MarsCon Masquerade Ball

What a party! This weekend (being the first one after Halloween) was the First Annual MarsCon Masquerade Ball. I have to say I had more fun in the four hours of this event than I've had in entire weekends of some sci-fi conventions. Ok, now one expects that for the "first annual" of any event there are going to be some bugs to shake out, right? In this case it was the D.J. cancelling at the last minute, which is obviously a major problem for a DANCE! Thankfully the Ball was saved by Matt B. stepping in to spin the tunes off his computer - and considering there was no Internet connection to grab songs off the web, and he had to work with whatever music was on-hand I think he did a fantastic job. Yeah, sure, there are the inevitable songs that clear the dance floor, and I think your generally nerdy/geeky crowd (especially the guys) have a natural aversion to the dance floor - but put on some Wierd Al or Star Wars Cantina music and it's a different story! Ok, yeah, I understand that if your average uncoordinated geek were to go to a trendy dance club (assuming they'd even be let in) it could be embarassing to do a twitchy, spastic dance in front of people who take "looking cool" seriously. But at a dance attended by your fellow geeks? Drink up a little liquid courage and shake your groove thing, baby! Ain't nobody gonna laugh at you.

There was also a costume contest (of course), typical Con-suite type snacks in another room upstairs where they were showing movies, and a cash bar. Whereas a weekend convention can be kind of expensive, admission to this was only $10 at the door! Ok, granted, you could easily spend a King's ransom at that cash bar - just make sure you've got a room for the night too. Speaking of rooms, this dance wasn't in the big ballroom, but one of the "conference" rooms (specifically one used for the Dealer Room at MarsCon I believe). Since it's the first year of this event they didn't know how many people would actually show up, and by the end of the night it was pretty packed in there and maybe more people would have hit the dance floor IF there'd been room for them. Hopefully next year they'll get the actual ballroom and more people will show up.

Ok, now there were a couple of odd things about going to this dance, especially since it's in the same hotel (Holiday Inn Select) as MarsCon. First of all, there was no waiting for an elevator. Yeah, I know, strange!! The other oddity was that there WAS a convention going on at the same time for Overeaters Anonymous (they had the main ballroom). Some of them seemed a little wierded out by all of us in costume running around - as mundanes usually are - though I did get a couple of compliments from their attendees on my costume :) I also explained to one little old lady that we were having our costume party that night because Halloween fell in the middle of the week which I guess made us all seem not quite so bizarre as being in costume in July or March (or any other non-Halloweeny time of year). Some photos from the event are already posted at THIS LINK.

Anyway, so what is my recommendation for the 2nd Annual MarsCon Masquerade Ball? GO, DRINK, DANCE!