Con report time!
Jul. 13th, 2004 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tephraActually, I don't do a lot at cons these days other than talk to people I know and don't see often. Which should be expected I suppose, AC2004 was my 17th furry con after all. For those going "didn't she say it was her 15th at the con"... I forgot about CF9 and miscounted. Just in case I'm still miscounting, that's every Anthrocon, every Further Confusion, and ConFURences 8 and 9. I'm not counting whatever it was that I went to with a group of Toronto Furs in late 1997.
Anyway, I'll start my report from the day before the con, when I had hoped to be on the road in the morning and instead ended up leaving at 1pm. Trust me, when I'm traveling alone this sort of delay is normal. I added 20 minutes by stopping to buy another charger and minutes card for my TracPhone as well. Turns out I didn't need to get the minutes (for the con anyway, I still needed to get one sometime this month) but the charger was a necessity.
Once on the road things were pretty sweet for most of the daylight hours. I opted to avoid NYC this year by the expedient of going to Albany and then heading south. The drive was much prettier than heading diagonally through CT but lacked the "if I exit here I could be at Kazin's house in 20 minutes or less" moment.
The drive turned annoying in NJ though, there was an accident on the outer southbound outside truck lanes of the Jersey Turnpike. Since I was in the inside car lanes you'd think this wouldn't effect me, but humans are morbid little creatures so everyone had to slow down and look. So, from exit 14 to exit 8 there was slow (20mph) traffic, and there are fairly long distances between those exits. I must admit, the accident, which was still being cleaned up when I got to the area, was worth a slowdown and looksee. All I saw was the back half of a Roadway trailer, the front half was burned away and presumable the truck portion had been towed by then and not melted into slag.
After clearing that the drive was good again, though US-1 and some confusion in the directions left me down in Delaware and forced a call to Hafoc and a return call from Robert the Concierge. After that was straightened out it was easy sailing, though grounds for further bad opinions of Massachusetts drivers. But considering Philly drivers I'm not concerned about them believing I'm a Bostonian. ;>
Friday:
Spent some time in the registration line, but far less than I expected to due to AC's new "peon enters their own information" system, or whatever nice name the folks at AC want it called publicly. :) I got in line around 10 am when reg opened and was out in about an hour. For those who have never stood in a non-prereg line at a large furry con, that is a really short time to be in line. Particularly when the line was already wrapping around corners when you joined it!
Got lunch at Denny's, even with rumors of furs being denied service. The line at Denny's was slightly shorter than the reg-line, though much less efficient and speedy. Once seated the service was excellent. Of course neither Hafoc nor I look at all "weird" to mundanes, and since we de-badged ourselves prior to entering there was nothing to indicate our furriness to outsiders. Your mileage may vary.
Back from lunch I wandered in the dealer's room to say hi to those friends trapped behind tables. Rafferty was AWOL that time but I got to talk to Heather Bruton (and get my Sekhmet shirt), Stymnus and Caribou. It just occurs to me that I didn't talk much to Susan VanCamp this con. I shall have to correct that at the next FC.
After browsing a bit I decided to abandon the crowds (I really don't like crowds much) and headed out to one of the few panels I attended this year, Iron Author. The challenge, should we choose to accept it, was to write the worst furry story ever in 24 hours or less. There was even a menu of cliches with point values to include. Yes, I wrote an entry. No, I don't have a copy (I don't know if I really want one). Yes, Hafoc wrote an entry. No, neither of us wrote the winning bad story.
I missed Gneech's Dynamic figure drawing panel, dammit! Hopefully he'll have his handouts available for download on his site.
Just wandered and chatted until 7pm, taking time to get some food from the stores laid up in the hotel room (coolers full of sandwich fixings are handy at conventions). At 7 was 2's show, opened by SpazFox, so of course I went to that.
Missed the Hoofer's panel on making masks of hoofed creatures (primarily horses). That one I'm really annoyed I missed.
Wrote my Iron Author entry, completing the first draft at 2am.
Saturday:
Revised my bad story to make it worse. I should have just made corrections on the original and handed it in with scratch outs and arrowed in corrections, I might have ranked closer to the winner that way. As it was my entry was too readable, though I did get to add a lot of extra alliteration and gratuitous adjectives and adverbs. I even managed to mis-use a word and overuse a couple others.
Turned in my entry on the way to lunch at TGIFridays. It's become a tradition for Hafoc and I to get onion soup at Fridays while at AC and I didn't think we'd manage to get a chance later with the evening events.
Back from lunch we headed to the How to Critique Literature panel. I'm not sure if Hafoc found that more useful that I did or not. By this point I was working on my fifth drawing at the con. The last couple years all the drawing I do has been at cons. I really need to make the effort to draw when I'm not at cons.
More socializing and drawing until 7ish. Well more like 6:30ish, when I joined Orzel and Stego in line to get into the Masquerade. No costumes that caught my attention during the Masquerade this year, but there were a few acts that held my attention without inducing the "eew, that was gruesome" cringe feeling. Moneypenny chose to perform to Black Cat by Janet Jackson, using a good song is always a plus. It's doesn't hurt that Moneypenny is *kyoote* either. :) The last act was the hit of the Masquerade though, electronic music and a raccoon that plays a convincing robot in time to it, and the owner (an otter) was delightfully expressive.
The Masquerade actually ended early this year, over 20 minutes early. Whoever was bright enough to figure out we weren't going to applaud the skills and efforts of the suiters that long needs a raise, or at least a good cookie. It turned into a mini fursuit dance while waiting for Uncle Kage to show up for his story hour and a half. It was enjoyable as usual, new stories of course, and a couple of his older stories (ones with the hat and trenchcoat most notably).
I wonder if Kage has read/heard of some of those Iron Author entries.... I hope he takes his part in mine in good humour.
Sunday:
The last day of the con, and a short one for me since I was driving to Hafoc's. Mostly wandering and socializing, and some drawing. I convinced Hafoc to get some food after the Fursuit Parade, and the service at Denny's this time was slow though the wait in line was much shorter. I find it terribly amusing, in a cynical and rather nasty sort of way, that you have to wait almost as long to pay for a meal there as you did to get seated in the first place.
Back from lunch we sat in on the shortest panel in history, or at least it seemed that way. Since we only had about an hour to kill and the panelist had a half hour at most it worked out well. And left us time to deal with the elevators and get to the 23rd floor for our last panel, the Iron Author results.
We didn't have a chance. The winner had an excellent grasp of Bad Writing, and apparently a gift for bad typing too. And the runner up got creative with assorted colored pencils, papers, author's notes and innovative stapling. Next year I'm using my swirled color gel pens on black paper and leaving all my scratch-outs and arrowed in comments. Maybe I'll lay it out to be trampled over by some of the furrygoths while I'm at it.....
The drive home was covered in my previous post, though I did neglect the torrential rain showers that reduced visibility to a single car length at times.
Sketches from AC are currently dumped in my temp directory.
bunnygaurd.jpg - the torso was actually drawn at FC, not happy with the face, no clue what she is really
dancecat.jpg - loved the torso, took a lot of attempts to get to this stage, added hands just a couple hours ago
hewbound.jpg - mistress to be added when she figures out what's she's doing to the poor hooded and tied up horse
kerwyn.jpg - looking human, barring the ears, but then she does look this way fairly often
lynxboi.jpg - I drew a GUY, I like him, still need to detail his pants
rant.jpg - a companion to the ramble and the peeve, need to wild-up the eyes and reposition him to finish his wings
Yes, the copyright does cover part of the image on these, no it won't when I've inked and colored them. I'm hungry and wanting to get this done so I just stuck the copyrights on.
And it's now time for something completely different:
Batty is one twisted little fruitbat. Darkk, apparently, is just twisted . ;>
And for someone that isn't real ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
normanrafferty gives good hugs.
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Date: 2004-07-13 03:42 pm (UTC)BTW, who did you mean by Batty? You mean me, another bat at the con, or Batty from Australia (who would be the most twisted of all us bats :P)
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Date: 2004-07-14 09:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-14 04:13 pm (UTC)I got to meet him back in 2002, hope to again someday!