World Fantasy Con 2011 -- part three: the amusing anecdotes

[mariness]

Random con anecdotes, in no particular order:

1. This time I remembered Stitch! (My backpack.) This would have gone better if I had actually remembered to put things in Stitch, but no memory is foolproof. I mention this only because Stitch might get mentioned again.

2. Obligatory name dropping bit and what am I doing here number one So, on Thursday, I happened to run into Ian Tregillis who said they were just popping off to lunch and would I like to come? Since that, along with escaping the banging, had been my main purpose, I happily said yes. What I didn't realize, until everyone sat down, was that "they" referred to just four people and me – Ian, Melinda Snodgrass, Walter Jon Williams and, um….Robert Silverberg. Yes, that Robert Silverberg.

My first thought, honestly, was, no. Wait. Wait. WHAT?

My second thought was, what the hell am I doing at this table?

What I was doing was holding a Stitch backpack which for, I swear, completely accidentally, various bad reasons just happened to be holding Emily Jiang's nametag and pretending to be Emily. (Nobody was convinced, probably because although I did try, I could not convince Stitch to start reciting poetry.) I have to tell you, this did not at all decrease the what the hell am I doing at this table feeling, nor did a series of texts with Emily who not unreasonably wanted to know where her badge was. (I didn't tell her about the poetry impersonator part.)

Silverberg told us about a previous con held at this hotel which at that point was the top prostitution joint in town, and how the hotel management staff had been infuriated when the con booked the place and the attendees, gasp, brought along spouses and girlfriends leaving the disgruntled call girls just resting, unemployed, by the pool. It was all very sad.

Otherwise the conversation was amusing as hell.

3. Obligatory name dropping bit number two My planned token appearance at the Tor party turned into an unplanned token appearance just outside the Tor party; one look and I realized that I was just not going in there however much free alcohol might be provided. (Can we say, jammed, jammed, jammed?) So I lined myself up against the wall outside to continue said token appearance outside the party, only to realize that the breeze just happened to be pushing cigarette smoke right at me; I'm not usually sensitive, but this time for whatever reason it started to bug me, so I moved a bit down, where I found myself in agreement with a very nice man that the smoke was still kinda strong, and so we moved further down, and the very nice man said something about his mother clearly expecting that I would know who she was, and we chatted while I stared at the name tag KNOWING I knew who this was until finally –

Oh, right! You're that Todd McCaffrey!

(And I hadn't even drunk anything.)

Luckily, I didn't say this out loud, and he turned out to be another amazing, amusing and very nice person.

4. Considerably less obligatory food recommendation Oh, seared Ahi Tuna from P.F. Chang's where exactly have you been all my life? Almost made up for not having any cheesecake on the entire trip. (No. Really. I don't understand that either. I did have a ricotta blood orange cake thing and some fudge and some amazing tapas and some foamy white thingy though. Not that this is a food blog. Moving on!)

5. Open Poetry Reading Honestly, you should go check out everyone else's descriptions of this – I mean, I was there, but I was really, really out of it, what with the hotel, the brain fog, and just learning about the suicide of an online acquaintance. So. If my memory is correct, it went something like this: csecooney got up and received her poetry award, and then agreed to read her poem.

Here's the thing: csecooney doesn't just READ her poems; she PERFORMS them, with different voices, body movements, and everything. Plus she's gorgeous AND she was wearing these absolutely awesome red ruby slippers (I took this as a personal compliment to ME although apparently it was not.) Which presented a real problem: we had to FOLLOW that.

I'd sorta known that going in, so had planned to go with something funny. But by that point, I knew I couldn't pull off the funny just then, so I read "Snowmelt" which seemed to come off ok even if Rose Lemberg, who was running the event, hates rhymes, which….I forgot about until I started reading. Gulp.

6. The other hands down best thing about World Fantasy: yes, yes, you CAN have fierce arguments about what the CUTEST DOLPHIN EVER IS – and people will actually whip out iPads and phones and HAVE PROOF ON THE ELECTRONIC DEVICES THEY HAVE WITH THEM even though this is not a marine biology conference.

(However, I still win: cutest dolphin ever is Orcaella brevirostris, the Irrawaddy dolphin. Look. THEY BLOW BUBBLES. You cannot beat this in a dolphin.)

Which also goes to show you: writers can and will talk about ANYTHING. An excessively incomplete list includes dolphins, crayfish, snorkeling, Oz illustrations (well, ok, that was me), mangroves and fishing issues in the Gulf of Mexico (that, um, may have been me too); various world religions; hellish hotels throughout the world (honestly I didn't start that one; contributed, yes, start, no); linguistics; Hollywood screenwriters/writing; wolves; how to build rockets; how not to build rockets; what happens when you do not build rockets correctly; Nepal; archaeology; new laser techniques for reading manuscripts; and so on.

7. Also, writers will get into sudden loud singing moments in hotel rooms, cheerfully singing along to the sounds of guitars and ukuleles strummed by Patrick Neilsen Hayden and Elizabeth Bear. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

7. Obligatory post-con anecdote: So I'm in the lobby, and this geeky looking guy looks at me and the badges and says, hey, what con is this? And I explain, and he looks at me, and he says, so, wait, that line I saw today was for Neil Gaiman? And I said, yes, I think so (I hadn't gone to Neil Gaiman Signing the Second) and he looked thoughtful and eager at once and said, man, I think I saw him last night! I mean, I saw a guy with a badge that said Neil Gaiman and I couldn't figure out what that was about!

That was probably him, I said.

I think what I particularly like here is the concept of various Neil Gaiman impersonators running around. Probably chasing the Robert Silverberg ones.

8. Anecdote most likely to raise hostility in a certain portion of my reading audience: So my jean jacket got all stained and soaked from a very sad Gatorade incident that actually belonged in the hotel report, but I forgot to put it there. However, I said bravely to Shweta and Nathaniel as they were driving me away from the hotel (yay!) that this was something, like so many other things, that I was more than happy to blame on the University of Florida, and added that blaming things on the University on Florida had proven to be a reliable technique for much of my existence, especially since it is SO OFTEN TRUE.

"But you can't blame the Gatorade on the University of Florida!"

"Oh, yes I can," I retorted.

"How?"

"They INVENTED IT!"

(I honestly thought this was common knowledge, but, apparently not.)

9. So, to sum up: brilliant conversations, amazing desserts, new friends, renewed friends, and BOOKS. LOTS AND LOTS OF BOOKS. As I said, the CON part was amazing, even if I more than once felt incredibly intimidated by everyone else there since the concentration of brilliance and productivity is kinda frightening.

The only bad thing, apart from the hotel, was that what with being sick and the con just not lasting long enough, I didn't get to see enough of ANYONE. That sucked. I need a Star Trek teleporter, like, NOW, so I can solve this problem.

I'm bound to secrecy for some of the Monday stuff, but I think I got some otter pictures, so if I can figure out how to get them onto the computer, those should be forthcoming in the next post.