Crypticon!

This is going to be a long ass-post about my weekend at Crypticon. Here's the precis:

It was awesome. There were cool people. The Sheraton is neat. We spent money.

Here's the full-length version.

We left Winona by 3pm on Friday and made it to the Sheraton in Bloomington by, oh, about 6pm. There was wicked awful traffic once we got into the Twin Cities area, but we stayed cool and didn't experience too much craziness.

We checked into the hotel and Nick was astonished to discover that the Sheraton (not Sheridan, as he'd previously believed) is a rather posh establishment. The whole place was very shiny and prim, and it was damn amusing to see all the punks, metalheads, and downright scary scary people walking the shiny halls. Our room was on the 15th floor.

We were amused that there does not appear to be a 13th floor. As a matter of fact, when we were getting ready for bed at the end of that day, Nick dropped his shoes on the floor and exclaimed, "Take that, 13th floor!"

Now that I look at the picture, it looks like there's no button for the 3rd floor either, which is kind of weird. I do think there was a 3rd floor, and also a maintenance floor just above that one (3M) so things evened out. Really.

We went up to our room and marveled at the nighttime view. I tried to take a picture but totally failed at it, so you get nossing for now. But it was pretty cool. In getting settled in our room, we discovered that the very posh and shiny and expensive Sheraton Hotel did not include a mini-fridge in our room, which we'd pretty much expected, having stayed at other, less posh hotels and gotten fridges. This was problematic, as we'd brought not only sammiches for lunch on Saturday, but also a 12 pack of Killian's. So we did what anyone would do: we filled the garbage can with ice from the ice machine and tried to drink as much of it as possible as fast as possible.

The lack of a fridge was a point of contention with Nick for the whole weekend, though.

The beer situation settled, we headed down to the lobby to get our VIP wristbands to enjoy the con. As we walked, I casually asked Nick, "So, you got the tickets we printed out?"

Silence...

That's right, he left the damn tickets sitting on the printer at home, three hours away.

PANIC!

I'll skip over all the crazy panicking we did, and tell you now that the Sheraton provided computers with free internets in the lobby, and free printing services too, so we were able to access the email that had our tickets pdf and reprint them, and all was well.

We walked around the dealer room, chatted with a few of the guests and vendors, and basically oriented ourselves with the place while trying to not spend any money quite yet. We made an especial effort to chat with Ricou Browning, who played the Creature in The Creature from the Black Lagoon films (he did the underwater work in the creature suit, someone else did the above-water work). And for one of the big highlights of the evening, we chatted a bit with Don Calfa of Return of the Living Dead! He's a very awesome guy. Ernie Hudson was there, but Nick hadn't worked up the courage to talk to him quite yet. I'd have teased him about it a little, but I was a little starstruck myself.

We went up to the music room (a new event this year) and checked out a few metal bands. Our favorite was Mommy S3z No, simply because they played a song called Zombie Bukkake.

At 9:30 we went to watch an independent film called The Landlord, about a guy with quite literal tenants from hell. It is a hilarious movie (complete with its own drinking game, which we've not attempted yet) and we bought a copy later. We then watched part of another movie called Terror Overload, which had lots of boobs and gore, which is always fun. But we got a little restless and decided to check out the hospitality rooms (another new feature this year). There was one room playing Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and serving chili. The decor was pretty great.

And then we went to bed. Saturday had a whole lot of stuff planned for us, and we needed our rest!

We woke up Saturday morning to the sound of one of our neighbors having a loud phone conversation in his room. It was a little unnerving that such a posh shiny expensive place should have such thin walls ("And no fridge, dammit!" Nick muttered). The towels were also really coarse and cheap feeling, and Nick and I agreed that as posh and shiny and expensive the place looked, it was really just a money veneer.

We got dressed and I got fancied up (seriously - I wore makeup every day this weekend. Crazy!!) and I wanted to make another attempt at getting photos of our view. Success! It doesn't look as impressive in the morning, but oh well!

The Ernie Hudson Q&A was at noon, so we decided to hit the $10 breakfast buffet and see if the made up for the lack of an in-room fridge. And I'm not going to lie to you, Marge, the food was awesome and we completely stuffed ourselves. They even had fresh raspberries, which of course I went crazy over. Between the fresh fruit, the eggs, breakfast potatoes, the thick-as-whoa slices of bacon, and the muffins and pastries, and other foods that we didn't get a chance to cram into our faces, it was a damn fine $10 breakfast buffet. Because there were fresh raspberries, I forgave the Sheraton for its thin walls and coarse towels and stuff. Raspberries make up for everything!

Tummies stuffed, Nick and I headed to the dealer room to kill the last bit of time before the Ernie Hudson Q&A. Needless to say, we were thrilled to get a chance to hear him talk about his life and experiences and such, and I was personally glad that nobody ever asked him if he was a god, because I sort of expected it to happen but wasn't sure if I thought it would be funny or lame. Immediately afterward was the Q&A with Bill Moseley; it was pretty interesting in spite of the fact that neither Nick or I were especially well-versed on his films or parts.

Back on the Con floor, Nick started his shopping spree, getting autographs, pics, movies, and tshirts. We have yet to take full stock of all the hot swag we picked up this weekend, but it was good and plenty, let me tell you! We finally worked up the courage to visit Ernie Hudson's booth and professed our undying love for Ghostbusters. We got his autograph and a pic, and afterwards he hugged the both of us. That was a real highlight of the day.

We hit the Q&A with Ricou Browning, who talked a lot about his stunt work, and the animal training he did on Flipper. After that, none of the events happening really appealed to me, so I took some time to have a sammich (it was still good, in spite of just being in our little cooler and not a fridge) and a few beers, and reconnected with my much-missed internets. At six I joined Nick at the Return of the Living Dead Q&A with Don Calfa and Linnea Quigley, both of whom are cool as cool is cool.

We stuck around for the Sideshow Vaudville Burlesque show, expecting to see some boobies and dancing but instead got a pretty damn fun sideshow vaudville burlesque show - why we didn't expect exactly that I don't know. Probably we just saw "burlesque" and assumed there would be boobies galore.

Nick and I grabbed some food quickly at a nearby TGI Fridays (we'd never been to one before). I got myself a kitschy Cosmo poured over pink cotton candy and an appetizer. We went back up to our room, had a few more beers, and hit the music room for some more metal. This was where we were damn glad to have had the presence of mind to pick up earplugs before coming to the con, because even with them in the music was loud loud loud! Clearly, Nick and I are boring squares. The best part of the concert was watching a small group of teens, probably around 14 years old, headbanging right by the stage, and trying to form their own mosh pit. Nick and I were in hysterics watching them, and we both commented later how it was weird to feel ourselves lauging our asses off, but not be able to actually hear it.

After the concerts, we caught the last of the few short films playing that night, including an airing of an episode from the Twin Cities Ghostbusters. You may remember me taking a pic with them last year, and of course they were back in full force!

Then it was time for bed for us. Nick and I passed right out.

We woke up the next morning, cleaned ourselves up, packed all of our swag and gear and such and loaded everything into the car, quite thankful that checkout at the hotel wasn't until noon. So, of course we hit the breakfast buffet again and stuffed ourselves just as completely as the day before (mmm raspberries). We'd been seated next to where all the con staff was having their breakfast, and as we ate, Steve Dash of Friday the 13th 2 joined the con staff (he sat right next to me!). The con staff got up shortly after, and so we got to chat with him while we all finished eating. It was an awesome experience, and very cool to chat with him one-on-one in such a relaxed manner.

The Q&A with Margot Kidder was at 1pm, so we swept through the dealer room one more time, got the last of the things that we decided we really couldn't live without, and then headed up to watch her speak. It was incredible listening to her; she made a few allusions to her breakdown years and years ago, but she is really just a very charming and outspoken woman. Towards the end of the Q&A, she told "all the young women out there" not to be afraid of aging, because it was like a free pass to get to say and do and think whatever you want, and that it was terribly empowering and wonderful. It was an awesome thing to hear, and I think I got a little teary-eyed listening to her say that.

After that, we had still more time to kill until the Steve Dash Q&A (which we couldn't miss now that we'd had breakfast with him) and it was absolutely hilarious! He ripped on people coming in late, he ripped on other guys that had played Jason, he talked about his experiences as a stunt man, and was thoroughly entertaining.

And that's the end of the con. Nick and I got some sushi, and headed home, and crashed hard. I'm still not feeling totally recovered from it, and was a little worried this morning that I'd picked up one form of ConSARS or another (that post-con sickness that seems to plague con-goers), but I'm actually feeling pretty good right now. 100% pleased with myself that I'd had the presence of mind to take today off work.

I've posted all the pics at my Flickr page, so feel free to check them out there.

Too Long to Tweet

Why is it that one of my all-time favorite pieces of jewelry is not the garnet necklace that used to belong to my great-grandmother, or the gorgeous Italian necklace and earrings my boyfriend's parents (his mom, really) gave me, but a cheap necklace I got from Goodwill for a Halloween costume five years ago?

Upon reflection, the reason this necklace has preference at this time is because I'm packing for Crypticon, and expecting to be at at least one rowdy concert, and I'd feel less shitty if by chance this one got lost or broken.

Also, holy hell run-on sentences!

I'm Swamped!

I may have mentioned this here before, but I can't remember where or when offhand, so I'll say it now: I do not watch traditional tv, and haven't really since I started living with my boyfriend two years ago.

We do not subscribe to cable television, and have not even bothered to see if any basic channels come in on our television set. I do watch television programs, and herein lies the subject of this post. For the entirety of my televisual entertainment comes via my internet connection. For most of the programs I follow, I use Hulu. Otherwise I get the shows directly from the website of their origin, if that makes sense. For instance, CBS hasn't jumped onto the Hulu bandwagon yet, so when I want to watch CSI or HIMYM, I go to cbs.com.

It's a system that works out fairly well for me, except for Tuesdays. The difficulty here is that the majority of the shows I watch are added to my Hulu-queue(eueueueueu ("Nanny Ogg knew how to spell banana, but she didn't know how to stop.")) or become available to me on Tuesdays. Here's what I face every Tuesday.

6am - go to work until anywhere from noon to 2:30pm. The joys of part-time employment.
12 - 2:30 pm - turn on the computer, and check my webcomics. This is actually a daily occurrence, and there are so many it's easier to simply open all the links in my webcomics folder every day than try to keep track of which ones update when. I could do a whole series of posts on the different webcomics I read and why they're awesome.
Post-webcomics-reading - check Hulu. The day before gave me an episode of The Simpsons, which I may or may not have watched. New to my queue(eueue) are episodes of The Daily Show, Castle, House, and Lie to Me. For those of you keeping track, that's about 3.5 hours of tvtertainment right there. I don't really know when a new episode of HIMYM is actually added to cbs.com, but I know it airs on Mondays, so I assume it's up by Tuesday afternoon. Which, as I check the website, appears to be the truth.

Then there's Wil Wheaton's Memories of the Futurecast podcast, which is usually updated Monday or Tuesday afternoon. AND THEN there's The Guild, which I catch over at msn.com!

Throw into the mix three more episodes of The Daily Show for the week, CSI (which I'll usually catch somewhere around the end of the week) and finally the Dungeons and Dragons podcast featuring Scott Kurtz of PvP, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade, and Wil Wheaton of Wil Wheaton as the members of Acquisitions Inc.

Oh, and I've also started playing WoW again (I'm so ashamed) and am trying to level four characters.

And and I'm reading The Scar by China Mieville, which is a hefty damn book and pretty damn intense. With all this entertainment to glut myself on, it's a wonder I get anything done. I need to devise an entertainment schedule to keep it all straight.

The Musketeers Saga

A while ago, I bitched about how the first volume of The Vicomte of Bragelonne didn't live up to its title very well. I didn't have a lot of complaints about the actual book at that point, but simply that the title did not accurately reflect the plot, or even any of the principle characters. Once again, because the information here is important for the content of this current post, I'll quote the Wiki summary:

It appeared first in serial form between 1847 and 1850. In the English translations the 268 chapters of this large volume are usually subdivided into three, but sometimes four or even five individual books. In three-volume English editions, the three volumes are titled "The Vicomte de Bragelonne", "Louise de la Vallière", and "The Man in the Iron Mask."

I've finally read all three volumes. I had such high hopes...

Where to begin? The expectations? The characters? The pacing? These three books were nearly tortuous to get through, and I can be an almost voracious reader. They are all hefty volumes, which makes it quite understandable that the novel itself was split into three parts. Trying to read the whole book in its entirety would be far too daunting. But to set some perspective on the whole thing, here's a run-down of my impression of each book in the Musketeers saga.

The Three Musketeers: The second-best Dumas book I've read, behind The Count of Monte Cristo. It's just plain fun. There's plenty of humor, romance, and bravado for anyone desiring a firmly buckled swash; the mystery of Milady and the intrigues of Anne of Austria provide the book with a thoroughly entertaining plot. I could not help but adore each of the main characters, and I will say now that I enjoyed watching their characters develop over all the books of the series.

Twenty Years After: I can't quite say why, but I enjoyed this one a little less than Musketeers. Perhaps it was because I saw the inevitable sobering of our heroes as they aged. It felt less like an adventure tale and more like a drama. I laughed less, and cried more, and was mystified that all of a sudden Porthos was being described as this giant of a man with the strength of a Hercules, when I did not recall any such description of him in Musketeers. This continues to be strange to me, as his size and strength play such pivotal roles in the following books. Perhaps when I re-read Musketeers I'll catch something that I missed, but it really did seem to come out of the blue.

Twenty Years After also introduced Raoul, the son of Athos and the Vicomte of Bragelonne. I was excited to see this, as it heralded a continuation of the youthful energy of the first novel.

The Vicomte of Bragelonne: This was... okay. It was a fair enough plot, and did a fair enough job of setting up the events that would cause a great deal of the action later on. It is far more about D'Artagnan and King Charles II than Raoul; the Vicomte himself makes only a few appearances in the book until the last few chapters, and is not even spoken of much either. At this point in the series, I noticed that I was most enjoying the passages where D'Artagnan was, for lack of a better phrase, pissed all the fuck off at the young King Louis. He brought a great deal of passion and nobility to the pages, and continues to do so throughout the books. I think it's one of the traits that makes him such a likeable character.

Louise de la Valliere: Uuuuugh! This book is almost all court drama, and complicated but passionate romances that go in every possible way as many times as possible. By the end of the book, it's very difficult to empathize with most of the main characters. Even Raoul, who finally plays a larger role, is so emotionally immature I started imagining him with eyeliner and jet-black hair combed in front of his eyes (this, by the way, is nothing compared to his behavior in The Man in the Iron Mask). What's even worse is that the more I saw of Aramis, the less I liked him. Where before he was a bit of a romancer, now he is a schemer, and while he takes the side of M. Fouquet, who needs all the help he can get, I couldn't help but feel that Aramis was not quite doing this out of the goodness of his heart.

The Man in the Iron Mask: I've not seen any film version of this, but at this point, I think I'd like to. Because I'd be rather interested to see how much time Louis' twin brother actually spends in an iron mask. Would you like to know how much of a role the iron mask plays in this novel? One, perhaps two chapters' worth. He is discovered, Louis says he'll be forced to wear an iron mask, he's transported to an island wearing it, is shut up in a prison, and is never heard from again.

Here be spoilers for the ending. I'd be considerate and tiptoe around it, but the ending was so dissatisfying for me, I have to rant about it.

And, as if that weren't bad enough, Raoul, for whom I had so much hope, considering he was the son of the wonderful and eloquent and noble and awesome Athos, a man beloved of kings... Raoul fucking wastes away, pining for poor little Louise de la Valliere who never even loved him in the first place. He utterly gives up on life and decides to go and get himself killed in a war in Africa. And, because Raoul has become Athos' only reason for living, Athos too wastes away. It's fucking pitiful.

Porthos dies helping Aramis, who has pretty much revealed himself to be a bit of a sleazeball, escape from the army of the King. Porthos is so simple and wonderful through all these books, it just broke my heart that he had to be taken in by Aramis, and couldn't have been at D'Artagnan's side the whole time instead. Aramis, by the way, gets to become the ambassador of Spain to France, and he's pretty smarmy about it.

Finally, what of D'Artagnan? This noble soul, as loyal a servant and soldier as any king could have ever dreamed for, was constantly beaten down by his masters; his triumphs and derring-do forgotten and ignored by the royalty saved by them; denied again and again the titles and ranks he so obviously deserved... Through all this, he served the king with grace and dignity. In the final chapter, he is given the thing he has worked for all his life, and the moment the object of his desire is placed in his hands, he's shot through the heart by a stray musket bullet, and dies.

Fucking Dumas.

Fleeting

I remember standing on a chair, reaching waaaay over into an old one-gallon ice cream bucket about 1/2 to 3/4 (call it 2/3?) full with generic oreo cookies. I would plunge the cookie into a glass of milk beside me until it soaked up enough milk that it was nearly mush, and then nom it with delight. My grandfather was there, and probably my cousin, who is a year younger than I am.

I'm probably about 4.

I remember being held by someone; in my memory it feels as though I'm sort of being held on their hip, if that makes sense. We're at a factory, where my grandfather works, and he's using a paint key to open a small can of paint or varnish for me to see. I remember the smell of the place, the strong odor of the paint. A part of me isn't quite sure that this is a real memory. I'm not sure how old I would have been at this point.

This memory is even less concrete - I'm sure I've pieced a lot of it together from having seen photographs of the event; but we're celebrating my fifth birthday, and we're in the hospital, where my grandfather is being treated (lung cancer, I think - I only remember being told that it was because he smoked). I remember sitting on the hospital bed next to him. I know that I got a set of doctor toys (stethescope, syringe, that mallet they use to test reflexes, a black bag for it all) and green scrubs for that birthday.

Ninja maids?

Ninja maids!

They clean the floors when you least expect it, leaving only a polished shine and the aroma of lotus blossoms.

Pirate maids are pretty much the opposite. They leave unusual stains and suspicious odors.

This n' That 2: Son of This n' That

I keep thinking of things that I'd like to blog about, then promptly forgetting what these things are before I can get to a computer. D'oh. Anyway, here's some this n' that...

I had a couple of dreams last night. In the first dream, I looked in the cupboards beneath our sink and found a tupperware dish full of old stew which had turned a sort of mother-of-pearl color. Shiny and sickeningly glossy... And then a roach crawled out of the cupboard, and I'm fairly certain I ought to have screamed myself awake at that point. I have no idea how I did not do this, but somehow I managed. The second dream had me driving behind another car on a country road, not going very fast. The car ahead of me got trapped on a set of train tracks, with an oncoming train. I got out of my car, screamed, and started running away, and warned the people driving behind me, yelled at them to drop to the ground. Then the train hit the car, which exploded, and I caught a bit of shrapnel in my right let. I remember it hurting a lot, I could barely walk and was dream-concerned about losing a lot of blood in spite of the smallish piece of metal in my leg. But I limped towards other people who were hurt more than I was and helped them get to the ambulance that was miraculously there.

Then my alarm went off.

Nick and I saw this at our local Taco Bell a few weeks ago, and we've been talking about getting a picture of it ever since. I would have liked to get one of us (probably me) standing in front of the window holding our butt with an expression of agony on our face, but that just didn't work out. Either way: BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

I have a rash on/in my cleavage. I have very little else to add, but right now it's a pretty huge deal, because I haven't itched anyplace this badly since... Fuck, I'm so distracted by the itching right now I can't think of anything. I have some antihistamine ointment on it right now, but it's not doing a lot of good...

I've been reading Louise de la Valliere, the second volume of the Vicomte of Bragelonne; lots of court drama which is ok, but it's still sloooow reading. This is one book I'm probably going to have to check out again just to be able to finish it. D'Artagnan is barely in this at all, and I'm starting to see a little bit more of Raoul; the book still appears to be mostly about King Louis XIV, his jealous emo brother and the court, but a little character development is starting to happen, which I'm not going to complain about.

We're getting super excited for this year's Crypticon. Margot Kidder is listed as one of their big guests right now, which should be wicked cool. We've been talking about doing costumes this year; Nick is thinking about Leslie Vernon. With my new haircut, I may drag-king it up as one of my own horror heroes, Dr. Herbert West.






















A part of me is still holding out the hope of seeing Ken Foree at Crypticon, but according to his website, he's scheduled to do a con in Germany the week following, which probably does not make for awesome scheduling. Ken Foree would probably bring out the screaming fangirl in me, and I'd be absolutely giddy with puppy-like joy to get to meet him.

I'd have to practice my disapproving glower for the Herbert West costume. I'm not used to being menacingly stern.


Uhhh... my squishy brain has started to run dry. Not many this n' that's today. I'll probably have to make supper pretty soon anyway; it would probably not be the best thing to have apple crisp for lunch and supper today...