Arisia Roundup
Jan. 19th, 2004 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurSo. While I work at assiduously ignoring the Iowa caususes, I may as well write up reminiscences from Arisia. The following is a long ramble, in no particular order...
Celebration got its own posting, so I'll largely skip over that.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
msmemory and I had a quick dinner before the game at McCormick & Schmick, which I dearly wish had an outpost in the suburbs -- it's pricey, but it really is the best fish restaurant I know. And after the game, I managed to completely overwhelm my current alcohol tolerance with a chocolate martini. Note to self: a six-ounce martini is not the right thing to have when you're already dehydrated.
Panels: I moderated Cool Comics You're Not Reading Yet, which turned out to be three Fenmeri plussdavido. We took turns recommending books, and all of us ran on at the mouth a bit, but it was fun. Since someone previously asked: I wound up mentioning The Red Star, The Marquis, Metal Hurlant, Faction Paradox and Evenfall. I didn't get around to Noble Causes, Aria, Beware the Creeper, Red (as an example of the various miniseries that Warren Ellis is currently doing), Rex Mundi, Fables, The Human Target or Arrowsmith, which were the others I'd brought with me.
Pitfalls for New GMs was kind of interesting, since I had assumed it was a LARP panel and the other panelists had assumed it was a tabletop panel. So we did a lot of compare and contrast, seeing what issues are similar and which are different.
Fictitious Religions was a blast. We had a fine wander through subjects of sociology, the relation of religion and culture, the issues that real religions tend to address, and a good deal of discussion of why most religions depicted in SF (especially in Star Trek) are so shallow.
The Next Big Thing in Technology was an odd one -- I wound up moderating two guys who knew quite a bit more than me. But I had fun speculating wildly, and think I made the right choice starting us off with biotech as the first subject, leading to a lot more discussion of culture and a lot less talk about toys.
Other Saturday: Okay, I'll admit it: Tom Smith rocks. I need to get all of his CDs. You win. After his Saturday concert, I wound up earwormed with Rocket Ride for the rest of the weekend.
I earned doobie points by giving blood Saturday afternoon; that went rather better than the past couple of times, very quick and relatively painless. I missed most ofladysprite's Fantasy Forensics panel, but based on what I saw at the end she seems to have come through that with flying colors. (The audience was happily peppering her with speculative questions about the biology of various fantasy critters.)
The Masquerade was fairly average: some good stuff, some terrible stuff, nothing that really knocked my socks off. It was fun getting the now-traditional trailers show at halftime, but I was disappointed not to find anything that completely grabbed me. (Aside from Sky Captain, which we have already established looks like it might be the coolest movie this year.)
Post-trailers, a bunch of us went out for dessert at Finale. It was very tasty, but I'll admit a shade pricey even for my blood: $80-mumble for dessert for five. Okay, yes -- drinks accounted for a lot of that. Still...
Dancing: After dessert,msmemory and I wandered around until about 1am, at which point I wanted to get some dancing in. So I wandered downstairs, only to be confronted with a knot of Carolingians standing around outside the ballroom. new_man assured me that I did not want to go in; when I made to do so anyway, he said that they'd be out there when I gave up. I was skeptical: after all, how bad could it be?
Answer: that bad. The DJ this year was very talented at the special effects -- the lights were dazzling, the video effects were cool, the audio effects interesting. The one thing he was not good at was playing music that anyone would want to dance to.ladysprite and I valiantly attempted to dance for a few minutes, but started to get really frustrated when the music trailed off into artistic waterfall noises for about five minutes.
Fortunately, we got to talking about it, and she pointed out that we could do something about it. After all, Celebration was set at the High School Prom. I had a relatively loud boombox; she had the CDs that she andumbran had burned for the dance. We looked up at the stage (still showing beautiful CGI set to the waterfall noises), and decided that it was our holy mission to Save the Dancing.
We grabbed the Carolingian Mob, told them to follow us, and went up to the fourth floor. The room we'd used for the Prom turned out to be unlocked and empty, so we colonized it. We got the music system and discs, and began to play. Jasmina did a trip back downstairs to put up a sign advertising the "80s-ish Dance Party Upstairs", and we were off and running.
Things grew steadily from there. I think it was around 1:45 when Security wandered by for the third time, and told us that we'd been blessed as a quasi-official alternate dance party, so long as we were well-behaved. By about 3am, I gather that most of the dancers at the Con had made their way up to us: Security came by again, to tell us that the DJ had been fired, and someone who actually understands dance had been installed in his place. We declared victory, cleaned up the room, and went back down to show our support for Real Dancing. I eventually went to bed around 4am, in a considerably better mood than I've been in for weeks.
Lodging:msmemory and I wound up with a good, if odd, room at the Park Plaza. The "Executive King" turned out to be a room with one bed, two bathrooms, and six towels for the two of us. A good deal of floor space, although only average by Park Plaza standards. We've had rooms ranging in size from broom closets to football fields there -- the hotel has a very strange layout.
Good thing about the room: it had a thermostat. (Something I've never seen at the Park Plaza before.) Bad thing about the room: the thermostat was wholly ineffective. I set it for 60 degrees on a frigid night, and the room still never went below 69.
Okay, enough. Overall: a good weekend. Now I just need to get some sleep...
Celebration got its own posting, so I'll largely skip over that.
msmemory and I had a quick dinner before the game at McCormick & Schmick, which I dearly wish had an outpost in the suburbs -- it's pricey, but it really is the best fish restaurant I know. And after the game, I managed to completely overwhelm my current alcohol tolerance with a chocolate martini. Note to self: a six-ounce martini is not the right thing to have when you're already dehydrated.Panels: I moderated Cool Comics You're Not Reading Yet, which turned out to be three Fenmeri plus
sdavido. We took turns recommending books, and all of us ran on at the mouth a bit, but it was fun. Since someone previously asked: I wound up mentioning The Red Star, The Marquis, Metal Hurlant, Faction Paradox and Evenfall. I didn't get around to Noble Causes, Aria, Beware the Creeper, Red (as an example of the various miniseries that Warren Ellis is currently doing), Rex Mundi, Fables, The Human Target or Arrowsmith, which were the others I'd brought with me.Pitfalls for New GMs was kind of interesting, since I had assumed it was a LARP panel and the other panelists had assumed it was a tabletop panel. So we did a lot of compare and contrast, seeing what issues are similar and which are different.
Fictitious Religions was a blast. We had a fine wander through subjects of sociology, the relation of religion and culture, the issues that real religions tend to address, and a good deal of discussion of why most religions depicted in SF (especially in Star Trek) are so shallow.
The Next Big Thing in Technology was an odd one -- I wound up moderating two guys who knew quite a bit more than me. But I had fun speculating wildly, and think I made the right choice starting us off with biotech as the first subject, leading to a lot more discussion of culture and a lot less talk about toys.
Other Saturday: Okay, I'll admit it: Tom Smith rocks. I need to get all of his CDs. You win. After his Saturday concert, I wound up earwormed with Rocket Ride for the rest of the weekend.
I earned doobie points by giving blood Saturday afternoon; that went rather better than the past couple of times, very quick and relatively painless. I missed most of
ladysprite's Fantasy Forensics panel, but based on what I saw at the end she seems to have come through that with flying colors. (The audience was happily peppering her with speculative questions about the biology of various fantasy critters.)The Masquerade was fairly average: some good stuff, some terrible stuff, nothing that really knocked my socks off. It was fun getting the now-traditional trailers show at halftime, but I was disappointed not to find anything that completely grabbed me. (Aside from Sky Captain, which we have already established looks like it might be the coolest movie this year.)
Post-trailers, a bunch of us went out for dessert at Finale. It was very tasty, but I'll admit a shade pricey even for my blood: $80-mumble for dessert for five. Okay, yes -- drinks accounted for a lot of that. Still...
Dancing: After dessert,
msmemory and I wandered around until about 1am, at which point I wanted to get some dancing in. So I wandered downstairs, only to be confronted with a knot of Carolingians standing around outside the ballroom. new_man assured me that I did not want to go in; when I made to do so anyway, he said that they'd be out there when I gave up. I was skeptical: after all, how bad could it be?Answer: that bad. The DJ this year was very talented at the special effects -- the lights were dazzling, the video effects were cool, the audio effects interesting. The one thing he was not good at was playing music that anyone would want to dance to.
ladysprite and I valiantly attempted to dance for a few minutes, but started to get really frustrated when the music trailed off into artistic waterfall noises for about five minutes.Fortunately, we got to talking about it, and she pointed out that we could do something about it. After all, Celebration was set at the High School Prom. I had a relatively loud boombox; she had the CDs that she and
umbran had burned for the dance. We looked up at the stage (still showing beautiful CGI set to the waterfall noises), and decided that it was our holy mission to Save the Dancing.We grabbed the Carolingian Mob, told them to follow us, and went up to the fourth floor. The room we'd used for the Prom turned out to be unlocked and empty, so we colonized it. We got the music system and discs, and began to play. Jasmina did a trip back downstairs to put up a sign advertising the "80s-ish Dance Party Upstairs", and we were off and running.
Things grew steadily from there. I think it was around 1:45 when Security wandered by for the third time, and told us that we'd been blessed as a quasi-official alternate dance party, so long as we were well-behaved. By about 3am, I gather that most of the dancers at the Con had made their way up to us: Security came by again, to tell us that the DJ had been fired, and someone who actually understands dance had been installed in his place. We declared victory, cleaned up the room, and went back down to show our support for Real Dancing. I eventually went to bed around 4am, in a considerably better mood than I've been in for weeks.
Lodging:
msmemory and I wound up with a good, if odd, room at the Park Plaza. The "Executive King" turned out to be a room with one bed, two bathrooms, and six towels for the two of us. A good deal of floor space, although only average by Park Plaza standards. We've had rooms ranging in size from broom closets to football fields there -- the hotel has a very strange layout.Good thing about the room: it had a thermostat. (Something I've never seen at the Park Plaza before.) Bad thing about the room: the thermostat was wholly ineffective. I set it for 60 degrees on a frigid night, and the room still never went below 69.
Okay, enough. Overall: a good weekend. Now I just need to get some sleep...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-19 07:34 pm (UTC)You can get his albums at his web page (http://www.tomsmithonline.com - which also has his nifty and enthusiastic con report), or if you want I can just snag them for you at the next filk con I go to - if nothing else, he'll have them at MarCon in May, and I'm planning on being there if at all possible....
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-19 07:42 pm (UTC)Actually, now that I mention that, my interest is very piqued. Someone else mentioned in the gripe session that they were given a different room than they requested, which was fine, except that they were given a fancier room than they requested and they were expected to pay the difference. Normally, when that happens to a hotel customer (even at a con) the customer only pays for the room they requested even if they have to be upgraded "against their will". If that happened to the person in charge of our room, not only would that explain why it was 20 bucks more per person than expected, but I doubt they would have tried to fight it (if they even noticed) as they're not very pushy. They mentioned some kind of complication and I bet anything that's what it was... It's too late to fix now, but I'd really like to know for my own curiosity.
I now await your response with bated breath. :)
As far as 2 bathrooms for 2 people, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I often think I wouldn't mind getting married someday if I could just have my own bathroom!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-19 08:25 pm (UTC)Actually, out of all that, I'm not quite sure what the question was.
Really, though, it was fine for us -- I'm pretty sure that the Executive King was one of the options we'd listed.
(And this room wasn't nearly as strange as the football-field one. That room was big enough to fit *four* King-sized beds in it. We almost had a party, solely because we had a room bigger than some of the hotel's function rooms.)
I do find the two-bathroom thing rather weird. Not entirely unpleasant, but not hugely useful, either. The one advantage might have been showering -- the tubs were small enough that we weren't sure that we weren't going to knock each other out of the tub if we'd showered together. But it turned out that both showers share the same hot water line, so showering at the same time wasn't a good option either...
Normally, when that happens to a hotel customer (even at a con) the customer only pays for the room they requested even if they have to be upgraded "against their will".
Well, remember that the room assignments were made by the Con, rather than the hotel. I suspect that the hotel didn't even know about the involuntary "upgrades". And the Con isn't likely to make up the difference.
Really, I'm not even specifically annoyed at the Con for the failure to give people their first-choice rooms; I gather that enough of the hotel was out of commission that they didn't have much choice. My only real complaint is that the Con should have known about the problem, and told folks about it, far, far earlier than they did...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-19 10:06 pm (UTC)I agree completely with not being annoyed at the con for failing to give people first-choice rooms. I can't think of a single con where everyone gets the room they want, and sometimes people who wait until the last minute don't get rooms at all. My problem is what you stated: the con should have known about the issue, and above all should have told people, loudly, in bright flashing colors, beforehand. Anyone in fandom should know that a lot of fannish (in this economy, a lot of everyone) are on extremely tight budgets. To get an end-of-con checkout surprise in the form of a higher bill could potentially be a major problem for some (fortunately that's not me right now).
It never occurred to me that the hotel wouldn't have known about the involuntary upgrades, but you're right, the way Arisia ran it, it's very likely the hotel had no idea. Another reason I agree with those at the gripe session who felt the reservation system needs revision.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-20 06:09 am (UTC)Ah. It can best be thought of as it probably originally was: two fairly ordinary and thin rooms, with the wall knocked down. There were two corridors leading in, on the edges of the room: the real entrance, and a second corridor that didn't actually open out into the hallway.
The bathrooms ran along the corridors, back to back with each other. The main area of the bedroom was somewhat wider than it was long, with the bed up against the wall to the bathrooms.
We didn't have the sofabed -- we had a desk on one side, and a dresser on the other, plus one somewhat squishy chair.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-19 07:43 pm (UTC)Oh, and my housemate
Thermostat
Re: Celebration
Date: 2004-01-20 12:58 pm (UTC)Re: Celebration
Date: 2004-01-21 06:13 am (UTC)