Jake wants a weenie bake, steak and a layer cake. He´ll get a tummy ache too.

[hazelchaz]

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. The program books came loaded on a pallet that was delivered directly to my house. When we stuffed them into plastic bags (with two postcards, two bookmarks, and the program guide supplement/pocket program/restaurant guide), it took up a little extra room so we couldn't pack all of them back into the boxes they came in (including the postcard boxes). Fortunately, my parents had been unpacking boxes of books at the Old Homestead and giving me the empties, so there wasn't a critical box shortage.

When we started filling the boxes, I thought that I'd drive over to the storage unit -- in my copious free time, because I get the week after Christmas off from work af ter all -- and leave them there, and then the truckloading crew would pick them up.

By the time my car was full of these boxes and more boxes, I didn't think there would actually be room in the end of the storage unit to hold all of them. Did I mention the beanbags?

ala_mokita wanted us to have more beanbags than ever before. Lynn and I bought one or two at a couple of stores, where we learned that December isn't a good month to find them in the department stores becuase they're really a summer/back-to-school seasonal item. We found a place that specializes in futons and beanbag chairs, and bought ten in assorted colors there. And magicheide told me about another place in Anaheim that would give us a good quantity discount. But my car can only hold about six beanbag chairs - mybe one or two more if I don't have a passenger - so it means a lot of roundtrips!

With forty or fifty beanbags in the storage unit (which includes the ones we bought last year, and ten or a dozen that belong to Loscon) there wasn't going to be much room for a great number of program book boxes.

As it happens, the Logistics truck was rented starting on that Tuesday. The first stop was to pick up everything at the lasfs clubhouse that we were borrowing. So Tuesday afternoon I met the truck and George Mulligan (who had agreed to be the driver for the logistics truck), and a few other people who were there. What started out as an unwieldy carload in Saltine turned into one or two rows at the front end of the truck -- didn't make a dent in the capacity of the truck at all.

So that was one carload. But I had more to bring to the convention. Lynn's car was stuffed full of Registration computers (and a box or two of the program book bags, plus her own luggage). I had the ribbon bins and boxes, both the ones that Elizabeth had helped me with and the resupply bins.

There were the goodies for the Guests of Honor. Some sodas, including the Mexican Coca-Cola, some beer for the beer-drinking GoHs, bottles of wine for Catherine the Great (Joyce couldn't remember if Catherine liked Chardonnay or Cabarnet, so I bought two bottles of Bear's Lair Chardonnay and two bottles of their Cab Sauv. -- it turns out Catherine likes the red wine), green tea, Tejeva iced tea, cases of water, chocolates, fruits and nuts for the GoH who was trying to live a healthier lifestyle, lots of candies for the ones who weren't, Gummy bears, Peanut M&Ms -- lots of snacks. (And the Hello Kitty toaster.) And on top of that, there were the supplies for the New Year's Eve party I was going to host.

Something new we did this year: a party the night before the convention load-in started. Part of it was pure practicality: both Genny and Dana, running our Staff Lounge, have long-standing commitments on New Year's Day and wouldn't be able to oversee the Staff Lounge load-in on Thursday. So we moved into the Staff Lounge room Wednesday afternoon, and that gave us a place to deliver supplies for the Staff Lounge and the Con Suite on New Year's Eve without having all of that load-in happen on New Year's Day.

As long as we've got the room anyway... I hosted a party. This was "Not an Animé Los Angeles Party" -- it was the chair of the convention hosting, and the people invited were generally on the staff of the convention, but it wasn't a convention party. (And the convention wasn't supplying the food and drink, either.) Which meant that I could choose to serve some alcoholic beverages. What's a New Year's Eve party without champagne, after all? That meant putting in some bubbly, and a case each of Newcastle Brown Ale and Negra Modelo, and some sparkling cider, and some of the other sparkling fruit juices they sell at Trader Joe's because we want the non-drinkers to have something fizzy to toast with.

By Wednesday, with my enormous ice chest full of drinks, and the other coolers, and all the rest, I had an increasing logistical problem -- because even with both cars, I needed more capacity. Fortunately, Richard Foss came to the rescue. He was in Orange County that day anyway, and volunteered to take a vanload of supplies to the hotel for us. Hooray, we're saved!

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.

Comments

[summoner-lenne9.livejournal.com]

YES. THE SNOGGING WAS VERY AMUSING AND I'M STILL SUPER SAD I MISSED IT.

(Though now you have me going 'Wait, who slipped out with who? Huh?!' And I didn't notice anyone kissing at midnight, but I was sorta having too much fun going, WHEE, NEW YEARS, STREAMERS, WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE! :D)

Oh, New Years Eve party... I loved you man. Soooo much. :D

Some people

[hazelchaz]

Some people said good-bye two a time, and they weren't people I remembered as having booked a room together. They were very discreet.

Re: Some people

[summoner-lenne9.livejournal.com]

I only remember one such incident. Hmm, I'm intrigued now, but its also none of my business, so alas. :)

Oh also, and not the best quality alas, but... DALEK KARAOKE! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Guklv1I5Vu0&feature=related

And another Dalek video, with (I'm pretty sure) Stephen inside it. Could only be him or me for this time, and I don't THINK its me...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBS0i9UfWBs

:D

[missmea.livejournal.com]

Ohhh Karaoke!!! And umm, New Years Party was FUN!!!!! Although it still amuses me how unusual it seems to be to see two females kissing. This may be why I insist on doing so in public whenever I get the chance-eventually no one will care anymore. And I still can't believe the number of people who didn't know about the midnight kissing thing. Hello??!! Old movies anyone??!! Sigh. No one watches the classics anymore.

[summoner-lenne9.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was the 'not used to the females kissing' thing as much as it was the 'Wendy and Maria snogging, guys getting turned on, NO, WAIT, THIS IS MARIA, HUH?' ness of it all. :D

(And I know about the tradition actually, just seems no one does it anymore, heh.)