Way down among Brazilians coffee beans grow by the billions...

Friday evening, mostly, part 1 of 2

People I forgot to mention from Thursday night's party-hopping and photography: Dave Sorgen. Other things I forgot to mention from Thursday night: Amy Sisson is a SLOF. (Later library_lynn got her SLOF ribbon from Kim Kofmel.)

More people from taking pictures on Friday, but left out of my previous list: Julie Bertagna, David Campbell, Giulia de Cesare, Jane Dennis, Scott Dennis, Meggy Fernandes, Steve Francis, Adrian Hope, Rasmus Durban Jahr, Edward James, Elizabeth Klein-Lebbink, Mark Linneman, Michal Lisowski, Andrew McMurry, Farah Mendelsohn, Patryk Strzelwicz, Harry Turtledove, and Lucy Zinkiewicz (l_zinkiewicz).

I mentioned the fancy dice on Friday. Patryk Strzelwicz and Michal Lisowski have a website for them, at q-workshop.com.

Some of Will Dunston's hand-made journals can be seen at phoenixac.4t.com. The paper in the journal can be replaced when you fill it up.

Jane Dennis asked for extra pawprint stickers -- she wanted to put four paws on her badge, and so did Scott. One of their parody t-shirts was "Harry Potto and the Prisoner of Algebra." (I have a few friends and relations who would appreciate that!)

Friday afternoon after I'd stopped at Vodafone I tried shopping at Fraser's for umbrellas. They only had a small selection of folding 8-spoke models.

Melchior was wearing his Kristi Smart coat when I saw him on Friday. I didn't see Anderbear though, and forgot to ask Melchior if both of them were here or not.

Friday night, "Reductio Ad Absurdum" presented their play, "Lucas Back In Anger." Reductio Ad Absurdum is essentially Ian Sorensen and Phil Raines, plus a variety of usual suspects; in much the same way that Trans Iowa Canal Company (West Lock) in Des Moines is Les & Jeanette Roth and company, and Lux Radio Theater in Los Angeles is Colleen Crosby, Shawn Crosby, and Michael Reed, with the cast filled out by their friends and relations.

You've heard of the "Reduced Shakespeare Company"? R.A.A. reduces their source material to the point of absurdity, hence the name. They've put on "Dune, or the Sand of Music" and "A fistfull of Hobbits" and "The Matrix: Remaindered" at Eastercons, and they're known for their cardboard props & costumes and similarily cheesy special effects. At the production Friday night, they distributed kazoos to the audience before the show, and explained that every time a certain symbol came on the screen, the audience should play Vader's "Imperial March" theme. We were all very enthusiastic about it, and it was difficult for them to get us to stop.

They breezed through the classic Star Wars trilogy in about 75 minutes, and covered almost all the high points in a sometimes-naughty parody, occasionally with songs to carry the story along. They had some "last minute substitutions" in the supposed all-star cast Ian thought Phil had planned... a Dalek played the part of R2-D2 and a Cyberman played the part of C-3PO. They had two Oompa-Loompas playing the Jawas. Londo Mollari came out instead of Lando Calrissian when they got to The Empire Strikes Back. For the speeder-bike scene in Return of the Jedi, Luke and Leia slowly walked across the stage with their prop bikes, as stage ninjas dressed as cardboard trees ran past behind them.

After they'd made it through all three, Ian reminded Phil that they'd promised the audience all 6 movies, not just the original three, so for their "encore" they did a musical version. To the tune of various ABBA songs. In fact, they called it "Jabba! The Musical." Mostly they had layered paper costumes, and for each costume change they just tore off the top costume.

All told, a very clever and silly production, and a good time was had by all.

...so they've got to find those extra cups to fill. They've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil.

Friday evening, mostly, part 2 of 2

After the "Lucas Back in Anger" show I went over to the Hilton, to see the parties.

People I saw and photographed Friday night whilst party-hopping included: Rolf Christian Andersen, Kurt Baty, Kris Bauer-Exline (glittercat13), Gunnar Bakke, Arabella Benson, Thomas Benson, Mike Benveniste, Helge J. Bjørnhaug, Scott Bobo, Jim Briggs, Judith L. Chantelois, Chad Childers, Genny Dazzo, Mike Donahue, Lynn Edwards, Darrel L. Exline (darrelx), Adrienne Foster, Sue Francis, Lisa C. Freitag, David Gallaher, Deb Geisler, Lynn Gold (figmo), Marina Grskovic, Joe Haldeman, Andrew Hook, Ed Hooper, Joyce Hooper, Masaharu Inoue, Tamie Inoue, Per C. Jørgensen, Vlatko Juric-Kokic, Greg Ketter, Elizabeth Klein-Lebbink, Laura Krentz, Gyrd Thane Lange, Nicki Lynch (nwl), Richard Lynch (rwl), Christian McGuire, Yoshiko Maegawa, Craig Miller, Carol Morton, Jim Murray, Inger Myers, Roderick O'Hanlon, Noriko Oyama, Carole Parker, Elayne Pelz, Yngve N. Pettersen, Larry van der Putte, "Sparks" Rennie, Patrycja "Zoey" Rozycka, Leann Runyanwood, Spring Schoenhuth, Jerome Scott, Hachiya Shouichi, Takayuki Tatsumi, Sten Thaning, Kees van Toorn, Andy Trembley (bovil), Tom Veal, Jack Vickeridge, Sue Wheeler, Mike Willmoth, Naoko Yamaguchi, Carmental, and Dessy.

I stopped first at the Future Worldcon party -- the L.A.con IV/Nippon 2007 party. Christian McGuire was at the door and welcomed everyone to the "Pacific Rim Worldcon party hosted by..." as he and Ed Hooper handed out Space Cadet party stickers, and just inside the door Yoshiko Maegawa in a kimono handed out Nippon 2007 stickers as well.

The "red" theme was carried over very effectively, I thought; certainly the strawberry shortcake looked like a big hit. A number of people just wanted the fresh strawberries, which was just as well as I heard they ran out of whipped cream during the course of the evening. There were chocolates strewn about the place, and candies, and so forth. The little boxes of Red Hots were enjoyed by several people; I think the amount I bought was the right number (one small case of them), because they're not everyone's favorite. The giant 200g Turkish Delight snap bars were broken into their bite-size pieces, the Chomps were all over the place, and there was some other Cadbury chocolate that I didn't supply as well. galtine1 had told me not to do the jelly, so I still have six packages (three strawberry, three raspberry) of jelly blocks, and the plastic serving cups, in my luggage. There was some kind of red punch at the far end.

Genny Dazzo wore a sleeveless sparkly red dress. Joyce Hooper and Elayne Pelz wore red, with matching Space Cadet caps, and complete Space Cadet badged sashes. Although the uniform appearance was spoiled slightly by the sashes being opposites of each other -- Joyce's went over her right shoulder, while Elayne's went over her left. I wore my red and black anime-style "Dragon Princess" shirt. The Japanesese attempted to read the writing on it -- they said there was a greeting in one place, but couldn't make heads or tails out of the large writing. (Maybe it's in Chinese that doesn't work in Japanese? Or maybe it's just some random ideograms.) The party was in a non-smoking ballroom, and there was a bar right outside so if you had to have a drink you could get one. It was a prime location: the first ballroom off of the bar (there were three). Because the ballrooms are so much larger than the other party rooms, there was plenty of room for tables (10-seat rounds, I believe) where people could plant themselves if they wished. Kudos to galtine1 and her crew (including busboy darrelx) for a marvelous party.

Naoko Yamaguchi and Noriko Oyama were dressed as wind-up clockwork maids -- they had black and white maid uniforms, with a big wind-up key sticking out of the back. They seemed to have some connection to madscientist-cafe.org.uk.

At the Friendly Norwegians' party, Per C. Jørgensen served me a "Borg" pilsner. I don't know what the Norwegians think of the Star Trek Borg, but the Beer of Borg was okay. It was cool -- and only barely -- not cold at all. I took it with me, Jack Vickeridge took a picture of me with it, and I took it with me to a few more parties.

Even though Carmental is now 24, she still pushes my "Jailbait" buttons. Perhaps because she's grown up to be a beautiful woman but still has a playful young attitude? I don't know; she's not immature, that's not it. Maybe it's because I've seen her with her mom at so many conventions.

Inger Myers has made herself a "Cookie Jar" dress -- the fabric has gingerbread men in a cookie jar. It looked to me like it the outfit was made with the "flame" skirt I've seen her wear before.

kproche and bovil's League of Evil Geniuses party had the signs on the wall that I'd seen at their party at Gaylaxicon. Lots of evil geniuses, lots of odd food. Including some locally-produced twisty marshmallow things, which I bet would be great toasted. But there were no candles in the room, so I couldn't check the theory.

I met up with Vlatko Juric-Kokic. Vlatko had volunteered to help with the Saturday night Masquerade Fan Photography area.

The Kansas City in 2009 party was in another party ballroom. They had the advantage of having a kitchen at their backs, and Inger Myers spent the day baking batches of Inger Cookies. Chocolate Chip and Peanut Butter were what I saw, the peanut butter were almost gone by the time I arrived (about 22:00) but there were a bunch of the choc chip ones left. (I suspect she made many more of those than the p.b. cookies.) library_lynn pronounced the choc chip ones very good. Inger told us that she had to wing it because her recipes are in american cups and tablespoons, but she hadn't brought her measuring cups; but she's been making these same recipes for decades, she has them in the back of her head, so she could look at the amount of sugar she had and say "that looks about right" and go with that. I think she and my mother would get along famously; mom cooks like that all the time.

rwl said that Joe Siclari is ready to help me restore my photo collection with any way that he can assist. This reminds me, I think I sent Joe a CD or a zip file with some of the Fan Gallery photos; it may have been just the viewing-size images that I had posted with the captions, but that would be a good thing to ask him for when I talk to him next. I'll have to send e-mail, because I didn't see him when I stopped by the FANAC exhibit.

In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs of every head ...

Saturday, part 1 of 3.

On Saturday I saw and photographed several people, including: James Bacon (jamesb), Scratch Bacharach, Margene Bahm, Sandra Battye, Zara Baxter (zarabee), Sandra Bond, Seth Breidbart, Cindi Somebody Cabal, Philippa Chapman, Piotr Cholewa, David W. Clark, Cardinal Cox, Kathryn Daugherty, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Miki Dennis, Nick Edwards, Robin Elliott, jan howard finder (aka "Obi-Wombat Kenobi"), Ela Gepfert, Ed Green, Susan de Guardiola, Lisa Hayes, Louise Hoiles, Janet C. Johnston, Ethan Lawlor, Andy Leighton, Christian McGuire, Pat McMurray (pmcmurray), Liz Mortensen, Myrna Parmentier, Andrew Patterson, Elayne Pelz, Terry Pratchett, Corlis Robe, Juan C. Sanmiguel, Sharon Sbarsky, Joyce Scrivner, Kevin Standlee, Bill Sutton, Arthur Taylor, Katt Thornton (katt1028), Clare Thorpe-Tracy, Megan Totusek, Andy Trembley (bovil), Sylwia "Kiro" Zabinska, Lucy Zinkiewicz (l_zinkiewicz), Julie (our landlady) Nojay, Paul of Light and Smitty. Also all of the grown-up Masquerade entries; I don't have the names handy for those right now because library_lynn is upstairs sleeping.

Joyce Scrivner had written to me a week or two before I left, about getting "Timebinders" ribbons printed up. I had a last-minute order going into RV Awards, so I piggybacked her request onto mine. I mailed half of them to her address. She didn't receive them before I left, so I brought the other half with me. I left them in a box, with her name and address, at the laconiv table, and eventually she picked them up. But she and I never met up again after she picked up the ribbons, so I didn't get one myself. I've heard that Elayne Pelz will be taking over curatorship of the Worldcon History Exhibit starting when it arrives in L.A.; can anyone else confirm it? I suppose I can ask Elayne when I see her next.

Saturday morning when I went up to The Goat to post my Thursday and Friday afternoon notes, i stopped to take a picture of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Centre & Bait-ur-Rahman Mosque that's across the side street from it.

Saturday afternoon I spent some time at the Masquerade check-in desk, and a lot of time sitting on the blue couches at the other end of that aisle. While at the Masquerade desk, I was talking to Susan de Guardiola who was keeping a minute-by-minute journal of her trip. She was tired, and a little vague (her description), and her remarks were mostly free-association. Vlatko Juric-Kokic came up because we'd agreed to meet here at noon, and we determined that someone else (Nojay mostly) was taking care of setting up our backdrop and lights so we didn't need to do anything. I told him he should come back at 18:00.

Vlatko hung around talking for a while. I told Susan that the Croatians invented the necktie, and that the word Cravat comes from the same word as Croatia. This flabbergasted her. Vlatko assured her that I wasn't making it up, and we both tried to explain it. Croatia = Hrvatska. A person from Croatia = a Croat = Hrvat. The plural is hrvati. They tied cloth around their necks, and the cloths came to be known as hrvati too. Hence cravat. We tried to explain that the C, and the H, are just like the Kh sound in chutzpah and Hannukah and the greek letter Chi, but it was just blowing her little synapses left and right. Not a linguistics major, our Susan, no... She teaches historical dance, and had some research planned during her U.K. trip which would help make her trip tax-deductible. She has a house in Connecticut, with a laughably tiny mortgage and plenty of space. And she was raised as an Ashkenazi goy. But that's another story.

The Masquerade exhibit people needed some Hefty bags (bin liners) to protect an exhibited costume that had to go away because its owner had a plane to catch. I remembered I had some enormous clear plastic bin liners in my luggage, and I knew library_lynn was asleep in the room and had been for about two hours. She usually takes a two-hour nap. (My naps are usually half an hour, unless I'm really tired. When I just doze off at a convention because I've been sitting still instead of standing or moving around, they tend to be shorter than that.) Susan and I went over to Number 36, and I tried to reach Lynn on the phone. No luck. I tried ringing the doorbell. Nobody home. I threw pennies at the downstairs window. She didn't wake up. Now, I should have programmed my landlady's number into my phone, but hadn't thought of it at the time, so Susan and I walked back to the SECC empty-handed.

Miki Dennis was orbiting the Masquerade desk and exhibit, when I noticed she had a "Filk Program" gizmo. I gave her the "Immortalized in Song" ribbons to hand out. She showed us her green-filled bun -- it looked like it was wrapped in a tortilla, actually, but they still call it a bun. There was something green in the filling -- pesto? guacamole?

We learned from Arthur Taylor, I think, that the zig-zag lane markings in the street mean that you're near a pedestrian crossing, and there's no parking there either.

Robin Elliott admired my "Glomp Me!" ribbon -- he was one of the few people to recognize it and know what it means.

Scratch Bacharach wasn't the only one to find me at the Fan Gallery and nominate themselves for inclusion. He was, however, the only one to ask a number of his friends and long-time acquaintances to tell me what he's done for fandom. Nobody could really point to much of anything; he's been around in fandom since 1969, he was one of the people who broke the charge (the riot attempt) at Heicon, and he lives in a Philadelphia suburb. Sometimes costumer, SCA, volunteer locally... but nobody could actually point to anything of significance.

Cindi Somebody Cabal was in pink. Very pink. All pink clothing, purse, shoes and hair. An interesting change for her; I think I like it better than the crazy hair she used to sport.

...he's had the pleasure to have known. And all the people that come and go stop and say hello...

Saturday, part 2 of 3. (See Part 1 to start at the beginning of this report.)

Susan de Guardiola wants a copy of A BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN #1. Several other people came up to tell me they'd RAE the ish I'd sent, and asked to be on the list for #3, including....

I met Ela Gepfert from Kotowice, Poland, and another Polish fan, Piotr Cholewa showed up at the same time. Later I asked another Polish fan who the movers and shakers in Polish fandom were, and they immediately said that Piotr Cholewa and Ela Gepfert were the ones to catch. So if we decide to add them to the Fan Gallery, I've got the pictures already in the bag. (Just need to chase bios and caption data...)

It turns out that, while we'd told photographers to check in at the photography area in Argyle 3 (Argyll?) at 18:00, there was actually a panel in there 'till 19:00. Six o'clock was also when we were going to make the final go/no-go decision, if it was raining heavily; it was bright and sunny, and stayed clear and not windy all evening, so we were definitely going through with bringing the costumers out the back loading dock, across to the Moat House, and into Argyll 3.

Nojay and henchmen were setting up the lights and backdrop in the back of the room while the panel went on, and I sat outside telling the prompter photographers to come back at 19:30. I was getting antsy, though, because library_lynn hadn't returned yet, and I had wanted to change for the evening. Allan MacBain, who had volunteered to help me with fan photography with anything I needed, came by, and at 18:30 we decided to let the sign on the door explain the 19:30 schedule time, and go off and try to get things done.

With Allan's phone, we looked up Number 36 St. Vincent Crescent, and I called Julie (our landlady). She was shopping, but would be home in ten minutes. Allan took me to Safeway (apparently Safeway U.K. used to be a corporate cousin to the American Safeway/Vons outfit), and we bought two kinds of fruit juice blends. (If I'd been paying attention I would have noticed both included raspberry juice, but I didn't catch that...) We returned to Number 36, Julie let us in, we went down to our room. Lynn was up -- she'd been zonked out all this time -- and I put on a pair of long pants and we headed back to the Moat House.

At Argyll 3, the lights and backdrop were about ready, and photographers had started to arrive. I started checking them off the master list (we had 30 slots filled), and issued them my own ribbon -- now they'd all have both the official convention-issued brown "Event Photographer" ribbon, and my off-white unofficial "Unofficial Photographer" ribbon which signified that they'd talked to me. People took seats, some people arrived who weren't on the list and we set up a "waiting list" row for them, four rows back from the line, so they could figure out where they wanted to jockey for a position to shoot over someone else's shoulder who'd signed up in advance.

When Nojay was trying to get the backdrop up, and later taken down, Vlatko Juric-Kokic was a great help because of his height. Notes for next time: A wider backdrop would have been very helpful, to allow photographers who were shooting at an angle from the left or right side to get a shot with all backdrop behind the subject. We compensated on a few of the entries by asking them to take a step to the left or to the right of center, but it would have been better if we'd had a backdrop twice as wide. Failing that, taking giant sheets of paper and taping them over the mirrors and reflective shiny surfaces next to the backdrop would have been a good idea, because the floodlights showed up in them throwing off the exposures. Also, a personal note, available-light photography doesn't work for me if I can't steady the camera; even with the light we had, my camera wasn't happy.

... On the corner is a banker with a motorcar. The little children laugh at him behind his back.

Saturday, part 3 of 3. (See Part 1 to start at the beginning of this report.)

[Maria: I keep getting a busy signal when I try to call you. My phone's working now, country code 44, 77677 41313.]

During the photography session, they sent presentations over to us, and we tried to turn them around as quickly as possible. The job of coordinating this area isn't a huge deal, but it helps to have people like Nojay and Allan and Vlatko to handle the tech setup and teardown, and to run errands that may crop up. The photographers mostly stayed in one place and used their flash cameras to shoot the costumers. The biggest concern that came up was keeping the lane free from the outside door to the door of the ballroom. We asked for a few gophers, but the Gopher Hole was dry, all the gophers were off-duty watching the Masquerade in the special seating set aside for them. I spent 10 pounds tipping the two barmaids (Louise Hoiles and Clare Thorpe-Tracy) serving ale to try to keep an eye on the lane, and to chastise anyone loitering in the taped-off lane area, or moving a chair or table too close to it. Fan Lounge (next door) loaned us two gophers as well, and that helped a lot. Coupled with the Masquerade gophers escorting the costume entries, it went smoothly.

We'd been told we wouldn't be getting the child entries. We were surprised when a little pink princess turned up, with her mom dressed as a fireplace. We learned that she was our test subject, so we could make sure that we were ready to focus and shoot. There were many fine costumes that came across to see us. There was also the YAFA entry, which had jamesb and a crew of young people from the YAFA project dressed and made up as horribly mutilated walking corpses. You had to be quick to get those photos, as jamesb hustled them in and out in a lot shorter time than we usually enjoyed for each masquerade entry. I caught up with the grownups (the YAFA staff that participated) outside in the Real Ale Bar area later.

The very last entry was a group shot, with Death, and Death, and Death by Chocolate, and so forth. Then pmcmurray came in, in a naval uniform of some sort, and a lovely pink sari clad lady whose name I didn't catch on his arm. And they were our last photo subject -- after that Nojay and crew struck the set.

I am very frustrated with the slow cycle time of my old Olympus. Part of it is the smartmedia card, which has slower access times. Also the flash has to recharge. I'd love to get a Canon Powershot S2 IS like Shawn Crosby's packing these days; it wouldn't be as compact, can't keep slipping it in and out of my pocket, but the quicker power-up time and cycle time would be a great boon to have. I expect I'll be spending money on restoring my website first, though; if heroic measures are determined to be necessary, if there are data on the dead disk that SpinRite can't recover for us and we have to send the old unit to a data recovery house like OnTrack, I'm going to be out $500 or $1000 for that process. (When I mentioned this to Naomi Fisher she immediately pledged $20 and suggested I put up a donation button. Hmmm, I think maybe I will, if it comes to that kind of an expense.) Since my camera wasn't that great, Allan MacBain who's got a modern Fuji camera gave me about 200 pictures from the Masquerade shoot.

The backdrop used Saturday night was basically a single-use roll of backdrop paper. We didn't know how much paper was on the roll; it's possible that there was enough on the roll for two uses. But we didn't know. We checked out the situation at the Armadillo, where we'd be using the Forth room for the Sunday morning photo session. They told us the Forth room was locked up tight, but when we went down to check it out we found it was actually wide open. Nojay, Allan and I surveyed the room. The walls were grey, there were lights built in, and on the whole we decided to forgo trying to set up the backdrop a second time. It was going to be used Sunday morning for the Worldcon Chairs photo, and Sunday evening for the Hugo nominees and winners; and would be a great improvement over prior photo sessions just in the grey-walled room. This is because past Worldcon Chairs photo sessions have been at the Worldcon Chairs "Old Pharts" party, which usually means vertically-striped hotel wallpaper as the backdrop; and past Hugo winners photos have been ad-hoc on stage, with horrific lighting and a dark background. So even if we didn't have lights and backdrop, just doing it in this room would be an improvement. Confident of that, we locked up the floodlights in the secure storage, and went off to bed, home, or parties.

Outside in the Real Ale Bar, I snapped a bunch of pictures of the crowd. I ran into l_zinkiewicz who asked for the "Muggle" ribbons and more "Squib" as well.

The first stop at the Hilton for partying was the Noreascon 4 thank-you party. Christian McGuire thought I'd look charming with a flamingo-straw in my hair, and shot me so adorned. There were a series of big posters on the wall, listing names; the first one had a headline that said "Glactic Patrol: Members of Noreascon Four" and you were supposed to highlight or circle your name if you were there at the party. I think that since the convention was over, the Galactic Patrol must have lost an "A" to become the Glactic Patrol. Maybe there was an apostrophe that went missing - G'lactic?

I ran into young Ethan Lawlor who'd been told I was the person to talk to about getting a few more ribbons on his badge. I told him to go to the back of the room, look for Seth Breidbart and Sharon Sbarsky, and ask "may I please have a hoax ribbon." He came back to the door happy, with one of the red "Interthingie II Hoax" ribbons on. He came back later and asked how to get a "Space Cadet" ribbon. I said he could get one in Hall 2 in the morning; he said that he was just on a day pass, so I volunteered to mail him one when I got back home. He gave me his address in Skibberdeen, W. Cork, Ireland.

At the Kansas City in 2009/Montreal in 2009 party next door, Megan Totusek introduced me to Myrna Parmentier, who I knew from seeing her picture in the Fan Gallery. She's like a favorite aunt to Megan. I showed Megan my slide show of photos so far, and started dozing off while she watched them. That's when we decided it was time for me to pack it in for the night.