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hazelchaz
Trying to catch up with November. Part 2 of my Loscon 35
(2008) report.
(Other sections: part 1,
part 3.)
Joyce Hooper (right) and I talked about what she wanted for the
convention's ribbons.
She wanted to switch Loscon to use horizontal ribbons, and stop using vertical ones.
Loscon 34's chair, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
drarizona
had continued the long-standing tradition of vertical format ribbons. Which is fine if you just have
one or two, like she wore at that 2007 convention. (left)
But it doesn't work well when the ribbons proliferate to three or more on a single badge.
They were already doing that for some people long
before this.
A typical example: a number of the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
lasfs LASFS Board of Directors are also Past Loscon
Chair and volunteer on the convention every year on the
Committee or Staff.
The course some people take, like Tony Benoun
did at Loscon
34, is to have an enormous monster-size badge, with more room to hang
ribbons from. Personally, I think this is rather unatttractive and silly,
but when Tony's the guy taking care of printing badges in the first
place, what can you do... (right)
Most of the unofficial ribbons that people have been bringing to Loscon
have been horizontal format. In 2008, lizardfoss put
two of them on the side of her vertical
ribbons, and used
one of them crosswise to bridge the vertical
ones. (left)
The vertical ones are fancy, sure. And Hodges does a nice job on them.
But with the number of
ribbons being handed
out, almost to baycon proportions, horizontal ribbons are the
way to go. Joyce managed to get Loscon 36's chair, Marcia Minsky, to sign
off on the plan.
A number of the ribbons were printed up in a generic style -- they don't
say LOSCON 35 or 2008 on them.
Next year's convention can use the
extras.
In fact,
for some ribbons, such as Evans-Freehafer Award Winner
they
have
enough for another twenty years. Or at least another 20 winners, but
there's generally only one award given out each year.
Loscon 35 ordered a few titles that were customized to fit the theme, such as LOSCON 35
GLADIATOR for volunteers and LOSCON 35 MERCHANT for dealers. (left)
This was where we knew that Loscon 35 would need so many that it was not necessary to split their order with the following year(s). Loscon 36 will be able to re-order them in generic form for next year -- such as DEALER instead of MERCHANT -- without having an art set-up charge, because the plates are already on file.
Cathy and Joyce had given away ribbons that said WHEN IN ROME... during their year of promotion. (And the rest of them not used during the year were handed out to people wearing togas at Loscon 35.) I made the special ribbons use the same typeface (Carleton). In my first installment, I showed you the matching WHATEVER ribbons that we provided to John Scalzi, the Writer Guest of Honor.
John also has a fantasy football team named the
Mediocre Walloons, so I put in an order of Mediocre
Walloons ribbons.
When the WHATEVER ribbons started running low,
I gave him some of these.
I still have a few left. If I run into
him at another convention I'll be able to give him one last refill.
(right)
John had asked for burgers to be delivered to him from In-N-Out, anytime he wanted them.
The convention took the idea and ran with
it. friendlypinet gave Burger Time ribbons to the various people who did the
the
deliveries.
(left)
Melissa De Mello
volunteered to be one of the
drivers.
The headquarters for the operation was in the Fanzine
Lounge.
(right)
johnnyeponymous has been figurehead for the Fanzine Lounge at
number of conventions.
The Fanzine Lounge, when Chris is
involved, tends to be an entertaining and engaging place to talk about
whatever it is fans and fanzine fans talk about -- that is to say,
anything they like. "All knowledge is contained in fandom."
You may have seen people use the LiveJournal variant -- AKICILJ.
(left)
cmdrsuzdal
and
trinsf
are friends of Chris, and
help him with the Fanzine Lounge. (Translation: they spend more time in
the room than he does.) And
they try to run the Fanzine Lounge so it hardly ever closes --
it just relocates at night to the "Fanzine Lounge PM" room. (right)
Leigh Ann (left) got into the Loscon spirit with a special order of
ribbons, so if you found her in the Fanzine Lounge you could ask her
nicely for one. She has ribbons that say Charmingly Robust Drinking
Companion, but she only gives those to the ladies -- apparently
"Charmingly Robust" is a codephrase for something exclusively female -- so
she wanted something to give to the gentlemen.
She decided to get something in Latin -- everything sounds better
in Latin, especially at a convention like this -- and settled on saying
Is that a scroll in your toga, or are you just glad to see me?
(right)
I brought some ribbons that say Saved by the Costume Repair Station for
missmea to use.
Maria had volunteered
to run the Costume Repair Station, and they put it in with the Fanzine Lounge. She borrowed the kit that we
have built
up for animelosangeles, packed her sewing machine, and spent
most of the weekend in the Fanzine Lounge/Costume Repair Station/Burger
Time Headquarters. (left)
Ribbon orders from other fans that fit the theme or the GoH started showing up on my desk in the
summer.
I mentioned that Scalzi is famous for his Bacon Cat, which is named
"Ghlaghghee" and pronunced "Fluffy," as frequent readers of his blog
Whatever already know.
In my last installment, I showed you the Scalzi-Bacon-Cats - YUM! ribbon.
Lee Whiteside brought "Fan Club" ribbons. (right)
Annie Mitschek, from Costumers Guild
West, ordered "Semper Ubi, Sub Ubi" which means Always wear underwear. (left)
That was by no means the last of the Latin ribbons floating around Loscon. In Pterry's Discworld books,
the
motto at the entrance to Unseen University reads (in latin) Now you see it - Now you don't so Annie
Mitschek ordered those ribbons, too.
And later this year (2009) is the North American Discworld Convention out in Arizona. Lee Whitside
ordered Veni, Vici ... Vetinari ribbons for that.
There were other ribbons, too numerous to mention all of them. Apart from the foolishness that I pack in my traveling bin, there were different Clone ribbons provided by the "Clone Pod" people (they're ordering them from RV Awards now, but still had a few of their homemade ones from the previous year); +12 and of Doom! ribbons were available to bracket any other ribbon you might want to put between them, such as Cleavage.
Someone else had the SMOFFERATTI ("I'm not a SMOF, I just follow
them around") ribbon, ala_mokita had his new ribbon Squeals like a little girl!!!
and there was the
We'd Do the Weird Stuff! ribbon from zyxwvut that I've been assured will make
sense once I've viewed all of Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog. We have it on DVD, so
we can watch it complete with the musical commentary. (right)
Clearly the Ribbon Explosion (Ribbon
Singularity?) has arrived.
As part of our Loscon 28 convention publicity I threw a toga party at Baycon in 2001. Since my theme for convention centered around Education, we were using different school-related themes, and at Baycon it was a fraternity toga party -- complete with alcoholic Jell-O, which you can see in the foreground of the picture. (left)
I invented an fraternity (Figmo Aleph Null) and decided that the motto of the fraternity was "In Caelis Non Est Cerevisia" -- In heaven, there is no beer. But we weren't giving out ribbons as part of the publicity angle.
You can also see this is before the Ribbon Explosion hit Baycon -- because if it had, Eylat and I would
surely have been issued a ribbon or two by Saturday night. (right)
I did offer my guests of honor a silly ribbon to hand out, having been inspired by getting
I Met the FGOH ribbons at Windycon in 1999. figmo, who was our Fan Guest of
Honor and is a Baycon regular (that's why I named the frat after her) asked for ribbons that said
Honorary Relative of Lynn Gold in honor of everyone who thinks she must be related to Lee Gold.
So you can
see I was helping along the proliferation of ribbons back in 2001, although the
ribbon
explosion hadn't started yet at Baycon or Loscon.
Anyhow, as Loscon 35 approached, I decided I wanted to have my own Latin ribbon to hand out.
Being someone
who sometimes appreciates good beer
(in moderation -- see my previous-before-last LJ
post, halfway down, for a few small details), I decided I would
bring back the toga party frat slogan In Caelis Non Est Cerevisia as a ribbon. (left)
There were many ribbons circulating at Loscon 35 -- I've mostly just talked about the ones that were ordered specifically to be ready for the convention.
To be continued...
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 02:00 am (UTC)Weekend
Date: 2009-02-12 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 02:45 am (UTC)A thousand apologies
Date: 2009-02-12 02:53 am (UTC)Re: A thousand apologies
Date: 2009-02-12 02:59 am (UTC)Other than that, the lounge folks who sit there when Mr. Garcon is missing thank you for recognizing what we do. *grin*
Re: A thousand apologies
Date: 2009-02-12 03:06 am (UTC)(Also, will I see you this weekend?)
Re: A thousand apologies
Date: 2009-02-12 03:10 am (UTC)Re: A thousand apologies
Date: 2009-02-12 03:11 am (UTC)Re: A thousand apologies
Date: 2009-02-12 03:14 am (UTC)Re: A thousand apologies
Date: 2009-02-12 08:42 pm (UTC)Re: A thousand apologies
Date: 2009-02-12 09:23 pm (UTC)Re: A thousand apologies
Date: 2009-02-12 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 07:23 pm (UTC)(I got a 'We'd do the weird stuff!' and didn't get it at the time. And laughed afterwards.)
(Also noticed many ribbons I didn't get in this post and thought 'Awww....') :D)
Btw, the lady in purple who had all the acronmyn ribbons I have come to despise because the glue sucks and falls off- she had the SMOFFERATTI. :)
Watching
Date: 2009-02-12 07:37 pm (UTC)It was a long night -- I was waiting for some posters to print, for Gallifrey One. (Two 3'-high enlargements of the program book cover.)
Don't despise the purple lady, instead take pity on anyone who orders from Hodges.
Re: Watching
Date: 2009-02-12 08:35 pm (UTC)Sorry about the long night though :(.
Oh no, I wasn't despising the purple lady. Just her ribbons :).
And do you mean problem instead of program? o_0 :)
Re: Watching
Date: 2009-02-12 09:22 pm (UTC)Re: Watching
Date: 2009-02-12 09:43 pm (UTC)