My Arisia ramblings, containing (in no special order): a dangerous muffin, excess feathers, a secret alien formula, amusing neo-pros, and a short film all geeks ought to see.
I was fried Friday afternoon and seriously considered skipping Arisia this year. It took me several hours more than expected to get myself on the road, so I didn't show up until 11ish pm. The directions worked (always a small miracle in Boston). Check-in was problem-free, at least, with both the hotel and the convention.
Arisia did a lovely job with a much-too-small hotel. Things went much more smoothly than last year. The free parking in the MIT garage nearby was a blessing and the free wireless a nice surprise. The elevators (not under Arisia's control, of course) were sort of dealt with (via "do not touch the door" signs, since apparently touching the doors breaks the tender mechanisms) and did pretty well until Sunday morning, when at one point three of them were down at once.
FastTrack on 14 was an inspired idea - the space is perfect. Having the art show on 16 is less ideal, but I don't think there are any other options. At least this year I was able to get to it.
Also not under Arisia's control were the amount of feathers in the bedroom. If driving, I routinely bring my own pillow to any upscale hotel (cheap hotels are less likely to be a problem), but I didn't catch that the comforters on the bed were goose down until I'd spent Saturday feeling miserably sick. Specifically, until I woke up Sunday morning and my eyes suddenly focused on the tag with its picture of a goose. Arggh! I had already gotten rid of all the bed pillows; now I had to get housekeeping to get me a non-feather blanket as well. This is getting annoying; I draw the line at carrying a comforter with me to hotels. All the bathroom toiletries were also allergenic and thus useless. Hyatts: evil!
While I appreciated the shuttle to get back to the parking garage, it would be nice if Arisia could get the hotel to allow it to pull up to the door. It's a very cold wait out on the street when the temperature is down in the single digits. Brr. I have no idea why the hotel is so territorial about its driveway, but it needs dealing with.
Breakfast Saturday morning with my roomie Hugh Casey; along with the orange juice came mysterious vials of pink fluid. Something about the dimensions of the vials (glasses? nah, definitely vials) made it look more like medicine (or worse) than anything one would normally drink. Having forgotten my new digital camera, which I am just not in the habit of carrying around, my one and only picture for the weekend was taken on Hugh's, of Hugh, prior to my drinking what turned out to be a very small strawberry smoothie.
"At last, my formula is complete!"
Hugh has made a nifty short (4.5 minute) film called "Young Geeks in Love" to a soundtrack of Tom Smith's "Rich Fantasy Lives". I watched it when I got home and you should too. It made me smile in pleased recognition.
My one adult panel was on vampire literature in the 20th century and the development of the vampire from horror staple to romantic hero and all. We had the usual amount of discussion of vampire sex appeal (can't get away from it!) but also managed to talk about vampires in several media from books to comics to TV to film. I managed to merely kick myself gently in the teeth rather than getting my entire foot in my mouth when I said (truthfully) that The Vampire Tapestry was not a particular favorite of mine right before author Suzy McKee Charnas popped up in the middle of the audience. Yeep. I had an interesting chat with precocious borderline-adult-teenagers Antonia and Raven afterwards. They were seen later in the con running around in little black dresses with large windup keys on their backs. No one ever explained this to me beyond the obvious (they were windup toys), but they definitely have excellent personal style.
All my other program items were part of Fast Track, the kids' program, this being my clever solution to non-stressful program participant status. This year I overdid it; they put me on six hours of Fast Track, which I reduced to five, which then turned back into six because things sort of ran over. I discovered that I am a really dreadful face painter, but all the artsy-craftsy stuff was quite successful. I helped cut tissue-paper snowflakes and flowers, twisted dozens of pipe cleaners, and made a mess of myself helping make magic wands. I washed up in the green room after four hours of Fast Track on Sunday lightly coated with green and silver glitter and frantically scrubbing ("will these hands never be clean?" style) at my glue-covered appendages. Many thanks to Rose Fox and her crew for the lovely green room, refuge and source of curry and stew. Sorry about the glitter and little curls of glue under my chair.
I saw Jim Macdonald Saturday night with an entire luggage cart full of what I mistook for cinnamon rolls for a Viable Paradise breakfast in the con suite the next morning. I decided to show up for this even though I'm not a writer and don't expect to ever attend VP. I was sadly deceived; turned out the food from the cart included no cinnamon rolls at all. I did snag a rather dangerous muffin which was large and heavy enough to make nice catapult ammo. Who the heck puts both crumb topping and frosting on one muffin? I had some desire to give marketing advice to the VP folks but instead settled for chatting with a couple of the VP alum neo-pros who were sitting around promoting VP. I managed to switch them from promoting VP to just promoting themselves, which was much more useful to me.
Jennifer Pelland was gently pimping her upcoming anthology with a Naked Guy Flier (every anthology should have one). She actually sold me on it the minute she said it was about bodies and alienation, but I was also entertained to hear that it contained the mandatory Elephant Man/body swapping/time travel story that she presents as the authorial equivalent of the costumers' Snow Queen (everyone must do it once). More confirmation that I shall never be a writer; I have never in my life had the urge to write an Elephant Man/body swapping/time travel story.
I have long ago given up trying to keep up with all the F&SF of significance coming out. There's just too much. So my selection process for books has become as random as "author says something entertaining in the con suite over muffin", and I have thus pre-ordered the anthology.
Margaret Ronald was amusingly quiet/shy - a refreshing change from neo-pros who include "as I wrote in my upcoming novel" at the end of every other sentence and build little walls of books at panels - but eventually confessed to having three books (same universe but not a trilogy) of urban fantasy set in Boston and involving Irish mobs coming out from HarperCollins, um, sometime in the future. I googled around on her and rather liked two stories that she has on line: "Bonefields" and "The Welsh Squadron". Both made me tear up. Remember this name!
I wasn't in a particularly partying mood this convention (too tired and feeling too physically fragile), but I spent an hour or so Friday in the Boskone party and a few minutes in the Montreal party on Saturday night. I hung out at the Goblin Ball Sunday night, too worn out to either change into anything interesting or (mostly) to dance. I did grab one delightful waltz-with-redowa with the delectable Jennie in her fabulous purple corset. In dance geek mode, I particularly admired the double spiral in the Grand March.
Having absorbed last year's pre-Masquerade message of "not enough space! watch from your room!", I proceeded to do that preemptively this year when I saw the line. That turned out to be a mistake, as there apparently were plenty of seats and the picture on Arisia TV was snowy and annoying. On the bright side, we could make loud comments without disturbing anyone. There was a very impressive Batman and a second Batman as part of a group, but my personal favorite costume was the anime-inspired fire and ice pair with the wheel. I also admired the Kamikaze "Spider Rider".
Sartorial detail that will be wasted on everyone who doesn't understand the monumental personal significance to me: I wore a tank top Sunday.
Monday morning I woke up and decided I was feeling antisocial in the extreme, so I packed up, sneaked out, and took off for home.
At some point I'd love to question you about doing fast track panels, as I'd like to get involved and this seems the best way, considering I have no qualifications.
Also, how was the masquerade over all? Antonia and I missed it do to our roomies, sadly.
Raven
Posted by: Raven | January 23, 2008 at 08:57 PM
Maggie Ronald (she's actually an old college friend of mine) has a semi-official blog now at http://mronald.wordpress.com/, where she links to more stories online, if you're interested.
She's also on LJ, where her ID is, coincidentally, stealthmuffin.
Posted by: kouredios | January 23, 2008 at 09:51 PM
Wow, sounds like you had fun!
This LJ cut didn't work.
Jim owes you a cinnamon roll.
Posted by: Marilee J. Layman | January 24, 2008 at 12:25 AM
Raven:
Persis is doing Fast Track again next year; I will introduce you. She would love to have more help and you don't have to have special expertise for most of the crafts stuff.
Overall I thought the masquerade was decent but not spectacular. There were a lot of new people and a lot of anime costumes. The numbers weren't padded out with out-of-competition costumes like last year. There was plenty that was solid and some entries were quite good, but nothing really made me go "oooh!" This may have been partly the filtering through Arisia TV; some impact was probably lost. Most of the anime went right over my head, which to me was a flaw - one of the key rules of masquerade presentation is that it needs to work at least somewhat even for people not familiar with the source material. That's one reason I liked the fire and ice number so much - I had no idea what it was from or inspired by, but it was nifty even without knowing. Some of the others just left me going "huh?"
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | January 24, 2008 at 12:39 AM
Marilee:
I'm still trying to figure out the Sekrit Formula for making LJ cuts work. It's so Sekrit that even Typepad tech support doesn't know it. I just tried making a change; let me know if it worked retroactively? And keep me posted on when they do or don't work; it helps.
I would describe the con as low-key fun. That's not a bad thing or a slam at the con. I was just in a very low-key mood so my fun was proportionate.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | January 24, 2008 at 12:42 AM
kouredios:
Thanks for the link to M.R.'s blog. I've changed the link in the original post. I expect good things from her future writings!
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | January 24, 2008 at 12:49 AM
The directions worked (always a small miracle in Boston)
That bad? I guess I was lucky after their worldcon in 2004. I was planning to visit my relatives in Quebec City so I printed MapQuest directions from the car rental place to the Great White North. I made it out of Boston in spite of the roadwork that forced me out of the highway's tench onto a parallel street, and all this without getting lost and without anybody giving me the Digital Salute.
Glad you had a good time at the con.
As for Hyatts being evil... Guess which hotel is right next the site of Denver's worldcon in August.
Posted by: Serge | January 24, 2008 at 12:32 PM
Persis is doing Fast Track again next year; I will introduce you.
Thanks, that would be wonderful.
Posted by: Raven | January 24, 2008 at 08:15 PM
Maggie's writing kicks ass, and she needs to get better about letting people know that! But this three-book deal will probably help with that, especially once she has a book to start showing off.
(Sorry for the late comment. I only just now found your blog.)
Posted by: Jennifer Pelland | March 11, 2008 at 09:53 AM
Jennifer: No need to apologize; it's amazing you found it at all given that it's new and obscure!
Maggie makes a nice change of pace from the annoying sort of neopros who are always trotting around thrusting their book in one's face, of whom I've met plenty and whose books I generally do not purchase. But there's such a thing as being too shy. She should get bookmarks or something to hand out - great solution for the tongue-tied, since every reader needs bookmarks and will carry around your small advertisement and look at it regularly.
(I may not be a writer, but I spent enough time in advertising years ago that I pay attention to successful and non-successful promotion strategies. I was happy to receive the free VP muffin, but can't help thinking that's an inefficient way to reach potential students.)
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | March 11, 2008 at 01:04 PM
When Maggie's books are on the verge of coming out, I will be sure to mention the bookmark thing to her. I just got a few myself, and need to start scattering them hither and yon.
As for the VP muffins, we usually get a few prospective attendees each time we do a brunch, and it garners us goodwill among fans, which is a good thing for building name recognition.
Posted by: Jennifer Pelland | March 12, 2008 at 07:54 AM
VP muffins:
Well, whatever works. It just seems haphazard to me. But I'm not the right audience; I already know plenty about VP (rather more than I ever needed or wanted to know, actually) and am not a potential candidate to attend.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | March 30, 2008 at 08:17 PM