Walk Softly and Carry a Big Schtick

Photos now online:
Shirt and Tie (Feb-2009)
LASFS/Aftermeetings part 325: Loscon 37 Vote (12-Feb-2009) et seq.
LASFS/Aftermeetings part 332: Coral Cafe (12-Feb-2009) et seq.
The picture of Joyce Hooper and nitroace hiding behind their ballots is from the night at LASFS last week when we voted on who would chair Loscon in 2011. (Answer: Scott Beckstead and Sherri Benoun; their theme is "Urban Fantasy.")

Interlude: Catching up with the rest of December - Boxing Day to New Year's Eve

My Christmas week was full of ramping-up to animelosangeles. And my camera curled up and died. Fortunately, I got a Canon Powershot S5 IS for Christmas. I also purchased a Nikon Coolpix P50 as an emergency backup camera when I bought the backdrop stand for our Fan Guest of Honor's dealer table. The Nikon's an easy point-and-shoot, and it's library_lynn's preferred camera at this point.

( With Saltine being full to the brim with program books, I had a logistical problem on my hands. And did I mention the beanbags and beer? )

Lesson learned: transportation for materials from Chairman's House should be planned ahead of time. And probably should not hinge on everything being transported in Saltine.

tenkuudragon was in charge of the Decorating Committee for Animé Los Angeles. I mentioned that we could use Bertha (right) to print poster blow-ups of some of our Guests of Honor's work -- that is, some of the cartoons from VG Cats! and photos from A Fan's View. The trick, of course, is picking which ones to print, and getting the high-resolution images.

We had all of the pictures picked out, but we didn't get the original images until very late. So Sunday, Monday and Tuesday that week was full of me printing late at night, after Evan had come over and done the printing he needed. At the end of a few long nights of printing, I had a lot of rolled-up posters to transport and hand off to the decorating crew.

Lesson learned: buy extra rolls of paper, and print posters earlier in the month. In fact, I've got four rolls of paper on hand right now, and I'm hoping that the decorating crew can get an early start on picking photos to print for next year. It'll be the convention's 5th anniversary (the sixth convention, which is five years after the first one) and we can print photos from all five years of Animé Los Angeles. We just need to pick which ones to print, and get the photographers' permission.

Party. What can I say about the party? I don't host that many New Year's Eve parties. But of the ones I've been to so far, it was certainly one of my favorites. We had some of the decorations that we bought for loscon, and a sign that said "Happy New Year 2009." We had peanut butter and jelly, and hot cider, and lots of other snacks, but more importantly we had a whole bunch of people having a wonderful time. (right)

I was pleased that missmea had decided to join us. Sure, she's my s'daughter, but she has no shortage of invitations for New Year's Eve. One of the things that swayed her was the prospect of having a bed waiting for her on the property... Anyhow, she looked fabulous, and she explained that she doesn't have many opportunities to wear her fur. (left)

We had strawberries, and beer and sparkling wine and soft drinks, and Evan James (right) brought some pear cider, but Christian said we didn't have enough variety of alcoholic beverages. He volunteered to toddle off to the local liquor store. What he brought back was Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, which was very nice in the hot cider; and some orange vodka. Christian played bartender for the evening, guarding the beer and whatnot from underage drinkers.

I learned that one of the new traditions going around is texting your friends at midnight to wish them a happy new year. It turns out that many people hadn't heard of the older tradition of kissing someone at midnight, but there was a lot of enthusiasm for that idea. The trick, of course, is lining up a willing participant. The game of "Spin the Bottle" hinges on that sort of consensual participation, but it's a lot more clearcut -- if you're sitting in the circle, you've signed on for the game. The dance of picking your partner, and negotiating via body language, at a New Year's Eve party is a lot more ambiguous. I'm thinking maybe New Year's Eve parties need to come with warning labels... But Lynn had gone to bed by this point, and there wasn't anyone else I felt an urgent need to kiss that night.

One of the more amusing incidents of the night was when two young ladies were snogging on the couch. I don't have any pictures -- as I've said before, "it's not that kind of website" -- but the funniest part of the situation was seeing three or four grown men standing around watching them, committing it to memory.

New Year's Eve parties are a little like Mardi Gras, or Las Vegas year-round; things are a little looser, and nobody's taking careful notes on who slips away with whom during the course of the evening. (And that's all I'm going to say on that subject.) I enjoyed having the party, and I'm thinking I'll do this again next year. Although it won't be New Year's Eve, the night before the convention set-up Day Zero. (It'll be Twelfth Night, though.)

The party broke up about 1:00 am or so. After all, we all had things we needed to do the next day, as the convention's "Day Zero" would commence with Registration opening up in that room about noon, Con Suite load-in would continue when we got that room, and we'd get the first of the ballrooms at about 6 pm. We cleaned up the room as best as we could, leaving some of it for the next day, and went to bed.

Lesson learned: have a party next year, but bring more crockpots and start them earlier.

Next: Chaz's observations on Animé Los Angeles 5.

Anime Los Angeles 4 meeting at hotel (06-Jul-2007); LASFS Aftermeetings part 292: Coral Cafe (12-Jul-2007); Sac-Anime (13-15-Jul-2007); and Orange County Fair/Weird Al Yankovic concert (21-Jul-2007) photos now online. Pick on the picture of adrenailine at the animelosangeles table to see the pictures from Sac-Anime.

Well, I finished the book on Sunday. Took me two days. So I don't have to worry about spoilers in your LJs.

I posted recently about my experience at Anime Expo with the instant-photo printing project. I've proposed the same kind of thing for the Costume College Gala; we'll see if it gets approved by them who approve these things in time. I'm optimistic that it'll work out well. If anyone graphically inclined wants to design a picture frame for the project, please contact me right away! I need a PNG with a transparent window in it -- or you can just pick a color to be "transparent" where the photo will go. The overall size should be 775 pixels wide by 1025 pixels high, with the window for the photo no larger than a 600x800 pixel rectangle. Preference would be for the photo's position to be centered, but that's not an absolute requirement. (If there's a good photographer attending, I'll cheerfully set aside my ego in favor of the costumers getting better pictures, and run their photos on my computer equipment and save my own photos just for the website.)

Anyhow, that's a bit of a tangent -- I was starting to talk about Anime Expo. I saw a few things, I've heard a few things about the convention, and I went to the gripe session. Whoo boy, were people unhappy. (And that's before the announcement that the con was moving to Los Angeles Convention Center next year.) I passed up a note to the panel as they were ending the session, or more correctly, moving the discussion outside, and the chair (Joyce Lim) asked me to send her an e-mail message with some of my ideas. ( So here's a piece of what I sent her. If there's any interest, I'll post more... )