[CON] NorWesCon 23
gbres...@my-deja.com
for 14 years. It was at NorWesCon 10 that a group of seven of us
conceived of the basis for the Tai-Pan universe, including plotting the
epic "New Queensland Station" story that was eventually published in
issue #2. We've been hosting Tai-Pan parties every year since NorWesCon
11.
This year was the first time in a while that I wasn't a member of the
con-com, and it felt really good to just go to the convention and not
have much of any obligations.
The con has been at the Sea-Tac Doubletree for years, which is a large
hotel with excellent facilities. Coincidently, as we were climbing out
of our car at the check-in parking lot, who should pull into the spot
next to us but Fractal, another local fur. Poor guy was suffering from a
migraine, and just wanted to get checked in and lay down, so we didn't
visit, much.
This year we had a room in the tower, since one of our other members had
gotten a room in the party wing. We found two of them (Sky Rigdon and
Keith Johnson) fuming near the elevators because they had been waiting
two hours for their room. Also, Richard Chandler had decided that they
were his greatest friends and was being clingie, which was doing bad
things for several people's moods.
They hung out in our room for a few hours. By the time they got into
their room and the rest of our party arrived, we'd missed the only
Thursday afternoon events any of us were interested in, so we went to
dinner, then retired to Keith's room to play cheapass games until the
wee small hours of the morning.
Most of my Friday activities were going to panels (they had an excellent
series of hard science panels friday afternoon) and hanging out in the
art show. I wasn't very impressed with much of the art show this year.
The artist guest of honor (whose name has suddenly escaped me -- his
most recent big-name cover I can think of is "Ringworld Throne") had a
lot of originals of his work for sale dirt cheap... unfortunately they
had all been bid up to auction by late Friday, so I didn't get any. He
had a little note posted on his panels that he had been paid so much for
all of these things, anyway, and he thought the originals ought to go to
people who would appreciate them for what they were, not in the
collection of someone who didn't even know the books or magazines
involved.
Anyway I should skip over the dances and such (NorWesCon has four
dances, and they are generally excellent; they don't play as much of the
kind of music I like to dance to, anymore, which I attribute as a sign
that I'm getting old).
Saturday afternoon has been the traditional time for our party. One
reason for the afternoon time slot is that the masquerade is Saturday
evening, and a lot of the crowd that comes to our party like to go see
that live. We also don't serve alcohol nor play loud music, which seem
to be what people expect from an evening party. We do leave the room
open until quite late, but the crowd is usually down to a doizen or less
by the time the masquerade starts.
Anyway, we had upwards of 60 furs come through the party for at least
part of the afternoon/evening. Fortunately not all at once. I think the
peak was about 30 people in the room. I spent the first four hours
staffing a table with back issues of the zine, and selling memberships
to ConiFur. And I spent half of that time talking with Lex Nakashima and
Steve Gallacci, mostly gossiping about various furry cons.
There were a few sketchbooks being passed around. Steve even grabbed a
few to draw in. Sky was giving away a whole bunch of color prints, which
at one point I thought was going to make a couple of people come to
blows.
Some sub-groups of the crowd played some cheapass games (Spree and Give
Me the Brain). And I had one artist show me his portfolio and ask to
become a contributing member.
At seven we adjourned for dinner. About thirteen people went from the
party to the restaraunt together, then we came back and continued with
the games and looking at people's sketch books. A few more people showed
up as the evening went by. We watched the masquerade re-broadcast on the
closed circuit channel. There were some excellent costumes (I have to
say that, one of my co-workers got two master class workmanship awards
for her costume) but the only ones that were fursuits weren't very good.
At furry cons I see better hall costumes, to tell the truth.
My big accomplishment for the con was that I got the issue of our
fanzine which had already been autographed by C.J. Cherryh, Steve
Gallacci, and Lex Nakashima also autographed by David Brin. So the four
creators who inspired us to do the Tai-Pan have all signed one issue.
Dunno what I'm going to do with it, other than make it part of the wall
display at the next dealer's room where I have a table against a wall.
Overall the con was a nice relax-i-con for me. There was one panel on
genetically engineering species for specific planets which had a moment
of furriness in it, and there were some art panels with Wolf Lahti, but
otherwise there wasn't much of interest to either furry fans or anime
fans - at least not if the ONLY thing you are interest in is furry or
anime.
I didn't get in to the fanzine lending library once the entire con.
Rykandar has been trying to get readings in the library for years, so
they finally moved the library over into regular event space... which
meant that throughout the day there were constantly readins going on in
it, and if you just wanted to come in and look at the zines, you
couldn't unless you waited until very late at night. I haven't had a
chance to talk to him yet about that.
Normally the sorts of complaints I get after our room parties (or
during) are that we don't have alcohol or we're all too damn friendly
and won't let someone just come in and be a wallflower. This year we
heard a couple of new ones, one being that afternoon is a horrible time
to start the party. Since Yarf! isn't coming up and having a party on
Saturday evenings any more, we're now the only furry event at the con,
so we'll be thinking about how we might do things differently in the
future.
And this has rambled way too long.
--Gene
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