Counting Down. . .

So, it's now down to just HOURS before MarsCon 2008. Am I ready? Of course not! I've got some last minute fixes to do on my costumes, have given up trying to rush my prop building (it can just wait until the next con. I cannot change the laws of physics!). I DID, however, just finish working on a kick ass visual aid for an Anime discussion panel - which I'm not even on, but will probably have to run the thing since I seem to be the only person with a laptop that can S-Video output to the LCD projector. Which isn't a feature I use all that often and I'm glad I checked it tonight with my TV because "Eris the Goddess of Chaos" struck yet again and my S-Video cable had gone bad so the laptop wouldn't recognize that a TV was connected. Thankfully I have a bunch of S-Video cables around so it was just a matter of digging out a different one.

MarsCon 2008. . .T-minus 1 day and counting down. . .

Purina Blog Feed

I've had this blog hosted a couple of other places since I started it last year and finally decided to just move it to Blogger and feed it elsewhere (like back to my main site). Though I noticed that the dates on the feed all show the day I created the feed, rather than the dates of the posts. It would also be nice if the feed would let you comment directly from it without having to go to the Blogsite first, but oh well. Not like I ever got many comments anyway, though for the last setup for this blog the comment function wasn't working.

So, anyway, blog is up and running and people can comment to the posts if they like, blog is being fed into my web site - now I can cross that little project off my "to do" list. :)

MarsCon Is Entering Orbit

I can't hardly wait for next weekend to get here and bring MarsCon 2008 with it. It's a welcome break from the cold and gloom of a Minnesota Winter, that's for sure. Assuming that, unlike last year, the season's big blizzard doesn't hit that weekend.

I'm working on another "Star Trek" prop to go with my costume, but I don't know if I'll get it done in time. It may have to debut another time. Seems like that's always the way, doesn't it? Trying to get something done at the last minute, where if I'd had my brain in frontwards I'd have started working on the darned thing right after LAST year's convention.

To Boldly Go!

Wow! This was a fantastic evening. My boyfriend and I, along with another couple, went to the Minnesota Orchestra "Boldly Go. . ." performance. It was a selection of science fiction (or otherwise space-related) music presented by none other than George "Mr. Sulu" Takei. Originally it was supposed to be presented by Leonard Nimoy, but he had a scheduling conflict with shooting for the next "Star Trek" movie, so it was great that Takei stepped in.

Our evening started across the street at "Brit's Pub" for a drink and dinner. I used to work downtown years ago within walking distance of it, it was nice to get there again for a proper pint of cider and some fish and chips. My boyfriend was in his Han Solo costume and our friend was in his "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" uniform - which, given it was designed after the British "red coat" uniform, he didn't look out of place at all in a British themed pub! LOL. What's with the costumes you ask? Well, thankfully the Minnesota Orchestra isn't all snooty and snobby - they understood their audience enough to realize some would come in costume whether it was kosher or not. So they had a "costume contest" scheduled before the main event. Nobody I knew won anything, and frankly the Trek uniform SHOULD have won - not just because he's a friend of mine, but because so many people in the audience were commenting that he should have. But, alas, the audience wasn't the judge. I should maybe mention that this was also the first time I've ever attended a real orchestra concert in a concert hall. I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

They also renamed the drink offerings at the bars in the lobby area of Orchestra Hall, calling (for example) one of the beers a "Romulan Ale," there were also Tribbles stuck all over the place, and all the staff were wearing Star Trek TOS-era uniform shirts, which made scifi geeks like us feel we were among people who "get it" instead of a bunch of mundanes. Though I suspect some of the staff wouldn't have, under any other circumstances, worn a Star Trek uniform shirt.

The concert itself started with a medley of Star Trek music. Then they played selections from Gustav Holst's "The Planets." Which George Takei mentioned was used as "temp track" music by George Lucas when he was editing "Star Wars." Then came Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune" followed by the "Adventures on Earth" composition from "E.T." I should mention that, on a projection screen above and behind the orchestra, they were showing images from the movies and NASA images from the Mars Rover and Hubble Space Telescope.

A 20 minute intermission was a welcome break and gave a much better notion of just how many people were AT this concert. I had actually looked around the auditorium and there were very few empty seats, mostly up front. When my boyfriend had purchased the tickets in November all but some scattered Main Floor seats were sold out. Oh, yeah, we ended up in ROW TWO of the Main Floor - so we were practically on stage with the orchestra. Hopefully it was such a success they'll do more concerts like this in the future!

After intermission the conductor (Sarah Hatsuko Hicks) came out wearing a ST:TOS uniform shirt and pants too - and the Tribbles had multiplied all over the conductor's podium (well, that's what Tribbles DO, right?). The orchestra kicked the second half off with "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss and then into "Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss.

Before going onto the theme from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" the conductor took a moment to explain that the "hand signals" that go with the alien sounds are actually part of a method for teaching music to young children, developed by another conductor. It turned into audience participation as she had everyone doing the hand signals. However, on the last time through the orchestra (which had been playing the tones) finished with the extra loud "response" from the spaceship - which I don't think the conductor knew the orchestra was going to do that because it looked like it took her by surprise - and then she (and everyone else) just about died laughing!

After actually hearing the "Close Encounters" theme they went into another medley of "Star Trek" music, which I felt was better than the first one. It was kind of sweet that the audience erupted into spontaneous applause when an old "Star Trek" publicity photo of "Mr. Sulu" on the bridge of the Enterprise was shown. Finally the concert finished up with two selections from the "Star Wars" saga: "Duel of the Fates" from "Phantom Menace" (which sounded a bit different as it was lacking a chorus) and the main theme from all the "Star Wars" movies.

While it was a nice selection of music, I'm hoping they'll do another such concert in the future so they can maybe include some other pieces I was dying to hear performed live by an orchestra. For example, the theme from the original "Battlestar Galactica" would have been a great addition. I was also sort of disappointed they didn't play the "Imperial March" song everyone knows goes so well with Darth Vader - making him menacing just walking down a hallway. I'm sure I could come up with some other ones if I looked through my MP3s. Nonetheless it was a magical evening.

R2-D2 "Astrocake Droid"

I baked and decorated an Artoo-Deetoo cake for my boyfriend's birthday :) This was an interesting experience since I've never really "decorated" a cake per se before. I mean, sure, I can bake one from a box and smear frosting all over it (who can't?), but doing artwork in the medium of cake and frosting? That's a different matter.

So I got these tubes of decorating frosting in black and blue with these plastic tips for making different shapes - but I really only needed the one that lets you draw lines. Working from a line drawing I'd made of Artoo I set about decorating. Took about an hour or so to carve the marble sheet cake into a vaguely Astromech silhouette and get it frosted. The final touch was to put some cherry Twizzlers on his feet for wiring.

Ok, so maybe I don't have a future as a pastry chef, but it was kind of a fun little "art project" and the best part was that I got to help EAT IT afterwards!

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!

FallCon 2007

I finally attended my first MCBA FallCon! Well, the second day of it anyway. Quite a different affair from the other conventions I've attended in the sense that it was more akin to a Dealer's Room on steroids. In fact, most of the same tables of stuff I've seen at CONvergence and MarsCon - but in addition to them were all the "guest creators." Comic book artists, writers, colorists, inkers - you name it.

Really neat seeing all the different artistic styles and self-published/underground comics that are out there. Boggles the mind really. The downside was that it was unseasonably hot that entire weekend, and when you add hundreds of humans' worth of body heat to a confined space? Thankfully no spontaneous combustions.