The Bitter Guide to The Local Con

[thebitterguy]

Or, how I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Toronto Trek Polaris.

While at con this past weekend, I found an interesting flyer for an upcoming event: Hobby Hut Games is hosting the First Annual Canadian National RISK Championship.

Very enthusiastic, if a little primatively laid out. The admission is $50 until August 31, and that includes a catered buffet banquet and light refreshments. There's a championship trophy, as well as a consolation trophy and prizes. That seems like either a really good buffet, or a high price.

It's being held in a Salvation Army hall, so they are having a food and toy drive as well. Hey, pyat, do they rent halls out in Hamilton?

This weekend was Polaris: Interestingly enough, I had confirmed that fire alarms suck, as do panels up against the masquerade and at 1 am. Seriously, somebody's gonna get a slap for that.

Gaming is a non-event at this con. The Gamer's membership includes only admission to the LAN party (and maybe not even that, if they don't have any space. Oh, Snap!) . It doesn't bode well for Filking that they got shoved down to the Skyline level. That's where they sent tabletop gaming to die.

Saw many people there. Spent some time with angrykat late at nite, kibbitzing on these huge couches in the lounge. Almost missed talysin until I recognized the Squirrelman books. Nice covers.

I manned the booth a bit, made some sales, and had some fun. I really, really want to beat with a tire iron the obnoxious mouth breather who insisted on buying their iron on on a t-shirt. It's an iron on. You buy a t-shirt and put it on your own damn self. Fucked up my weekend, that's for sure.

I spent the weekend in my VB tees. Killinger, Samson, and Guild, respectively. I also got a massage from ketronic, which has hurt me more than any in memory.

Panel Breakdown:

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Kidsplace is apparently just a room where they put animation based panels. We talked about the show, and we watched one of the Chibi sequences and Iroh's Day Out. I cried. Nickelodeon is showing all the remaining episodes this week, one episode a night, with the final four put together into a two hour movie on friday. In response, YTV will be showing them weekly, starting on Saturday. File that under "dumb things Canadian networks do".

Dark Knight; We talked about the new Batman movie. It's odd, since I don't really like Batman that much.

Current Marvel & DC Events: I complained about how bad Civil War and Infinite Crisis were, and that I wouldn't get Secret Invasion until the trade came out.

Superhero Movies: In spite of the fuck awful time slot of one a.m. it was well attended. We talked about the latest batch, and Marvel's (overly?) ambitious plans to build a superheroic cinematic franchise.

Lost S4 Review: Cynra & I were the sole souls on this panel. We probably could have just spent the whole panel talking about the use of flashback and forward as a story structure. Lots of idle speculation on what's to come in the future and what the relationship between Ben & Widmore is.

A Run through New York: This panel is an abject lesson in why cute panel names are a bad idea. As well, it's also a lesson in why it's a bad idea to be scheduled against the Masquerade. (note to self: Next year, tell programming you're in the Masquerade. That should solve that problem).

On Sunday I did some shoping (picked up that Warhammer mega epic from way back when, Bangkook: Cesspool of the Orient to see if there are T:2K rules for ladyboys, a book of "action based Cyberpunk adventures" from Atlas, and the Ars Magica Africa sourcebook (ditto).

I checked out the Comics and Marginalization panel, which was apparently a panel on women in comics, although the moderator did mention Milestone, Luke Cage and the Black Panther. Blue Beetle came up too, although his "Generic Latino Background" was brought up for some crticism ("well, Of Course his best friend is a gang member!"). They didn't even get to discuss the fact that Giant Man got to be the Black Due who Dies First*.

Dinner with Browncoats afterwards, and then I hit the hay.


*Holy shit. The link includes this line:

Yes please, since Google reveals there's too much awesome Zombie Apocalypse -themed House fanfiction to find any particular one.

Who would have thought they'd see that phrase in their lifetimes?

Comments

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Kidsplace is apparently just a room where they put animation based panels. We talked about the show, and we watched one of the Chibi sequences and Iroh's Day Out. I cried. Nickelodeon is showing all the remaining episodes this week, one episode a night, with the final four put together into a two hour movie on friday.

Sweet, that means I can soon see past episode 15.

[thebitterguy]

"Soon" is a relative term.

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, the panels at 1 am and the filkers on the lower floor were not intended to be that way. We lost some event space less than a month before the convention due to flooding in the hotel (related, apparently, to construction and not rain). We lost a whole room (Aurora) because the hotel had to move some offices into it.

[thebitterguy]

It would have been awesome if someone had told me that.

In fact, it would have been good if they'd told all the programming participants that there had been this problem and there might be some inconveniences occuring because of it.

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

I'll make a note. Things like that could go in the TCON News mailing, because that goes out as often as needed.

That said, I don't know what could have been done about it. Maybe we should remind people to include times of day in their "don't put my panels here" requests. We get people who don't want to be put against a particular guest or the masquerade, and once we had someone say he was flying in from a wedding on the Saturday and couldn't actually be at the hotel before 1 pm.

I guess nobody thought about it because we had lots of complaints last year that there weren't enough late night panels. But yeah, it wouldn't be an obvious thing to put the superhero panel that late at night. You'd usually think you could avoid late nights by not requesting to be on any adult panels.

[thebitterguy]

I think there needs to be a panelists email that can go out just to people signed up to be panelists that year.

Because, yeah, TCON News is real easy to ignore, especially if you're not waiting on the edge of your seat for guest announcements. I missed the pub night, for example.

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

I'd be afraid that multiple spammy email lists would be even easier to ignore, but I'll make a suggestion about having a regular panelists' mailing.

reason # 273785 why being poor sucks

[uniquecrash5.livejournal.com]

I would loved to have gone to this.

Re: reason # 273785 why being poor sucks

[thebitterguy]

Would have been awesome to see you there. Hopefully in 2009.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It's being held in a Salvation Army hall, so they are having a food and toy drive as well. Hey, [info]pyat, do they rent halls out in Hamilton?

They do indeed! Though the buffet isn't likely to be very good.

[elizard100.livejournal.com]

Good to see you, albeit briefly. Glad you finally got a chance to meet my guy in person. :)

[thebitterguy]

He's quite the guy. I'm glad you've found each other.

[elizalavelle.livejournal.com]

Fire alarms do suck and yeah, WTF was up with all of the super late panels. I wanted to do the Veronica Mars one but at midnight on Friday I was dancing and totally hammered.

I think I want to be a panelist next year. :)

[thebitterguy]

Panels are more fun than volunteering, I think. Cool.
You should do an Oz panel.

[elizalavelle.livejournal.com]

You're the second person who's suggested that to me lol. It's sort of tempting. I'd still volunteer too, I love working the main room :)