Balticon 37 Memories
May 2003, Wyndham Hotel in Downtown Baltimore
The view from the 12th floor. It wasn't much, it rained all weekend. Luckily, all of Balticon was indoors. Oh, look! A mugging at the Steak and Seafood House! As Dave Atell called it, "Baltimore is a Lovely Lady by the Sea with a bad case of crabs."
From the Odd Promotion Department: Underworld - The Mints! These mints went fast, and people seemed to like them. I found them hard and not very tasty, and thus, I guess a metaphor of life in the Underworld.
"She was onlyyyy a merchants daughteeerr..." I don't even know if that's a song. Here's some symbolism for you: Sara is a merchant's daughter. Christine was a merchant's assistant. I met both at Balticon. I married one of them. No, not the one on the left, because in June of 1989, Sawa would have been six, you sicko! Both these girls knew Joanne. [sniff] We miss you, Joanne!
I heard on Saturday that they expected to top about 1600, which isn't bad. I took this picture on Friday, when I thought this was a crowd. Oh no. Saturday it was so packed, I couldn't get a picture of this hallway.
Hey, just to show you I am not a pervert, here's our friend Andrew without a dress. He's working for the Baltimore Water Taxi, and he just got off work.
Here's Hal, one of the big cheeses at Balticon. He also moderates the BWSMOF list, and hosted our meeting at Balticon. Sadly, when he was a kid, he made too many faces and just like his mother warned, it stayed that way. He has to apply a lot of lotion to his tongue to keep it from drying out.
Christine and Sawa playing cards. Christine was head of security for night ops for Balticon Friday and Saturday nights. She played a lot of cards, had friends over, and we really had a lot of fun
We wouldn't be here, if it wasn't for this man. Seth is the bomb. He is so with it, and while he works a lot at Katsucon with inventory and shipment (he's our quartermaster), Balticon is his home. He literally grew up at this con. It shows, doesn't it? He asked us to help out.
Paul O'Neil was head of Night Ops, and I don't know how he put up with us. He was also angry because he wasn't told to dress casual, and he thought it was a formal affair. Boy, did we make fun of his hat! I tried to stick a placard that said "In this Style 10/6," but they took all the markers from me and hid them. Our big security nightmare was unsupervised teen lacross players, and Paul was pulling his hair out over it all night.
Rogue. We have so many pictures of her because she's an attention whore. And we love her for it! Rogue is always trying to convince Christine to leave me and marry her. But she's already married to Cull, and since polygamy is forbidden in the US, I am fairly safe... for now.
Here's a trio of gals who can't be put in the same room together without mischeif abounding. Singing aloud in public? Check. Banging on restaurant tables when laughing? Check. Enbarrassing the heck out of everyone else around them? Check...
"OOH! Let's pose as Charlie's Angels!" says Rogue. Okay. Here we are, the "Scorpion Sistas." All of us have bithdays in November, under the sign of Scorpio.
Here are Carpathian and Kuzibah, two members of the storytelling group, "Patient Creatures." Carpathian is a right gentleman, and I was on a panel with him last year. Both of them are really into the goth and storytelling community. I keep missing their panels. I suck.
Irwin Strauss, a.k.a, "Filthy Pierre," I have known like... forever. At least since the early 1980s. He used to run the Convention Register, the Libertarian Connection, and he is THE man who knew who/what/when/why/where of all the con parties. He is the inventor of the "Voodoo Board", the inter-member communication method used at WorldCons. He is still a strong supporter of the filk community, and includes filk cons in his monthly "SF Convention Calendar" in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Filthy Pierre can still can be found at cons with this air-driven keyboard, his name tag, and his willingness to sing.
One of the new convention dynamos on the scene, this husband and wife team of Alison and Kory Kaese run Msytic Station Designs, as well as the game rooms of several conventions. Kory is taking over my position of head of programming at FanTek cons.
The computer room was crowded with kids. Mostly playing MPFPS (Multi-player First-Person Shooters), but there was also a crowd for Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). Check out that kid's hair in the front. It's blond with black criss-cross stripes. Way cool.
Check out this nifty catapult I got! It's hand made, and really, really, well-crafted. It's hardwood, with replacable rubber bands for a spring. This guy also made wands lathed from a single piece of hardwood. I might try and sponsor this guy in the FanTek art show. His name is Nicodemys Carvell, and he can be reached at "sirnicodemys at comcast .dot. net" (e-mail obfuscated to prevent spam harvesters).
It shoots any small object, like M&M's, mini-marshmallows, pebbles, marbles, and so on. I took it to work to shoot mini-marshmallows at people. The catapult was a LOT stronger than I thought. I had to reduce the strength with rubber band placement, but it took a while to aim it at my co-worker's door properly. He got mad, said he'd report me to HR if I didn't "remove an act of obvious agression." What a putz. I didn't even get to shoot it at him.