In which I succumb to Lunacy
Saturday night, I got to fuel an old addiction. Like many other addictions, the experience was thrilling and draining. It also cost a few bucks, but at least this addiction doesn’t do any physical damage. Really, I don’t remember when I was first bitten by the acting bug, but I know I was quite young. I understood even back then that some people got to share their games of make-believe with the entire world, and that sounded to me like incredible fun.
Some years later, 1986 or ’87 I think, I attended Stellarcon with a crowd of new friends from a club named VTSFFC. We learned that their Saturday afternoon masquerade was desperately short of entries, and I remembered seeing at RoVaCon a group called “Doctors In the House” that performed costumed science-fiction comedy skits. Inspired, I grabbed what little I’d brought for hall costuming, and created the “Starfleet Vice” troupe. We had a great deal of fun over the next few years, but after many performances at RoVaCon, Technicon, and SciCon, we moved on to other things, and Starfleet Vice faded away.
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| “Starfleet Vice” – RoVaCon 1987 From left: Heather McLaughlin as “Kei” from the Dirty Pair, Paul Danielsen as officer “Crock”, Sonoko Konishi as “Yuri” from the Dirty Pair, and me as officer “Stubble”. I don’t even remember what the skit was that year. |
Starfleet Vice t-shirt graphic From the left, the characters are “Ruth” (Beth Lipes), “Dr. Whizbang” (Mark Haymaker), “Cmdr. Paisley” (Tom Monaghan), “Stubble” (me), “Crock” (Paul Danielsen), and “Herald Harold” (Mike Layne). Eventually, Tom acquired a paisley “Next Generation” Starfleet uniform. Audience members were driven blind. |
Further years later, I learned that my VTSFFC friend Helen Madden had become involved with “Luna-C”, a group that I later learned had evolved from the old “Doctors”. I enjoyed Luna-C’s performances at many cons over the next several years, and often felt twinges of nostalgia for the stage – by then, I’d done “You Can’t Take it With You”, “Arsenic and Old Lace”, “Gentleman’s Agreement“, and “Space Rogues“. But I had plenty else on my plate and never seriously concerned myself with those old memories.
Well, at this year’s MarsCon, I was socializing with Luna-C members after the performance, and I jokingly suggested that with the hall costume I was wearing I could have substituted for one of the players. A little further into the conversation, and it wasn’t a joke. So, this weekend I attended a convention I hadn’t planned to hit in 2010. I had an amazing time, and had my first hit of serious memorized-lines-and-costumes acting in ages. It felt goooood.
They gave me six skits to do: an AFLAC parody (I wasn’t the duck), a “Fringe” skit where I played Peter, an SG:Universe scene where I played Dr. Rush, a James Bond / Austin Powers back-and-forth (guess who I played, baby), and two final skits in which I fulfilled a longtime ambition to play the Fourth Doctor. (I tried for days to get a Tom Baker voice going, and I failed; but Deb told me during the show that she thought I had the cadences of his voice nailed. Ego-boost +30!) I didn’t have as much rehearsal time as I’d hoped, and I know I mised some lines, but they covered for me wonderfully. I don’t think I did a bad job at all!
Now RavenCon is coming up, and both Starr and I will be joining Luna-C there if all goes as planned. Yep. Won’t be kicking this addiction any time soon.
Mars, the Bringer of Slack
I headed off to this year’s MarsCon with a single objective: to get drunk. I’ll be the first to admit that classier goals exist, but with one thing or another, 2010’s started off rough for me, and I needed some release. Besides, I drink so little that half a glass of dessert wine once a year is enough to make me pretty loopy.
I never got that drink, but I never needed to. A weekend of friends, costuming, laughs, and even a little gaming turned out to be just the prescription; by the end of the weekend, my body hurt, my head was spinning, my legs wouldn’t hold me up, and life looked so much better than it had a few days ago. In the short time since NekoCon, I’d forgotten why I devote so many resources to con-going.
I’ve avoided gaming at cons since I burned out on MechWarrior: Dark Age. Con gamers can be so angrily competitive that even winning leaves a sour taste. (And let me tell you, I’ll never play Button Men again.) This weekend, I got to game the way I enjoy it: Jesse Braxton brought a cards-and-custom-dice game called “Inn-fighting”, which was fun, fast, arbitrary, and not worth getting angry over. I’ve missed that kind of convention gaming so much.
Tom Monaghan and I began rebuilding our friendship this weekend. He’s not the same man he was a few years ago, but he’s more like the friend I remember from high school, older and wiser. He rediscovered BattleTech this weekend, and wants to get me into a game soon; we even discussed resurrecting Artificial Intelligence, or a descendant, as a webcomic. Do I have the time and resources for that? I don’t know. Am I fascinated by the idea? Yes, though I’m not sure who should draw: Tom is a better artist than I am, but a regular drawing gig would likely refine my skills a great deal.
I really do have some relatively traditional fan costuming planned for the future – I made contact this weekend with someone who could help me with some old-school anime outfitting I’ve always wanted. But from various (positive) comments I received this weekend, I’m developing a reputation at MarsCon for my over-the-top outfits, and I’d be lying if I said I’m not enjoying the rep.
The capper for the weekend? A casual enquiry about a costume commission led to a possible acting gig. Nothing’s set in stone, but I’m really stoked: I love the stage and screen, and I haven’t done any serious acting since Space Rogues. (Yes, I took it seriously. No matter how comedic or surreal the material, it’s not the actor’s job to laugh at it – only the audience’s. That’s often forgotten in low-budget work.) This is thrilling news!
Don’t know how long I can hang on to it, but I found my center again this weekend. Thank you MarsCon, for the opportunity.
More edumacation
Wall-of-text post is finally up (behind the lifestyle filter) about my Saturday night panels. That was a bumpy ride, to be sure. But we had sandwiches!
Looks like the chances are good to be doing my schtick at MarsCon 2010 and SheVaCon 2010. I think I’m almost relieved that the NekoCon audience is probably far too jaded for such a thing.
Power and Con Crud
I appear to have recovered from the sinus infection I had before MarsCon only to walk right into a full-blown bout with the influenza. This is an especially impressive achievement considering that I had the flu shot back in November. Go Me. So now I’m into the negatives again with my sick days at work – thank goodness that they’re pretty flexible – and sitting in bed taking Tamiflu twice a day and remembering what food and drink were like when my sense of taste was functional. Whine whine carp carp bleh.
It’s kinda funny to watch some people acting like Obama has already completely ruined his presidency based on a few choices that I admit I don’t agree with either. It’s even funnier, in a completely pathetic kind of way, to watch “Rapture Ready” Christians glancing impatiently at the sky while wondering why Jesus hasn’t come to rid them of this Antichrist. Y’know, he’s just a man, albeit an intelligent, articulate one with some ideas that, if they work out the way he says, could leave this country in markedly better shape when he leaves power. Which he will do, in no more than eight years tops, because that’s what the laws of the country say. But he’s still just a dude. He’s got four more years minimum to try to impress as many of us as he can, and we really ought to give a fair fraction of that to him before we declare him a failure.
(P.S. He’s also not the dictator of America. Whether the country is any better in four years has as much if not more to do with what its collected citizens do, than with any orders he gives. The most he can do is inspire, positively or negatively. It’s hypocritical to throw our responsibilities as citizens on the President’s shoulders and then be angry him if we don’t like the way things go.)
Okay, enough politics. Sort of. I had an excellent time at MarsCon, it offered me everything I could want from a weekend fan con and I indulged to the practical limit. I’m already in line for next year’s, and I think I may even have contributed to the next chosen theme. I’ve heard a little bit of whining in places, though for the most part I’ve put it down to folks with entitlement issues.
But I’ve also heard quiet murmurs of staff drama. These may be overblown, and already handled, in which case I’m a happy fan. However, as I look at some of the difficulties my favorite cons have hit over the years, I’m seeing a certain cycle. Since it always seems to hit sometime between the con’s tenth and fifteenth year, I’m calling it Con Puberty; after years of success, suddenly the con is hit with massive crises of staffing, programming, funding, and or general personality – an identity crisis, if you will. Sometimes they survive, sometimes they don’t – often the event will fragment and reassemble as a new con with echoes of its predecessor. But either way, unlike normal puberty, in another 10-15 years, it’ll hit again.
RoVaCon survived it once, and was killed the second time; it looks as though Technicon is going to follow the same path. Rising Star rose from the ashes of RoVaCon, then years later survived its own puberty by evolving into a different con with the same name. Sci-Con evolved into a completely different event with a new identity; and now, as I count back, MarsCon has been around under that name for, what – ten-fifteen years?
MarsCon’s a great con. To get all circularly Frankensteinian with my metaphors, if the con’s indeed having any issues, I’m hoping it’s not Con Puberty, but simply a minor, quickly remedied staff infection.
Order of Battle
I’ve been sick for the last two days – sinus congestion, stabbing stomach pain, sore throat, fever… same old same old midwinter bug. Reluctantly, I took Tuesday off, which I think cut a couple days’ duration off this bug; it’s fading away as I sit here, leaving me with a scratchy throat and headache. I should be fine for the weekend; good thing too, as I had to do a bit of finagling to make MarsCon.
On the other hand, it means I’m woefully behind on my prep. I managed to get some studying in for the panels in which I’m involved, but my costuming took the hit, and I don’t know if I’ll have anything ready for the weekend. Since I’ll be leaving directly from work tomorrow, I have to get packed and otherwise ready tonight. Good thing I managed some laundry.
Sometime Friday afternoon, I will have to find time to take a nap if I want to do late night stuff. This is unaviodalbe, as my internal clock these days is currently set to a 5:30am – 10:30pm waking shift, and cons don’t run on that time. Considering that my Saturday panels hover around 10pm and midnight, I’ll probably need to do the same that day as well.
I need to do some restructuring of my life schedule anyway. One reason for my dryness of prose output in 2008 was that I had not made much time to sit, off by myself, and actually write something – the most I’ve gotten done in that regard is hiding in people’s offices scribbling on the Newton while monitoring their OS X Leopard installs. (Up to three hours of glorious undisturbed concentration!) It’s easy to journal in 5-minute increments at work, but I have not yet mastered the art of focusing on plot and character in those tiny chunks.
On the other hand, I’m slightly pleased with my attitude towards the problem. I’m doing better these days with creating plans of attack for my roadblocks instead of just whining about them and using them for excuses. I’m decades overdue on developing this skill.
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. #
Sent subspace radio by LoudTwitter
Weekend on Mars
Started off the weekend with a fever on Friday, caused probably by having to run around in the cold cold rain on Thursday. But I medicated the heck out of myself, and was well enough to travel with Starr to Williamsburg on Friday for MarsCon.
Most conventions are, for me, opportunities to socialize with friends I don’t often get to see. southernsinger, kittykatya, impink, geckoman, and stori_lundi were all there, as well as folks I get to see a little more often such as ptownhiker, fixitup, and torn757. Got to spend some quality time with Jesse and Dwight too!
Convention loot: a Devil’s Panties graphic novel (Jennie Breeden remembered me from Dragon*Con), character sketches from an artist in the dealer’s room, a Carcassonne expansion and an book of Paranoia XP modules, two White Plectrum CDs and a Coyote Run CD, some erotica from Helen Madden‘s table, and a couple of buttons. After spending the weekend avoiding the purchase of T-shirts, Starr and I were handed free ones by a local game store – now I have to get rid of more old ones to make space!
Next year, the con is supposed to move to a bigger location, and it really needs the space. MarsCon completely overflowed its host hotel, which is a shame, as I think it’s a nice place to hold the weekend. I got to hear some other VA con politics I didn’t want to hear about, but that’s the down side of having friends who are so heavily involved in things.
Speaking of being involved, this was the first time I can recall having my con badge paid for as a “Guest” presenter. I have to say I found it very cool, though somehow I had always imagined it would be for my Great American Science Fiction Novel. Still, the panels (which I talk a bit more about in the Lifestyle filter) were great fun, and I can’t wait to do them again next year.
We’d really intended to stay longer on Sunday, but despite finally getting the MarsCon Charity Chair Massage I’d been wanting to try for years, we had a bad case of burnout. Excitement, dancing, endorphins, and little sleep all hit at once, and Starr and I headed home around 1:30 to veg for the rest of the day. Still haven’t quite come down though. How long ’till T-Con?
Oh, by the way, for people who didn’t go see Cloverfield, or restrained themselves from visiting YouTube this weekend, here’s the new Trek movie trailer. Total geekgasm.
