Philcon

[drcpunk]

mnemex and I went to Philcon, along with Julian Lighton. We'd been hoping to lure Beth Bartley out there this year, but under the circumstances, that wasn't possible. We'd also hoped to lure akawil and ladymondegreen out there to celebartae akawil's successful defense, but that wasn't happening either. We took NJT to SEPTA, getting off at Suburban, I think, as the train was skipping Market, and the walk wasn't long.

Well, except for Julian having a 180-degree mental shift of the area, and me being ravenously hungry. Chinatown was a further walk than the hotel, but I'm glad we did it first. We ate in a good Vietnamese restaurant. I got 2 coconut drinks. Julian's soup fought with his windpipe a couple of times, but was successfully defeated.

I felt much more human after dinner, and we checked into the hotel. As anticipated, Registration was closed for the evening. The convention wasn't, though. mnemex and Julian went gaming. I chatted with ot at Harold Feld, and then we went to the Hal Clement Memorial Filk, with a lot of good hard sf songs, including Uplift, and the song Harold wrote for Hal, as well as Mark Mandel's song for Halley Bopp (I hope I spelled that correctly). A bit much death for my taste lately -- Hal, Beth's father, and, as I discovered, Darrell Schweitzer's mother.

Some time after the memorial turned to a general chaos filk, mnemex came up, getting Harold to sing his Ivan song and singing his additional verse afterwards. Then, the 3 of us did a song about a friar who tried to seduce a woman and wound up in a well. Not bad for something unrehearsed.

Then, mnemex and I found blackholly and set up a lunch date for Saturday. We went back to the filking, while she went to the Eye of Argon reading. Mark Mandel sang what is probably the sweetest bondage song I've heard, although, on searching my brain, I can only think of about 3 songs on that theme, counting his.

We crashed early, adding nightstalker to the inhabitants of the room. He slept later than the rest of us, as we had various commitments. First, we went to the con suite for breakfast, but it was closed. So, we dashed across the street to the Reading Food Market and ate. I did a bit of shopping, then got mnemex from the gaming room .We met blackholly and went to Chinatown, eating dim sum. There were coconut cubes, and I had a bunch of those. I seemed to be on a coconut kick. Danny Lieberman was at the next table with someone whose name I forget, and they recommended some kind of curry beef patty that the restaurant had run out of. We still had plenty of good food.

We got back to the convention center, and I shopped a bit more, breaking this up with watching mnemex, Julian, Eeyore, and others play giant Ice Towers, and talking with Nancy Leibowitz about numinosity, Harry Potter, and Mary Sues.

I was fairly restrained on purchases, getting Darrell Schweitzer's newly reprinted Mask of the Sorcerer and Marilyn Brahen's Claiming Her. Both authors autographed the books. I picked up a collection of essays on John Crowley's works. I got a copy of blackholly's Tithe. This one I already had, but Larry Smith was actually carrying it, after not having had it for a while, and I decided to follow mnemex's example and reward this with cold cash. As another book dealer pointed out at World Fantasy, book dealers don't want to know what someone wants to see them stock. They want to know what people will actually buy. I gave the book to nightstallker. I had promised myself not to take too many books home, after all. I got Wen Spencer's Tinker as a freebie, but that's legit.

I also bought a 1 oz flask because it was cute and little. It went surprisingly well with my small plush Cthulhu doll, who had come along for the ride. And I picked up another knife. It has a really nice feel to it, even if it isn't something to carry outside of SCA feasts. Harold said to think of it as knife-shaped jewelry, and on that level, I spent far less than I would have had I bought more amber. It looked sharp, but when I ran the edge across my finger, it did not break the skin. I suspect it will cut bread and meat just fine -- is it a question of leverage?

mnemex and I did leftovers for dinner. Then, he went to gaming. I napped as my increasingly tired cellphone recharged. I wandered around various parties, being joined by mnemex in the Columbus party, where I talked with Eric Raymond about conventions and larps. He and Catherine enjoyed the Mad Scientist larp we ran, and I'm hoping Tabula Rasa may lure them in. I actually finished a second draft on two more characters at the convention. About 9 more to go.

Around then, I realized that Baby Cthulhu was gone, but we found him at my previous stop, the Con Suite, just down the hall. He'd been trying to slip up behind someone and eat brains, I suspect. I went to the filk, and mnemex joined me there as well, despite a throat of increasing soreness. Carson was there as well. He needs to come to more conventions and filks.

I drifted out, chatting with Harold and Nancy. mnemex joined us, as did a couple of other folks. Then, we wandered back to the filk, sang a few more songs, and headed for the room, planning to get up for a noon checkout. I reluctantly decided to wash my hair.

I was just drying off from that when the alarms went off, and it sounded like first a call to evacuate, then a statement that Things Were Being Investigated. When I was sufficiently clothed, I stuck my head out to see bundled up people heading for the stairwell. mnemex, Julian, and I grabbed coats and some stuff, including nightstalker's coat, in case we should run into him, and headed out, down, outside, and to the lobby / elevator area.

It turned out to be a false alarm, to no one's great surprise, and I got our checkout time extended to 1:30. We slept till 12:30, which would be about 6, 6 1/2 hours, and got out of the room. As we were planning to travel with Harold on the train, I wound up staying at his 3pm panel, which turned out to be smofish -- folks considered questions of tradeoffs for moving Philcon to other locations in return for getting November weekends, how this might affect Darkover, what things to offer fen, why membership might be declining, other conventions with similar and different issues, stuff like that. As I understand it, the folks there were from various conventions, and all tried to pool experience and ideas on a regular basis.

By 4:30, all of us were heading to SEPTA, along with several other folks. It was a schlep, but not as bad as I'd feared -- the #7 train was running to Queens from Manhattan, so it was a 2 train switch after Penn, not a 3 train switch. So, I'm typing this up and then aiming for sleep.