I got a pocket full of quarters and I'm heading for the arcade.

DD-B's server was hacked Monday. If you're looking at my LJ, you can sometimes tell if my server's up or down by whether or not the photos show up in my other messages.

And Monday I received word that Suzane Tompkins had won TAFF. Congratulations, Suzle!

Of 186 votes cast, I received 57: 52 from North America, 4 from Europe, and 1 "other."

Chaz

One day I will build a fountain, drink and never grow old.

Pictures from ConDor are online. Click on the picture of library_lynn and Maria in their new Victorian outfits to see them.

I'm just about ready to send in my next order of ribbons; I don't expect to send in another order before June. I know about Alan, Eric, and Lisa; anyone else want to piggyback on my quantity order?

Some people have asked for info about the TAFF results. Suzle got 45% of the vote, I got 31%, and Curt got 19%. Although Suzle didn't get a majority of the votes cast, it was not necessary to go to second-choice votes because Curt and I both failed the "20% on each side of the Atlantic" test: there were 155 North American votes and 30 European votes, so therefore anyone who didn't have at least 31 North American votes and 6 European votes was eliminated.

library_lynn and I are still going to attend inter_action, but we'll have a much shorter trip. We're talking about possibly stopping off at Precursor 2, and we're looking into sharing a place with another couple.

During the run up to animelosangeles, Mikal Saltveit contacted me to volunteer to run an AMV contest. About all I know about Animé music videos is that a fan takes a song in english and matches it up to animé clips. It's a fannish artform that I didn't know much about, so when he turned up I told him to go right ahead. We ended up with half a dozen entries, and we made it our main event for Friday night. I made a mistake with the mailbox, though, and didn't check the mail after we'd picked up the last of the pre-reg mail; I asked Shawn and colleency to check it on Saturday, and it turned out that someone from overseas had sent us a few AMVs that arrived late. They'd arrived after the deadline for submissions, but it would have been nice to show them anyway...

After Friday's AMV contest, we cleared all the chairs out and DJ Tw-E-k did a eurobeat dance until after midnight. He'd contacted me to volunteer to do a dance, having done so at Anime Expo; I learned that AX's dances (and many others in real life) trade off DJs every hour, so his AX set was a 1-hour chunk of time. Giving him a 4-hour block (or whatever it turned out to be) was a challenge for him, but he and a DJ friend of his kept the music thumping.

"I hope it doesn't rain." The first few weeks of January were drizzly, off and on, as our winter storms came through. We had a sunny weekend the week before the convention, and we crossed our fingers for a sunny con. And we got lucky. It rained during the week, but the rain let up Friday afternoon. Saturday was cold and windy -- but at least it wasn't raining.

Because of the crowds we were expecting, and the small amount of pre-function space that we had, we put our t-shirt sales table (which doubled as my office) outside. We also put the fan tables there. Fan tables (also known as club tables, or con/convention tables) are a tradition that started in the U.S. in 1984, but had been a staple of British conventions for years before that. So the Loscon table was out in the wind, along with me and the t-shirts. (And my ribbons. I decided I'd sell some of my ribbons, to raise money to buy more ribbons, and a lot of the fans came by to pick up a few.) We'd offered fan tables to AniZona and Ani-Magic; a California lady representing AniZona set up for a little while, but decided it was too cold and windy to stick it out for very long. I don't remember seeing anyone from Ani-Magic. We've been offered a table at Ani-Magic, in October. AniZona had a good first year, with about a thousand people in the same Embassy Suites that had Coppercon last October; AniZona 2 has announced Easter weekend dates, and I've signed up for memberships, but they haven't announced a hotel yet. Kudos to AniZona for hosting a Con Suite, by the way -- glad to see another new animé convention with one.

We had a number of people sign up for Artist's Concourse spaces. The intent of these half-table spaces was to provide a place for artists to do art, to work on their art projects, to sell some of the work and to take commissions. Some of the artists that showed up did that. Others showed up and set up souvenir stands -- there was one batch of people selling t-shirts, for example. I think that if you're big-time enough to be printing up t-shirts, congratulations, that's great, let me tell you about our dealers room because you've graduated beyond the Artist's Concourse concept. I'm thinking that next year, you'll only be able to sell original work; what I have to ponder is what to do about artists selling prints, or hand-colored b&w prints which further blurs the line.

The Masquerade/Cosplay had about 30 entries if I remember correctly. We were concerned about overcrowding, because there were only about 250 seats in the ballroom. It turns out that, just like Loscon, the Masquerade doesn't get more than 50% of the members, so no-one was turned away. We had an "audience's favorite" award in additional to the judges' presentation awards and the workmanship awards. (Karisu-sama agreed to be our Workmanship judge, and Jess Miller ran the Masquerade; both of them were on the recommendation of kproche & bovil [aka Kevin And Andy]). The same entry (a Princess Zelda group entry) won "Best in Show" and Audience's favorite. Next year I want to get someone with more anime cosplay experience on the judges' panel.

After the presentations, there was a long interval while the band Random Ninjas got ready to play. Tadao Tomomatsu ("Mr. Shake-Hands Man") vamped during the set-up, telling the audience his teleporting-cats story. When the band did their set, including their popular Naruto medley, some people got up to dance -- I think next year we should leave an open space in front for people who want to dance. Next year I also want the band to have a sound-check in the morning before the daytime program begins so that we know everything's good to go, but on the whole I was satisfied with how the evening went. After the band's set, the judges announced the winners, and then we cleared out all the chairs and lynxcat ran a dance for us and did an awesome job. Up until recently, he was doing a weekly club called "Club Adrenochrome" in the Bay Area, so we called his dance here "Adrenochrome South." Lynx, did you lose an SP pin? We found one and we think it's yours...

Weapons at the convention were a minor issue; at the heart of it, we're concerned with (1) people with things that look like real guns (especially considering the mayor of L.A. was speaking at the same hotel that weekend), and (2) careless behavior. So a big foam "gunblade" isn't a weapon, it's a prop -- unless you poke someone with it, then it's a weapon. This was the first time for us, and I take the blame for some of our overzealous enforcement. Next time, the flintlock pistol is going to be classed as a prop. Even if it were a real operating flintlock pistol, it probably would be of more danger to the person holding it! My apologies to anyone who thought we were too strict; we're learning, and we'll be a little easier-going next year. We also have to consider whether glowsticks spun on the end of an arms-length strength string constitute plastic noonchucks (sp?) of if they're just a harmless light-up thing to play with on the dance floor. Anyone else out there dealt with this sort of thing?

At the end of the convention, there were enough volunteers to take care of the last of the move-out. Thank you, everyone who stayed to help -- it's very much appreciated! We had to get the dealers rooms turned back into bedrooms by 6 o'clock, so that was our biggest time crunch; there were a number of people hanging around, including a bunch of Anti's friends, so it went quickly. When everything was torn down and packed away, those of us who were left (including our AGoH authorcarmen and our SG Jerry Koudelik, and TM Tadao Tomomatsu) went to have one last dinner together at Mogo's (Mongolian BBQ in Sherman Oaks). Mogo's isn't really set up for seating a large party, so we were scatted at three different sets of tables across the room, but we made do. It was a nice way to close out the weekend.

Next year's guests of honor: professional GoH Hiroaki Inoue, artist GoH pmbq, and fan GoH's karisu_sama and didjiman.