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jere7myI went to Arisia last weekend, and got my geek on for two nights at the beautiful Westin Waterfront.
To get the bad stuff out of the way first — and there always seems to be bad stuff, doesn't there? — Sunday afternoon did not go well. There was some drama and unhappiness late Saturday night, which meant I slept poorly and woke up early, after which I had to run off and give blood. Long story short, I spent about six hours of Sunday sitting in the lobby, shivering, cultivating a new nervous tic, and reading most of Farewell, My Lovely. A string of people came by to chat with me — Eric from the dreidel party,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kdsorceress's roommate Genni and mom werewulf, Otavia and David and Theodora — but for the most part I read and glowered and shivered until someone came and made me go to the sauna-like pool room to warm up. I need a more realistic strategy to get through that phase of the con, 'cos what I've been doing just isn't working. I've figured out that retreating behind a book for some social retrenchment is perfectly fine, healthy even, but six hours is a bit excessive.
Now, the good:
• OMGzors, I am such a fanboy. There was a life-size stormtrooper cake, and I et it! You may have seen it on BoingBoing. Amanda Oakleaf Cakes had it standing in the con suite until 2:30PM Saturday, at which point a long winding line of fans ate it up. I got to watch part of the assembly, and a lot of the disassembly. So. Incredibly. Cool.
• I got to meet Phil and Kaja Foglio! He sounds exactly like Vizzini, and signed a XXXenophile collection for me. He was a formative part of my childhood — I started reading What's New? in Dragon around age 9 — and I've followed him ever since, through M:tG and RoboRally and XXXenophile. For the halftime show at the masquerade, he and three volunteers from the audience did a staged reading / slide show of The Capture, written by Robert Aspirin and illustrated by Phil 'way back when he was a young, easily persuaded fan. It's a story of a con on a cruise ship that gets abducted by aliens from the Bermuda Triangle, and contains a lot of sidelong references to Kelly Freas ("Gremlins do not exist!") and Gordon van Gelder and so on. It made me feel...less old. Or old, but okay.
• The masquerade itself was quite good this year, with a lot of impressive or funny or moving costumes. (I actually teared up a little when a dying steampunk HAL 900 sang Daisy, Daisy.) My favorite was this team of youngsters, who gave us a dragon fighting a hydra that kept popping up new puppet heads. Worthy of early Jim Henson.
• The hall costumes, as usual, were amazing. Here we see a Cyberman using the dreaded "nyuk-nyuk-nyuk" attack on a Dalek.
• The Saturday club dance was really good, at least for the first couple of hours. I'm glad I decided to give blood on Sunday; it meant I had much more energy for mad flailing on the dance floor. (The donation itself was the smoothest it's ever been. Maybe it was because I was donating to a kids' hospital, maybe it was having a professional phlebotomist, but I barely noticed the needle going in or coming out. It was like a magic trick.)
• I roused myself from my Sunday funk for a little retail therapy, buying for myself this gorgeous bronze pheasant feather pendant (say that five times fast) from Kelly Kotulak. It suits my coloring, and fits with my natural-historical bent. In the art show, I was more than tempted to bid on a black-and-white conté crayon sketch of Ray Harryhausen's Ymir from 20,000,000 Miles to Earth by multiple-Hugo-winner Bob Eggleton, but missed my chance. However! According to his blog, it is still available for $125, and I may yet snap it up.
• I also tried a new (to me) gimmicky Japanese soda in the dealers' room: Ramune, which is sealed by a glass marble being held by carbonation pressure in the mouth of the bottle. You need a little plastic plunger to open it. Fun and tasty!
• I got to watch the end of Them! while eating breakfast in my hotel room. Memories of Saturday afternoon creature features!
• I went to a writing panel that made me actively angry — half the panel were pushing a monetary, formulaic approach to writing, and dismissively mocking difficult, literary work. ("I've never understood that approach," one said. "Following your muse is all well and good, but don't they have rent to pay?" Cue laughter.) Fortunately, Grant Carrington was tucked away at the end of the table, 73 years young and standing up for artistic integrity. Grant Carrington is fucking solid.
• Despite the Sunday mopery, I had a successful social experience, meeting new people and making them laugh and generally feeling welcome. Lots of people complimented my kilt; one dude offered to buy my green sunglasses. I got to spend time withkdsorceress (and fetch her stormtrooper cake while she was trapped behind a sound board), and wandered about for a while with Rosie, an entertaining dentist I'd met at Kat's housewarming. People are friendly.
• On that note, I nearly forgot about the dudes with the goggles. I was decompressing with my book in the con suite when these dudes came in with goggles that used refraction to mess with vision, shifting it around in either a left-right or up-down shuffle. We spent a fine hour watching people try to walk, and putting one set on one person and the other on another and watching them try to shake hands. Spontaneous, raucous, geeky socialization like that is a big part of why I go to Arisia.
So, overall a success. 2/3, anyway.
To get the bad stuff out of the way first — and there always seems to be bad stuff, doesn't there? — Sunday afternoon did not go well. There was some drama and unhappiness late Saturday night, which meant I slept poorly and woke up early, after which I had to run off and give blood. Long story short, I spent about six hours of Sunday sitting in the lobby, shivering, cultivating a new nervous tic, and reading most of Farewell, My Lovely. A string of people came by to chat with me — Eric from the dreidel party,
kdsorceress's roommate Genni and mom werewulf, Otavia and David and Theodora — but for the most part I read and glowered and shivered until someone came and made me go to the sauna-like pool room to warm up. I need a more realistic strategy to get through that phase of the con, 'cos what I've been doing just isn't working. I've figured out that retreating behind a book for some social retrenchment is perfectly fine, healthy even, but six hours is a bit excessive.Now, the good:
• OMGzors, I am such a fanboy. There was a life-size stormtrooper cake, and I et it! You may have seen it on BoingBoing. Amanda Oakleaf Cakes had it standing in the con suite until 2:30PM Saturday, at which point a long winding line of fans ate it up. I got to watch part of the assembly, and a lot of the disassembly. So. Incredibly. Cool.
• I got to meet Phil and Kaja Foglio! He sounds exactly like Vizzini, and signed a XXXenophile collection for me. He was a formative part of my childhood — I started reading What's New? in Dragon around age 9 — and I've followed him ever since, through M:tG and RoboRally and XXXenophile. For the halftime show at the masquerade, he and three volunteers from the audience did a staged reading / slide show of The Capture, written by Robert Aspirin and illustrated by Phil 'way back when he was a young, easily persuaded fan. It's a story of a con on a cruise ship that gets abducted by aliens from the Bermuda Triangle, and contains a lot of sidelong references to Kelly Freas ("Gremlins do not exist!") and Gordon van Gelder and so on. It made me feel...less old. Or old, but okay.
• The masquerade itself was quite good this year, with a lot of impressive or funny or moving costumes. (I actually teared up a little when a dying steampunk HAL 900 sang Daisy, Daisy.) My favorite was this team of youngsters, who gave us a dragon fighting a hydra that kept popping up new puppet heads. Worthy of early Jim Henson.
• The hall costumes, as usual, were amazing. Here we see a Cyberman using the dreaded "nyuk-nyuk-nyuk" attack on a Dalek.
• The Saturday club dance was really good, at least for the first couple of hours. I'm glad I decided to give blood on Sunday; it meant I had much more energy for mad flailing on the dance floor. (The donation itself was the smoothest it's ever been. Maybe it was because I was donating to a kids' hospital, maybe it was having a professional phlebotomist, but I barely noticed the needle going in or coming out. It was like a magic trick.)
• I roused myself from my Sunday funk for a little retail therapy, buying for myself this gorgeous bronze pheasant feather pendant (say that five times fast) from Kelly Kotulak. It suits my coloring, and fits with my natural-historical bent. In the art show, I was more than tempted to bid on a black-and-white conté crayon sketch of Ray Harryhausen's Ymir from 20,000,000 Miles to Earth by multiple-Hugo-winner Bob Eggleton, but missed my chance. However! According to his blog, it is still available for $125, and I may yet snap it up.
• I also tried a new (to me) gimmicky Japanese soda in the dealers' room: Ramune, which is sealed by a glass marble being held by carbonation pressure in the mouth of the bottle. You need a little plastic plunger to open it. Fun and tasty!
• I got to watch the end of Them! while eating breakfast in my hotel room. Memories of Saturday afternoon creature features!
• I went to a writing panel that made me actively angry — half the panel were pushing a monetary, formulaic approach to writing, and dismissively mocking difficult, literary work. ("I've never understood that approach," one said. "Following your muse is all well and good, but don't they have rent to pay?" Cue laughter.) Fortunately, Grant Carrington was tucked away at the end of the table, 73 years young and standing up for artistic integrity. Grant Carrington is fucking solid.
• Despite the Sunday mopery, I had a successful social experience, meeting new people and making them laugh and generally feeling welcome. Lots of people complimented my kilt; one dude offered to buy my green sunglasses. I got to spend time with
kdsorceress (and fetch her stormtrooper cake while she was trapped behind a sound board), and wandered about for a while with Rosie, an entertaining dentist I'd met at Kat's housewarming. People are friendly.• On that note, I nearly forgot about the dudes with the goggles. I was decompressing with my book in the con suite when these dudes came in with goggles that used refraction to mess with vision, shifting it around in either a left-right or up-down shuffle. We spent a fine hour watching people try to walk, and putting one set on one person and the other on another and watching them try to shake hands. Spontaneous, raucous, geeky socialization like that is a big part of why I go to Arisia.
So, overall a success. 2/3, anyway.
