RCFM: Thursday & Friday
I had hoped to have RCFM photos ready before making a post about it, but that hasn't worked out so I'm writing about RCFM now before I forget.
Thursday was a travel day and I finally found some Squirrel Nut Zippers candy at a Cracker Barrel so now I know what it is. IT's the same size and style as Mary Janes and Bit O Honey, but not as sticky as Mary Janes and not as sweet as Bit O Honey. I think the balance is about right.
After checking in at the Radisson we opted to skip the various stuff that santa_fox had planned. It would have been a large group doing mostly stuff I'm very interested in, and supper was a more urgent issue. The navigation system was helpful and the name Rollo's came up in the restaurant list. It wasn't where or what I had remembered, but it was a good start to the RCFM weekend. Sometime I also left a few items for kiwihunter8 with someone, figuring I might not see her for a while.
Orvan was out once doing a bit of the "Eat Candy, Not Cattle" bit, though there weren't all that many folks around. He also made a delivery to deyna_otter fairly late in the evening at the hotel bar. After cleaning up from that, I returned to the bar and talked with Deyna for a while and listened to a few other folks, including 2_gryphon. While his show doesn't do all that much for me, I find him really interesting when he isn't "on."
Friday I went to a few panels. The fursuitter's meet & greet was a must, and I finally attended the intro to fursuitting/fursuitting performance panels. At the start of one, jugularjaguar's co-panelist hadn't yet arrived and he jokingly(?) threatened to bring me up with him.
Orvan made a few deliveries, including some coffee to koakako (KO, of the 'Cappuccino with KO' bit). I wasn't sure what to do for him as all I knew about him was the Cappuccino bit. Working with that, I pondered the most "un-coffee" coffee there was for a person who made cappuccino. Without going to outright substitutes, the answer seemed to be instant decaff. So KO got a small jar of Decaff Folger's. His reaction was perfect, "Who sent me decaff?!" Orvan pointed to the ACME written on the box.
Another delivery was to a couple of the Guests of Honor, the Carspeckens. From reading their cartoon, Faux Pas I recalled they both had had back troubles earlier in the year. They got a big "bottle" of ACME Back Medicine (jelly beans) with a suitably silly label. A while after RCFM, I received a nice thank-you e-mail from them about that.
Orvan had a couple more deliveries to make at Opening Ceremonies, including one that jugularjaguar had set up. I knew of this and jmaynard knew of this and so Jay planned to be there to take pictures. I had warned him not to indicate anything when krag_carbine appeared as things would get soaked and that would a Very Bad Thing for his fancy new camera. Well, his camera was safe. To get a good view he went to the front. There he was told by someone, after the rest of the room had filled to capacity, that the front row was for Guests of Honor only and he was effectively thrown out. There were more seats than Guests of Honor, so he could have stayed, but nobody said anything. After everything was over I found Jay was rightfully livid, and so I as I have no photos of Orvan's first big appearance at RCFM. Since then I've see a couple photos of folks having opened a couple delivered items, but that's not at all the same. It's the difference between seeing a photo of a fireworks display and seeing photos of the spent fireworks.
As Orvan, I waited in the wings for a couple cues. Thus I missed opening ceremonies - the sound system doesn;t carry into the hall. And with krag_carbine's constant going on about this and that I had to ask someone else to listen for my cues. *grumble*. The first cue came and Orvan delivered a book, "To Serve Fur" or "To Serve Furry" (I'd look at a photo to check, but...) playing off a fairly well-known Twilight Zone episode. From the crowd reaction, which was about all I could hear, it seemed to have worked. Later the security folks were introduced and eventually Orvan appeared again and delivered a couple small ray guns (I didn't know about the other, larger ones some RCFM folks had been using as props until well after the con was over) complete with trigger-locks (which only almost worked, it turned out) so that they would not be in violation of con rules.
Now, I have a rant: Why is Jim Groat permitted to have a device that can project water and damage items? I know he says he tries to avoid doing certain things, but I fear it's just a matter of time before he damages something and the repercussions hit him or RCFM hard, no matter what disclaimers RCFM may have. There are already folks with water damaged artwork from RCFM opening or closing ceremonies. Fortunately for me I am not one of them. I don't want to see RCFM or its reputation go under due to this sort of thing, and I see it happening all to easily with perhaps the filing of assault or at least vandalism charges - and Jim & RCFM might not have much to back them up, despite the lack of a projectile device rule in the RCFM Code of Conduct. I'm a bit surprised this omission hasn't been abused more. It's also a matter of time before folks in the audience start firing back at Groat - and the results will be all the more likely to cause damage to something. No, I haven't been soaked. This isn't about getting back at anyone, it's about not losing RCFM.
After the last delivery at opening ceremonies, I didn't stick around. I need a shower, the suit need to be sprayed down and aired out, and I discovered I had to see if I could rescue Jay's weekend which was off to bad start. Mine wasn't doing much better. I felt bad as I had talked Jay into going to RCFM and springing for the booster level. My emotions were, well, I suppose you could say inductively coupled. Trying to do what I could to patch things, at least get a couple folks to listen to him and maybe prevent future messes like this (I really wanted him to have a better time than we'd had at AnthroCon a few years ago, and this was threatening to be even worse) and get it so that Jay finds them attentive (Read his page about why he will never buy a Ford again - it's not that problems are unforgivable, it's that problems ignored are unforgivable), I missed the Meet the Guests of Honor panel that I would have like to have attended. Then maybe I'd know something about them, other than the ones whose cartoon I've been following for a few years. I also recall why I like the MFF opening ceremonies, at least of this past year: they're short! Sure, the delivery shtick might not have worked out for them then, but I can deal with that.