This past weekend, I kicked off my con season with a
convention in my former haunting grounds, Raleigh NC. It was a first year con,
very small, but tons of fun. In some ways, I like small cons better than huge
ones, just because you actually get to hang out and connect with people, as opposed to the big cons, where you have to have drive-by-conversations. It’s like the
difference between going to Mardi Gras, and having a dinner party with a
bunch of good friends. I will admit that
despite being a tiny weekend event, it completely kicked my ass, and I was so
exhausted by Sunday night that I couldn’t even stay awake enough to play a
button-mashing side scroller on the Xbox with my sister. In gamer speak, that's pretty freakin' exhausted.
Technically, my illogicon started on Thursday night, when
Matt and I drove down early so I could shoot with my dear friend and mentor
Alan Welch, of Reverie Realm. We’ve been planning an image as an homage to
Frank Frazetta’s “Egyptian Queen”, and finally got a chance to shoot it, using
our friend’s large garage/workshop area. For anyone unfamiliar with it, Little
Miss Egyptian Queen is wearing some kind of gold pasties, and a long blue loin
cloth, and….nothing else. Oh, she has a fancy Egyptian hat. Which is all well
and good when you are lounging about warm, sunny, well heated Egypt, but holy
cow it’s January and we’re practically outdoors and why couldn't he paint her
in a nice cashmere sweater or something. Thank god for set assistants and
fluffy bathrobes is all I have to say. The pictures turned out great, though,
and hopefully I’ll be posting the finished image soon!
On Friday, Matt and I headed over to the hotel to set up. We
were nicely tucked into a corner with Shaun, my chainmail guy, and GarthGraham, a really unfairly cute webcomic writer and artist. Every year at WTHCon
I bid on him at the geek auction, and every year I get outbid because he can do
the David-Bowie-in-Labyrinth-glass-ball-thing. Pro tip, fellas, the ladies just
love that. Also in the dealer’s room were the artists of Firetower Studios, a
Jedi Academy (where you can learn to fight with lightsabers!), and some cool
vendors selling books, jewelry, and art. I finally got to meet (officially in
person) two of my con buddies, Animaze Guy, whose awesome pictures I will be
linking throughout this blog, and Mike Penny, who does videography.
I had a record (for me) EIGHT panels, including the Zen
Scavenger Hunt (the panelists bring 10 random items, then the audience makes a
scavenger hunt by calling out what they want us to “find”, and we have to
explain why one of the random things we brought is what they want. It’s like an
awesome exercise in BSing, because you have to explain how a typewriter is really
like a bass guitar. Unfortunately, I kinda skimmed the explanatory email, and
brought nothing besides my jazz hands, so I was designated scorekeeper), Trivia
for Chocolate (answer geeky trivia questions, receive chocolate for correct
responses), a couple panels about modeling, costuming, and art (with the
aforementioned Firetower Studios guys, who are very funny).
Friday night also saw a very fun dance party thrown by the
infamous Formal Vader (with his beautiful wife as Formal Leia, making them a
very-well-dressed-but-exceedingly-weird-to-think-about-in-canonical terms
couple).
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| Just before the Father-Daughter dance! |
As it was a winter formal, I endeavored to find something appropriate
to wear.
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| Clearly I failed. |
We had Mandalorians and Master Chief (in a pinstripe suit),
raver girls, elves, lots of people in formal wear, and Matt even got down on
the dance floor in his full armor.
In addition to enabling people to dance their butts off,
there was also a fundraising and support effort for Baby Leah, affectionately
known in the fan community as “Princess Leah.” Leah is the infant daughter of
two Star Wars fans, Zev and Fran Esquenazi, and she suffers from a very serious
condition that has baffled doctors. As anyone who’s ever had a family member go
to the hospital… those bills get kinda scary. So the fan community has banded
together to help raise money for her family, and so far has sent $65,000 to her
family to help them out. You can check out their facebook page and blog if you're interested in helping out! This time, we also took turns recording video messages
of hope and encouragement, so hopefully the Esquenazis will be getting their
video of all of us NC geeks wishing them the best soon.
Saturday saw the debut of my newest outfit for conventions:
my fleece? Pikachu onesie. Oh, I can sense your jealousy from here. My dear
friends Cord and Kelly came up with it for my Christmas present, and it’s the
perfect thing for wintery conventions, warm and soft and fuzzy. Also, it’s the
best way ever to one-up someone’s Pikachu hat/tshirt/shoes/whatever. “Oh, you’re
wearing a Pikachu? I AM PIKACHU, BITCHES.” (I may have a small Pikachu
one-up-manship contest going on with my friend SpaceJesus) Words can’t describe
the amazingness of this outfit, so I think these pictures will have to:
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| Chu! |
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| Back view... yes, it has a tail! |
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| Me, clearly about to kick some Mandalorian's ass |
There were more panels….and more parties! ConTemporal, a Chapel Hill based steampunk convention, threw
an excellent party which was promptly shut down by the hotel, then discreetly
reopened by the ConTemporal staff, and was very fun, especially for a party
that periodically had to shush itself. For all the Whovians out there, we taped an episode of GallifreyPirate Radio (which you can watch here). I also helped host Trivia for Chocolate, as the self-designated
Chocolate Girl. Like Vanna White, but handing out M&Ms. Is it true that I
was caught sneaking a few M&Ms? At this time I can neither confirm nor deny
such allegations…
Sunday is always a very laid back day at conventions, partly
because everyone is leaving to get home and get ready for the week to start
again, but mostly because everyone is dead tired from partying/gaming the night
before. In a cruel twist of fate, Sunday is actually when I had the most
panels, so I was forced to feign coherence and wittiness. I confess, I couldn’t
even bring myself to get into the bikini, and spent the entire day as The
Pajama Chick, and now I’m strongly considering lining my bikini with some
flannel.
By Sunday afternoon, I was falling asleep in the lobby
waiting for my last panel to start. The panel, named “See I’m So Pretty,” was
not actually a panel about stunning good looks, but rather how to get great
pictures of your costume. You might be surprised to know how much sorcery is
involved with this process, so it was a pretty informative panel, but we also forced
the audience to preface any comment or question with a compliment about the
panelists, preferably related to how pretty we were. Our very creative audience
complimented the sturdiness of our noses, our lack of split ends, and how nice
our relatives were. Next time I’ll have to be a lot more specific with the
wording.
We capped off our Raleigh visit with a trip to Brewmasters, to
sample their famous burgers, which were ungodly delicious and probably totally
unhealthy. And then I slept for 14 hours straight.
I hear illogicon was a success this year, so there will be
another next year, and I’m looking forward to it! Congratulations to the
illogicon team for putting together such a fun event :)
