Well, that went well. No, really!
It didn't start well. Any day that starts with only six hours of sleep because somebody else has to go to work early is officially teh suck. I compounded that by staying up and playing Civicrack for a couple of hours, but a substantial breakfast and a big cup of Guatemala balanced that out, and I even managed to rewrite my apazine so that I wound up with four pages.
Much driving around ensued. P wanted to do stuff at the apartment after showering, but I drew the line - I had a 2 PM collation to be hosting, and no delays would be tolerated. Between the Kinko's run, refueling, lunch on the run, and swinging back by the apartment for a clipboard & tape (which wound up not being used) and dropping off P's apartment keys, I barely made it back to Arcana and the collation by 2 PM. I did, though, and things went pretty smoothly. There was a good turnout - pretty much all the in-town members except for Marjorie, IIRC. materia_indigo and Rick both took spec copies, so we may even have some new blood for the next issue. Yay!
The collation broke up, and I checked out the art show, which was a pretty impressive collection of paintings and drawings including some Finays, a Dold from the 1930s, some truly weird stuff from the Wandrei brothers, a couple of covers by Gahan Wilson, and some quite nice work by artists I'd never heard of before. Me, I wound up rounding out my collection of Fastner & Larson's Little Black Book series and picking up their latest, Bed and Bondage. Now, this is kind of weird, because I don't actually care much for the hugely-endowed women they specialize in, but I think the cartoon tales they do are funny and a lot of the cheesecake is done very tongue-in-cheek. So I'm buying it for the humor. That's my line and I'm sticking to it. :)
After dinner, F&L were presented with the Minnesota Fantasy Award (well-deserved, imao) and then the auction ensued. No slight to the other programming, but I think the Arcana auction is the high point of the convention in terms of entertainment and shopping value. Quite a few interesting videos, books and magazines pass through the auction every year, in addition to art, stuff provided by the Guests of Honor (who are, of course, available to autograoh said items) and just plain odd stuff. For example, one year the auction featured a human hand from the estate of Gordy Dickson, and this year there was a Bone Clock - not from the House of Clocks, mind you, but strange all the same. Then there was the year when they had the Gein Belt beer labels, but the less said about that, the better. The auction is very much an audience participation event, during which audience members encourage purchase of various items by announcing "Has vampire content!" "Adrienne Barbeau content!" "Nazi lesbian vampire content!" &c. as applicable, which not infrequently spurs interest and/or amusement. Prices tend to be quite reasonable for many items; one can frequently acquire used hardbacks and videos for $1 apiece or even less, since many items are offered in packages. I avoided the auction last year due to a shortage of cash; this year I wasn't so careful and staggered off into the night with $46 worth of kung-fu movies, Charles Addams collections, Tim Powers novels, and David Cronenberg movies with Debbie Harry content. ;)
And I'll be back at it this afternoon after showering & dressing. TTFN.
Much driving around ensued. P wanted to do stuff at the apartment after showering, but I drew the line - I had a 2 PM collation to be hosting, and no delays would be tolerated. Between the Kinko's run, refueling, lunch on the run, and swinging back by the apartment for a clipboard & tape (which wound up not being used) and dropping off P's apartment keys, I barely made it back to Arcana and the collation by 2 PM. I did, though, and things went pretty smoothly. There was a good turnout - pretty much all the in-town members except for Marjorie, IIRC. materia_indigo and Rick both took spec copies, so we may even have some new blood for the next issue. Yay!
The collation broke up, and I checked out the art show, which was a pretty impressive collection of paintings and drawings including some Finays, a Dold from the 1930s, some truly weird stuff from the Wandrei brothers, a couple of covers by Gahan Wilson, and some quite nice work by artists I'd never heard of before. Me, I wound up rounding out my collection of Fastner & Larson's Little Black Book series and picking up their latest, Bed and Bondage. Now, this is kind of weird, because I don't actually care much for the hugely-endowed women they specialize in, but I think the cartoon tales they do are funny and a lot of the cheesecake is done very tongue-in-cheek. So I'm buying it for the humor. That's my line and I'm sticking to it. :)
After dinner, F&L were presented with the Minnesota Fantasy Award (well-deserved, imao) and then the auction ensued. No slight to the other programming, but I think the Arcana auction is the high point of the convention in terms of entertainment and shopping value. Quite a few interesting videos, books and magazines pass through the auction every year, in addition to art, stuff provided by the Guests of Honor (who are, of course, available to autograoh said items) and just plain odd stuff. For example, one year the auction featured a human hand from the estate of Gordy Dickson, and this year there was a Bone Clock - not from the House of Clocks, mind you, but strange all the same. Then there was the year when they had the Gein Belt beer labels, but the less said about that, the better. The auction is very much an audience participation event, during which audience members encourage purchase of various items by announcing "Has vampire content!" "Adrienne Barbeau content!" "Nazi lesbian vampire content!" &c. as applicable, which not infrequently spurs interest and/or amusement. Prices tend to be quite reasonable for many items; one can frequently acquire used hardbacks and videos for $1 apiece or even less, since many items are offered in packages. I avoided the auction last year due to a shortage of cash; this year I wasn't so careful and staggered off into the night with $46 worth of kung-fu movies, Charles Addams collections, Tim Powers novels, and David Cronenberg movies with Debbie Harry content. ;)
And I'll be back at it this afternoon after showering & dressing. TTFN.