Anthrocon 2007 Highlights: Part Deux!
After four days of build up and my commitments to Con Op's met, the con takes off on after burners! Anthrocon 2007 Highlights...
Part Deux: Saturday
I stayed overnight at the Westin with Javi and Brendan roos and we spent the wee hours of the morning hopping up and down on the beds! Well okay…not really…but that might have been fun if I wasn’t so tired. I had to be down at Masq practice by 9am Saturday morning and then to Room 301 at 10am for Looney Lab’s game demos. Sil wouldn’t get to the con until after Noon in order to take Edan to his obedience class.
So I pulled myself out of bed at 7am with five hours of sleep. I grabbed breakfast at the Steel City Diner and ordered their $3.35 three egg breakfast, plus potatoes and bacon! Fueled and filled with “go-go juice” (coffee) I put Ashes masquerade costume on and headed down to practice.
Now, just to fill folks in…I had a sketch…and Caddie had a sketch to compliment mine. Ashes was going to fanboi all over Bursty to Weird Al’s “Do I Creep You Out” and then, a skit or two later, Bursty would get her revenge on Ashes by singing “You’re Pitiful” at him. Well, as we were called up to practice, we were told, “You can’t have two acts with the same characters in it.” Ummm…carp! Well, they let us perform both in practice, but they preferred “You’re Pitiful” over “Do I Creep You Out” so for those of you who went to the Masq, you saw half our act.
Finished with our “once through” I ran across the hall to run my two hour panel of games in suit with the head off and told Caddie that if they needed us again to come and get me. We only had three tables going for the morning session which equated to about 15-20 folks total. Xavier and I easily handled the crowd getting a game of Fluxx started and then as more folks arrived I broke out the Ice House pieces and demoed Ice Towers, Treehouse and then Martian Chess. Xavier demoed games of Fluxx, Aquarius and Chrononauts.
I wrapped up the games I was demo’ing just before noon and cleaned up the pyramids and tie-dye table runners and left Xavier to finish up the Chrononauts game while I sought out something for lunch in the SuperSponsor lounge. A hot dog and half a peanut butter sandwich later I was down in the room switching Ashes from Masq mode to Fire Dog mode for the fursuit parade. Arrived at 1pm to find out that the parade wouldn’t be until 2pm so I took my gear off and hung out talking with Vixy, Durango, Damaron, Mishi, Xavier, Flanowa, Babs, Tilt, Aloha…oh heck I laughed and talked with a good number of fursuiters in that hour, exchanging hugs and smiles.
The parade wasn’t as bad as it was last year with the exception that my hose pack was not cooperating AT ALL! (Bad highrise pack! No biscuit.) Darned thing fell off my air pack three times causing me to drop out of line to re-set it. I finally threw it over my shoulder and went on like that. As usually I was pretty spent by the time we reached the end of the parade and I sat on the floor again to cool down and get my wind back. Many of the local Pittsburgh fursuiters were sitting nearby relaying their experiences from the parade and when I caught a hole in the conversation I told them, “You know how you feel right now, hot and physically spent? That’s how I feel when I come out from working a fire.”
When I got back to the room around 4pm, Javi and a bunch of furs were getting ready to go up to Sushi Kim’s for an early dinner. I implored them to give me a half hour to get out of my suit, shower and get dressed again which they agreed to. So by 5 in the afternoon, Javi, Brendan, Caddie, Xavier, TallyFox and I were sitting around a table getting ready to order. I’m not much for sushi, so I ordered a plate of chicken fried rice which I managed to eat entirely with a pair of chop sticks. (Eating with chop sticks is a first for me.)
After dinner, I got back into Ashes and put on his costume for our Masq sketch so I could be in the convention center headless lounge by 6:30pm. There wasn’t much going on aside from talking and playing with the other suiters involved in the show. I had the script with me for our act, and my MP3 player with the song on it, so I wandered off to someplace quiet and ran through the song several times to work out the timing of some of the lines and refining my pantomime. My long disappearance made Caddie worried and he was a little vexed with me when I strolled back into the headless lounge.
The Masquerade however and our skit in particular went extremely well, which was confirmed by the audible reactions of the audience, lots of hugs after the show from people who would smile and say, “You’re not pitiful Ashes,” and from the many, many folks who watched the show and commented they enjoyed our act. Then to wrap up the show by dancing the Time Warp in the aisles with folks in the audience, like it’s supposed to be done when you see Rocky Horror in the theaters…well it was awesome!
I suited over to the hotel real quick, took Ashes off, cleaned up double quick and turned right around and returned to the convention center with telescope in tow for the north terrace and Saturday night’s AstronoFur’s Star Party! I ran into Nauta who helped out by putting the star party signs up as we went along. We were late by about 5 minutes, but the group up there waiting for us were patient and lent a paw as I set my 100mm refractor up, aligned it and then centered Saturn in the eye piece for folks to see. Karl arrived shortly after and set up his 100mm ED reflector and together we moved from Saturn to Venus.
As with the night before, Karl kept on Jupiter and I used my scope to hop from Albireo in Cygnus, to Eta Lyra, to Mizar & Alcor, and then to Cor Carolai as I showcased a pawful of visible and actual double, triple and quadruple star systems. As new folks arrived, I moved between these four night sky staples. When the lights at PNC Park dimmed enough, I took folks for a tour of the visible constellations and visible planets and answered questions about our equipment. I had printed up 50 star party fliers for the weekend. I had better than 30 left when I started Saturday night and I ran out 2/3rds of the way through. So by my estimates, we entertained somewhere between 60 and 80 convention attendees (and DLCC employees) over the course of the weekend! Against the dances!! Starz Rul! :)
Sil arrived somewhere around 11pm after the Weird Al concert let out. She helped by looking up some stats on the objects we were viewing and lent a hoof as we packed up again. We walked right to the car with the telescope and a few other things, to begin to decrease our pile of stuff in Javi’s room, and left the con for home yet again.
Thus endeth Saturday… (Yeah, I was afraid Saturday would end up a post in it’s own right.)
Tomorrow… Part Three!
*Hugs*
Swifty
Part Deux: Saturday
I stayed overnight at the Westin with Javi and Brendan roos and we spent the wee hours of the morning hopping up and down on the beds! Well okay…not really…but that might have been fun if I wasn’t so tired. I had to be down at Masq practice by 9am Saturday morning and then to Room 301 at 10am for Looney Lab’s game demos. Sil wouldn’t get to the con until after Noon in order to take Edan to his obedience class.
So I pulled myself out of bed at 7am with five hours of sleep. I grabbed breakfast at the Steel City Diner and ordered their $3.35 three egg breakfast, plus potatoes and bacon! Fueled and filled with “go-go juice” (coffee) I put Ashes masquerade costume on and headed down to practice.
Now, just to fill folks in…I had a sketch…and Caddie had a sketch to compliment mine. Ashes was going to fanboi all over Bursty to Weird Al’s “Do I Creep You Out” and then, a skit or two later, Bursty would get her revenge on Ashes by singing “You’re Pitiful” at him. Well, as we were called up to practice, we were told, “You can’t have two acts with the same characters in it.” Ummm…carp! Well, they let us perform both in practice, but they preferred “You’re Pitiful” over “Do I Creep You Out” so for those of you who went to the Masq, you saw half our act.
Finished with our “once through” I ran across the hall to run my two hour panel of games in suit with the head off and told Caddie that if they needed us again to come and get me. We only had three tables going for the morning session which equated to about 15-20 folks total. Xavier and I easily handled the crowd getting a game of Fluxx started and then as more folks arrived I broke out the Ice House pieces and demoed Ice Towers, Treehouse and then Martian Chess. Xavier demoed games of Fluxx, Aquarius and Chrononauts.
I wrapped up the games I was demo’ing just before noon and cleaned up the pyramids and tie-dye table runners and left Xavier to finish up the Chrononauts game while I sought out something for lunch in the SuperSponsor lounge. A hot dog and half a peanut butter sandwich later I was down in the room switching Ashes from Masq mode to Fire Dog mode for the fursuit parade. Arrived at 1pm to find out that the parade wouldn’t be until 2pm so I took my gear off and hung out talking with Vixy, Durango, Damaron, Mishi, Xavier, Flanowa, Babs, Tilt, Aloha…oh heck I laughed and talked with a good number of fursuiters in that hour, exchanging hugs and smiles.
The parade wasn’t as bad as it was last year with the exception that my hose pack was not cooperating AT ALL! (Bad highrise pack! No biscuit.) Darned thing fell off my air pack three times causing me to drop out of line to re-set it. I finally threw it over my shoulder and went on like that. As usually I was pretty spent by the time we reached the end of the parade and I sat on the floor again to cool down and get my wind back. Many of the local Pittsburgh fursuiters were sitting nearby relaying their experiences from the parade and when I caught a hole in the conversation I told them, “You know how you feel right now, hot and physically spent? That’s how I feel when I come out from working a fire.”
When I got back to the room around 4pm, Javi and a bunch of furs were getting ready to go up to Sushi Kim’s for an early dinner. I implored them to give me a half hour to get out of my suit, shower and get dressed again which they agreed to. So by 5 in the afternoon, Javi, Brendan, Caddie, Xavier, TallyFox and I were sitting around a table getting ready to order. I’m not much for sushi, so I ordered a plate of chicken fried rice which I managed to eat entirely with a pair of chop sticks. (Eating with chop sticks is a first for me.)
After dinner, I got back into Ashes and put on his costume for our Masq sketch so I could be in the convention center headless lounge by 6:30pm. There wasn’t much going on aside from talking and playing with the other suiters involved in the show. I had the script with me for our act, and my MP3 player with the song on it, so I wandered off to someplace quiet and ran through the song several times to work out the timing of some of the lines and refining my pantomime. My long disappearance made Caddie worried and he was a little vexed with me when I strolled back into the headless lounge.
The Masquerade however and our skit in particular went extremely well, which was confirmed by the audible reactions of the audience, lots of hugs after the show from people who would smile and say, “You’re not pitiful Ashes,” and from the many, many folks who watched the show and commented they enjoyed our act. Then to wrap up the show by dancing the Time Warp in the aisles with folks in the audience, like it’s supposed to be done when you see Rocky Horror in the theaters…well it was awesome!
I suited over to the hotel real quick, took Ashes off, cleaned up double quick and turned right around and returned to the convention center with telescope in tow for the north terrace and Saturday night’s AstronoFur’s Star Party! I ran into Nauta who helped out by putting the star party signs up as we went along. We were late by about 5 minutes, but the group up there waiting for us were patient and lent a paw as I set my 100mm refractor up, aligned it and then centered Saturn in the eye piece for folks to see. Karl arrived shortly after and set up his 100mm ED reflector and together we moved from Saturn to Venus.
As with the night before, Karl kept on Jupiter and I used my scope to hop from Albireo in Cygnus, to Eta Lyra, to Mizar & Alcor, and then to Cor Carolai as I showcased a pawful of visible and actual double, triple and quadruple star systems. As new folks arrived, I moved between these four night sky staples. When the lights at PNC Park dimmed enough, I took folks for a tour of the visible constellations and visible planets and answered questions about our equipment. I had printed up 50 star party fliers for the weekend. I had better than 30 left when I started Saturday night and I ran out 2/3rds of the way through. So by my estimates, we entertained somewhere between 60 and 80 convention attendees (and DLCC employees) over the course of the weekend! Against the dances!! Starz Rul! :)
Sil arrived somewhere around 11pm after the Weird Al concert let out. She helped by looking up some stats on the objects we were viewing and lent a hoof as we packed up again. We walked right to the car with the telescope and a few other things, to begin to decrease our pile of stuff in Javi’s room, and left the con for home yet again.
Thus endeth Saturday… (Yeah, I was afraid Saturday would end up a post in it’s own right.)
Tomorrow… Part Three!
*Hugs*
Swifty