What is an All-Con?

Following recent posts, a reader has asked, "What is an All-Con?" Reader must have sci-fi conventions explained to her, as she has recently moved to the land of the Big Chicken, just down the street from Atlanta. Atlanta, of course, will be home to Dragon Con in September, and she'll need to know stuff in order to decide whether to attend it or get the frak away from it. (And in case you didn't know, frak means f**k, in some other language, long ago in a galaxy far away where machines have taken over and decided to wipe out the human race.)

Okay, first off there are professional cons and fan run cons. "Professional" doesn't mean better, it means that it is someone's job and they expect to make money from it and keep doing it on a regular basis. Some fan run cons are very good. If there were not some very good fan run cons out there, it would never have occurred to anyone to start companies to have professional cons. See?

Okay, the professional cons I am most familiar with are Creation Con and Vulkon. On the one had, most of the cons I have been to were Creation Con. On the other hand, most Creation Con events I have been to were a bit on the boring side. I know that sometimes in other parts of the country, Creation Con has really big events and that they sometimes work with fans to do something different, but for the most part they don't do that here. At a Creation Con you have a star (or maybe stars plural), an actor from Star Trek or Stargate or whatever you are a fan of, and you go to hear that actor talk and maybe pay extra to get his or her autograph. You hear the actor speak in the main auditorium, and while you wait for that there are other things going on in the main auditorium, but if you aren't interested in that your only other option is to visit the dealer's room and maybe buy some t-shirts. There is nothing else going on, just programming in the main auditorium and shopping in the dealer's room. Sometimes the dealer's room is just the back of the main auditorium, so it's all just the one room. And, if all you want to do is hear the actor speak and maybe buy autographs and t-shirts, then you're fine with that, and Creation Con is just what you want.

Vulkon was a lot like that, except that they had two other rooms for fans to do stuff. So if you weren't interested in whatever was going on in the main room, you could go to another room and play a game, hear Klingon poetry readings, or watch a makeup demonstration. And of course, there was the dealer's room.

More recently I have been to another professionally run con. I don't remember the name of it, and I guess I've been ignoring it for years thinking that they only did Star Wars and comics. It was somewhat in between Creation Con and Vulkon. There's the main auditorium and an autograph room and a photo op room and a dealer's room. There was no fan run room when I went, but there were at least fan tables set up to promote local clubs. Creation Con and Vulkon usually have a costume contest (though it is usually short), but I don't remember this other group having one, though last time there were plenty of people running around in costume.

Fan run cons are usually different. There's always something going on in five or six different rooms, and you have to get out the schedule and figure out what is most interesting to you. You might even go to the con for some reason other than to see the actors. There are movie screenings, writing workshops, makeup demonstrations, model-making demonstrations, costume workshops, singing, and sometimes even children's programming. And there's usually a big costume contest, followed by a dance, and lots of parties. At the end there might be something called the Dead Dog, which I have never been to, as it sounds like a lot of people getting really falling down frakking drunk (but I can't say for sure, cause I have been, see?).

Some of the conventions are mainly for fans of a particular thing, like Star Trek or Star Wars or Babylon 5 or some animated shows from Japan. Or, some cons try to have a little bit for everyone. Some of the cons have gotten very big, and have just everything for everybody, like Comic Con in San Diego.

Dragon Con is sort of like Comic Con's little brother. Only it's getting bigger. Really Big. It's taken over four hotels and the underground. And there's a parade. A big parade, with costumes from just about anything you can think of.

Dragon Con is too big for me. My friends say that it's great and I have to go, but I don't think that I ever will. I don't really like crowds. And I can watch the parade on YouTube.

Okay, so what is an All-Con. All-Con is a fan run convention. It is not a big convention. It is more my speed. I liked All-Con the one time that I went, though not everything there is for me. Like, I did not watch the performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (I'm still thinking that there might be a prize for the oldest virgin). But, there are five or six rooms, movie screenings, workshops, parties, a costume contest, a dance, etc....

After a while, all the cool con names are taken. You have to call it something. Since this was one of those cons that tries to have a little bit of something for everything...All-Con.

This year's main guests at All-Con are Richard Hatch (of Battlestar Galactica, not the naked guy from Survivor) and Anne Lockhart (of the real Battlestar Galactica, not the recent re-imagining). But if that doesn't interest you there will also be Stormtroopers, Browncoats, people fighting ripe produce with swords, etc...

Okay, I hope that explains. If you like, I'll try to find some YouTube links for you.

I'm not going tomorrow. I don't know if my friend is going either, she might still be too upset about the whole ticket situation. I already have Anne's autograph. I would like Richard's, but the ticket price, plus another thirty or so for the autograph, plus standing in line, plus I can't tell from the schedule even when I would be standing in line. Now there's a $15 Sunday only ticket, but on Sunday there's no costume contest, no Battlestar blooper reel, and I'm not sure when or if Richard and Anne are going to speak. At this point I'm going with my original decision. No $20 or less Saturday ticket, so I don't need to go.

Update on the All-Con Situation

Okay, after months of asking about one-day tickets and being ignored, and then being told that there will be no one-day tickets, and then even some people were told that they were being a problem for only coming to All-Con on the one day and having the bizarre thought that they should only pay for the one day that they attend the convention, All-Con will now be selling Sunday only tickets for $15.

You still can't buy a one-day ticket for Friday or Saturday, when the stuff that most of us want to see is going on.

What the frak???

So I don't know if at the last minute they've figured out that they screwed up and just can't do anything about it because they didn't have any one-day tickets made up and so the only thing that they can do is sell left over badges on Sunday, or if they don't think that they screwed up but they might as well try to make a few extra bucks on Sunday.

The person who told me about the Sunday tickets is really, frakking mad.

Still not going. If somehow there had been a Saturday only ticket, I'd have gone. If somehow there had been a Friday only ticket, maybe. Okay, Friday is tomorrow, and I have stuff to do, and this is short notice, so probably not. But at least there's stuff that I want to do on Friday, so I would have had to seriously think about it, even if I ended up decided against it.

Anyway, if you're out there and you're not totally mad like my friend, and Sunday is the day that you really wanted to go anyway, now you can go for $15. Just thought I'd pass that on.

Don't go to All-Con this weekend

Unless, you have already bought the $40+ ticket, or you were planning to buy the three-day ticket, or you don't mind paying the $40+ for just one or two days. Apparently, this year you can't buy a one-day ticket.

Attempts to find out about one-day ticket prices were at first ignored. Some people persisted, and were finally told that there would be no one-day tickets, and that if you just wanted to come for the one day you would still have to pay $40+ for the whole weekend.

The last people to inquire about one-day tickets reminded All-Con that some of the people wanting one-day tickets could only get one day off from work or other responsibilities, and if one-day tickets were not offered people would stay home rather than purchase $40+ tickets, an amount unfair and charging for events that they mostly would not be attending.

These people were told that "the higher demand put upon us by the people who support us the least (one day)that was the basis for the decision to do away with the discounted tickets."

I'm not sure how to interpret that.

For one thing, I've never thought of the one-day ticket as a discount. You go for one day, you pay for one day, and that's fair enough. That isn't a discount. You go for three days, and if you pay for a weekend pass ahead of time, the three-day pass is usually less than the prices of the individual three days added together. So buying the three-day pass is the discount. Like, maybe a Friday ticket is $10, a Saturday ticket is $20, and a Sunday ticket is $20, but a weekend pass is $40, making either Friday free after paying for Saturday and Sunday, or Sunday half-price after paying for Friday and Saturday.

I'm not sure about this "higher demand" part either. If it's just that they sell more one-day tickets, maybe they should be nicer to people buying one-day tickets instead of acting like they are some sort of burden. If a bunch of people were buying $20 tickets, and you do away with the $20 tickets, that's a lot of twenty dollar bills that will be spent somewhere else. And I can't quite picture what extra work the one-day customer is causing for the convention, unless maybe the customer actually had a good time and decided to come back the next day and pay for another ticket, and the cashier had to do the same job twice for that customer instead of just once for the customer buying a three-day pass.

If read another way, it just sounds like the one-day customer is just somehow more trouble to have at the convention. Like, people who just come for one day to get an autograph and buy a couple of things somehow make trouble for the convention and require more security than the people who stay out partying and such for three days.

Anyway, not much of it makes any sense. Several of us have just decided not to go. A few people are going cause they already bought tickets, but probably wouldn't have bought tickets if they had realized their friends were going to be treated like this. And then of course they will not get good word of mouth advertising, cause people this year either won't go or will go and get really mad cause either they were overcharged or they didn't get to meet with friends who had planned to buy one-day tickets. Bad experience this year means less people next year.

It's sad. I only went the one year, for the one day. I thought it was a good convention, and I missed some things that I would have liked on Friday, and I wished that I'd bought the three day ticket instead. I was planning to go the next year, but life happened, and I didn't go the next year, and so forth. I could have gone this year, probably just Saturday, but I currently have a limit of about $20 for such things, and so I am not going, and my $20 will be spent at another convention later that doesn't sound as interesting.

If All-Con hadn't made this stupid decision, they might have sold some one-day tickets to people who liked the convention enough to make plans to come back. But people who make stupid decisions are usually quite attached to them and usually keep them. So I don't expect that our complaints will do any good.

Next year, when the club is voting to move things around to accommodate All-Con, I'll vote that we not move anything, and that we might not want to bother with it at all.

Yesterday's convention

I suppose everything went as well as could be expected. At least it was for me. I think other people might have had different feelings on the subject.

G picked me up at my place, on time, and drove me to a restaurant where he liked to have breakfast. I had never been there before. I liked the place, though what I ordered was not the best for a person trying to lose weight. Even after having breakfast, we were still a bit early, as I had been told that the general admission people would not be allowed in til 11:00, and they wouldn't even be sold tickets til 10:15. So we had time for G to run an errand, and we still arrived around 10:30. Not in any hurry, we spoke to a few people in the parking lot, and then a friend came to tell us that they were letting people in a bit early. So I told G that I would see him later, and I went off with my friend. By the time we found where to buy a ticket, there was no line at all.

At least, there was no line for buying a ticket. There was a long line for getting autographs. I wasn't sure that I wanted any because a.) getting an autograph costs a lot more than it used to, and b.) I wasn't sure if I wanted to stand in this line. So I went off in search of something else to do, thinking that the line would go down some and I might do it later.

My club had a table, somewhere. I looked around, but I didn't see it. I went in the dealer's room, not so much looking at the dealers, but looking around for my friends in case they had been moved to this room. I didn't see them. I ran into a few more friends and talked for a bit, then walked around looking again for the club table. I had walked back and forth the entire length of the place twice without seeing it. I found another friend, who pointed out the table for me. I hadn't seen it before because of all the people in the autograph line in front of it. Okay, mystery solved.

So after figuring out where most everything was, I went back to the dealer's room. I didn't see much that I wanted, which was good, cause I didn't want to spend much money. The main thing that I wanted was Nichelle Nichols' autograph. Getting Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) to autograph a picture would cost $30, and I wasn't even sure that included the picture.

There were other people there besides Nichelle Nichols. I had met Anne Lockhart (original Battlestar Galactica) before. Erin Gray from Buck Rogers was there. The girl who had played Batgirl in the 60s was there. The medtech from the now cancelled Stargate Universe was there. But I think most of us wanted to see Nichelle Nichols, Morena Baccarin (Firefly and the new V), and Trisha Helfer and Katee Sackhoff of the Battlestar Galactica remake.

Now, at about $30 each, getting all the autographs would have cost me over two hundred dollars. I already have autographed pictures of Anne and Erin, so that would bring it down to $180. Not much of a Batman fan, so I didn't really need that autograph either. And as much as everyone else loved the new Battlestar Galactica, by the end of it I was mainly still watching cause everyone else loved it so much I just wanted to keep up so I'd know what everyone else was talking about. So the remaining three autographs would have cost me $90. And even if I'd had $90, that's just too much. And really, while I'm still a fan of Stargate Universe, I don't really feel that I need that autograph either. If I spent all the money I had I could get two autographs, and it would have been really nice to have Morena Baccarin sign something, but no.

It did not used to be this way. When I first started going to conventions, the actors who did autographs did them for free (or at least, we did not pay them directly, it was included in the price of the ticket). So either the actors would autograph stuff for everybody, or they would autograph stuff for a limited amount of time they had been paid to do that, or they didn't autograph anything for anybody (I was shocked the first time I paid to see Leonard Nimoy and he didn't do autographs, and DeForest Kelley didn't do autographs at public appearances because he had arthritis), depending on how much the convention had paid them and how long they were scheduled, etc.... So if the actor was doing autographs, the only additional money you had to spend to get an autograph was maybe five dollars for a photo for them to sign, but if you didn't have that they might still sign your convention program.

Then came the VIP tickets and the Gold tickets and the preferred seating tickets, etc.... You had to pay to get autographs, and they probably weren't going to do autographs for everyone, so if you really wanted an autograph you should buy a special ticket that put you at the front of the line and such. I have never done that, but some of my friends always do that. The price of getting an autograph went from free to five dollars to ten dollars to twenty dollars.

I pretty much stopped getting autographs then, though I did still purchase a few, and I got five free for volunteering at a Stargate convention. But it's been about ten years since I've done much of this sort of thing. I miss it sometimes. (But I don't miss it enough to spend a lot of money and/or drive to the other side of Dallas.)

Someone from my club stood in that long line and spent $120 getting three autographs. He wanted two more autographs, but Trisha and Katee were late and he'd have to get them later. He ate lunch and then got back in line.

I talked to a few more people and then had another look at the autograph line. It was about half the size it had been, but it was still a line. And that was just the line to get into the room. You had to stand in line again for each autograph.

And the people with VIP tickets got to go to the front of the line, whenever they happened to arrive. So you could stand in line for a long time, nearly get to the front of the line, and then have dozens of people just walk in front of you. And the preferred seating group was also supposed to go before the general admission people, but there seemed to be some confusion about that. Anyway, I thought that maybe most of the VIP group had already gone through the line and there wouldn't be that many of them walking up to the front. But I still had to seriously think about standing in this line and spending $30.

While I was standing there thinking about it, one of the volunteers was trying to explain how the line was now being split into two separate lines, because Trisha and Katee still were not there. If you were waiting for either of them you stayed where you were, but if you just wanted one of the other autographs, you got to move forward quite a bit. You still had to stand in line again once you got into the autograph room, but still, if I got in line right then that cut the wait time by more than half. So I got in line.

Once I got inside the room and found out which line I was supposed to be in, it was okay. There were people waiting for Trisha and Katee. Nichelle and Morena both had long lines, but not near as long as the line outside. There was a very small line of people waiting to get Batgirl's autograph, and a few people talking to Anne and Erin. There was no one waiting for the Stargate Universe medtech. I felt sorry for her. If I wasn't so short on money I think I might have gotten out of line and gone to her table for a bit. It didn't stay that way forever, but she never quite had the line the the actors around her had.

When I was halfway through the line to get Nichelle's autograph, I saw Katee come in. Stuff happens. Planes are delayed, and there are accidents on the freeway, and people are late. It is annoying for them, and it is annoying for us.

I got Nichelle's autograph. I couldn't think of anything interesting to say. I had seen all of the other original cast members in person; she was the last.

Now that I had my signed photo, I went back to the dealer's room to buy a photo protector. I probably had several at home, but I forgot to bring any. It's been a long time since I've gone to a convention. I'm just not organized.

A bit later I see the guy from our group still in line in the hallway, waiting to get autographs from Trisha and Katee. That surprised me, as I had seen one of them come in and I thought the other one was just behind her. But just before he could get into the room, one of them was called away to do a photo op, and not only are photo ops scheduled for a very short time, they cost more than autographs, so the photo ops were not delayed anymore than necessary. He was still waiting in line when I went off to get a seat to hear Morena speak.

The schedule had been changed. There should have been someone else speaking in the main room when I arrived, but the room was nearly empty. There had been an announcement, but I had missed hearing it in the autograph room. But it was not important.

I went to look for G, and did not find him. This worried me a bit, that I would not find him before the other stuff started, and maybe he would want to leave as soon as Nichelle finished speaking but couldn't find me. I spent about twenty minutes looking for him, gave up, and went back to the main stage room. There were a few more people there now, so I did not have the perfect seat that I gave up, but I still had a good one. K came to join me, and I saved G a seat just in case.

Now there was confusion as to where the preferred seating people were supposed to sit. The VIP sections were clearly roped off, but I didn't see anything that said preferred seating. Someone sitting behind me had paid the extra ten dollars for the preferred seating, and she thought that she the general admission people would be asked to wait outside until all the VIP and preferred seating ticket holders were seated, and that this would be repeated again between speakers. I expected that since no one had asked me to wait that other than roped off areas it was first come first served, and I had a good seat and I would be there for the next three hours or so.

Morena spoke for almost an hour, and then Nichelle spoke. At that point I found G, who was not concerned one way or another when we left. We stayed to hear the last panel, which was Trisha and Katee. The other actresses did not speak that day, and most of them were not scheduled to speak on Sunday.

G and I left. I do not know when or if the other guy from our group (who paid a bit extra for the preferred seating ticket) got his autographs from Trisha and or Katee. Except for lunch the only time I saw the poor guy he was standing in line for something.

I was tired by then, and mostly glad that G was ready to leave. Others were going hang around for a bit and then head to a restaurant. It would have been nice, but I didn't need it, and I'm eating quite enough non-diet type food as it is.

I got home and thought how this wasn't my life anymore. I kind of miss it, but on the other hand I kind of don't. I wish I had something else entirely, but I haven't a clue what or how to get it.

But I am very glad that after all this time I have finally seen all of the original Star Trek actors.

New plans for today

At rather the last minute, I decided I might want to go to a convention today. I've known about it for several months but didn't think that I'd really want to go. It's in Plano, which is not the other side of the world, but it is the other side of Dallas and way north of my comfort zone. So I thought I'd just see if I could get a ride. I was pretty sure that I could get a ride with K, but I'd heard earlier that he was driving S, and S has become a ranting atheist and I wasn't sure that I wanted to be in the car with her for that long.

As expected, when I asked the question K offered, and the offer was repeated my someone else going with him, but I decided against it, not because of the ranting atheist, but because it just sounded really inconventient for K in addition to having to run an errand before the convention in addition to already having to pick up S before meeting the other guy. And S lives nowhere near me, and arranging to meet up with the other guy (which the other guy did suggest) would have had the other guy driving in the wrong direction.

But at the same time as the guys offered, G also offered, and he isn't driving anyone else, he just wants someone willing to go to the thing early enough to get breakfast at a certain place near the convention. G and I are not friends, so it was very nice that he offered at all. I accepted his invitation. So far no one else is meeting us at the restaurant.

The diet is pretty much shot for the month now. For breakfast I will probably order something that is more calories than I normally have for both breakfast and lunch. And then tomorrow there is pizza at the meeting, and then the next two weekends there's other things going on which also involve eating stuff that one shouldn't eat while trying to lose weight. So I guess for now I'll just try not to gain anything back rather than stick to the diet and not participate.

Back to the convention.

It isn't much of a convention. It sounds like the Creation Cons I used to go to, with the only point of being there is to see Nichelle Nichols (and debate if I should spend that much money to get her autograph). Nichelle Nichols is the only one of the original group that I haven't seen in person. There will be other actors there, and it will be nice to see them, but I just can't seem to get that excited about seeing actors, or at least not the way I used to. And that's all there will be at this convention, or at least that's all that has been scheduled, so there's no contest or fan-run panels, and there's only the dealers room and the main stage.

Got to go now. Must get ready early today because of the breakfast plans.

Behind schedule again

Before I get into that, someone has read the last post and asked if I had fun at the party. Sorry I didn't make that clear. I had fun at the party. You maybe don't think so, cause I don't drink alcohol and I don't dance, but I still enjoy going to a couple of parties. I like to hang out with my friends, I like to eat, I like raffles and such, and most important I like to watch people.

I don't know if it was said that children were not invited, or if just most of the people knew what to expect and didn't bring any. Not that anyone wore anything particularly out there, but in this group there's usually a lot of costumes that prominently display the quadra-boob. I only remember one such costume this time, but it just all depends on who shows up and if they've had time to make anything new or if they'll just show up in last year's ren faire stuff.

So at some point I went to get something to eat, and I came back to find one of my friends had been told she wasn't dressed appropriately. Did she display too much boob? No. Did she have on a really short skirt? No. Did she wear something skin-tight or see-through? No.

She wore jeans, and this was a formal dance.

Okay, it says that somewhere, but I don't think that it says anywhere that jeans are forbidden. It is a party, and it is supposed to be fun, and for some people stressing over what to wear is not fun.

At our table, no one was particularly in costume. I had the black slinky dress, but I didn't do anything particularly interesting with it. No latex, no hat, just plain old me but in a dress. A male friend had nothing interesting to wear, but he did put on a tie. One girl had on a uniform top with jeans. This is a no no when one is out in public to represent a particular group, but when one is only at a party to enjoy oneself, it shouldn't matter if jeans were worn instead of black dress pants. Another girl wore t-shirt and jeans, another wore jeans and a very average looking top, and still another girl wore black shirt and pants with a lot of loud costume jewelry. Half of our table would dance a lot, and the other half didn't dance at all.

But it is a party. You should do and wear whatever is fun for you. I probably wouldn't be having much fun if I didn't wear something interesting, but I wouldn't want other people to stay home if they can't wear something equally nice. That would be almost as unacceptable as someone trying to make me dance.

After that little bit of drama was over, we went back to having fun.

One of my friends will soon be off to Dragon Con. I, of course, will not be going. I never go. I never have any money. I rarely even go to anything here anymore, so going to Atlanta is out of the question.

Anyway, my friend is going. I should think that he has to go somewhere to show off his costume.

He is Ironman.

Seriously, he is Ironman. He probably put as much effort into this costume as the comic book character put into his suit. He wore it to last year's Halloween party, having this idea that he shouldn't enter it into the costume contest. He thought that it would be unfair to the other people who wanted to be in the contest.

He has the best costume, cause he worked on it all year and spent a lot of money on it. It is a damned good costume. What the hell is unfair about entering and winning a costume contest?

Some people in our little group used to go to conventions and some of us even used to compete, but now most of us seem so focused on ren faires and our Halloween Party that we almost forget to enter other contests. And most of our Halloween costumes just aren't convention material, but Ironman fits in just fine.

At some point my friend was talked into going to a local convention and entering that costume contest, and he won first place.

In Atlanta, he will get some real competition, but I still think it is a good idea for him to try.

Back here, I have all but given up on this year's Halloween party, at least as far as the costume contest goes. I just don't have the money to do anything new. I have a new dress, but I can't buy anything interesting to go with it. I seriously have no money at all. I will have to figure out something to do, mostly with what I already have. The most I can do is fix a new hat, but I'm losing interest in even trying to do that.

So I should be putting up Halloween decorations today, but I'm not going to. The house isn't clean enough. And yes, there are already Halloween decorations up, but I mean that I won't be getting started putting up any extra Halloween decorations. The decorations that are already up are there all year.

Halloween is just two months away. There's just no time to do anything.

At this point, I am even starting to worry about Christmas. I knew from last year that unless there were major changes I wouldn't be able to do much. I considered just making an announcement that I didn't have enough money to participate in any gift exchanges. But I had so much fun last year, and I got it into my head that I could give my friends some homemade things that they would like, if I got an early start on it.

And of course, Christmas is now less than four months away, and I haven't started on anything. If fact, for the most part, I can't even remember what it was that I was going to make. I remember that I was going to make a few scarves, but that's about it. I even remember buying a lot of supplies at clearance sales, only now I can't remember what I was going to do with them.

I've wasted the whole year.

Billy Mummy will NOT be in Dallas this weekend

Okay, he wasn't going to be in Dallas anyway, he was going to be in Richardson. Close enough. Anyway, I just read that he isn't going to be at the Sci Fi Expo this weekend because of some family emergency. So I hope that whatever it is isn't too bad.

As for the fans who wanted to meet him, try again in August.

Me, I had already decided that I wasn't going anyway. I hate Dallas. And I hate going to a lot of near Dallas because it pretty much means driving through Dallas. So after a month or so of thinking about it, I decided not to go, even to meet Billy Mummy. And for me that would have been the main reason to go. Sure meeting all those other people would have been nice, but the main thing for me would have been seeing Billy Mummy.

Hey, look, Tony Todd. How did I miss that the first time?

No, still not going. Not for Billy Mummy and Tony Todd. So definitely not going now that Billy Mummy isn't going to be there.

So, why am I posting this?

For some reason, this was where some people first heard about the whole Fedcon disaster, so I thought that I should post Billy Mummy's cancellation, and the fact that some of the other guests might be late (Michael Hogan's flight was delayed), etc.... But these little things happen, so it's not really like Fedcon at all.

Wardrobe and other malfunctions

It is probably going to rain some more today. It looks like it will be nice and sunny next week, but I'm not sure how long it will take for everything to dry out so that I can get back to the gardening.

Later today and tomorrow and Sunday, my friends will be going to a convention. Right now I am not planning to go, even though with the weather I have no plans for anything else. The convention is run by a group that I found to be a lot of fun the one other time I went, but there's no one in the guest list that I'm just dying to see, though Aaron Douglas will be there, and I'm sure that a lot of my friends are looking forward to seeing him. I hear that he's a nice guy.

The convention itself reminds me of bad things that started that same week three years ago. That really shouldn't be held against anyone at the convention, but as it turns out I haven't been back since then. Also, they moved to a different hotel, since the roof leaked at the one I went to. The new hotel is nowhere near the other one, and I would either have to drive on the freeway going through Dallas, or I would have a very long drive on surface roads. I don't care to make such a long drive there and back, especially since it is likely to be in the rain and it would end up with me being in an unfamiliar area.

But the real deciding factor is that I have no money.

Of course I have no money for tickets to the thing or buying autographs or cool sci-fi stuff from the dealer's room. That's just a given that I don't have money for that. And I really don't have money to eat out, so I would have to take peanut butter sandwiches, and if anyone asked me to go out anyplace afterward I would have to say no. And I have nothing cool to wear, so it would be just me in maybe a club t-shirt and jeans, and even the jeans are against me at the moment, and I have no money to go out and buy new ones.

But the really sad thing about the lack of money situation is that I don't even feel like I have enough money to volunteer to work at the thing. I have the day off and nothing planned. In fact, I have the whole weekend off and nothing planned. But last month someone made a point of saying that they still needed volunteers, and that if I worked enough hours it would get me a free ticket for next year. That's a good offer, one that I don't remember getting before.

But I don't think that I should spend the money even for just gas and a couple of sodas.

So that's a bit sad. I've just been reminded that a friend of mine has a serious entry in the costume competition, and I won't be there to cheer him on.

Speaking of costumes, it has recently occurred to me that I have nothing to wear on May 8th. Staying home on May 8th is not an option. My friends will be out in force (and of course, in uniform) to promote the club and the new movie.

Right now, I don't really have a uniform. The old ones either just don't look good or don't fit me at the moment. I'm not even sure that I have any decent black pants should someone offer to loan me a shirt.

The borg costume would not really be good for this occasion, though if I looked better I would probably wear it anyway. I probably still have a Centauri dress or two around, but no bald caps or head wear to go with them, and that stuff is Babylon 5 anyway. I have tons of costume stuff, but most of the stuff that still fits is either Harry Potter or an old Halloween costume. I just don't have anything Star Trek related that I can wear two months from now.

So I'm surfing the web, looking for pictures. With the economy and my current personal lack of funds, my other personal problems, and having less than two months to come up with something, making a new costume should be the last thing on my mind. Still, I'm looking. If I found the right picture, I might try it anyway.

I've decided that trying to get something that looks like the new uniform is out. One of the designs is simple enough, but the fabric is some odd polka dot thing that I probably won't be able to match. Plus that dress would require me to go out and buy new boots.

I'm thinking that the best thing as far as a new costume would be some Vulcan robes. But that would also require wearing Vulcan ears and probably plucking my eyebrows. And then there's the glasses. I am blind without them, and they tend to look out of place on an alien face, so I spend a lot of time getting the glasses on and off to pose for pictures and hoping that I don't actually lose the glasses at some point when they are off.

But there are some costume designs that aren't too bad, if I could just find a decent picture of what I want. The glasses would still be a problem, so I would have to add a pocket somewhere just for them. And depending on the color I could use some things that I already have around.

Still, it seems a totally silly thing to be worrying about right now, and I have zero funds to spend on such a thing. But somehow that doesn't stop me from looking at the pictures.

A screenplay treatment, writing seminars, and a Deep Space Nine script

Recently a friend sent me a screenplay treatment for a sci-fi movie. The screenplay treatment was written not by my friend, but by another friend of my friend, and I don't know the other friend. So I'm reading a treatment written by a friend of a friend, see? More about that later.

I used to go to sci-fi conventions a lot. Some of them had writing seminars. I didn't get to go to many of them because I didn't have the money. Once J. Michael Straczynski gave one, and I didn't have the money, and I was really not happy about missing that one. So I saved money so that I could go to the next one that sounded like the person giving it knew what he was talking about. I can't remember, but the guy on the next one either worked for Babylon 5 or one of the Star Trek shows for a year or two.

So we got to pick this guy's brain for a few hours. To start of with, he went around the room and asked us why we were all here. One guy held up a script and said that he was here to find out the code, did the little brass bracket go in the first and second holes of a three hole punched script, or did the little brass bracket go in the first hole of a two hole punched script, or did all the holes need little brass brackets, or did we need to switch to another color bracket or staples or a maybe a magic paper clip? And about half of us were laughing, and the other half didn't have clue what he was talking about and moved away from him in case he was contagious.

There is all kinds of stuff that might happen to your script or book or whatever after you submit it. For one thing, you have to be sure you are submitting it in the correct form. If the place you are sending it wants everything with certain margins and double spaced with one staple on the right side, and you send in something with the wrong margins or single spaced or a staple on the left side, all your hard work probably went straight into the trash bin. Nobody read any of it, except for your name and address so they'd know where to send the rejection letter.

There's other stuff you have to know about. Like you might need an agent. If you send a script to certain shows without an agent it is returned unopened, and also some places only read completed scripts and will not read any of your story ideas. Then you probably have to sign a lot of forms before anyone will read your completed script that was properly submitted through an agent, cause they might already have something very much like it, and they don't want to be sued because you think that they stole your idea.

And there's the whole slushpile thing. If you've never been published, your book is going to first be read by someone who doesn't really decide anything important. The only thing that person gets to decide is that you don't deserve to have your book read by anyone else. And most of the time, that is exactly what that person will decide. I have heard that some of these people get paid per book, so they'll get paid more the sooner they decide that your book isn't worth reading.

Anyway, I don't remember what was said about magic paper clips at the writing seminar, other than he confirmed that you need to find out the format that particular place uses and follow it exactly even if you have to go to Kinko's and have the whole thing reprinted every time. And unless you have a personal letter requesting something be sent single spaced, never ever submit something that isn't double spaced. Otherwise, single spaced stuff gets dumped in the trash, completely unread.

At another convention, I met R. R was the guy who came over and asked if his group could sit at the table with us, and his group ended up including the guy in the Vorlon suit. So we were all talking about this and that, and I think that the guy in the Vorlon suit says something to R like maybe, too bad about that whole Deep Space Nine thing.

What Deep Space Nine thing?

So R has to start over at the beginning of the story since I had never heard it before. R had also gone to a number of these writing seminars, and after this one guy kept seeing R over and over again, he says something like, it's time to show me what you've got. So R has been working on a Deep Space Nine script, and the guy giving the writing seminar is someone who either reads Deep Space Nine scripts himself or is in a position to have that person read the script. And they read the script, and they like it, and R gets a check for three thousand dollars and a note saying what changes that they would like, etc....And R says, cool, and then he goes back to his life and thinks about the changes that should be made to the script.

The Deep Space Nine people do not hear from R for a week, then two weeks, and then they continue without him. Whenever R got all the problems with the script worked out, he sent it in, and they weren't interested anymore. R's script dealt mainly with stuff happening to a certain character, and at the time they bought the script that would have worked out, but several weeks later they had read other scripts, and they had decided to do something different with the character. They couldn't film R's script and the other things that they wanted to do, so R's script was never filmed. So R got the three thousand dollars and a lesson learned, and that was that.

I've since lost contact with R and have no idea if he went on to sell more scripts.

Okay, back to the friend of the friend who wanted comments on the sci-fi script treatment.

I assumed that this was one wannabe helping out another wannabe. But that's okay, and I spent about five hours writing out the problems that I saw with the story. And I emailed him my first set of comments and then waited for him to email me back so that I could make some more comments. I think that both my friend and the friend of the friend are (unlike me) professional writers, but I don't think that they have any movie credits. While I'm waiting for the friend of the friend to email me, the friend emails me and tells me not to get upset if it takes the guy a few days to get back to me, cause he gets tons of emails and he's busy with his other writing, etc....

I sent the email on Sunday. It is now Wednesday. I have read a few things that make me think that maybe this isn't just one wannabe helping out another wannabe, that maybe this guy has had a conversation with someone who could actually get this movie made, that maybe another friend of a friend is really interested in this guy's story, or at least is interested in making some sort of story on the subject into a movie.

So now I'm worried that this friend of a friend could really sell a movie script if he would change a few things, but he's going to blow it cause he's taking too long and there are other scripts and treatments to read, etc.... Also, the guy's treatment is typed out singled-spaced. He says that he knows people are supposed to type double-spaced, but he thought that he would save some money and paper and space on the computer and such, and so he typed it single-spaced instead. While I appreciate it being sent to me single-spaced, he'd better know to change it to double-spaced before anyone else reads it, or it will go straight into the trash bin. So that could totally ruin things for him too.

And I think that I've got the answer to the guy's main problem with the story, but for all I know he hasn't even read my first email, so I don't think I'm going to write out anything more until he does.

Sad news, even if not so sad for me personally

I just got up this morning and I haven't done much yet except check my email and such. I got several messages that a certain person had died. I can't say that I knew this person, and I can't even say that I remember this person's name.

But I did met him about fifteen years ago, and I did know who they were talking about. He was a guy that went to all the conventions carrying around a stuffed bear with a champagne glass. The guy never had a name badge, because all the badges had the bear's name on them. The bear became somewhat famous in the area and was asked to judge costume contests and such.

Anyway, this guy has died, and I want to asked perhaps inappropriate question -- are they going to bury the bear with him?

Someday I'm going to die, and maybe people will get up and find messages that I have died, and if the name doesn't ring a bell you might remember someone who used to wear a certain costume.

More headaches

I have my 400th post coming up soon, and I haven't yet decided what I should write about. I'm sure it will be nothing that could rival either the 100th or the 300th post. Not that it will matter much. Regular readership is down now that I've decided to focus on me rather than writing stuff to make fun of other people. Also a lot of the bloggers I like have other things going on in their lives which keep them busy and don't allow for a lot of blog time. Both things are fine by me.


I do seem to have gained a reader in Australia. But he doesn't comment. Welcome, reader from Australia.


Even if I do find something brilliant to write about, I may not get to. The computer is acting up again. The screen usually filled with icons now has only six, and one of those is the recycle bin. Both of my word processors are gone, all the video players are gone, Photoshop is gone, etc....


I'm afraid my exciting plan for today included doing a bit of laundry in between watching episodes of Life on Mars. I think that they have been erased as well, which is sad since we had only watched two of them.


Life on Mars is a British show, and it isn't at all what it sounds like. It's actually about a cop, who is probably in a hospital near death, but he seems to living back in 1973, trying to solve crimes without benefit of DNA testing, cell phones, computers, and other miracles of modern science. At least one of the 1973 crimes has a connection to a case he was working on in the present time.


Speaking of British TV, I found a DVD at the library of The Eleventh Hour, episodes 1-4, starring Patrick Stewart. After watching it, this appears to be the same show that is coming here in the fall, only with different actors and produced by Chris Carter of The X-Files.


I'm sure British people do all sorts of baffling things, but until a few years ago the main thing that I questioned was their television. It makes no sense. Not that the shows themselves don't make sense, because after you get past the odd word here and there like solicitor it usually makes total sense, and most of the time it is rather good. Of course, (other than Dr. Who and Baby Spice the Dinosaur Slayer) most of it that we see here is stuff from either Masterpiece Theater or Mystery, so it would have to be good. But they don't have normal seasons. They often make only six episodes or so, and then say that's enough for this year. I'm guessing that they have the same drivel soap opera stuff as we have here, but make something good that resembles The X-Files and stars Patrick Stewart, and then they only make four of them. The still popular Faulty Towers had only about eight episodes. It makes no sense.


But it is finally August now, so in a month or so I can go back to watching regular American TV and not worry so much about downloading British stuff.


Elsewhere in the world, my friends who have money are off to Vegas, where they are buying up what is left of Quark's bar and the like. They are having a big Star Trek convention there, right before The Star Trek Experience is going to close. I have been to Vegas once, and we went to the Star Trek Experience before they added the Borg and Klingons. I have never been to an out of town convention or anything as big as what is going on in Vegas. Going to such things requires money, which requires getting a job, etc.... Of course, even if I had a job I wouldn't make enough to go to Vegas, and if I had a job I'd been stuck going to work this week instead of whatever boring thing I'll be doing around here, so I still wouldn't get to go to the convention.


Well, back to, whatever.

General Hammond of Texas is dead

Or at least, actor Don S. Davis is dead. I'm just now hearing this, but it happened Friday. Also Friday was the release of the DVD Stargate: Continuum, which I didn't know about either.

Don S. Davis was at the last convention I volunteered at three or four years ago. He was a very nice guy, and he signed autographs, and he read us a poem about smoking with Willie. Most of my regular readers won't probably won't understand, but that's Willie Nelson. A general hanging out with Willie is an interesting image.

Anyway, in my little group we are glad that we got to meet him and we're sorry that he's gone.

And a few more thoughts on Fedconusa

One of the vendors who went to Fedconusa has decided to sell Dedcon T-shirts. I'm not going to copy the entire thing, but I will at least copy the contact info at the end of my post, and the included list of other area conventions. I like the idea of this person making money from selling these T-shirts because a.) after the what happened this weekend it would be nice of one of the good guys did make some money, and b.) this is probably someone who used to work at GalaxyFair.

After I wrote my first post about Fedconusa (which I really did not expect to be read by many people other than my regular readers), I was left a comment from a certain Michael Nelson, who is one of the people in charge of our local fan run convention Fencon. He was concerned that people would get Fencon confused with this Fedconusa, since most of us were just saying Fedcon instead of Fedconusa, and Fedcon and Fencon sound a lot alike. So he left me and some other people this comment, and I didn't think that many people would see it on my blog, so I copied it to someplace where I thought that it might do more good.

And I was very surprised at the negative responses. Okay, I don't know those people on those other forums who were accusing Michael of pretending to have a problem so that he could get attention and sell a few more tickets to his convention, so I don't know if that's just the type of behavior that one should expect. But I was really surprised to get negative responses from people that I know. I know people who go to this convention, and come to think of it, I even know a few people who work at Fencon, and I really expected the comment to get more positive responses. But there was actually someone making fun of Michael, saying that the mighty Fedcon has been around for sixteen years and that no one is really going to get Fedconusa confused with his little fan run convention.

Well, I for one had heard of Fencon before, but had never heard of Fedcon. Fedcon is in Europe. I don't know about what goes on in Europe. I know so little about what goes on across the ocean that last week I was pleasantly surprised to find out that twenty years ago a TV show was made based on the novel Chocky by my favorite author John Wyndham. So I'd never heard of Fedcon, and I don't think that it's unreasonable to think that other fans here had never heard of Fedcon, and that we might have heard of our local Fencon, and some people might be confused.

And the other point of ridicule seemed to be that no one could get Fencon confused with Fedconusa. They don't sound anything alike, and Fedconusa has three extra letters. Except that most people weren't saying or writing out the whole Fedconusa. I never heard anyone call it that. For the most part people had shortened it to Fedcon, thinking that they were actually going to a Fedcon run convention, and no was saying Fedconusa until this weekend when the real Fedcon wanted distance from Fedconusa. So Fencon and Fedcon do look alike and sound alike and I have no doubt that people were getting confused and contacting Fencon by mistake. The names are similar, and they are both in the Dallas area, so people get confused. There was no reason to make fun of the people who were confused, and there was no reason to make fun of Michael by saying he was pretending that people were confused to get attention for Fencon.

But while we are on that subject, how about a little attention for fan run cons. They need all that they can get. They usually don't make that much money, and if they do make any money they often take that money and try to have another convention the next year. Fan run conventions are possible because a lot of people volunteer time and effort, sometimes donate artwork and materials for stuff like fliers and websites, etc.... And a few of those people put up a lot of their own money to get the thing started. So if the convention doesn't make enough money, they just don't get that money back. They could be out thousands of dollars. Then what? They put off going to the dentist that year, they cancel their vacation, they don't get to fix the roof that starts to leak, they get behind on their credit card bills, etc.... And they don't have a lot of money to start with, so most of their advertising is usually ads put up at the comic book store and fliers handed out and clubs and other conventions.

It's almost all word of mouth for them, so maybe while we're talking about this stuff, we should talk about fan run conventions for a bit. We used to have something called GalaxyFair, and it was great, but it's gone now. And we used to have something called StellarOccasions, and I loved it, but it's not around anymore either. And there's something called All-Con, which is still around, but a few years ago it took a hit when there was a flood and the hotel roof leaked. So let's hear it for the fan run conventions, and let's hope that we don't lose anymore of them.






******************************************************************************

Because I can do it (and partially to mitigate my losses for the weekend) we will be producing a limited edition commemorative t-shirt that says “I got FRAKKED at F(crossed out)DedCon USA! anyone interested in obtaining one of these needs to contact me by Thur 6/19/08 as I’ll be printing and mailing them next weekend. My email is pegasushelp@gmail.com.

The direct link to order our "Commemorative" shirt is http://www.pegasuspublishing.com/I-Got-FRA...rt-p-29357.html

100% Cotton Red Shirt with Black Print.
We came..., the fans came... The hotel threw us out.
Limited Edition T-Shirt. Commemorating the 2008 FEDCON USA debacle wherein an inexperienced under capitalized promoter tried to put on a large scale media convention that was abruptly cut short.

Design ©Pegasus Publishing. All Rights Reserved."

There are a lot of good SF/Fantasy/Anime conventions around the country and particularly in Texas. I would like to hope that the first time attendees who were burned by this unscrupulous promoter to please please give conventions another try. They really are a lot of fun. Here is a small list of DFW area shows. DallasComicCon/SciFiExpo (www.scifiexpo.com); FenCon (www.fencon.org); ConDFW (www.condfw.org); All-Con (www.all-con.org); Project A-Kon (www.a-kon.com); Texas Frightmare Weekend (www.texasfrightmareweekend.com); AnimeFest (www.animefest.org); Portus (www.hp2008.org); Texas FearFest (www.txfearfest.com). And for those of you who travelled up from South Texas I recommend Apollo-Con Jun 27-29 (www.apollocon.org) in Houston.

Scott Merritt
www.PegasusPublishing.com

Since my last post is getting so much attention...

I have a few more words to say about Fedconusa.

I have already mentioned how Aaron Douglas tried to warn fans that he might not actually be at the convention, since he was still waiting on plane tickets and such. The fans who actually got word of this appreciate his efforts, but unfortunately most people showed up at the convention without having any clue that anything was wrong.

The organizers of our local Fencon are really hoping that people do not get them confused with Fedconusa, since when most of us were talking about Fedconusa we shortened it to Fedcon. These are all separate groups. Fedconusa was a one time thing, Fedcon is a respected group in Germany that has been in business for sixteen years, and Fencon is our local Dallas group that has put on an annual convention for about five years. If I remember correctly, past guests of Fencon include David Gerrold, Larry Niven, and S.M.Stirling.

So far, my friends do not have refunds, and are not holding their breaths.

When the stars arrived at the convention and found out that they weren't going to get paid, they stayed anyway.

Anne Lockhart (Sheba from the original Battlestar Galactica) saw the Fedconusa website and saw that she was scheduled to appear. Not having heard how Aaron Douglas and other actors had not been paid or sent plane tickets, etc...she made her own travel plans, thinking that there had been an error and all would be straightened out once she got here. That's right. She paid for her own plane tickets and hotel rooms. Once she got here she found out that she wasn't getting paid and she wasn't getting reimbursed for her travel expenses, but she stayed and signed autographs and such.

A dealer I know didn't arrive at the convention until Saturday morning. About ten minutes after he finished setting up his table, he's told that the convention is canceled and he has to take it all down and leave.

While someone in the main room made the announcement that the convention was being canceled, some of the volunteers hadn't been told, and they were still selling tickets to the convention.

The hotel allowed one convention room to stay in use on Saturday, and most of the stars went there to sign autographs. John Billingsley even continued to honor the Gold Pass and did not charge those people any additional money for autographs, though some of the fans went ahead and paid him anyway. Actors JG Hertzler and Robert O'Reiley found out that the convention was canceled while they were halfway through having their Klingon makeup put on. They finished having the makeup put on and went on with the autograph and photo session. Garrett Wang (Ensign Kim) "stole" a photo, and the Klingons chased him around the room.

Anyway, the actors tried to save the show and see that the fans had a bit of fun. Still, the people who were there are calling it Frak-con or Dead-con.

The Felgercarb has hit the fan

Seems like about a year and a half ago that one of my friends mentioned something called Fedcon. They had heard that Fedcon put on some really nice sci-fi conventions in Europe, and that they were planning something in the Dallas area. Great. But it looked a little expensive for my tastes, and I'm not as into conventions as I once was, but we'll see.

So Fedconusa was having their convention at one of the hotels at DFW airport this weekend. My friends have all been looking forward to this for most of the year. But when I saw it was at the airport I pretty much lost interest. I hate driving in Dallas, and I feel the same about the airport (toll booths and parking fees and I don't know where I'm going and I'll get run over by someone else who drives there on a regular basis.) And I didn't want to spent the money. $45 just for Saturday, $99 for the whole weekend, and of course a couple of my friends wanted the $269 Gold Pass and bought extra tickets for the dinners and such with the stars. I didn't want to part with my $45, and that other stuff was way out of my price-rage. I all but put it out of my mind.

It's been so long since I was really into conventions that I totally forgot to look into the option of volunteering. And I also forgot that we now have a train that goes to the airport. I maybe could have done that if I had thought of it in time. I usually get picked if I volunteer because right now I don't have a job and can work on Friday. Problem is, if you are working the four hours that you want to be doing something at the convention, is it worth the effort for the free ticket that you don't enjoy that much? Sometimes, there is something else in it for the volunteers, like a special arrangement for autographs, so it's usually okay. Sometimes my friends buy the expensive tickets AND volunteer.

This week while I was reading all the emails from my excited friends, I was starting to regret my decision to stay home. But, I figured that a week before the convention was too late to ask about volunteering. I have been out of the loop, somewhat deliberately on my part, and this is what happens sometimes. Don't cry about it, just go on with the original plans of watching movies and cleaning and such for the weekend.

On Thursday, a friend made one last attempt to get me to go to this thing if I wanted to buy a ticket for Saturday. He offered to drive me and everything, if I was up for the party scheduled til 2am. And he doesn't live anywhere near me, so that's a bit of a drive, especially to take me home at 2am. But, no, thanks anyway.

Yesterday I went to see The Incredible Hulk and did some cleaning and some sorting and then watched several episodes of The Tripods. And then I was checking my email, and there's strange things going on at the airport.

People went to buy their Saturday only tickets and were charged $57. The website says $45. There are often different prices for advance tickets and at the door tickets, but if the website says $45 after the convention starts, you'd think that the prices on the website would be the at the door price.

Some of the guests that were scheduled to be there weren't there. Other guests weren't paid. Some guests didn't get their plane tickets. Guests were scheduled, then dropped because of scheduling problems, then put back on the schedule after the time conflicts were resolved, but now they aren't at the convention. The guy in charge of the event is having back problems and is going to the hospital instead of the convention.

A lot of people were going to this convention specifically to see Aaron Douglas, who plays Chief Tyrol on the new Battlestar Galactica. He was one of the guests who was on the schedule and then off and then back on. He was dropped this week, apparently knew nothing about it, and was waiting for plane tickets which never arrived. Here's a quote from Mr. Douglas--

"This is the most unprofessional, egregious behaviour that I have ever seen
displayed. FedconUSA you make Creation look like Shoreleave or Dragoncon,
two of the finest run conventions a fan will ever attend."

Most of my regular readers won't understand, but this is quite a serious insult. I read it and thought that's really bad, but apparently if you've heard Mr. Douglas talk about Creation the insult is meant to be even worse than it first seemed to me. He had more to say, but I won't quote the rest of it. I think that some people will soon be trying to take advantage of Mr. Douglas after something else that he said, and I'm not going to add to the problem by telling anybody else who doesn't already know what he said. Not his fault, and everyone should leave him alone. Besides, he's a guy who likes fans, likes going to conventions, and I think that most everyone who wants to see him or get his autograph or whatever will have many other opportunities to do so.

What else? Yesterday was Friday the 13th, and everyone now says that they should have known better. And it turns out that Fedconusa is not run by the same people as Fedcon in Germany. People were trying to warn the fans since August, but most of them did not get the message. People with dealer tables are losing money, even though I heard that they didn't actually pay to rent the tables. It is still a weekend that they wasted being at a con now filled with unhappy people. Unhappy people do not buy stuff.

Besides the up to $269 that some people paid for Gold Passes, and extra money that they might have spent on dinners with the stars and such, many people have paid for hotel rooms and airplane tickets or spent lots of time and gas driving from other parts of Texas or maybe Oklahoma. If they paid for the actual convention stuff with a credit card, they should eventually get that money back, but the money spent on gas and hotels and such is probably just gone.

So I'm reading the emails of how bad it was yesterday and how volunteers today should be prepared to deal with lots of angry fans and how the convention isn't going well so if you haven't already paid for tickets you should probably just forget it and stay home. And while I'm sitting here reading the emails a few more pop up. The convention has been cancelled.

The convention has been canceled? But it already started.

Then there's a message from the guy in the hospital who is supposed to be in charge of the thing saying that everyone who bought a ticket today is getting their money back, and that it will take some time but the advance tickets will be refunded as well.

That does nothing for the people who spent time and gas, rented hotel rooms, or bought plane tickets.

I'm glad that I ended up staying home. Except for not being able to find the last episode of The Tripods, I think I'm having a pretty good weekend.

The Five Meme

I'm picking up the Five Meme from Dmarks, and like Dmarks, I'm not actually tagging anyone. If you are interested, let me know, or just have at it.

1 year ago I was...Are you kidding? Pay attention people. Here's some links if you need to catch up,
http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/05/monday-morons.html
http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/02/year-before-that-horrid-person-invaded.html
http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-keep-meaning-to-get-back-to-original.html
http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/02/monday-morons.html
but basically I was trying to stop my husband from throwing away an almost twenty year relationship because of some dimwit in London he met through a blog. Nothing worked. I have know idea what to do about the situation now.

10 years ago I...thought that the most evil thing that a person could do to you is cheat you out of a lot of money you worked for. There was a lawsuit, and I signed stuff, so I can't really talk about it. But let me say that the lawsuit was mostly a waste of time, and while I would not try to talk someone out of suing an employer, I would say the best thing to do is just get a new job as soon as possible. You think that by taking all of these notes and such that your employer will eventually pay up rather than have you go get a lawyer, but that's not really the way it works. Take the notes and get ready to sue anyway, but you'll probably never get everything you are owed. Cut your losses. Get out at the first sign of trouble.

5 songs you know all the lyrics to--Songs have lyrics? When I was going through all the drama of the past year, it came as a shock to me that all songs have lyrics, and most of them remind me of something unpleasant. Radio stations should not be allowed to broadcast when someone is going through a bad breakup. But let's see what songs I know all the lyrics to. I don't know. Does the School House Rock stuff count? The opening of the original Star Trek had music, but I don't think that counts as a song, does it? I might could stumble through the Enterprise theme. Possibly I know all the words to some hymns. And of course I'd like to buy the world a Coke, but I'd probably screw that up too.

5 things I'd do if I were a millionaire--Well, that would depend on how many millions I had. Give up on the whole get a job thing and become a full time art student. Make take a trip to London and...never mind. Take a trip to Hawaii, Alaska, and the other eight states of the Northwest I have not been to yet. Go to Trek Expo, Dragon Con, World Con, take a tour of the Stargate set, try to hit every Ren Fest in the country, and spend most of an October in Salem. Have someone invent a hovering neon sign that points out cheating spouses, homewrecking-sluts, Enron executives, sex offenders, drunk drivers, drug dealers, etc....

5 bad habits--Procrastination. Bad eating habits. I never learned to clean my room. Not finishing stuff I write. Spending too much time blogging.

5 things I will never wear again--I'm not sure that I have anything that really fits into this category. I have stuff that I don't wear for a very long time. I have stuff that gets made into costumes. I have shoes and such that finally falls apart on me and I throw them away. I save t-shirts that I don't wear anymore but I keep them just in case I want to make quilts from them someday. I would probably save old socks and make tribbles out of them, but I don't cause it's been a long time since I've made any tribbles, and how many tribbles do you need anyway? I would probably say that I'd never wear permed hair again or that I'd never wear blond hair again, but if someone had a Uni perm thing that still worked I might try it, and if my hair gets to be more gray than brown there's no telling what color I might dye it. But the one seems doubtful and the other seems a long way off.

5 favorite toys--my newest favorite toy I haven't actually bought yet, but the school has two screens that I can use to make the mud in my backyard into terra cotta clay, so after the test pieces are done I'm going to go to the ceramic supply place and buy a set. My husband just bought a thing to copy DVDs, so I'm going to copy the second set of Time Tunnel for my brother and a friend. Not really a toy, but I have an emergency cell phone now, which is a really cool thing to have if you can remember stuff like taking it of the charger and taking it with you. I love my VCR, and soon I'll have a DVD recorder hooked up too. Last year before all this stuff happened, my favorite toy had to do with the bed, but I won't go into that. Next year I might have a totally different toy that also has to do with the bed, but I won't go into that either.

Guess that about does it. Everyone have a good weekend.

Monday Morons at conventions

As some of you may know, I recently went out of town the week of spring break. I wanted to rest and spend some time with my husband. I should have been home catching up on housework and doing stuff in the garden, but I decided that other things were more important.

While I was gone, I missed two small sci-fi conventions that were in my area the weekend of the 16th. I wanted to go to both of them, but besides the fact that I also wanted to go out of town and rest, I also did not have a lot of money and did not want to be tempted to buy autographs and such. Most of my friends went to one of them, and they had a blast even if they didn't spend money on autographs and such. Our little group even had a private room, and some of the actors stopped by. Can't get much better than having the actors in your private room.

But I didn't write this post to say I was a moron for not going to the convention. I did not have a perfect week away, but if I hadn't gone I think I would have regretted it. And I did not write this post to call my fellow get-a-lifers morons either.

I wrote this post to complain about the people who organize the conventions.

What were they thinking, organizing two convention on the same weekend?

I personally don't think that there is enough stuff like that to do in the area, and then there are two things the same weekend? You'd think that one of them would here about the other one and reschedule.

Unless maybe one of them did that on purpose.

I don't really think that was the case this time. I think that this is the third year for All-Con, and they are trying to make this an annual thing, and you want to try to have your annual thing on the same weekend every year. I did not go to the first one, but I went last year.

As for the comic con, those happen fairly often, and I think that the guy running that show either picks a day when he can get a good deal at the convention center, or on a day that he thinks he'll get most of the talent he's interested in signing. In my opinion, All-Con was not promoted very well this year, so it is very possible that comic con guy did not even know about the other convention until it was too late.

But in the past, we had a couple of groups doing conventions here, and they would be on the same weekend. It looked like Creation Con was trying to run off Vulkon. Vulkon would plan a convention, and then Creation Con would have something that same weekend, with really cheap tickets. Or Vulkon would plan a convention around a certain actor, and then Creation Con would plan a convention nearby for the month before that, with the same actor.

One time Vulkon planed a convention in Irving around the guy who played Odo (Rene Auberjonois) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Creation con then hired the same actor to be at one of their conventions the month before in Plano. If everyone already got Rene's autograph in Plano, then they probably wouldn't have any reason to buy tickets to the convention in Irving. Anyway, when the actor found out that Plano and Irving were in the same area, he decided to cancel on the Plano convention. He made the commitment to Vulkon first, and he didn't want to see them get screwed. I think he made the right decision, but it ticked off a lot of people who bought Creation Con tickets, who then couldn't get their money back. The convention in Plano wasn't cancelled, they just got a different actor. I don't even remember who it was, but it was someone who'd already been to that area, and a lot of the people already had that person's autograph.

After a couple of years of this sort of thing going on, Vulkon quit coming to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And Creation decided that they weren't making enough money here, so they quit doing Star Trek conventions here too. I think that they did a couple of Buffy the Vampire Slayer things, but I didn't go to them. And they did a Stargate thing two years ago, but that is all that they've done in the area for the last ten years or so.

So there was this whole stupid thing of both companies fighting over the area, and then neither one of them wanted to do business here. So we all got screwed.

I really hope that this isn't the same thing all over again.

100th post: Dinner with Shatner

I'm not sure how far back this was, maybe 1995. Voyager was the new Star Trek series. I was in a different Star Trek club than the one I am in now. I went to a lot of conventions. I had some fun.

Some people in the club I am in now and the club I was in then volunteered at a museum sometimes. I tried to do that for a while, but I quickly dropped out. I had volunteered at another museum before that one and was used to getting of stuff in return for my work. Working for no money is one thing, actually working for free is something else.

And I hate Dallas anyway.

This museum in Dallas was going to have a Star Trek exhibit. At about the same time, there was a small convention planned near the museum. People in the area were getting interested in Star Trek.

Wouldn't it be cool if we could get the actors who played the four captains on the four Star Trek shows all together for some event?

So I think I knew about The Legacy of Star Trek Dinner Gala before the actors did. More people got involved, and it looked like it might actually happen some time that September. There was all kinds of scheduling that had to be worked out, but none of the actors had actually said no, so maybe it would all work out.

Kate Mulgrew, Avery Brooks, Patrick Stewart, and William Shatner were all very busy people at the time. Finding a weekend when they were all free turned out to be very difficult. But it was finally narrowed down to two possible days: one day everyone but Kate Mulgrew was available, and on another day everyone but Patrick Stewart was available. Since Kate Mulgrew was the star of the new show, Patrick Stewart got bumped from the program.

Jonathan Frakes came instead, so they could still call it the four captains' dinner if they wanted.

Sometimes the local clubs are asked to help out at conventions and such. Volunteer security and directing foot traffic and stuff like that. For a while a friend of mine organized people from many clubs in Starfleet Region 3 (Texas, Louisiana, and Mars) to help out with such things, usually in return for free admission and free advertisements for the clubs and stuff like that. This was something she was not paid for, but it over time it seemed to develop all of the hassles of a real business. People she barely knew would call and complain that she did not pick enough people in a certain club, people demanded to work on certain projects after the schedule was already filled, I've worked twice as long as the new guy and he got just as many freebies as I did, mom always did like you best, etc.... She was getting tired of the whole thing. She decided she didn't want the Region 3 volunteer group anymore, just the volunteer group from her own club. If she needed more people, she'd ask for help from people in specific clubs, or maybe she'd just ask specific people.

So when this thing came up, she only had twenty slots to fill, and she was not going to waste them on the Region 3 group. I was one of the extra people she talked to about the Gala.

On that same weekend was a Stellar Occasions convention. I think Jerry Doyle (Mr.Garibaldi from Babylon 5) was there that year, but I'm not sure. Anyway, the point being that if I didn't get to go to this thing, I would not be totally crushed, there were other plans for the weekend. But it was really cool to be one of the few asked to work at this thing. And, if I skipped the costume contest on Saturday, I could probably do both.

There was maybe a bit of a problem. The volunteer group usually works in costume. Sometimes, they specifically work in uniform. Now, I have costumes. I enter costume contests. In a costume contest, for the most part, you do not want a uniform. Certain uniforms are really good, and if you have one of those uniforms the entire audience will be on their feet cheering just because you stand at attention. But most of us do not have those uniforms. Most uniforms are bought from a catalog and come in sizes S, M, L, XL, and you really shouldn't be in uniform but you've already sent us a check. Those uniforms are good, but not that great, and for the most part they should not be entered in contests but usually someone doesn't know that and does it anyway. I have never wanted one of those catalog uniforms enough to spend money on them, and unless I win the lottery I won't be buying any of the really good ones either. I have some homemade ones that are probably not even as good as the catalog ones, but sometimes I wear them anyway.

What I spend my time and money on are costumes, not uniforms. They rarely look just like someone else's, but they don't usually have to look just like someone else's. I made a few Centauri dresses that I liked, but mainly I was known for a certain borg costume. And this wasn't a regular borg costume, this was a parody costume with lace nylons and earrings and such. The last time I wore it, pearls were added.

So I didn't have exactly the type of thing that they wanted the volunteers to wear that night, but so far nobody had said that I couldn't wear the borg costume.

One of the companies involved with the Gala was one of those superstores that sells computers and stereos and such. It was owned by Tandy (Radio Shack), and I want to say it was called Incredible Universe, but there were a lot of these stores for a while, so I might have the wrong name. So this store was advertising the event, and they had a costume contest in one of their stores, and the first prize was two tickets to this event at Captain Kirk's table.

That store was in Dallas. I hate Dallas.

But never mind about the Dallas store. That same day the Arlington store was also having a costume contest. I heard that they were going to give away a phone that looked like Voyager or a shuttlecraft or something. And who doesn't want a phone that looks like a spaceship?

So a friend of mine was going to the Arlington store, probably to help out, and maybe to be a judge. But he wasn't going to enter the contest. He was wearing a uniform, probably size L. He was not wearing an elaborate costume. I went with him. I was going to enter the contest, unless they told me that I was disqualified for being a member of one of the participating clubs. I was wearing the borg thing.

While everyone seemed to know about the contest in Dallas, few people seemed to be aware of the contest at the Arlington store. There were about four people in uniform and two of us in other costumes, and half of the six were judges. Too bad, because it turned out that the Arlington store had the same prizes as the Dallas store. First place was two tickets to the Gala at Captain Kirk's dinner table. Second place was two tickets to the Gala at Captain Kirk's dessert table. And third place was that spaceship phone.

I won first place. This alien of a species I could not identify won second place. Another guy that was on and off with our club won the phone with a gold Voyager uniform, size S. And that was it. Only three of us entered. A little kid showed up in a red uniform, but he was almost an hour too late.

Who wants to compete against little kids anyway.

So that was cool. I won tickets. So my husband could go to the thing too if he could get off work. And they let him off work, no problem.

It didn't really sink in at first. I wouldn't be going to the Gala as a volunteer in either a borg costume or a uniform. I would be having dinner at one of the front tables, with William Shatner.

I needed a dress.

And, to go with that, my husband's suit didn't seem to fit him anymore. We didn't have a lot of money, but we needed to wear something. I think we went to Ross like a week or two before the Gala.

There is this whole other language to describe clothing, and I basically know none of it. The dress was very modest in front and a bit lower in the back. It had short sleeves. It was lace over something else. The skirt was sort of zig-zag in layers, so that in some parts the hem was up near the knee and in other places it was nearly down to the ankles.

And of course, it was black.

My husband was also all in black, with little glittery bits in his vest, and one of those shirts with the little collar that you don't wear a tie with.

And I still went to the Stellar Occasions thing first. I annoyed Mr. Doyle with my total inability to use a camera. ("Take the picture. Take the picture. Take the **** picture.") I spent most of the day in a Babylon 5 uniform and then changed into the dress at the hotel about two hours before dinner.

I have all kinds of stuff that would have been better with Will Shatner's autograph, but I didn't know what the rules were and I didn't want to risk losing my stuff, so I didn't bring much of it. I meant to put a couple of trading cards in my purse, but I must have misplaced them. And we spent a lot of time worrying about the camera. Flash photography was not allowed, and it was hard to find film that would work indoors without a flash. We found something that worked most of the time, but it made everything orange, almost red.

So we went to the place about almost an hour early. I saw a bunch of my friends, most of them were volunteers, but a few were guests in the cheap seats. And there were a bunch of other people that I didn't know with badges. I think that there were like four or five different kinds of badges. My friends had one kind, and the waiters and such had another kind, and other people doing different things had other badges, and then the people really in charge of the thing had a different color badge. So if someone told you something, you went with that, until someone with a higher color badge said something different.

We talked to people for about twenty minutes or so, and then one of my friends (in a Klingon General Chang costume) took us to our table. The table was still empty. I was surprised that except for the people with badges, there didn't seem to be a lot of people there yet.

And then I had to decide where to sit. Mr. Shatner had a place-card, but I guess the rest of us were supposed to figure it out for ourselves. So, does the first one there get to sit next to him or what? Or does he have a date? I don't want to sit in the chair next to his and then get asked to move because he has a date.

So I sit one seat over. In theory, I could get a good look at everyone from there. Kate Mulgrew's table was in front to the left, and Jonathan Frakes' table was in front and to the right. Avery Brook's table was just to the left of ours, and his chair was about six feet away from mine. This is good.

People are starting to come in, but not a lot of them, and most of them don't go to the tables. They're just sort of milling around the front of the room. Then I notice that one of them is Kate. Okay. We watch Kate, but we don't get up. Are we allowed to get up? This just isn't what I'm used to at all. Frakes comes in too. A couple of people go up and ask for their autographs. You're not supposed to do that now, are you?

There was a schedule printed out. We were supposed to be eating by a certain time, and then we were supposed to be having dessert by a certain time, and then people were supposed to be speaking by a certain time. So, even though we were the only ones at the table, someone brought us salads. Okay, we'll eat our salads.

Soon a couple more people came to sit at the table. They brought pictures. They were a father and son team who went to costume contests as borg. I'd seen them before, though never out of costume. They had won first place at the Dallas store. Two more people came and sat with us. I don't remember exactly what the deal was, but their tickets also came from a contest, but they didn't win that contest, someone gave them those tickets or they had the winning bid for the tickets, or something. Anyway, those tickets were originally won by my friend who was in charge of our little volunteer group, but she wasn't going to use them, so someone else got to use them. The guy who had won second place at the Arlington store came by so I could see what he looked like without the alien stuff. The waitstaff brought more salads.

The cheap seats were filling up. They were getting their salads. The front eight tables were still mostly empty. People are talking to Kate. Jonathan Frakes goes over to talk to her. That seemed to get everyone's attention. Like they weren't sure it was really Kate Mulgrew before that.

William Shatner came in, and someone told him where he was supposed to be. And he came over and pretends to look real serious and says "Eat...your...food." There was an implied "or else." We ate.

More people were getting up and asking for autographs. Now, I have been to many book signings and many conventions and such, and you're not supposed to just walk over to someone and ask for an autograph. I did that once, at my first or second convention, cause I didn't know any better, and I was embarrassed about it later. There is usually a set aside time and place for autographs, if they are even allowed, so that the actors aren't mobbed in the lobby and bothered by fans all the time.

On the other hand, there didn't seem to be anything on the schedule about autographs. And there was a warning about not taking shooting videos or using flash photography, but it didn't say anything about not being allowed to ask for autographs. And the man is sitting right there, and he doesn't seem interested in his salad, so why not? So I asked him to autograph my invitation to the thing, and he did, and my husband got his autographed too. And we took some photos of him with the orange looking film.

Everyone is going up front and asking William Shatner and the other actors for autographs. People in the really cheap seats are going to get autographs. Damn it, I'm going to go get some more autographs.

Just when I finally get up the nerve to do that, a lady with one of the important people badges asks me to sit down. And I'm like, but I'm at a captain's table. I'm supposed to be up here. And she says that they just can't have all these people milling around up front, so if I'll go back to my table someone will come and get me when it's my turn to get the other autographs. Okay.

So I go back to my table and other people are going back to wherever they are supposed to be. I eat my salad. The last three people come to our table. The guy that runs the Incredible Universe, the guy that bought my tickets for me, he sat down between me and William Shatner. And his wife and daughter sat on the other side of Shatner. Good. The guy who made this possible for me gets to sit next to Shatner. Couldn't be more fair, could it. Anyway, I don't remember the guy's name, but he was nice. He and his wife talked to Shatner about horses.

My husband said something about Avery Brooks coming in. Where? I couldn't see him.

Avery Brooks didn't sit in his assigned seat. He sat at the right table, just in a different chair. We were sitting back-to-back, and I couldn't see him without turning all the way around. He was in a very colorful outfit with boots and one of those little African hats.

Someone took our salads away and brought us chicken and vegetables. Shatner said he wasn't feeling well and sent it back and asked for all vegetables instead. Then he only ate the carrots. He looked at some pictures of me and the other two borg in costume.

Someone came and took two people at our table to a different table. They were supposed to be at Captain Kirk's dessert table, not the dinner table. So then we had two empty seats for some reason, and they can't have two empty seats at the front tables. How would that look? So they went back to the cheap seats and found a widow of someone who had worked for Tandy for over twenty-five years, and her and her grandson sat with us instead.

If you don't know, William Shatner has this problem that causes him to always hear ringing in one of his ears. Leonard Nimoy has a similar problem, in the opposite ear, so they think that they both damaged their ears during a certain movie scene that involved blowing up a door. So between the ringing in his ears and general background noise of people talking at the other tables, he couldn't hear us very well. So he made a point of getting up and going around the table and shaking hands with everyone and stuff like that.

Just about the time that everyone is starting to relax and talk to him, someone tells him it is time for dessert and takes him to the other table. I know that they're on a schedule, but that was a little bit unfair, since dinner got started a little bit late. The people at the dessert table had more time with him than we did.

And all evening, people kept being brought to the different tables to ask for autographs. Supposedly, someone is going to come and get me when it is my turn. I wait.

The people at my table are having a good time. The people at the Captain Kirk's dessert table are having a good time. The people in the cheap seats are having a good time. We're all looking at the actors.

The people in the other front six tables are all looking at themselves.

I don't think that they cared anything about Star Trek at all. It's like they just came so that people would see that they could afford the expensive tickets. From some conversations I overheard, some of them had never seen some of the shows and didn't even know who some of the actors were.

Whatever.

Someone took all the actors backstage. I still didn't have my other autographs yet. But I thought maybe I would get them at the end of the program. And I said that I would wait. So I wait.

People start milling around again. Someone from the Paramount station came over to talk to us. He was expecting Myrh the cat to come by later. I knew better. Myrh was at Stellar Occasions being MC of the costume contest.

This guy I know who has an excellent Klingon costume went to the microphone. "You will be seated." You do not argue with this guy. Today is not a good day to die. We sat down.

The guy from the TV station spoke first. I don't remember what he said. Then the guy from the museum spoke. I don't remember what he said either.

Then Kate Mulgrew spoke. She asked if we could see her okay, cause the lights were too bright and she couldn't see anything. So she was talking about what an impact Star Trek had made on people, and how recently she'd been to some thing where she met a lot of young women who had won scholarships and such, and a bunch of them talked about being inspired by Star Trek. So she just knew that one day one of them would cure cancer or something, and it would partially be because of Star Trek.

And then she talked about the hard work of being Captain Janeway on a weekly TV series, and how it was nice to be away from that for a change, wearing a dress.

Avery Brooks came out next. He was all into the Education is Paramount thing. And he was saying how in the beginning he wasn't even sure he wanted to be Captain Sisko. He didn't know if he'd like being associated with Star Trek. And then he was talking about it to his wife, and I don't remember exactly what she told him, but it was something like "Quit being dumb. Do it for the kids." I'm not sure if that meant their family specifically or that it was good for kids in general to have a role model, but that snapped him out of it and he took the job. And now he could go all over the country and tell kids to stay in school and all of that.

Jonathan Frakes came on stage, and he complained about the lights a bit. And he talked about how he wasn't sure about the whole Star Trek thing in the beginning. He didn't think people liked his character at first. At one of his first conventions he noticed a sign at one of the dealers' tables that said "Buy any action figure, get Riker free." But he was glad that he stuck with it. And he agreed that it was wonderful to be here "in a dress."

William Shatner spoke last. He came out and said, "I don't know what everyone was complaining about. I can see just fine." And then he was talking about how sometimes things happen to show you how insignificant you are in the grand scheme of things. He'd just gone with his family on a trip to Africa. And he was sleeping in a tent. And the guides had all warned them not to leave the tents, not to wander around at night, and all that stuff. And when you are in Africa, and your guide tells you to do something, you'd better listen.

But he heard a noise and woke up, and he went outside to see what it was. And it was this huge elephant. And he's standing right behind this huge elephant thinking, wow, an elephant, this is great. And he's trying to be quiet and not disturb the elephant.

And the elephant dumps on him.

So that was really funny. And then all the other speakers came back onto the stage. Someone had made these crystal statues to give to the actors to thank them for helping them with the museum's fund raiser. And they're all saying thank you, how nice, and stuff like that. Jonathan Frakes said, "Mine has Patrick Stewart's name on it." And we all laughed, but maybe it did have Patrick Stewart's name on it, since originally he was supposed to be there.

And then they all walk backstage. I have to run to the ladies room. There's a line, and this greatly upsets me because I still think that someone is going to escort me backstage so I can get autographs. I'm in the thousand dollars seats. Surely I'm going to get more autographs.

And I get back to the table, and people are milling around, but no one seems to know anything. Finally, I find someone with the important I'm in charge badges, and he tells me that all the actors left the building as soon as they went backstage. He's sorry about the mix up, but there's nothing he can do about it now.

So I never got my other autographs. But I have William Shatner's autograph, and that's the important thing.

So we went out to the lobby to talk to some of my friends. And we got someone to take our picture with the Klingon General Chang. Then someone from TV Guide took the Klingon's picture.

People were leaving. Some people went to another room for an auction, but I didn't have any money so what was the point in staying for that. My friends stayed and danced until the place closed, but I was tired and went home. I don't really dance anyway.

Really, I only got to talk to the man for like ten minutes. But who else gets to say that they had dinner with William Shatner.