We headed off to
Necon Thursday afternoon: a three hour drive but all highway, so it wasn't much of an effort and it stayed a beautiful day. There had been a last minute venue change, so instead of the homey dorms on the Roger Williams campus, we were in their new conference center, AKA the dampest place on earth. Really -- everything felt saturated. Paper left lying in the room soon curled and undulated, including books. There was a white lacy splotch of mold between the panes of our window that looked like a fractal snowflake.
But you don't come to Necon for the ambience and we had time enough to get settled before the Saugy roast in the courtyard. As usual, people kept arriving all evening, saying hello and nattering on about this and that. The upshot, of course, is that the noise in the courtyard grew rather considerably in no time. When we're over in the dorms, everyone on the quad is part of the show. If you don't like the all night noise, you ask for a room in the middle quad. There'll still be crazy rambling noises all night, but not nearly as many.
But this wasn't the quad -- it was a hotel with other guests. Other guests who complained about the noise. There wasn't a Broadway show tune sing-along that night -- it was just a bunch of people talking, but in an enclosed space, yeah -- it became deafening. And the lights kept going out -- and the bugs were eating us alive. Over-worked organizer Dan Booth pointed out that folks could go into the lounge which was open for us, but people were so used to being at "camp" that few took that route. We chatted with Rod and Elena, who were staying in Bristol and caught up with Phil and Anya when they arrived, as well as a bunch of the regulars, but we didn't stay up all that late the first night.
Friday started with actual breakfast -- hmmm, we thought, maybe this hotel thing wasn't going to be so bad. Next up the first Olympic event, mini-golf, which meant our usual foursome was off to
Fantasyland (a little late, but that just meant we didn't have to wait in line long to start). We had the usual craziness and teasing, but for all that pretty good rounds for us. Gene was one stroke away from a medal, I think we each got a hole in one, and most importantly, I had a better score than Phil (that one stroke means everything). We had our complementary slices o' pizza after, played skeeball and splat the spider, and found a new addition to the Fantasyland regulars: bumper cars! Yee ha! That was great fun.
Having found out that we were going to have the Necon's Got Talent? Show instead of the always agonizingly interminable That Damn Game Show, we set out for the Dollar Store to muse our options. Anya already had a plan and a purpose, but the rest of us meandered around finding things that made us laugh (ant farm candies and plaster rubber duckies). After the requisite stops at Stop & Shop and the 1776 liquor store (wondering yet again if they make all of their profits the third week in July), we were back to the conference center and actual panels. I caught part of the artist panel and then the gay writers panel which was good to see at Necon, which can sometimes seem just a little too much of an old boys network (which in this country inevitably seems to mean making lots of
homophobic jokes). We skipped out for dinner to our favorite seafood restaurant which had changed names but little else. I had a lobster roll -- yummmm.
We were back in time for the Hall of Fame induction and the tasty art show reception. Gene bought me one of
Richard Sardinha's cool faux-medieval
fire dragon plaques which will go up in my office. Then it was Meet the Authors time which meant packing us and all our books into a much too small lounge which was quickly filled with people and enormous heat. We didn't sell near enough books (Gene had his latest tome too), but Elena was a big hit with her off-the-cuff caricatures of folks passing by. We caught a couple of shorts played in the lounge later:
"Eater" based on Peter Crowther's short story (and which even he hadn't seen yet) and "Peepers" scripted by
Rick Hautala. Again, a not very late night, but we were pacing ourselves (and anyway, I had an idea for the Talent Show that I needed to write).
Saturday we had another big breakfast and spent so long chatting with John Douglas that we missed half the film panel that we told Phil we were coming to (sorry!). The myth panel afterward was excellent. It featured Ginjer Buchanan, Laura Anne Gilman, Charlaine Harris, Toni Kelner, Tom Sniegoski. I had seen Toni at World Fantasy and enjoyed her comments, Ginjer and Laura Anne are always interesting -- Charlaine Harris was a
hoot. It was a terrific and lively panel, much fun to hear about the very different ways people developed their books' mythologies -- from Tom's remembrances of the gigantic archangel Michael painting in his childhood church to Laura Anne's detailed research into lightning strike victims. I got a big laugh out of Charlaine's struggle with Irish fairy names and made sure to go up and tell her afterward that, having worked with medieval Irish texts, she was right to have gone with her gut and just made a choice. Inconsistency is the by-word of medieval Irish works -- argh! Look for the new HBO series based on
Charlaine's True Blood this fall. I bet it will be a lot of fun.
We had a birthday dinner with Rod and Elena at the
Lobster Pot and did a little shopping before hand. I bought a great new moss green wool cape for a fabulously cheap price -- I guess July is the time to buy woolen goods. The Pot was amazing as always, although Rod wouldn't let us tell the waitress it was his birthday. Back in time for the Talent Show, which to seemingly everyone's surprise had a good balance of talent. Phil and Anya and Sephera did a spooky mad scientist version of
"Two Ladies" and there were a number of guitar singers, which prompted referee
Cortney Skinner to declare a good number of 5 yard penalties even though
Beth Massie declared them all to be "The best thing I ever saw!" MC
Craig kept things moving, and although we were the penultimate act, it hardly seemed like a long evening (unlike ANY version of the game show, especially the "shortened" ones). If you want to read our bit, you
can, but I warn you that it's chock full of in-jokes as all Necon bits tend to be. I prefaced it with the comment "We're academics: we don't sing, we don't dance, but we have put our research skills to use for
you." Most of the humor relied on Gene's delivery of the lines, of course.
The big surprise: the long rumored film brainstormed by Phil and shot by Sal actually appeared. Of course there were some technical difficulties that prolonged the wait for the captive audience, but finally it was on. Amazing -- "tubesocks" became the word du jour and Gene found a new fan base. Next up was the far too gentle roast of John "Mac" McIlveen, bookseller extraordinaire and then the usual Saturday night babbling conversation, helped along by another load of saugies. We did stay up late talking and talking, blessed at a late hour by Laura Anne Gilman, the Lovely Lady of
Laphroaig, celebrating with the film-makers and co-stars, listening to Dan's Navy tales, getting a
Larry Blamire update from Cortney (bad news,
Trail of the Screaming Forehead is in limbo; good news,
Dark and Stormy Night is coming along) and chatting with all and sundry while the singers sang, the movies played and everyone had fun.
Sunday morning came too soon, time to pack up and check out, although the day continued. At the town meeting, people came around to the realisation that despite the initial shock of the conference center, it had its positive aspects. Since we can't be on campus next year either, the decision seemed to be that we would return -- perhaps with dehumidifiers. We didn't have the usual barbecue send off, but the food was good and the desserts plentiful. The usual sad goodbyes followed, always making it difficult to extricate yourself from the crowd, but we finally did.
We filled up on cheap Massachusetts gas and made the long drive home in good time. We found that there had been big storms in Albany which we had missed. As I walked to the lake this morning, there were still limbs down every where. Of course, I miscalculated and found myself soaked by a shower while I walked. The ducks laughed at me, but I didn't care. Naturally, it stopped raining by the time I got back to the Aerie. Figures.
If I had my PDA here, I'd put up a picture to show it, but I got bit by a bee as I smacked it to my head walking to campus. All right, so maybe it wasn't dead when it bit me (but it was close). I nonetheless had Walter Brennan's words in my head. Ah, that impossibly thin Lauren Bacall, and the absolutely smitten Bogart -- fun film.
Coming to Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut on August 16th & 17th at 1.30pm: the Finnish film Unna ja Nuuk, which I simply have to see! Not only for the Finnish angle, but it overlaps with so much that I am writing now that I can hardly believe it. It's been making the rounds of various festivals since its release. Here's the description from the RAW eNews:
Always a reason to celebrate! There's a great new book store in the area, East Line Books. The proprietor, Robyn Ringler, is just a wonderful and enthusiastic woman -- and writer! You may remember her from my radio show, Prose at the Rose, where she talked about things like being Ronald Reagan's nurse when he was shot.
I just got word (well, it came the other day but I was at Necon) that Wild Violet magazine is going to publish my creative non-fiction essay "Me and Margery Kempe." What's it like? Well, Gene said it doesn't sound a bit like me (which he's said about the last couple of things I've written) so I can't tell you. If you don't know Margery, read about her here. She's a singular medieval woman, who forged a new path trying to live a religious life in the secular world -- and driving most of the people around her to distraction. What could I possibly have to say about her? I guess you'll find out soon.
This morning as I walked to the lake, I glimpsed a few houses ahead of me a nun in full habit getting into a mini-van. Just then I looked to my left to see a vine-covered cottage with a nude man disappearing down the stairs. The name plate by the porch said simply "Faust."
I'm always the last to know: "Fluorescence" is up at The Harrow, that swanky logo'd journal of fun stuff. Check it out and read the other stories, poems and reviews. Let 'em know what you think (or even donate to the cause of good writing).
HB, big bro! Hope it's a great day hangin' with the little bro in the ancestral home.
In that situation, one should always check the Meaning of Liff (all the gods bless Lloyd and Adams):
Tip o' the keyboard to my theoretical co-editor Scott for linking to this at the Got Medieval blog, which highlights the following comments:
On the way to the post office and grocery store today, I walked past a woman I have seen once or twice before so she's probably local. The weird thing is she looks an awful lot like a latter day Baby Jane Hudson with her garish lips, raven-kohled eyes layered with blue and a thick pancake crust shifting like tectonic plates across her face. Today she was wearing a red and white striped top that didn't quite cover her midriff. I'd make a stab at guessing her to be in her sixties, but who can really say. Was there a Blanche sitting at home waiting for her?
Here's Squeak and Stinky in a typical pose at Susan's in front of the gigantor tv screen. But I'm back home again to the rain and the warm weather that seems to be constant across the Eastern seaboard. When we were on the beach at Fort Macon Thursday, a big storm blew up -- enhancing the already giant waves in advance of Bertha and resulting in a lightning strike a little too close for comfort. Well, not for me as I had wandered over to the ocean side of the beach and missed it all. Waah! But I enjoyed sitting on the rocks as the spray broke over them and walking along the almost completely deserted sands (who else is foolish enough to be out in a thunderstorm?). Black headed gulls, sandpipers and even a few pelicans cruised by. Later we headed over to the hotel bar that had a happy hour featuring free hot hors d'œuvre -- yum. Even though it started raining, we sat out on the pier for a while, then jumped in puddles in the parking lot pretending to be either five year olds or Gene Kelly as the mood struck.
Off we go to the beach house today (because Susan's palatial home isn't quite enough luxury for our indolence). Yesterday was our visit to the North Carolina Museum of Natural History where we saw lots of critters and things -- lots o' snakes, giant bugs and a good number of skinks and salamanders -- although sadly we found the butterfly refuge closed -- waah!
Off on an early flight from Albany, briefly stopping over at Baltimore. In Carolina now at Susan's palatial home, relaxin' as if this were something I did everyday. Kitties surround us waiting for patting. Snacks and bevvies at hand with plenty of friendly conversation. It's good.
In the morning I'm off to a reunion of the Three Mothers in North Carolina, where we'll be staying at Susan's lovely house and enjoying the wit and wisdom of Mildred and Birdie (emergency health care, as always, provided by Ron if needed -- maybe it won't be this year.... ha ha ha!). Normally this coincides with Trinoc*coN, but they're taking a year off to hold a relaxicon, so we're doing the same thing.
Check it out -- pal Phil Nutman has a fabulous new publication, Scream and Scream Again, his acclaimed critical history of the British horror film production company Amicus. Here's the scoop:
