Every Memorial Day weekend, I attend Baycon--a science fiction convention in San Jose. In past years I collected quotes and would post them out of context. A couple of years ago I then, to relieve some stress, posted the quotes in context. This year several people said "Be sure and tell me about the con." Well, you're wish is my command.
Last year I dragged Nick Cuccia along with me for his first con. He enjoyed it enough that he bought his own membership for this year's con. We decided to split a room again this year.
Nick had to work on Friday, so we didn't arrive until Friday evening after the con had begun. Check in was smooth, and we were given a room with 2 queen beds up on the 7th floor at the end of the west wing (about as far away from the hotel elevator as one could be)...Oh well, I wasn't planning on running back and forth between the room and other events anyway. One thing I was able to tell...the hotel was closer to the San Jose Airport's terminals than the section of the Yellow Long Term Parking Lot (which is on airport property) that Cathy and I had parked in a month before.
Anyway, the highlights from Friday night:
At the Clan McDude party, a cute seven year old blond girl was giving people backrubs. It's nice to know that con pick-up techniques are being passed down to the younger generations. Points go to Craig "Omni" Jackson for giving giving her a message in return.
While in the hallway, I bumped in to Cheri Stryker, someone who's been going to conventions all the way back to when I worked Timecon, and now was in charge of the Masquerade Ball. This time when I noticed her wedding ring, she said "I've been married for four years. You've met my husband before." Doh! I wish I wouldn't forget things like that.
The concert by Avalon Rising, a bay area Celtic-Rock band. They put on a great show!
The one disappointment was that the bartender at the hotel's Quiet Bar doesn't mix a good Long Island (Bring back the old bartender!)
The next morning, Con registration came off without a hitch...and in looking through the con guide, I found out the answer to why some people were giving me strange looks.
Because wearing my "I D-I-G a.d.d" button on flight down to Disneyland earlier in the month gave me the reward of meeting some people who gave me a ride to my hotel, I decided to wear the button to the con to attract the attention of any other readers of alt.disney.disneyland. Ultimately this failed--nobody recognized my button. Then I ran across the following in the list of convention panels:
Will ADD Be Necessary for Surviving the 21st Century
Over time, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) has come to be accepted as an actual biochemical condition which affects the brain. There is contention among the experts whether people actually grow out of ADD as they reach adulthood or simply learn to mask the symptoms. But why has such a contdition become so prevalent? Is it a survival trait humans are developing in a fast-paced world where it is common to be innundated with all sorts of stimuli? Rather than a problem to be overcome, perhaps this is a source of strength to be encouraged.
The funny thing was that at the SF a.d.d meet on May 3, somebody joked that people might think we dig attention deficit disorder.
No, I did not attend, I was more interested in a panel called The Plausibility of Space Flicks. It wasn't that good, nor was Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5: Science Fiction Soap Opera or Quality Entertainment?
The best panel of the day was also the first one--Science Fiction and Fantasy in Education: Bringing in the Next Generation. The panel started off discussing how grey fandom is becoming--that most fans are over 30. This led up to the best quote of the con (in fact the only quote I remember). David Brin also mentioned that most SF authors remain single because you can't take time off to be a parent when you have writing to get done. He then said:
When I took time off to have kids, another writer pointed to me and said "breeeeder". I pointed back to him and said "extinct"
The panel then turned into a bull session about how Baycon could be used to spread science fiction to local area middle school kids.
One other good panel was Hugh Daniels' Mr Destructo panel, in which he led kids of all ages in tearing apart an old color TV set and an old 640Mb disk drive. I'll have to see how the pictures I took at this panel turn out.
Usually one of the highlights of the con is the showcase of upcoming movies. This year it wasn't. The ones I remember:
Starship Troopers -- we saw a behind the scenes featurette that made it look like the story will concentrate on the training of Johnny Rico and the "Bug Hunt" portions of the film. From the interview with director Paul Verhoven, it looks like it may be quite different than the book (which I'll have to reread).
Men In Black -- we only saw the trailer, which has been in theatres already. It had the best response of the day.
George of the Jungle -- we saw both the trailer and a behind the scenes featurette. Surprisingly it looks like this live action version of the classic Jay Ward cartoon series is going to work. I now *want* to see this.
Anastasia -- we saw the preview trailer that ran before a few Fox films last year. It's being put out by Don Bluth. The animation is nice, but the music seems forgetable. I would have been more interested to hear something about Planet Ice which is Fox animation's next project.
Hercules -- we saw a behind the scenes featurette, and it looks like this is going to be a fun movie.
Contact -- we just saw the trailer, and it didn't pique any extra interest in the adaptation of Carl Sagan's novel.
Conspiracy Theory -- again, a trailer. the concept of Mel Gibson having all of these conspiracy theories and him being persued by the feds just doesn't interest me.
Gattica -- a behind the scenes look from CNN. The film is supposed to be set in the future and involves geneticly engineered people, but it didn't seem that interesting.
Spawn -- I haven't read the comic book, or watched the HBO animated series, but this looks quite dark...It's not usually the type of film I go for, but we'll see.
Speed 2: Cruise Control -- we were asked if we wanted to see the anything on this. Everyone replied "NO!!!!"
Batman & Robin -- seeing the trailer again, and a behind the scenes featurette made me wish I had left the panel early to catch a panel called My Sense of Wonder Just Got Run Over.
Surprisingly we saw nothing about Titanic or Alien Resurrection.
The only good thing that came out of the panel running long was that I had more time to hang out with some fans. I bumped into Russ Rufer, his wife Tracy, and several others at the bar afterwards. Sometimes conventions are the only time I ever see certain people (Earlier, I had mentioned Cheri); The last time I saw Russ was at last year's Baycon. This time I asked Russ and Tracy, "So did you bring The Frog?" (Last year they took possession of a giant stuffed frog which Mark Tozer had brought to the con in 1995 and then gave to a woman who had brought it back last year.) They said "It's in the car."
Another person whom I had not seen since the last Baycon was Russ' sister, Kim Rufer-Bach. I first met Kim at Baycon in 1988 and we slowly went from being acquaintences (and members of Pete Shipley's entourage) to friends. Kim is a writer (look for the 1996 Bram Stoker award nominee Daddy's Girl in Adventures in the Twilight Zone and Ancestral Culture in Phantoms of the Night), freelance editor (her business is Alchemy Editorial, and teacher (this summer she's teaching a Writers Workshop on Tuesday nights and a one-day class called Selling your Writing for the City of Santa Cruz Department of Parks and Recreation.
Kim was one person whom I really wanted to see at the con--aside from the fact that she's fun to hang out with, she had promised to buy me a cup of coffee and talk about Disneyland.
Anyway, back to the story. While I was with Russ, we ended up talking with Brett, a writer who participated in Kim and Lillian Csernica's writers' workshop. When Russ introduced us, Brett said "I think we met last year, didn't we?" (Indeed we had) This became on ongoing joke when ever we came across each other and will probably continue next year.
While we were hanging out at the bar, we decided to get something to eat. The hotel has two restaurants Maxis (which is the nice restaurant) and The Coffee Garden. Since we were not in the mood to spend lots of money and we didn't want to leave the hotel, we went to the Coffee Garden. The food was ok, but they were obviously understaffed. The funniest part was when Russ asked for some horse radish to go with his French Dip. The waitress took a while to come back, but when she did, she had a soup cup with a mountain of horse radish piled inside it. When she brought it out, a few of us thought it was a side of ice cream. We couldn't help but laugh... someone obviously had NO clue as to what you do with horseradish. It didn't help that our waitress also messed up are bill, charging us for two items (a mocha and some Armegnac) that we didn't order. After everything got solved, it was time to return to the bar.
The party patrol began when Kim found us at the bar. Our first stop was the Masquerade Ball--a combination costume contest and dance. Not too many people were dancing, even though the music seemed ok. We ended up cruising the party floors instead. The highlights:
A room which was nicknamed Mara's Bar; It was overflowing on Friday, was host to a Klingon Lingerie Party (now there's a frightening thought). The music, ambience, and decorations were perfect for the party. The best decorations were a set of cabbage patch dolls dressed up as various aliens (Kingons, Minbari, Ferengi, Centauri, etc).
The USS Northern Lights, a "starship" whose captain, Tracy, can tie a cherry stem with his tongue (I know this because Kim and Lilian both sported tied cherry stems on their badges), showed a Babylon 5 blooper reel. The funniest segment was a flying Star Fury with wind-up key turning in its "back".
The San Francisco in 2002 Worldcon Bid party had Haight and Ashbury signs over its door, and hanging beads at the entrance. Still, I want Seattle to get the bid.
The X Files party was showing the Alien Autopsy video--it was too crowded to enjoy that day.
One of the best parties was a private poker-single malt tasting party...unfortunately, Nick found that one but not me.
At one point we ended up back in the Quiet Bar. I have to say that service at the bar was pretty bad. Kim and I sat down so she could by me coffee and we could talk about Disneyland. It took our waitress about 5 minutes to take our order. She did give us one refill afterwards, but still took her time. When Russ and his wife sat down with us, they waited 15 minutes before Russ decided to get a pot of coffee from the Coffee Garden. A full 47 minutes after they had sat down, the waitress asked them if they would like to order anything. sigh.
The party patrol wrapped up around 2am. Nick, who had returned to the room not too long after I had asked if I was going to go to mass the next morning (they had a Catholic mass scheduled for 8am as part of the con)...I said "I want my sleep."
After a decent breakfast, it was time for more panels. Unfortunately they weren't that good. The best moments were as follows:
At the Why do the good shows die? panel, people mentioned how some good shows just last one season beyond their good ideas (ala Twin Peaks) or that they get tinkered to death (ala SeaquestDSV). Some people also mentioned their "guilty pleasures"...shows like Space Rangers.
At Babylon 5: To B or Not to B we learned that the series will survive in one form or another. And that if the series is not renewed, the final episode (which takes place 20 years after the season) will air in October. There will also be B5 action figures, but Lando's will not be anatomically correct.
At the Robot Wars panel we found out that this year's robot wars will have more rules. They showed a few videos of past robot wars. This year's competition is August 16 and 17 at the Fort Mason Center.
After that I bumped into Kim, Russ, and Tracy and joined them for late lunch/early dinner. Service was better this time...When I ordered the French Dip with horseradish, we joked that the waiter was going to come back and say "We're out...it seems somebody had this enormous ammount of horseradish yesterday." Actually he came back with a small dish of horseradish.
After lunch/dinner, we went to the bar for another drink. After being disappointed by the Long Island Ice Tea on Friday, I opted for a bloody mary. Unfortunately, the mix they have uses too much pepper, too much Worstcheshire souce, and NO cellery (sigh). I had to follow it up with a whisky sour. The drink itself was ok, but the best part was that it came with cherrys. Kim decided to see if she could tie a cherry stem with her tongue. It didn't take her too long, and soon I had one attached to my badge ;)
We got tired of hanging around the bar, so we headed over to the con suite. The theme that night was The Star Wars Cantina and they served a delicious drink called Chocolate Bantha's Milk (it was a mixture of chocolate milk and root beer). Other drinks were similarly themed, and non-alcoholic. It was time for a different vice anyway...
Our next stop was the hotel gift shop for some cigars. They had some $4 stogies that weren't bad. It took us a while to light them as we didn't have a lighter, and it was pretty windy. Still, our spot along the 2nd floor walkway above the pool was perfect for people watching, and being spotted. One of the people who spotted us was Kim's friend Kelly. Even though she didn't have a con membership, Kelly came for the best night for parties.
When I say that Kim had an entourage, I mean it. It started off with just Kelley, and myself, but it grew to range from 5 to 9 people (not counting Kim) from time to time. We hopped from party to party, picking up people at some points, and losing people at others.
Our first stop was The X Files party. It was pretty cool when we got there. They had special badges for each person who signed their list. They also had cards to remind us "You didn't see anything. You didn't hear anything. You don't know anything. Remember; We are watching you." So, I can't tell you anything more about it ;)
On the second floor, we found the Hawaii in 2000 Westercon Bid party. They had appropriate decorations, munchies, and even stickers. Kelly put two crab stickers on her thighs and said "I got the crabs in Hawaii." Every so often she would show them off to other people.
Across from Hawaii was LA...specifically a party for Loscon, which will be held over Thanksgiving weekend at the Burbank Airport Hilton. They had an interesting vegetable dip along with healthy munchies. Memberships are $30 until July 5... and several of us are strongly considering attending.
We checked out the dance. Unfortunately, not too many people were dancing. It's not to say that the music wasn't good. Any child of the 80s would have loved the music. We all had fun dancing. The person who had the most fun though, was Larry, who had taken control of the infamous Baycon Frog. He and the frog later went to the Regency Dance where he found someone else to take the frog for this year and bring it back next year.
The Dance also included a bar...Unfortunately, I had lost my cherry stem while dancing (drat). Fortunately, someone got a bunch of cherries from the bar and we all tried to tie the stems with our tongues. While Kim, Kelly, and one of the guys was able to do it, I couldn't...oh well, at least Kim gave me a replacement stem, which I still have.
Anyway, it was time for more parties.
The best party was Mara's Bar, yet again. This time the theme was the Zathras Evil Sock Puppet party. The bartender also gave us his speciality--Butterscotch Schnapps topped with Baileys (mmmmm). The party included several evil sock puppets too.
After leaving the Zathras Evil Sock Puppet party, the entire entourage started singing the Meow Mix song (c'mon, you remember it). Someone said to us "Now I'm not going to that song out of my head! Could you have picked anything worse?" I started singing "It's a small world after all. It's a small world after all..." and several others quickly joined in, including the guy who complained. He then nodded as if to say "you're right, that would have been worse."
Actually, also while we were singing the Meow Mix song, we ran across the strangest animal site for this con...I've been to a few cons, and I've never been surprised by cats, dogs, snakes, birds, and even an iguana...but I'd never ever before seen a rabbit on a leash. At least the rabbit did not have big nasty teeth.
Anyway, we also decided to bravely enter what used to consistantly be the best party of Baycon, but this time it was kind of dead. Pete Shipley's D-null-C party featured free beer and some decent moshing music...only no mosh pit. Instead we started moshing on one of the two beds in the room. It was quite fun...I even took one dive onto the bed. Still, there weren't that many people there, and it was time to move on.
Near the X Files party was the Coffee Party. Yes, they had good coffee. Some Kahlua from down the hall made it even better ;)
The X Files party itself had a bunch of people in it watching The X Files (it was Sunday night)...sigh. I'd seen the episode before, so why bother.
Across from the X Files party was a group of costumers who had a pretty cool alien costume. The guy who built it showed it off and explained how each part worked (including the moving eyes, antenea and toungue).
Eventually folks got tired. Only three of us made it through until the coffee garden opened for breakfast. It's been a while since I've stayed up long enough to see the sun rise, and I don't anticipate doing this again soon. After a nice breakfast, it was time for Kim to go home, and it was time for me to get a couple of hours of sleep so I could drive home safely.
There were a couple of panels on Monday to attend. The best was Urban Legends, the Internet, and That Friend of Your Brother's. There we discussed a few of the more famous urban legends, and a few not-so-famous ones. We even talked about how it is up to each one of us to show people how to find out the truth about urban legends. The best urban legend though, was one which had been invented at last year's Baycon--"There is a link between the use of laptop computers and testicular cancer." ;)
After Nick and I attended a panel on the future of the communications industry (or "Let's increase bandwidth and fight spammers"--visit The Spam Bouncer for info) it was time to go home. I was quite satisfied by this year's con, and I'm looking forward to next years' (I already have my membership). Anyone care to join us?
Tuesday the 27th was the 20th Anniverary of The Other Change of Hobbit, a great science fiction and fantasy book store in downtown Berkeley. They had a party that included two cakes (one was carrot, the other was chocolate), munchies, drinks, puzzles, and toys...plus the following twenty question quiz:
What bookstore's street address is 2020 Shattuck Ave in Berkeley?
What science fiction movie opened the same week as we did, 20 years ago.
Name a book title with exactly 20 letters.
Name a book title with 20 in it.
Name a book title with two "20s" in it.
Name the novel which won the Hugo award 20 years ago.
Name the novel which was given the Nebula award 20 years ago.
Name an author with exactly 20 letters.
Name three science fiction/fantasy writers who first published when they were under 20 years old.
What famous book's 20th chapter is titled The Dainty China Country?
How many magic rings are there in The Lord of the Rings, and who has them?
Name a series with at least 20 titles.
Name a series with at least 20 authors.
Name a series with exactly 20 titles.
Name a famous science fiction writer born in Russia in 1920.
Name a science fiction/fantasy book that costs exactly $20.
Name an anthology with exactly 20 stories.
Name a science fiction magazine that lasted at least 20 years (as of May 27, 1997).
How many fingers and toes does Luke Skywalker have at the begining of Star Wars?
Summarize The Hobbit in exactly 20 words.
What you wanted the answers? ;)
Anyway, if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading. Thanks also to Nick, Kim, Russ, Tracy, Kelly, the organizers of Baycon, and the folks at the Red Lion Inn (soon to be Doubletree) for making the weekend a great one.