The Things Look Up
If I were really on top of things, I would title all of my entries as parodies of famous works of sf.
But it's nearly 2:30 a.m., and anyone sensible would be asleep. (Ben R went to sleep an hour ago. At least he said he was going to sleep, but he was last seen heading down a corridor with Cory D, so it wouldn't surprise me if they're still talking.)
But I figured I should note a couple quick things while I wait for the last 70 email messages of the day to finish downloading.
I'll spare you the suspense by noting that my luggage did indeed arrive today. Yay! (Thanks again for the suitcase, Mary Anne!) I called the airport midafternoon, and they said it would be delivered to the hotel; I got back to the hotel half an hour ago, and went upstairs and got my computer, and came down to check mail, and then remembered to ask for my suitcase at the front desk, and they gave it to me. Yay! The nice desk guy even turned on the light in the little cafe here for me. Then I ran out of battery power while checking mail, so had to go up to my room (taking suitcase along), get power cord from backpack and adapter from suitcase, and come back down to plug in and finish checking mail.
So nice to have all my stuff!
Today was also mostly quite nice. I missed most of the morning's programming, but that was okay. Took the train in to the convention center, which probably took longer than walking would have: 5 min walk to station, 10 min wait for train, 10 min on train, 5 min walk to convention center, adds up to maybe twice as long as the 15-minute walk from hotel to convention center.
Attended a bunch of readings; all of them were good material, read well. I'll try and list them at some future point, but if I were to try that now I would be bound to forget some. I will note, however, that I was sad to see how few people showed up to some of these readings.
Let's see. Hung out with various cool folks for a while in the afternoon; stopped by the dealer's room and finally picked up the first four issues of the new British magazine PostScripts, which I hadn't realized was up to four issues already. Rowe pointed out that all four issues together contain only one female fiction author. Continued following folks around as they engaged in an entertainingly snarky mini-tour of the art show. Attended the second half of one panel and the entirety of the panel immediately following it; both panels ended up being about multiculturalism, and I'm afraid I winced a bit during both of them, wishing there were some more WisCon folks around to do a little more nuanced discussion of some of the stuff that came up. (Sorry, Merrie, if you read this! No insult intended, and I know I don't really get to complain since I didn't participate in the discussion.)
Was very pleased to meet various folks, albeit mostly only briefly: Merrie H, Hal D, Ralan C, Jetse dV . . . oh, damn, I'm almost certainly forgetting people but my brain's not working properly.
Attended a live stage production called Lucas Back in Anger: comedic summary of all six Star Wars movies. Some very entertaining bits, some not so much. The whole audience played Vader's theme on kazoo whenever he appeared. The original trilogy took about 75 minutes; then they did the prequel trilogy as a series of filks of Abba songs. And they said the audience should sing along, and they showed the lyrics a line at a time on the projection screen at the back of the stage. Only problem: they showed each line after it was sung. On the rare occasions when they showed a line before it was sung, much of the audience enthusiastically sang along, only to fall frustratedly silent again when the next line didn't appear in time. It was baffling. Anyway, I think they were probably pretty good filks, though I'm not familiar with most of the originals, and it was a fun idea; too bad about the bad timing.
Afterward, had a late dinner alone in one of the hotel's restaurants. Turkey burger and fries. I didn't want to deal with trying to order ketchup, so I skipped that part.
Then to the Asimov's party, which turned out to be great, though I'm not sure I was really supposed to be there. Chatted with a bunch of people, met some new people, talked with Sheila for a while, ended up in a great long conversation with Ben R and David M hidden in the farthest back corner of the room.
And then we decided to wander back to Ben and David's hotel, and en route someone noticed how late it had gotten, so we called it a night.
And now I really better go to bed.
Technorati tag: worldcon.
