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Back from Denvention. Our flight was delayed to oh-god-o-clock this morning, and both Teresa and I have urgent things to deal with today, so if you’re waiting for either of us to answer something from the last few days, it may be a little while longer before we catch up to it.
Some Worldcon photos are here—including a few from the never-to-be-forgotten Making Light party. You guys rock.
Nicholas Whyte observed in his LJ that Elizabeth Bear is only the second person born in the 1970s to win a Hugo for fiction. I was so stunned by this that I teased out some more statistics along these lines and posted further observations at Tor.com.
It's impressive that you managed to get photographic evidence of my husband's total of 20 minutes at the convention...
Sigh. Yet another party I missed.
What's genuinely surprising to me is not that I recognized people, but that I did so well enough to say to myself, "That's not Bill Higgins in that picture!"
Nicholas Whyte observed in his LJ that Elizabeth Bear is only the second person born in the 1970s to win a Hugo for fiction.
Talkin' 'bout my generation (X)
FWIW, I had more fun at the ML party than probably any two other parties put together. Y'all are totally awesome.
Xopher and Tim Walters were heard singing in the bathroom.
(quoted from my blog post)
By the time I got to the party after the Masquerade, the room was literally so crowded that there was no chance of squeezing a big guy like me into the space without blowing out the windows and defenstrating several of my fellow Luminaries.
And there I am, caught in a dreadfully stereotypical "nom nom nom" pose...
But I gotta say, that party was a lot easier to be *near* than to be *in*. All of the actual conversation I got into occurred at the Making Light Standing Around Blocking The Hallway Party Annex.
(Which was, don't get me wrong, great. Thanks to the Party Annex Regulars for dragging me in. That being Bill Higgins and Avram, mostly, I think.)
Clifton Royston @ 7, yeah....
(I'm trying to talk Keith into it for next year.)
*long string of cursing*, wish I'd been at that party.
Ah well, next year in Jerusalem Montreal!
I was kinda busy angsting over food issues during the party, but I got to watch people NomNomNom some stuff I made, which is, really, what I live for.
Skwid, right back atcha. Great hanging with you, man! (No, you're D'Argo; I'm Crichton.)
Speaking of NomNomNom, someone (Tom B?) thought up a line which, slightly edited, I'm going to have put on a button at my next opportunity:
EVOLL CHOCOLATIER
I've read the NecroNomNomNomicon
Xopher @ 12
Non-euclidean confections! Or should that be Nom-euclidean confections?
Me three, wish I'd been there.
Andrew definitely has the right of it, there was a great deal of fun to be had hanging out blocking the corridor in front of the ML party. Including fun to be had from people who were desperately curious about why so many people seemed to be wanting to crowd into a one-room party...
Xopher, D'argo is definitely not how I would self-identify...but that was definitely some Con-Buddy-dom to repeat! I wonder if there's a decent Goth club in Montreal, too...
Speaking of, did you remember this comment on Sunday night?
Skwid, no, I didn't! Wow. Wasn't the Goth club we went to Sunday called The Church as well? (Too bad I never got that button.)
And yesyes on the conbuddydom. Excellent time had by all. Both. Whatever!
I was there with my lovely wife anthro_geek, though as the party had already reached the crowded-elevator stage (and past the picture-taking stage), I didn't actually get to meet you guys before you had to leave for the Tor party. Still, it was nice meeting some of some of my fellow fluorospherians, and it was cool to get to go to one of the exclusive Worldcon parties, rather than just overhearing talk about them and muttering to myself "well, I wouldn't want to go anyway, hmph!"
Let's not forget to thank Kathryn, who worked VERY hard to organize this.
Wish I could have gone. Looks like one hell of a party.
Xopher, yes it was also called The Church.
I'm thinking, if we do that again next year in Montreal (and I'm seeing no reason why we shouldn't, really), we should publicize it and make it more of an event for many. Particularly in light of the thread on Tor, y'know?
Oh, excellent, Xopher! You ended up at The Church! We used to go there many a Sunday and were thinking of maybe going again sometime soon. It's been awhile since we put on our big stomping boots and stomped around to classic '80s New Wave & such. I wish I'd had more energy Sunday night to go looking for cool people and parties. John and I pretty much collapsed, regained consciousness just long enough for dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory, and then collapsed again. (This con did a number on my shins.)
I must admit I spent much of the party sitting against a handy wall with a dazed, goofy grin on my face. (Although this didn't stop me from getting to enjoy conversation with B. Durbin, Jon Singer, and Skwid--among others--and from waving madly across the room/playing air guitar at Elise.) Eventually I ran out of air and went home for more. On our way out on the sidewalk we ran into Xopher on his way in with his set of travel speakers. We got accosted by drunks who, seeing my little red ice chest, started demanding burritos. Xopher told them we were from the planet Xerps, and John and I played it up for all we were worth, and eventually the drunks found themselves totally outweirded.
Apparently Serge arrived sometime after that. We've spent a small series of emails bemoaning that fact and vowing not to miss each other in Montreal.
There appeared to be a sort of almost an after-party reunion at Teresa & Tom's panel Sunday morning. Yays! (Teresa, I haven't posted that picture anywhere yet, but I'm thinking of putting it on a belated Denver Metblogs post in which I taunt the rest of town for having missed the con.)
Anyone who missed the ginger chocolate thingies, btw, missed a miracle of the confectionery art.
Um, speaking of tor.com, you might want to take a look at it. It appears to have been hacked. Most of the home page looks ok, but there's some stuff about "THIS SITE IS HACKED BY PERSIAN HACKER ( THE UNDERTAKER )", and a claim that "SORRY BUT YOUR ALL DATA HAS BEEN DELETED".
(Others might want to avoid viewing tor.com for now; I don't know if just visiting the site can cause problems, but it pays to be careful.)
Nicole @ 20... drunks who, seeing my little red ice chest, started demanding burritos. Xopher told them we were from the planet Xerps, and John and I played it up for all we were worth, and eventually the drunks found themselves totally outweirded. Apparently Serge arrived sometime after that.
First drunks, then me.
It went downhill after that.
Random thoughts after having examined the photos:
The white-shirted back with the long blond braid hanging down it would be John LeBoeuf-Little. In one of the shots he's in, you can just make out my neck (with chatelaine chain) and my hand (holding up a red plastic glass of mead) between his chin and the left edge of the photo.
I see Mac came by after I left for the night an' I MISSED her - darn the luck! darn! *hugs to Mac*
I recall seeing Charles Stross's T-shirt and absolutely loving it, but failing to recognize the person it was being worn by. Ditto Andrew Plotkin and his Hungry Grue (Is Hunnngreee) T-shirt.
Many, many thanks to Kathryn for setting this up. You Rawk!
Looks like tor.com has just been hacked and defaced. Luckily, they apparently didn't do anything more than mess with the top story (about jet packs); all the community stuff looks like it's still there. Still, I expect it's time to change all the passwords, and try to sniff out whatever loophole they used to get in…
Nicole 20: Anyone who missed the ginger chocolate thingies, btw, missed a miracle of the confectionery art.
*blush* Thanks!
To your anecdote about the drunks, I should add that I made every attempt to be polite to them, then every attempt to politely get rid of them, and only when they were persistent, rude, and persistently rude resorted to the Mundane Repellent.
The offending hack is removed. The web ninjas are now seeking for the security hole.
Nicole @ 20: A friend of mine was a busser at the Old Spaghetti Factory when he was in school. One night he saw most of the waiters huddled around crying and said "Jeez, you're crying like Princess Diana died or something."
He really has a knack for awkward timing.
Andrew Plotkin @9:
But I gotta say, that party was a lot easier to be *near* than to be *in*.
Being very far away from it was pretty cool, too, though I spent a lot of time waving mutely rather than chatting...by the time Xopher and Nicole had run the gantlet, my chance to actually have a face to face conversation with Teresa had vanished. One day...
I am still amused by spotting Patrick in the back corner with his head bent down, wondering what he was doing, and suddenly hearing the *clunk* of my Google chat firing up from his Blackberry.
It was a real pleasure attending the party and chatting to the people I did. Kathryn is owed at least 1,000 kudos for setting it up.
I've read the NecroNomNomNomicon
I was proud to have been in the room when that was uttered.
and lovely chocs, by the way.
and lovely grapes, grape tomatoes, and fancy chips.
and Nicole -- you live here?
cgeye @29:
Nicole -- you live here?
No, she lives on a space ship with her brother and an ill-assorted crew, skirting in and out of legal trading as they travel from settlement to settlement, searching for freedom.
She's much nicer than she comes across in the series. But she can still kill you with her brain.
abi @ 30... she lives on a space ship with her brother and she's quite handy with a battle axe.
I got to say hi to Xopher (but left before the chocolates were served) and see Charlie in his infamous tee shirt. I also got to see Lee briefly. Stood in the closet (the only space I could find when I got there) for as long as my claustrophobia could stand it.
It's strange being an extrovert with claustrophobia - I love people but can only handle them in small groups. So sorry I missed seeing Serge at the party, but happy to have seen him in passing a couple of times around the convention center.
Dawno... I'm driving from New Mexico to San Francisco's East Bay during the Holidays. What's a few more miles from there to the South Bay? Nothing at all!
cgeye, what do you look like? If you were there and had some chocolates, I almost certainly met you.
My guess is Tor fell victim to the latest zero day Joomla hack. Time to try all those backup/restore procedures that were in the requirements but might not have been tested or even developed while everyone was getting the site launched.
Not that I've ever had to clean that kind of mess up or anything. Never.
On the bright side, the defacement seemed relatively benign compared to what it could have been. As far as I could tell, he just messed with the color scheme and the top entry (the one about jet packs—hopefully the author saved and can repost it); even though it said "all data has been deleted" none of the other entries or the community threads seemed to be affected in any way when he could (I assume) have wiped everything out.
Of course, they still ought to make sure that nothing nasty got hidden on the site…
PNH, you took pictures of people I already know!
Xopher, #12, that'll be a great button!
...Yes, cgeye, I'm a Boulder resident. Originally from New Orleans and determined to one day live there again, but for now and since 1999, living in Boulder.
But I think I like Serge and abi's version better.
So I take it you're a local too? We really need to have that Farmer's Market meetup!
I found a youtube video that cookbooked one possible attack vector; I flagged it for dangerous content. Hopefully they'll do a takedown soon.
John A Arkansawyer@3: What's not Bill Higgins in which picture? Bill certainly was in at least a couple of the pictures.
David Goldfarb @ 41: See the comments. (That sounds so much nicer than "Patrick is a space case! Patrick is a space case!")
The party sounds like it was amazing!
I just want to know when something will happen in NYC, so I can go.
This seems an appropriate place to link my Full and Complete Worldcon Report (pace Greg van Eekhout):
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.fandom/msg/bf9d7078e32dcc3a
("It is very dark inside this bear, and you are likely to be eaten... re-eaten... never mind.")
I had bare feet and dreads, and sat on the bed, in full violation of my mother's standard that a lady never sits on a stranger's mattress.
I mopped some dinosaurs, too, if that's okay....
cgeye @ 45... a lady never sits on a stranger's mattress
According to the Hayes Directive, that was ok, as long as one of the people involved had one foot touching the ground.
*Hays*, of the Hays Code.
Ahem.
Signed,
Missing out on TCM's Summer Under the Stars, because of foolish real-life commitments, like that there Worldcon thingy.
@37: I have the post, though in a slightly unfinal form (because even though I write in Word, I can't resist tweaking in Joomla--because when I see it in Preview, something always looks _wrong_).
PNH has to reinstall it, though, because apparently the comments are still there and he wants to marry the post and the comments. So it might be a day or two. No biggie.
I have like three other things I want to post and No Time to Write.
Feh.
cgeye @ 47... I stand corrected. Or, considering the subject mattress, I don't.
Xopher @ 12:
The working jpg is not in faked button mode.
Xopher #12: Does that mean that you'll make an appearance in Charlie's next Laundry novel?
I've got a button: "Any problem can be solved by proper application of dark chocolate."
(Sometimes the "proper application" involves 1-kg blocks at 0.9c, of course.)
Carol: I couldn't imagine a better rendition, and I have a GOOD imagination.
Fragano: That would be up to Charlie, wouldn't it? I wouldn't object though.
There are a lot of White Male Bearded Engineering Nerds who look like me. It takes a skilled observer, such as John A. Arkansawyer, to scrutinize a photo and determine that the person in it is, indeed, not me.
Joel's button
The art work is embarrassingly better this round.
Carol Kimball @ 55... Heheheh
Speaking of buttons, my many thanks to Lee for being the provider of the party's lightbulb badges.
Yes, I was clutching Lee's golden button (that sounds lewd, sorry, Lee) when working up the parameters for these. I should update the inspirations list...
Bill 54: There are a lot of White Male Bearded Engineering Nerds who look like me.
There are a lot of WMBENs who look like you—in Phil Foglio art. In what we laughingly call the Real World, you're fairly distinctive among WMBENs, IME.
Xopher @ 58... I'm not a scientist, but some people think this Foglio savant looks like me. On the other hand, my wife thinks that GG's Moloch reminds her of me - me when I had more hair and all of it quite black.
By the way, Bill is awesome at giving scientific demonstrations using balloons and empty water bottles.
Damn, I really need to get out more...
*sigh*
I am so jealous. And yay, faces to put with names! Somehow I imagined John Scalzi with more hair. Hmm.
In other news (from the Hugo awards pictures), whoever Mary Robinette Kowal is, she has AMAZING taste in golden gowns. *sigh*
In #59 Serge generously says:
By the way, Bill is awesome at giving scientific demonstrations using balloons and empty water bottles.
What's more, I was making ice cream with liquid nitrogen before it was cool. Wait-- that doesn't sound right...
#61 ::: Nenya@61 ... Somehow I imagined John Scalzi with more hair. Hmm.
Perhaps it's the saying "More hair than wit"?[0]
[0] ... which in his case would clearly suggest an exuberant head of hair
Bill Higgins @ 62... To think that you could have made ice cream at Kathryn's ML party... On the other hand, there are dangers in handling liquid nitrogen within a very crowded room.
xeger @ 63... Meanwhile, at the Luxuriant Hair Club for Scientists...
Oh, and another thing that happened to me at Denvention: several people unknown to me by face or name came up to me at various times and told me that they lurk on (or rarely post to) Making Light, and wanted to tell me they enjoy my comments!
Do you understand what I'm telling you? The lurkers support me at WorldCon. Bwahahah!
Seriously, I was amazed and delighted by this. I tend to inwardly assume, even though I actually know better, that the only people reading these comment threads are the ones who post. Dumb, especially considering how much I've read when I have nothing in particular to say.
I had a very happy WorldCon, all things considered.
Seeing that Xopher, Avram, and Charlie were all within hand-shake/hugging distance AT ONE TIME, I solemnly vow to have my passport by next year. Montreal or bust!
Down from dovesrest, here by hawkway,
Shine is shelved, bowcloth boxed
On unwindows, onto outmind
I scribe glowwork, thankwords thinking
Two and another fortnights past,
Dominion day, voweltakers spoke.
Abi in seaground asked party Skypped?
Then the towerfolk, festive powered.
Helpwork handled, locals leading,
Foodbeds brought by road and rainhome
Simple sleephut turned to Tardis,
Meadroom, feasthall, lemon's end.
------------------------------
Thanks to the co-makers of the party: Bill, Cynthia, Lance, Madeline F., Nicole, Serge, Tania, Tom, Xopher
(he who gifted godstree seeds),
Geri S--for that timely question,
the person who I'm sure I'm forgetting in this comment,
Jo, for leaving the breakfast chocolate,
Tim Walters, who single-maltedly kept the libations revolution going,
and an extra thanks to Carol Kimball: she drove us us to drink (and to food) supplies. She kept the Too-Much-Food (which happened even after taking into account that one always buys too much food) from becoming Way, Way Too Much Food*. She made the lemonade, ginger syrup, and wall-sized disemvoweller. She stayed to the end, helping to turn the room back into a pumpkin.
And to Brad, who took the ever-changing definition of "a get-together" in stride.
-------------
* another thanks to Geri S. (& Reno in 2011) for integrating the remains of the party into their own, down to the 10 pithy lemons.
Finally home, finally getting to catch up. Wish I could have stayed longer at the party but apparently I stayed too long as it is... five minutes out the door and the Dude was howling. Poor Evil Rob.
I took all of one photo at the party, but at least I made it count.
Next WorldCon will be a little easier for me to get to parties and such, because that will be 2011 for me and I shouldn't have too small of a fry to cope with.