Funk Babblings

Now I remember how difficult it is to find a place to get breakfast in downtown (Columbus in this case, but this probably applies to any city) at 7:30am on a national holiday..... But after heading toward a more residential neighborhood I found a coffee shop that had opened an hour earlier than they were supposed to on the holiday, and as a bonus they have free wireless internet service. (An hour or so later they were doing a brisk business.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself....

It's the Monday morning after Marcon, and I'm sitting in Columbus's Short North district. My calves are still doubtful about forgiving me for going up and down the stairs to our 17th-floor room at least twice Friday night. (It's been a long time since I lived on the 12th floor at OSU.) Not to mention the dancing Saturday night -- after I was fully intending to give my legs a break, the DJ played the Ramones, and those intentions were lost.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again....

Ah, nevermind, forget chronology. (Does that make me the anti-chronarchy?)

Marcon was fun, particularly socially. I got to see and chat with (in order of appearance) duriyah, wishesofastar, braider, and jayene. I finally met and talked to surakofb5 in person after seeing her on LJ and at Marcon for a long time now, as well as some other people I recognized from somewhere before and finally met and talked to this weekend. (The phrase "old friends who've just met" kept running through my head.) By contrast, I ran into someone I went to elementary school with, and last saw in 6th grade about 20 years ago; running into her during my mid-Marcon exhaustion surprised me so much that I wasn't able to talk very coherently with her until the next day, and even then I still forgot to get contact information. (This seems to be a running theme with me.) Of course, I didn't get to talk with anyone as much as I would've liked to.

Sometime in the past year I decided I wanted to pay more attention to the music at Marcon. So this weekend I attended performances by comedic filker Tom Smith (filkertom) and morose filker Erica Neely. Favorite songs were his "Illuminati Polka" and her "Gypsy Curse"; unfortunately Erica's followup CD to her excellent Not Everybody Dies won't be out until October, but at least I now have "Illuminati Polka" on CD. Also, on Friday night I went to the Rocky Horror Picture Show performed live. No toast or rice was thrown, but they made up for it in other ways.... The only problem for me was that I'm not familiar enough with the whole thing to be able to understand everything said either on-screen or shouted from the audience. (The same people also do the show on the 1st and 3rd Saturday on each month at Studio 35.) And on a somewhat similar note but much much tamer, on Saturday night I saw braider and surakofb5 sing and dance in the now-annual Buffy "Once More With Feeling" singalong while the episode was projected on-screen behind them. (After that was when I ended up going to the dance -- until 3am -- despite the protestations of my calves.)

I went to lots of panel discussions as always, though not as many as in previous years since I tried to pay more attention to other aspect (and people) too. "The Limits Of Science" on Friday was fun, though tending toward sidetracks. "How Biology Affects Thinking and Society" was not so fun, since it was taken over by a domineering psychiatrist who didn't seem to care about sci-fi-style speculation or letting the more interesting people talk; I left in boredom after the first 15 minutes were mostly about how different people deal with pain, and I hear that it didn't really get better after that.

Saturday I also went to the Marcon masquerade for the first time (even though I've been going to Marcon since 1999), and learned that it's more entertaining than I expected; though it's a bit harder to see the costumes there than just wandering the hallways.

Then there were the various panel discussions about shows such as Babylon 5 and Firefly/Serenity (both very well attended, particularly for dead shows). Sunday was a day of unfamiliarity in this area. First was a panel disussing three different shows, one of which (B5) I'm extremely familiar with, one (Farscape) I'm fairly familiar with but haven't seen enough of to know much of the wider plot aspects, and one (Stargate SG-1) I'm hardly familiar with at all and don't really have much interest in. I came away from that discussion resolved to try to fix my Farscape deficiences (but I still don't care about SG-1). After that I delved further into my ignorance -- a discussion of Battlestar Galactica, which I keep hearing is great but have never seen at all. It was really strange sitting in this crowded discussion about two seasons of a show I've never seen, but I came out convinced that it must really be worth the praise I'd been hearing. So I went straight up to the dealer room and bought the season one DVD set. Now I have to try to forget all the spoilers I heard; I think there's really only one that sticks in my mind now though.

Also in the dealer room I bought way too much comics stuff, including the pre-Serenity graphic novel, JMS's Midnight Nation and the 3-part B5: In Valen's Name comic book mini-series; Neil Gaiman's Death: The Time of Your Life and a Spawn mini-series I hadn't heard of (even though I know nothing about Spawn anyway); the first volume of Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men; and the first volume of Alan Moore's run of Swamp Thing, just to find out what all the fuss is about on that. This may be the first year in a while that I didn't buy any traditional (non-graphic) novels, since I already have plenty of those waiting to be read. And also because I've lost track of what Discworld books I need to get next (I'm about 15 years behind on those).

Now I'm thinking I should start checking out some more cons. Though considering that Marcon is so very multi-faceted and most cons are much more focused, I'm likely to be disappointed by the limited scope of others.

I'm very much looking forward to next year's Marcon. Why? It's Marcon 42. You can guess the theme they have planned. ;-)