Heaven is a woman dressed in blue, and heaven is knowing someone who's in love with you. Heaven is

[hazelchaz]

Loscon 32 photos are online. Click on the picture of myself and library_lynn to see them. (Full disclosure: we're on page 7 of 16.)

Loscon. This was the convention I was supposed to take it easy and sit at my animelosangeles table all day... I was responsible for getting two parties off the ground. The first one, for Kansas City in 2009 (the "Redheads from Hell"), we really should have put the word out to get more people to help. In fact, that's my biggest weakness. So I'll mention right here and now: Next weekend I'm running an laconiv party at Philcon in Philadelphia, and I could use some more help, please.

Tadao Tomomatsu, Lynn, and I ran the party. We had a shortage of redheads -- a few did turn up, like Arlene -- but we don't have hot and cold running redheads at L.A. conventions the way Kansas City does. So Lynn got this red animé-style wig, and she wore it during the party. When she went to bed, we stuck it on Tadao for a while.

But I'm getting ahead of myself in the narrative. (Actually, this whole post is choppy, chronological-wise... sorry about that.) The KC parties generally have a bunch of homemade cookies. So Lynn and I spent Thanksgiving baking. Together we put in about 9 hours -- she started mixing dough at 10:00 am, I got up and started rolling 'em out and baking, and we finished a little before 7::00 pm. We made chocolate chip (a batch that spreads out a lot), Oatmeal Scotchies from the recipe on the butterscotch chips bag, Peanut Butter, Snickerdoodles, and Lime Wafers (based on the lemon recipe, but we zested up a lime instead). This was also the first time I'd made lime/lemonade by taking one part juice, one part sugar, and one part water, and heating them up in a little saucepan to dissolve thoroughly before combining with another 4 parts water. Lynn and I shared the result, it was delicious.

Tadao had also baked some cookies. They were strange, huge mutant cookies that didn't hold their shape very well that he baked in Elayne's oven; we learned later that since he's originally from Texas, they were supposed to be "Texas-sized" cookies. They, umm, weren't a big hit. And Ed Hooper baked a batch of chocolate chip and a batch of butterscotch chip cookies, so we were all set on the cookie front.

I had a crockpot of Macaroni and Cheese (Stouffer's frozen, one "family" size and one "party" size box -- if I'd realized how big a crockpot I'd be using, I'd have bought two party size boxes). But more about the Macaroni and Cheese later...

My crockpots have gone missing. (And one's broken, needs a cord replaced or the whole think chucked.) So I borrowed one extra large from my mom, a smallish one from my sister Dorothy, and another extra large from my neighbor Laurie -- the same folks who have that marvelous green farm wagon. (Laurie and Tom also offered us some of their traditional Thanksgiving dinner when we came to ask to borrow the crockpot; they'd polished off their turkey but they still had a lot of ham left, so we each took some slices of ham and some bread to nibble on as we drove.) I borrowed the green wagon, too; I'd taken it up to LASFS the weekend before to make sure it got on the truck, and to make sure it would be put to good use. It was. It could hold all of Chas. Hoff's lights; it can take a dozen to 20 pieces of pegboard in one trip with ease, instead of one person struggling to carry two; it can take a large number of bins or flats of soda... I'm going to find where they got it, and whether it can be ordered online, because it would be a darned useful piece of equipment for a Worldcoon to have use of.

Lynn and I got a late start on Thursday to Loscon. I'd filled up the truck and her car as well, and we headed out about 7:00 pm; what with one thing and another, including my having to head back to get my laptop and camera, I didn't get to the hotel until about 10 o'clock. The goodie bags were being stuffed by a crew downstairs, and Pre-Reg was open; this was the latest I'd seen goodie bags stuffed, usually it's part of the work party that loads the truck Wednesday night. If I'd known I could possibly have added a flyer to the stack that late, I might have provided a thousand-plus Animé Los Angeles flyers. But I didn't.

I unloaded my truck. I unloaded Lynn's car. I got everything up to our room; then came downstairs to deal with the Fan Gallery. It had been set up in front of what looked like a one-way door concealed in the wall; and the configuration didn't match what I'd been told it would look like. Oh well, they say no Fan Gallery layout plan survives contact with the convention... I worked out how to rearrange my charts to match the setup we had. (I've really got to put all the tools for that on my laptop, so I can do that on the fly, and get a portable printer to print out new charts and bio captions... but that's another project.) I started at the end and got D through Z hung up, when at about 3:00 am someone came from the underground tunnels through that door that we'd blocked. Oooops!

I gave it up as a job mostly done, and went to bed. I didn't have much free time to think about it on Friday; Thursday was my day to deal with it, and staying up past 3 a.m. hadn't been in the original timetable either.

So Friday, Lynn got up early, we had breakfast together, and I went over to colleency and obishawn's house to join the work party to get all the props for the Lux Shindig Show over to the convention. By "work party" I mean the three of us and Todd aka "Jack Dagger." We had the "piano", the big leather chest, and Todd's target to move; it was looking like it might take one more trip than we had cars for, until Todd loaded the target on the top of his car and lashed the big flat piece of the piano prop to it as well. Huzzah, we can make it all in one trip.

I gave them a route to go that would be all regular surface streets -- not too fast, we didn't want the wind catching the flat pieces on Todd's car. We just went out Manchester and down Aviation, and back west on Century Blvd. to the L.A. Airport Marriott's driveway. All we had to do was unload everything into the ballroom, get started setting things up... I had told Colleen she had me until noon, and helped out where I could, then went upstairs to move all of my party kit from our sleeping room to the party room.

The party room was the "J.W. Marriott Jr. Suite", a big parlor with a bar and a bathroom section that could be used as a shortcut to get from one side of the suite to the other. I'm somewhat amazed at how long it takes me to prep a party room -- I'm trying to figure out where all the time goes. Get everything in the room, get the supplies situated where you can tell what's where. Clear off the table surfaces (including end tables, desks, etc) and get the tablecloths down on them: this is the biggest serialization of all the tasks, you can't do much else until that's ready. Get the decorations up -- very minimal in this case, we just had two A1-size posters to hang, and the party signs to position. Oh, that took me a bit of time -- I had to go around and post some K.C. party signs. Get the sodas situated -- this was a bit of a time sink, I had to get two chairs to put my great white cooler on top of, then I had to finish filling the cooler with sodas and ice.

Get the serving dishes, napkins, knives forks spoons cups, flyers, and crockpots situated; we'll hold off puttiing out the cookies until we're ready to open. Get the roaster oven (for baking the sausage cheese biscuits) set up. I had it at the far end of the party -- I should have put it in the bathroom area, I fixed that the following night, so that it didn't reverse all the work the A/C did.

(So, planning for Philcon: the big time sensitive or time intensive issues are: tablecloths, getting the decorations ready, starting the crockpots, and prepping a cooler full of sodas. Hmmm... Mr Shirt's helping a lot; if I can get two more helpers we can each tackle one of the jobs and it'll be a breeze.)

Anyhow back to Friday. After the Friday party was mostly prepped with the help of nolly and justeps (apologies to anyone else who helped that I've left out -- I didn't take notes or pictures), Pat Larson came up with her husband Eric to talk about ordering pizza. Whaa...? I eventually pieced together the story that Rebecca Barber had promised the Lux cast and crew would get fed, because they couldn't leave the ballroom on Friday; Kim Bergdahl had brought up a detailed list of who wanted what sandwiches and soft drinks, turned it over to Rebecca, and either Rebecca or Eylat had told them they couldn't take the food downstairs to the ballroom after all. Kim went back and got preferences for ordering pizza, turned it over to Pat who came upstairs and brought me in on the story. I went "Whaa...?" (because ordering pizza would add another half hour until they got their food) and marched with Pat & Eric back to the Con Suite Prep Room and Staff Lounge to try and get what had been promised to the Lux people. At this point I didn't know how many people we were feeding; I guessed it would be twenty-something. katt1028 understood the situation and helped make good on it, by loading up half of the hot food in the staff lounge crockpots into boxes for Pat and Eric to take back downstairs. I went back to my party room and retrieved the big crockpot of maracaroni and cheese to add to the cause, and to get cardboard boxes to hide everything in; it all went downstairs with Pat and Eric where reportedly it was wolfed down in short order, perilously close to opening time for the Ice Cream Social.

I was wrong about the numbers; they had between 35 and 50 people. (They had about 35 specific names to thank in the closing "credits" and they used up 50 "Lux Theater" ribbons.) So the food vanished and some people only got a few spoonfuls. The vegetarians in the crew -- whoops! -- didn't get anything to eat before the show; I went upstairs and Katt made up two big salads, some bread and a jar of mixed nuts for them, and I brought it back, but Elizabeth and Amy (the bellydancers) didn't get to it until after the show was over. I'm so sorry, guys... and for not getting you enough food... and we should have restocked your bottled water. Lynn and I have talked about what to do for "craft services" next time there's a Lux show; my roaster oven could be used to bake up a whole slew of baked potatos, for example, and we could have macaroni and cheese in one crockpot and chili in the other, and put together a bunch of potato condiments, and that would be a good start for a hot dinner. We have learned, painfully once again, that you can't rely on other departments to get it right, and if you can protect yourself by providing your own logistics support you ought to do so...

I had brought my own folding blue cart from home. This is the one that's been with me all over the map, including the trip to Toronto. We used it to get the party set up, and also used it to set up the Lux show. I got a number of pictures of the green wagon in use; my neighbors have no idea how popular it was. The blue cart is just like the other folding "tech" carts that Loscon uses -- Loscon has four of them.

So anyhow. I had sent Pat and Eric downstairs with food, I jumped in the shower and changed into my "animé" shirt (I didn't have anything Firefly/Serenity-appropriate) and went downstairs, learned that some of the cast handing out programs at the door of the ice cream social hadn't eaten. I sent them backstage to see what food was available (not realizing that there wasn't really enough to go around) and worked the door for a while myself. I was at the door when a big chocolate birthday cake for GoH Steven Brust was brought out; that cake went quickly, once they cut into it.

When I'd been upstairs getting the food from Katt, she'd mentioned that she'd really like some green tea ice cream. I told her I didn't know if they had any downstairs, or how long it would last; they had some, so I grabbed a couple of scoops and a scoop of mango ice cream for good measure and brought it back to her. I learned later that her shift was 4:00 pm to 10:00 pm, so she was basically giving up all the evening activities to keep an eye on the staff lounge and con suite. Poor Katt! If there's a viewing party of the footage from the show, it might be nice to invite her... Since she'd managed to get the cast and crew fed, I issued her a "Big Damn Hero" ribbon.

A note about ribbons. (What a surprise.) This was the first post-Michael Mason Loscon; also the first Loscon without Kelly Freas, but I don't remember what memorial activities they had for Kelly. But to honor Michael's memory, a few people were wandering around with bignormous oversized badges, the better to hang lots of badge ribbons from. As usual, I gave out a few packs of ribbons for people to hand out -- for example, selinawoman had the "Hot Bi-Polar Babe" ribbons to give away, and Ed Hooper had "Friends of Tux." The fifty "Browncoat" ribbons I brought I turned over to someone in the show, and they went very very quickly -- I probably could have easily used up 100 or 150 of them. Oh well, better to leave them wanting more...

Friday night. The ice cream social. There was a "brand" (a temporary tattoo, made with a stone stamp and an ink pad) based on the "Serenity" chinese characters; Mark Poliner brought home-made root bheer and was dishing up floats; Chris Marble did the liquid nitrogen ice cream thing with odd flavors, such as Lavender. The "Mudders Milk" project didn't come off -- Christian McGuire came up with a recipe, but the hotel declined to have their bartender serve it. So Mudslides were pushed instead. The Lux Show was a hit; I heard that they've received compliments on every act and every aspect of the show. (Including the costumes, but I forget who made the comment.) They opened with colleency as "Kaylee" twirling her hypnotic parasol introducing the show, and Michael Reed and Jim Russell (on guitar) performing the Firefly theme song, to great applause. The Star Wars fans appreciated the Firefly take on the Cantina scene, with Reynolds and Badger taking the Han and Greedo parts; did anyone in the audience notice the piano player tinkling the Cantina Band music, by the way? The knife-throwing act... that got everyone's attention. I'm told that "Jack Dagger" (dressed as "Simon") had a hangover, which explains why the knives were landing so far from Colleen. He also said he's never performed in front of an audience where so many people knew the lady at the target, and would cheerfully tear him limb from limb if anything happened to her. My favorite comment overheard when they switched from one part of the act to the next was the person in front who shouted "Now it's her turn!"

I could go on, but either you were there and you saw it; or you missed it, and words alone won't do it justice. You shoulda gone.

I'd told Tadao that we'd open the doors after the Shindig; so when the show was over, I took a snapshot or two of the cast on the stage, then lit out for the party rooms. The party floor was already hopping -- there were ten parties on Friday and 12 on Saturday, acto darrelx's list as posted on Thursday -- so we were one of the last parties to open up. But we had over 300 people come through, based on how many stickers we gave away. A note about those stickers: they sent me a bunch of sheets of die-cut round stickers printed with their purple/KC '09 art. The sticker sheets aren't marked "Avery" so I don't know how to order some of these sheets myself. Anyone out there know where KC gets them? (Yes, I've written to Jim Murray; if I get a useful answer I'll post a follow-up here.)

I'd pre-mixed the liquor for the "Red Rum" punch. We used two gallons of Unfiltered Gravenstein Apple Juice from Trader Joe's; a liter of Whaler's Dark Rum; and 375 ml of Hiram Walker Cinnamon Schnapps. I'd taken an empty water bottle, and it had half the booze, with the other half poured back into the rum bottle, so I could do up a gallon of juice at a time. We put it in the little crockpot, and we went through a gallon and a half of it. "Like apple pie in a cup." People asked what it was; I told them it was warm and alcoholic, and did they want more details? Ironically enough, we weren't obviously bartending it the following night, and the last half gallon wasn't completely consumed... I guess having the person standing behind the punch makes a big difference in how quickly it's consumed.

Let's see. Cookies, beef smokies in barbecue sauce -- Thanks to Caroline Smeby and Patricia Engel, two young fans who are new to science fiction conventions but have been to many animé conventions, for helping set up the party as well. They prepped the smokies. (And didn't get back to the room that night early enough to have any -- we ran out some time after midnight. They're both adults, that is they're over 18, or we might have asked for a "midnight check-in" like we would have done with Maria when she was 17... They were staying with us, and they'll be working on the Live Program for animelosangeles. But I digress.) We had the sausage cheese biscuits -- I made them with shredded cheddar (Smart and Final only had the mild pre-shredded), Bisquick, and Jimmy Dean Hot bulk sausage; I want to tweak the proportions on the next batch I make, they were a bit chewy for biscuits. I might even (shock, horror) have to add a 4th ingredient... That was about it.

Sometime in the wee hours, Marty Massoglia came up and paid for a pre-support. I wish we'd had extra people and had set up an obvious sales table with someone to pitch all the reasons you should pre-support and vote for Kansas City in 2009; we might have sold some more pre-supports, and perhaps a t-shirt or two as well. And we could have done something with the buttons and the temporary tattoos they sent us...

At 2:00 am, I was beat. I'd stayed up Wed. and Thu. night until 3:00 am, and gotten up before 11:00 am the following mornings, so I wasn't getting my eight hours of sleep, and I was so tired I didn't even want to stick around and direct other people to clean up. (Another habit I've got to change; I need to clean as I go, including getting the crocks soaked or washed as soon as they're empty, and to start tidying up in earnest at midnight. And Philcon's only going to be a one-night stand, with stuff being packed back up to ship home... gotta get this right. I'm going back on the road, in general, the following season -- Arisia and Capricon are on my list, and I might do Lunacon too.)

Saturday: Chaz overextends himself and scares those nearest and dearest to him. But that's another post.

Comments

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

It sounds like a wonderful time. I hope someday I'm able to attend a con where you're hosting a party.

My schedule so far for next year

[hazelchaz]

My 2006 schedule: Arisia, Anime Los Angeles, Capricon, ConDor, AniZona, FanimeCon, ConZilla, AOD, L.A.con IV, Conjecture, Anime Vegas, and Loscon.

Re: My schedule so far for next year

[zyxwvut.livejournal.com]

In the Bay Area Memorial Day weekend... but not at baycon? So sad.

Z

P.S.: Captioned my picture from Friday night. ;-D

Re: My schedule so far for next year

[hazelchaz]

Yes, as near as I can tell I'm not doing a single L.A. in 2006 or laconiv party at Baycon at all, over the entire 6-year run of the bid and pre-convention cycle.

Them's the breaks... I've got this other convention I'm in charge of, animelosangeles, and I can't really justify skipping Fanime two years in a row.

Chaz

[perkypeppycute.livejournal.com]

Sounds exhausting but fun! Might I suggest some sour cream for fluffiness on the biscuits?

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Thanks for bringing that green cart! It was indeed very useful! (I helpd tech load in and out, and there were many pieces that would have been very difficult to move on the other carts, which were much easier with that one.)

Load out

[hazelchaz]

I'm sorry I was too wiped out to be much help myself in load-out (and too busy baking to help with load-in), but I'm glad my neighbor's green wagon got so much use. I took a few pictures of it full of different loads to show Tom what use it was put to...