hazelchaz | "I feel pretty, oh, so pretty, I feel pretty and witty and bright! And I pity any girl..."

My photos from Costume College are online. I took 500 photos, printed them out and gave them away. Click on the picture of

bovil and friend to see them.

EDIT: If you see your picture, feel free to give me more caption info explaining your costume. Just click on a thumbnail to see the large-size image, then scroll down to the fill-in form.

Costume College. As you may know, I'm a minimalist costumer -- I made my own bear ears, and that's as far as I got. Costume College is a program-heavy convention, run by the Costumers Guild West. The relationship of the CGW Board to Costume College is comparable to the relationship between the

laconiv Execomm and that convention -- the board runs the convention, it's not an at-a-distance thing the way the LASFS or SCIFI board relates to Loscon or L.A.con IV. So this means that if I have any suggestions on what might improve Costume College, I should direct them to the CGW Board. Or to some members thereof; if they agree with my ideas they can take them and run with them.

So who's on the board? I don't know. I know of two members. Mrs. Joyce Saunders (Gordon's wife) is the Ambassador-at-Large. It's specifically her job to listen to suggestions. And there's a new CGW Vice President:

colleency. Welcome to the Establishment, Colleen!

Costume College is sort of a three-day (or so) intensive seminar weekend. But it's also a convention. I think some of the board don't realize it's a convention, though, and think it's just like a slice of a college campus.* There are a bunch of Costume College regulars who are also Loscon or Anime Expo regulars, or otherwise have connections to the sci-fi or anime fan community. Probably more than they realize. Perhaps they should do a survey, if they haven't done one recently? "In the last three years, have you attended any of these? __Loscon __Baycon __Westercon __Worldcon __Anime Expo __Anime Los Angeles ... other s-f conventions you attend: ______________ other anime conventions: ______"

Oh, what was I doing at Costume College? (Taking pictures, obviously.) The reason I went is because I'd promised we'd volunteer at their convention in return for the chair ("dean") Lana Bailey and crew helping with the

animelosangeles Costume Repair Station. Rebecca Metzger, Volunteers head, gave us a list of open volunteer slots and we filled most of the unfilled slots, including most of the hours at the Costume Exhibit. The Costume Exhibit is an easy post, but it's boring: most of the day, most of the other members are tucked away in classes and workshops and lectures.

But the Costume Exhibit is important. It doesn't get a lot of continuous traffic, but people do stop in when they can squeeze in a few minutes between classes.

Okay, I've got more things to say, but I'm going to break this post up into a couple of chunks. Next topic: Hospitality.

*It's not just an educational event, because people convene -- they come together to see each other and be seen and meet new friends, and to wear costumes even when it's not time for one of the specific dress-up events.