meet wren13 for dinner