Have to disagree about San Diego being a threat to Worldcon as we know it. Yes, it's different from most (all?) comics conventions in having significant multi-track programming, a Worldcon class masquerade, etc. And it's long since converted from comics convention to geek pop culture convention.
But if you take a close look at the programming, a *lot* of it goes into the categories of 1) Major media presentation (Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi Channel, movies, etc.), 2) Comics company presentations (What's new in the DC universe, the Spider-Man books, etc.), 3) individual spotlights on the 20 or so special guests of the con. Next up would be the "Mark Evanier track", which is Mark moderating a number of historical based or older creator panels/spotlights.
But after that, you've probably got maybe 1-2 full tracks of other programming per day. With no offense to San Diego, the programming has a very different feel than Worldcon program.
Also, there's no tradition of open parties, or even a central evening location any more (the Hyatt bar(s) appears to be the closest, at least for pros). The evening/social scene is a completely different feel.
I almost always go to both San Diego and Worldcon for the last decade plus, so I clearly believe there's value in each. But it's a pretty different type of value, at least to me.
Um, maybe I'm missing something, but how is introducing yourself and saying "I've been watching you from across the room" coming on too strong? It doesn't seem to even be in the same league as "Wanna f*ck" or initiating extensive skin contact without introduction and/or permission? While it sounds like it was being used very promiscuously and generically, and is a bit generic to begin with, I could see myself going up to someone and saying something like "Hi, I'm Tom, and I heard you talking about X, which I'm also interested in, from over there" or "Hi, I'm Tom, and I saw from over there how you elbowed that jerk who snuck up behind you and started rubbing your neck. I like your style."
On the other hand, if it was meant in the sense "I've been watching you from across the room for an hour or so, and I'm rather a stalker.", yeah, it's creepy.
Re: Flashing panelists at Comic-Con. Something sorta close to that's been done deliberately a few times at my regular item there, with my acceptance, or at least foreknowledge.
My regular item's the Pro/Fan trivia match, of which I captain the Fan team which consists of folk from Usenet's rec.arts.comics. Back in '99, a very well-built late-teen-ager then active on r.a.c. proposed that she wear the Mike Grell designed costume of Night Girl of the Legion of Substitute Heroes to the match and sit in the front row in front of the Pros in order to distract them. Said costume basically consists of bikini pants with two separated, reasonably wide, vertical panels going up the front torso and around the neck (leaving a bare back), all in black with a silver owl's face "belt buckle" (there being no actual belt for it to buckle). She did this for a couple of years.
I stress that this was completely her idea, and approved of by her mother, who sat right next to her during the matches. And definitely all part of the general spirit of fun and good-natured trash talking going between the teams. Don't know if it actually distracted any of the Pros and affected the match, but I did ask her to choose her seat such that my view of her would be blocked by the moderator's podium during the match. :-)
Comic-Con's management structure is also complicated due to their buying two San Francisco conventions, WonderCon (general purpose, probably in the high 4 figure range attendancewise) and APE (Alternative Press Expo, probably in the 2-3K range), so they've got additional stuff to keep folk busy. I know the Programming head is also paid, for example.
The other factor which skews Comic-Con out of a purely volunteer bit is the significant number of paid rent-a-cop security types they use for things I think most sf cons use volunteers for, such as badge checking. It's certainly still significantly volunteer-run and definitely non-profit, but it also can't be held up as being that close to completely volunteer run.
Re: Size of San Diego Comic-Con dealer/exhibits room. Per the Convention Center online blueprints, the aisles are 100 yards long. Comic-Con has 52 of 'em. So, just to walk down the center of each aisle, not even going side to side to look closely at stuff, is a 3 mile walk.
Alice, Clemson's located down near Greenville, SC; about an hour/hour and a half drive (it was about an hour from Brevard, but I believe Brevard's between Asheville and Clemson on the most direct route, unless taking I-26 towards Spartanburg would work).
I actually hung out at Clemson a fair amount my senior year in high school as I'd managed to hook up with the chess club there and, well, it was the closest place I had contacts that was well and truly out of Brevard. Still, both it and Florida State are generally considered the overall educational laggards in the ACC. It's an adequate school, and I believe pretty good in agracultural courses, but no one's going to mistake it for the Ivies, or even UNC-Chapel Hill in terms of academics.
B.S. Comp Sci, M.S. in Comp Sci with concentration in Artificial Intelligence. Strong correlation to all my post college jobs, save that writing has been the major component for the past decade (but without the CS knowledge, I wouldn't be doing it). Ironically, my undergrad CS degree at UNC-CH probably led to more improvement in my writing that anything else. Y'see, I think posting a fair amount to Usenet improved it, just by sheer volume and feedback, and I first got onto Usenet due to it being invented at UNC-CH and Duke when I was there...
While I consider the Shrub administration to be a disaster, I tend to get a bit annoyed when the idea that he didn't win the election is played up. Yes, there were significant problems with the Florida vote, but they only came to light because 1) Florida ended up being the deciding state due both to the closeness of the race and it being the last to be decided and 2) the race in Florida was so close. I'm sure if you'd looked at every state with the same intensity as Florida, you would've found minor chicanery on *both* sides going on. And if we're going to hit the Shrub for not being "elected" in that sense, well, seems to me he'd be preceded in that regard by JFK and those Illinois votes.
What happened was, basically, the election was a tie; statistically, it was closer than the various noise in the data (which include the bits by both sides to sway action at the polls around the country). Ideally, there should be a clause in the Constitution allowing for such a possibility and describing how to handle it, but I don't think Congress is math-savvy enough to do so, and it's complicated by there being no true national election, but rather elections at the state level in each state that determine the results when combined.
So, while I'm not thrilled with the fairly obvious partisanship of the Supreme Court, I don't feel this came anywhere near the 1876 election in that regard. Frankly, I would've found a coin flip between Gore and Bush to have been reasonable since for all intents and purposes, it was a tie election.
Me, I'm much more concerned about the liklihood of electronic voting systems being used to steal elections. Fortunately, there've been enough problems that it's becoming a major issue.
As far as I know, I have no credits in the gaming world whatsoever (unless someone has run a scenario based on probably my most famous quote involving a battle between Imperial Stormtroopers who can't hit the broad side of a planet and Star Trek Security types who have to die within 5 minutes of beaming down).
Well, this particular Tom Galloway (who is also the ConJose Tom Galloway) was a whopping 12-13 years old in 1973-4, and was definitely not the Jim Shooter of the games world.
However, I wonder if this isn't more evidence that I'm due to time travel back into the 1970s at some point. Y'see, I didn't get into organized/convention sf fandom until 1981/2. But there's a Tom Galloway on the membership list of both Suncon (Florida, 1977) and Noreascon 2 (Boston, 1980). Who no one in fandom seems to have ever actually met, at least no one who's encountered me. In all seriousness, it could be the same person. No close relation to me though; while I'm the fourth generation in a row to have "Thomas" in my name, I'm also the fourth generation in a row to be the single male in the family, so any other Galloway at best shares ancestry with me four generations back.
Alice, I suspect you now live in Asheville. Trust me, the book situation thereabouts has improved markedly in the past couple of decades, probably starting with when Malaprop's opened in '82. I grew up 40 miles away in Brevard, leaving in '78. Back then, there was no bookstore in Brevard (a 5,000 person town, seat and largest town in a 20,000 person county), and the only bookstore I knew of in Asheville was a B.Dalton in the Asheville Mall. Now, *that* was an intellectual stimulation void. :-) Asheville wasn't even noticably artsy or hip back then either.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 11 |
Total: 11 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Tom Galloway:
Show all comments by Tom Galloway.