A Fanatical Devotion to Admiral Maddox
Speaking of cons, tonight Starr and I were doing just that (speaking of them, that is). Thomas Atkinson friended me back on Facebook today, and when I told Starr that I had an old costume skit of his on VHS, she begged me to dig it up.
That tape, dating from RoVaCon 15 back in 1990, also contains one of the most elaborate Starfleet Vice skits we ever did. The performers for this installment included myself as officer Stubble, Heather McLaughlin and Valerie Brugh as “Dirty Pair” Kei and Yuri, time_shark as a KODRA Dreadlok, markush as Doctor Whizbang, Tom Monaghan as officer Paisley, Mike Layne as officer Harold, and Beth Lipes as officer Ruth. The camera operator for the con spent most of the skit focusing on the skimpy anime costumes Heather and Valerie wore.
Many of the jokes are esoteric, but some of them are still fairly funny outside of the late-80s Starfleet context. This little performance would be a good candidate for my first test of the new video-to-computer setup, right? I think we all want to see this posted.
Starr says I’m much better looking now than I was when I was nineteen. Any doubts as to why I’m in love with her?
Shiny!
The observant reader of this journal may have noticed that I didn’t mention exactly what outfits I wore as my hall costume or Costume Call garb. There’s a reason, and I think pictures are worth quite a few words, to begin with. So, my Technicon 26 hall costume and evening costumes:
It’s my take on the current ‘steampunk’ craze, in lace and black vinyl; and the anime character “Sailor Mars” in PVC fabric as well. I’ve actually had the second outfit for a while, but only found the nerve to wear it at the Technicon final blowout.
So I trust you to see these, as the folks at Technicon did, and understand that this is just a geek having some fun. These pictures are of a nerd who kept himself repressed and emotionally shut down for decades, and is making up for it now by going a little harmlessly wild, and collecting smiles and a few seriously startled looks in the process.
Unfortunately, I can’t trust everyone out there to understand these things. Call me a freak with a grin on your face, and I’ll laugh along with you, but say so with fear or anger in your eyes, and we’re going to have a problem. This is my LJ, and I like it that way. If anyone’s going to put that much effort into finding pictures of me in a dress, let ’em.
I had loads of fun over the weekend. My friends in fandom are some of the most awesome people I ever met: for all of Saturday and well into Sunday I was met with pleased laughter, friendly teasing, not a few admiring remarks, and jokes about who really ought to be bidding on the silk stockings in the White Elephant auction. I live for all of that, and the fen at Technicon were remarkably obliging.
As the years pass, I know more and more friends who are afraid society will punish them for being the perfectly decent, if offbeat, people they feel they are inside. My lifestyle panels and my costume choices comprise my own little rebellion against this prejudice. I love the folks in fandom who offer me the chance to misbehave.
Thanks again, guys. I hope to be amusing and mildly disturbing you at many events to come!
The Technicon 26 Show
Well, I intended to do the Saturday write-up last night, but by the time I got to bed, I was far too brain-dead to even try it. Not much better now, honestly, but I’ll still give it a go.
Health-wise, this year ran much smoother than the last. Woke up feeling all right, got a filling breakfast, and headed right on in to the con. Took about an hour to check out all the function rooms and say hi to the lovely people I encountered, then the 11:00 Costuming For Anthropomorphics panel started, so I donned my lynx ears and headed in. Kender detailed some fascinating info about building animal tails that I think Starr will be pretty interested in.
My noon panel actually started at 1:00pm, though schedule confusion meant that I wasn’t aware of that, nor were some of the attendees. We found out around 12:30, so we took a 30 minute break and restarted the panel! I answered some good questions, and didn’t make an idiot of myself in front of the Windows expert with whom I was teamed. Did a little bit to promote peace between the OS factions, too.
At this point in the day, I entered my ‘on stage’ mindset, and between costuming and presenting, I spent most of the day in that mindset. I enjoy the feeling: it’s exhilarating, but it takes the energy out of me. I didn’t really manage to come out of it until early the next morning, and felt heavily drained for most of Sunday. Wouldn’t have had it any other way, though.
The PC/Mac panel ended at two, and I took the opportunity to change into my hall costume. The con had no designated costume change areas, so I ended up doing so in the men’s bathroom; this process was nothing but awkward and uncomfortable. I would find a better method for my later changes, but undismayed, I did the rounds again and showed off the outfit a bit. To my happy surprise, I won a previously undisclosed Hall Costuming contest, receiving an appropriate reward; and one of the button-makers gifted me with a button reading “Gaseous Dihydrogen Oxide Non-Conformist”. (Steam-punk.)
Soon enough, I joined impink, southernsinger, and jameshroberts for the “Whose Con Is It Anyway?” improvisation hosted by kittykatya. I’m not sure it was my best performance, but our group grabbed enough good laughs from the audience to make it feel like a success. I changed back into street clothes, and from there, a bunch of us including Dwight, jsciv, and candidevoltaire headed to Macado’s for what was meant to be a quick dinner. Unfortunately, our group gave the kitchen more work than they could handle, and over an hour passed before our food arrived. I had to wolf down half my sandwich on an immediate drive back to the con, where I’d promised to be available for 7:00pm Costume Call judging.
I’d brought another outfit to wear as a judge, but when the organizer discovered that I’d be costuming again, he insisted that I join the Costume Call itself. I found an empty classroom in which to change, hoping all the while that no one of delicate sensibilities would barge in, and reported to the organizer. I think my choice of costume broke judge hippydippydncr‘s mental processes; it certainly provided some laughs during and after the presentation.
Sadly, I allowed myself to get far too caught up in good conversation and joking, and had to rush back to the hotel through fog even thicker than that morning’s to arrive at my evening lifestyle panels barely in time. No one had a key to the conference room, but I convinced the desk clerk that I belonged to Technicon and got us in. Of course, that report will be behind the lifestyle filter; suffice it to say that I’m not thrilled with the overall result, but I think our audience left generally satisfied. We wrapped up around 1:45, but I got into a late conversation with nius, zannyvix, and “Bad Andy”; including a bedtime call to Starr, I didn’t get to sleep before 3:30. But I’d managed at least two mediocre meals, and never felt sick or faint, so physically the day went well. I relished the feeling of finally being ‘off stage’, and fell asleep happy.
Very happy news
I have pictures of a Nebula Award nominee in cat-alien makeup and Starfleet combat gear.
Heh heh heh. Congratulations, time_shark!
I’ll Smile If I Want To
Thinking about something twistdfateangel posted:
There are a lot of people out there who can’t have a good time unless someone else is having a bad one. In online gaming, we call them “griefers”.
Unfortunately, the costuming field in fandom has a fair proportion of them. They used to make me angry… now I just pity them. (And mock them a bit.) I’ll wear what I damn well want to wear to the con, and if it’s not quite period, or if the fabric color’s a little off, or if I’ve taken parts of the outfit from entirely different fictions: screw it. I’m having fun. Too bad, so sad that they’re not.
Daft music, schedules, and composing
Now that I’m digging the Daft Punk, everyone’s been saying over and over that I needed to get the Alive 2007 album. Picked it up this weekend, finally listened to it with the speakers turned up on my morning commute. That’s some fine commuting music, that is.
It looks like Starr won’t be making it to Technicon Last; she can’t get out of working that weekend. Her shifts are crazy – it’s a regular thing for her to have five days off in a row, but somehow her scheduled weekend shifts always fall on convention dates. It annoys us both. She has more than enough PTO to cover it if she took off, but that requires a great deal of shift-trading, and for some reason few of her co-workers want to work extra weekend shifts. Can’t imagine why.
I may have a very memorable con costume this year.
I like Twitter because it provides useful writing exercise in expressing onself succinctly. I shouldn’t fret, though, if I miss a few dozen because I’m away from a ‘Net connection. Most of the stuff I’ll want to know shows up in LiveJournal, and LJ’s much easier to keep up with. (Blogging of any kind forces me to keep in mind two good practices: try to avoid that cursed passive voice, and don’t write a novel where a couple of paragraphs will get my point across better.)
The latest Guardians
Having already closed a couple of tickets this morning, I bounced over to my RSS feed reader, which notified me of the day’s posts on dailycostume.com.
Clicking through the links, I brought up this particular group of variant Sailor Senshi. I thought, “Okay, cute, bet I’m missing someone’s fanfic story here…” and then I suddently realized exactly what the theme in question was meant to be.
All I can say is, there’s a weekday afternoon cartoon that I’d put on the DVR recording list.
Brief updates
- 14:27 Realized I’m glad that home ‘Net is working, ’cause I sure as Hades can’t research my MarsCon panels at work. My life is weird (good). #
- 20:36 Trying to find a sewing pattern which would be a starting point for Kyle MacLachlan’s House Atreides uniform. #
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