Meanderings: August 28, 1999

Saturday,
August 28, 1999
Day Three

Saturday dawned with the buzzing of the alarm, which I slapped into submission as I turned over for another hour of sleep. But not too much sleep -- the CRUSADE cast were going to show up at the Agamemcon table and sign autographs and such.

Now, normally my reaction would have been, "Actors. That's nice." Unless it was someone I thought was cute, at which point I'd turn into a slavering puddle of drool. However, nobody really floats my boat from CRUSADE, so I was safe on that point. No, I was waking up at an ungodly hour of the morning to drum up the moxie to talk to Peter Woodward, the British actor who plays Galen the technomage. Good actor, lovely voice, seems to have a lot of fun with the role. He also happens to be Edward Woodward's son, which is IMMENSELY cool. I had a humongous crush on Ed Wood Squared, as Lyndon likes to call him, when I first saw him in THE WICKER MAN, so meeting his son appealed in some strange way.

Turned out that the cast members who showed up were all absolute peaches. A lot of times you'll meet actors at a con, and they give off so much attitude of "Bow down and worship me, mere mortal, because I am a member of the acting elite." Not these folks -- they seemed genuinely pleased to be there, and signed autographs while they chatted with people. And yes, I did eventually mention my crush to Peter -- unfortunately, the only opportunity I had to do it was during Joe Straczynski's talk, when he called the CRUSADE members up to the podium and they were taking questions. At least I phrased it as a throwaway comment -- he seemed amused, and I managed to avoid the Dribbling Idiot FanGirl stage. So that was cool.

Oh, and I can now feel like I've officially arrived in the SF community -- Harlan Ellison corrected my English. Be still, my beating heart.

In the afternoon, a group of us realized that we were starving, so we (me, Vera, Tippi, Kytte, Joe and Tom) piled into Tomäs Windstar rental and headed off for a Homestyle Buffet. I'd forgotten what these places were like -- great, huge, horking steam tables loaded down with food, salad bars with every bloody topping known to man, and a dessert bar that would make Susan Powter cry. This place was slightly more upmarket than your usual buffet restaurant -- they had a cook slicing off pieces of roast turkey and prime rib for diners. I'm still kicking myself for passing on the turkey, but the fried chicken just looked too good to miss. And, of course, we threw in a couple of rounds of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" -- this seems to be the SFF.Net signature piece of the con, since Vera started singing it on Thursday and it just took on a life of its own. So if anyone heard a slightly out-of-tune group going "WEEEEEEEEE--wee--EE--ee--uh--WEE--dum--dum-b-way," that was us, especially if the lyrics went, "On the SFF.Net, the mighty SFF.Net, the llamas lust toniiiiiiight!"

The evening parties were good once again -- Lyndon and I wandered through the various bid parties (when a group of fans want to host a worldcon, they hold bid parties at every major convention in order to garner attention and attract pre-supporters, who pay a nominal fee that will become part of the membership fee should that bidding group win the right to host a worldcon), hung out at the SFF.Net suite again, and after I confessed my cowardice, Vera and Jim Bailey took me over to the Tor party (read: Professionals hanging out in a REALLY nice suite and talking shop). I dunno -- I suppose I feel like a bit of a fraud walking in under my own steam. Which is eminently silly, of course, but there you are. The nice thing was that I got a chance to meet Mad Robins finally -- she wrote this fabulous fantasy about NYC called THE STONE WAR, which I highly recommend. Mad's also completely cool.

Eventually, I wound up back at the SFF.Net party, sprawled on yet another bed with Dave Smeds, Christy Hardin-Smith, Kytte Burke, Jim Bailey and other Published Small Fry (Vera's phrase) and Young Turks of SF (my phrase) as we gabbed well unto the wee hours. Before that, Jan Stirling (whom I want to be when I grow up because she is just so incredibly nice and gracious) read our palms, and we took turns trying out a telepresence unit that someone had set up on the balcony. Poor Christy was so incredibly exhausted, though -- by 1:00 am, her eyes looked like she had been staring at the sun for a couple of hours. As it was her bed we were sprawled upon, we finally left so that the poor woman could get some sleep.

And no, I still didn't manage to get down to the pool. Well, poop.

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