Posts Tagged ‘NADWCON’

Over on the YouTube, my obsessive butt has pretty much all of Pratchett’s various talks and suchlike from the conference. The bit above might be my favorite, and it’s from his long discussion on the 2nd day of the Con.

Here he’s talking about his first (successful) trip to the US, when he was finally starting to catch on. At that point, Doubleday had just moved into 666 5th Ave in NY and there was quite the issue about the physical address of the building, leading Pratchett to exclaim “you’re all a bunch of religious loonies!” and then to one of my favorite quotes ever. It reads well enough, but you’ve got to listen to him.

Having been told that several of the publishing house’s religious writers quit because they didn’t want to be connected with such an ‘evil’ address:

That’s rather dismaying, isn’t it?

I’m a humanist, I think. And the power of the Lord cannot be that good if it can be defeated by a few hundred yards of neon tubing.

As you can see, the Alzeheimer’s is really biting deep.

Just love the man.

Too funny. In looking at the info at the Con website I found these newsletters- and Charlie and I were scrambling to get the figurine out of the box and get everything set up when the photo was taken. I had no idea, too funny.

I don’t really count PirateCon as having been my ‘first,’ really, since I was more a voyeur than anything else. It was closer to finding your dad’s Playboy stash than your first actual kiss.

As with any blundering virgin, mistakes were made; I didn’t realize, for instance, that the Masquerade was an actual contest, and not a Ball. I saved my most elaborate costume for that night, only to discover that the participants had written up skits and signed up well in advance. Ah well. Next time. Besides, it was nice to kick back and watch the pros do their thing- there were some amazing, detailed costumes out there. It’s definitely something to shoot for going forward.

Despite getting to the party way late (so late in fact winners had already been selected) I got what amounted to a runner-up ribbon the first night, and another ribbon and encouragement the Masquerade night, telling me to keep it up, and be sure to enter for real next time, that I had an excellent shot. So that was nice pretty damn awesome. Charlie said the grin damn near split my face in half when they pinned it on me.

It’s only fitting, then, that that first costume was a Seamstress’ outfit. Again, not knowing all the convention conventions, I took the ‘Seamstresses Ball’ literally- and since Seamstress is a euphemism for “woman of negotiable affection,” I was…uh…not subtle.

In fact, I was in a dither before I left, and Charlie encouraged me to wear a red monstrosity of a wig which totally clashed with everything I had on, but what the hell. If you’re out there, trolling for business, ya wanna stand out, right? Right? Please? Ah well. Besides, the wig matched the whip. It’s those kind of details you need a pro for.

The strange thing was that there were very few seamstresses in the crowd. Maybe they have better shame mechanisms than I have?

At any rate, I’ll put up several posts on the Con, mostly about the guest of honor, of course, and then there was the side trip to the Grand Canyon, but I’ll kindly spare you the vile grossness I got sick with once we got home.

[flickr album=72157622253623074 num=10 size=Thumbnail]

Now that I’m coming down the home stretch, it’s time for that breather and explanation.

About a month ago, I found out about NADWCON, the North American Discworld Con through Neil Gaiman’s blog, and things just haven’t been the same since.

First there was the “Charlie ‘talking’ me into it” phase- a farce, really, where he pointed out how it’s likely going to be the only chance to see the man in the flesh, so even though this isn’t the ideal time for a vaca, we need to do it. It wasn’t exactly a hard sell.

Then came the “Great! Let’s book tickets” phase, rapidly followed by the “Oh SHIT I didn’t read the membership page properly- the convention’s sold out!” and the “wheedling, whining and whimpering” phases, which actually ended successfully, with tickets in hand.

And there was much rejoicing.

Short lived rejoicing, however, which quickly morphed into panic as I discovered that costumes are de rigueur. COSTUMES! OMG! The PTSD shakes set in as I had flashbacks to being the worst-dressed pirate EVER at PirateCon.

Read the rest of this entry »