mariness

So, C and I headed to Megacon on Friday, a process made considerably more difficult by my failure to read the website properly and find out exactly when the con opened and by Orange County's failure to put up signs explaining a) where the con was (same building as before, instead of the new South Building, but this was Not Clear) and b) where the disabled parking was, and further complicated by Orange County's failure to create parking lots that people can actually, you know, enter.

This is mind-boggling, because it's not as if the Orange County Convention Center is not, you know, RIGHT NEXT to three, count them, THREE, major tourist destinations (Disney, Sea World and Universal) all of which have created nice large parking areas that are easy to get into if not exactly out of. You can even see Sea World from the convention center. But I digress.

After going round and round and round, and then, for fun, round, we did manage to park. It was our little MegaCon miracle. AND we found an elevator, for a second MegaCon miracle (don't get me started on the disabled parking). But that alas was the end of the MegaCon miracles, for lo, we had found the MegaCon line, and lo and woe, the line was even less well organized than it had been in previous years. (I sense skepticism from MegaCon attendees but really. We timed it.) And then at last we had our little MegaCon bracelets and all shone brightly if not quite enough to dazzle our eyes from seeing the sad truth that the convention center was charging $3.50 for a Pepsi. And even this was a gesture of beneficence on the part of the convention center since apple juice was more.

Greatly chastened, we entered the exhibitor area, and immediately cheered up. For lo, before us appeared

DROIDS!

( Cut for large images and stuff about me getting sick. )

As always, Megacon provided an important lesson: placing dance/cheerleading and science fiction/comics/anime events in the same venue as a Mary Kay event is not going to make everybody happy, and by everybody, I mean the appalled Mary Kay attendees who walked around gasping about the crowds and saying that they just couldn't understand why grown people and teenagers would act this way (they were mostly appalled by the anime folk but weren't thrilled with the cheerleaders, either). Which is what you might call, Mary Kay people, ignoring your audience, or did you miss the makeup the attendees of both events were wearing?

(As if this were not enough, the convention center was also hosting a Disney Honors event, but those guys just came over and snapped happy pictures.)

The Mary Kay people might, however, have had a point about the crowds. Ok, they did have a point about the crowds. The Orange County Convention Center is admittedly large, but, beyond the slight problem that it was hosting at least four groups, at least two of which could easily be mistaken for each other, MegaCon had decided, yet again, to squeeze all of its retailers, signings, artists and writers into a single exhibition hall.

This has been a bad idea for some time; with William Shatner and Stan Lee on hand this year, it was an incredibly bad idea. I kept expecting the fire department to close everything down (actually three cops I encountered on the way out were suggesting just that). A couple of artists told me that despite the crowds they weren't selling that much because people couldn't see them or felt it was too crowded to stop and look.

Aside from the crowds, however, Megacon was its usual awesomeness of costumes, geekdom, robots, and Legos, including, and I kid you not, THE ENTIRE LOST SET AND EVIL ISLAND in LEGOS. I also had the chance to meet up with fellow Tor.com blogger and book reviewer of Grasping for the wind John Ottinger III and fellow aspiring writer Shaun Duke, who also blogs and reviews at The World in the Satin Bag and is about to start a dissertation on speculative fiction. Not at all surprisingly this led to awesome conversations all around (and yes, I urged both of them to attend IAFA next year – it's their type of thing.)

Alas, I had to cut my visit a bit short thanks partly to a certain basketball game by a little team from Gainesville that most of my readers would have no interest in (this is why I love you all) but which did deeply obsess my ride and thanks to lingering fatigue/dizziness from the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

My pictures coming up next post, but meanwhile, here's the ones by
the Orlando Sentinel.

Right! Appearances! Where I will be in 2011:

1) Driving arrangements permitting, I should be stopping by the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. I have absolutely no schedule for this, so if you are planning on being there, and want to meet up, let me know and I'll try to work something out.

2) MegaCon 2011, Orlando, on Saturday, March 26th, probably someplace by the Legos and the robots. Or just wandering around. There is a small chance I may also be there on Sunday, but that's entirely dependent on the schedules of other people who are planning to make up their minds about this in March, probably that Friday :) So this is not exactly a set planned thing.

3) GenCon 2011, Indianapolis, August 4-7, 2001. We will actually be arriving Wednesday night and leaving at some point on Sunday. This is where I turn from writer to gamer, so I will not be part of the Writers Symposium. Despite some rather sarcastic suggestions that I, you know, try to actually see the entire con instead of just the board gaming part of it, I expect you will probably be able to find me at the board gaming part of it. Or in line for coffee. It's a gaming con.

4) World Fantasy Con, San Diego, October 27-30, 2011. Once again, fluid schedule.

Still up in the air: Readercon, World Con and, yes, DragonCon. Unfortunately, that nasty bugbear finances, which, honestly, we, as a nation, or at least we, as artists, should have evolved past by now, is making Readercon and World Con not seem all that likely. DragonCon...ah, yes. Well. We'll see.

But first, just to clarify: I choose not to wear peach not for social reasons or to make any sort of fashion statement (my general fashion statement, these days, is "jeans"), but because when I wear the color peach everyone asks me if I'm ill. Blue tie dye is considerably more forgiving to my skin tones. This generally trivial information may well pay off by the end of the post. It just won't pay off well. Now, onwards, to the lessons learned from MegaCon:

1. If you absolutely, positively have no other way of meeting up with people save via cell phone, you will not discover until you are already zipping down the Turnpike that your cell phone absolutely, positively does not work even though you very very carefully charged it up and made sure it had four full little bars on it and everything.

2. Your desire to take along the netbook partly to show off and mostly to take notes will seem, in retrospect, to show an odd and almost unheard of level of preparedness, as well as giving you a chance to choke over the "tourist friendly" prices charged for internet service at the Orange County Convention Center.

3. You will agree to borrow another cell phone to allow you to meet up with people, only to realize that you do not have any of these numbers, since of course they are all on the old absolutely positively not working cell phone.

4. A Sony e-reader can, when needed, become a sudden emergency place to store emergency phone numbers.

5. None of this will stop you from Counting Pirates. (38 pirates!)

6. I've said it before. Other people have said it before. Putting MegaCon right next to a cheerleading event in the same building, however large the building, is just not good for anyone. (Some of the cheerleaders did go towards the MegaCon crowd to take pictures of some of the more spectacular costumes - and MegaCon has some very, very spectacular costumes - and I and other people trotted over to the food vendors at the cheerleaders since they were quieter (not on purpose; they just didn't have as many attendees. Incidentally, it's also perfectly possible - and at least a few people actually did this - to just stay in the lobby of the convention center and people watch without actually paying for anything except for event parking, and apparently a minor theme in these troubled economic times was parking elsewhere on I-Drive and taking the I-Drive shuttle to the convention center, this plan encouraged by the still terrible convention center parking which was supposed to be improved and still hasn't been.)

7. It will take you a few moments to realize that the cheerleading event is not the best place to unload yourself from the car.

8. Naturally, given the cell phone issue, you will completely fail to meet up with the two people that you absolutely, positively were planning on meeting up with, since all of you had agreed to "just call when you get there."

9. Finding random people in a crowd of several thousand people turns out to be slightly more difficult than it might sound. (Although it might well have been easier if I hadn't gotten distracted by the robots.)

10. You can spend longer than most of you would believe looking at Legos.

11. And robots.

12. And Lego robots! Also, Lego Yoda. Sort of ontopic: Legoland is coming to Orlando, and I think it should now be obvious to everyone that it is not coming soon enough.

13. It is, indeed, possible to shell out $3, plus tax, for a perfectly ordinary cup of coffee when this becomes a dire necessity. (And by dire necessity, we mean, a chance to see more robots.)

13. Two random cheerleaders can and will squeal over a group of stormtroopers in the lobby. These same two random cheerleaders will adamantly refuse to cheer for the stormtroopers because they don't want to "waste it."

14. No matter how wide and spacious you think your lands between booths are, they will never be quite large enough to accommodate two oversized hulking robots and a little scooter.

15. No matter how often you see him, you will not be able to recognize Brent Spiner in normal skin tones. Ever.

16. Overheard: "I'm the awesome. You're the boyfriend. I'd rather be the awesome."

17. Also overheard: Mother telling small son (probably four or five) that no, no, she is not going to buy him one of those elaborate spiked leather collars. Small son: "But I WANT to be a dog! JUST LIKE HER!" pointing to a woman who was, indeed, sporting one of those elaborate spiked leather collars. I think we can all guess this child's future.

18. No matter how good the costume is, the sight of the Queen of Hearts dancing to rap music is just wrong and hurts my little childhood heart. When the music switched to Lady Gaga I was not that soothed.

19. Having used the miracle of overpriced email to obtain necessary cell phone numbers, you will pull out your borrowed cell phone to call the next set of friends you are planning to meet, only to realize that the borrowed cell phone, too, has gone absolutely dead.

20. This, this, is not your day for cell phones.

21. At this time, the netbook will announce that it is no longer on friendly terms with the internet.

22. A Sony e-reader is good for many things, but phone calls are not among them. (Amusingly, I didn't even realize I'd brought this along until after the first cell broke – the reader just happened to be in my bag by mistake.)

23. You will decide to brave the odds and head out anyway to the Comedy of Geeks at Sleuth's Mystery Dinner Show, even though you have absolutely no way of reaching anyone there (or anywhere!) and even though you had just told a couple of people that you would not be going.

24. Mapquest does not actually know where Sleuth's Mystery Dinner Show is. Fortunately, this being Orlando, many others do, and after a rather exciting moment in Disabled Adventures, you will arrive at Sleuth's Mystery Dinner Show and successfully meet up with S and C despite the lack of cell phones, largely because the Mystery Dinner Show cannot accommodate 20,000 people.

25. A group of clearly Non Geeks can walk into a Geeks of Comedy show, solely because they are too inebriated from the previous Mystery Dinner show to go elsewhere, or because they are not inebriated enough from the previous Mystery Dinner show to leave yet. Their intentions will not be entirely clear.

26. In a room of Geeks, the Non Geeks will very much stick out, and lead to a conversation where C will explain that any person who wears peach, and not black, is, by definition, a Non Geek. You will point out that geekdom is not why you avoid the color peach (see, I told you at the outset that the payoff for that would not be particularly good) but that you wearing purple and denim.

27. Somewhat after this, Rorschach will emerge and address the table of Non Geeks directly as the group of people that are not sure what they are doing there. He will advise them that now would be an excellent time to visit the bathroom since he has about 42 pages of Alan Moore jokes. The Non Geeks will greet this information with completely blank expressions. Rorschach will then proceed to explain about the Wonder That is Alan Moore, getting more blank looks. "It was even a movie." This statement, finally, will cheer the Non Geeks up.

28. The Non Geeks will prove to be perfectly capable of leaving their cell phones on during the show.

29. But you will be too distracted to notice this, since...

30. ...you have just found that someone you met back in [year deleted] and who once slept on your sleeping bag (she adds, to be considerably more titillating than was the actual event in question), but who you have not seen in about ten years, is not only part of the show...but also lives just around the corner from you.

31. This will lead to accusations that yes, yes, you really should, perhaps, be spending a tad bit more time on Facebook, which would have provided you with this useful information somewhat sooner. As if to emphasize the point, Twitter will follow this by going down, down, down for hours, shaking the internet, and indeed society, to its knees. (Well. Maybe not.)

32. You will still hate Facebook. It will take a lot more time with robots to change that hate.