Blasted Bill's Marscon Report
Blasted Bill's Marscon Report
Well, another Marscon is over. This year was even better then the one I got to go to in 2004. It’s defiantly a MUST go to if you are interested in dementia in any way shape or form. We were joking at the con that there was no other place on earth with a higher concentration of dementia then at that point in time. It’s almost everything I always hoped my and Luke’s dementia cons would become. I’m starting this post from the train station on Tuesday morning while waiting to board the train.
My trip started out badly. I was going to get on the train in Pontiac and it left at 6:40 Thursday morning. The station is only about 10 minutes away from my house, if that. After my show in Wednesday, I packed everything so I just had to wake up and go. I woke up at 6:00, grabbed my bags, throw them in my car, went to leave, but there was an ice storm the night before and the drive way, car, house, EVERYTHING had a ¼ Inch layer of ice on it. I scrapped off what I could with out my scrapper, which was buried in my car in a place that was totally unreachable in any decent amount of time. The road was very bad and every one was driving slow, so I got to the station right at 6:40 and got to watch my train pull away. Fortunately, I had prepared for this problem and knew where the Ann Arbor station was and was able to drive to there in time. Annoying, but I made it. I slept almost the entire trip. We were running about 30 minutes late when Ken aka madman called to check my status. By the time we got to the station, we were only 8 minutes late. I walked out of the station just as Ken was pulling up.
It was good I came in a day early as Ken needed help getting the van. We drove to the van pick up location, but the van we were going to rent was damaged, so we had to wait for them to find a new one, then we had to drive to the other location to pick it up. So it took much longer to get the van then we thought. We got back to ken’s place, we took the back seat of the van out for luggage room, I worked on fixing his daughters computer, jayekitty from the channel showed up, we ordered pizza, we started ken’s show early, Kristi aka Mrs. Throwing toasters showed up, jayekitty and I geeked on ken’s computer trying to get 2 laptops online at once, but we only managed to mess up my network config, then we went to bed. The couch in the basement was making me sneeze like crazy, so I slepted up stairs.
Ken left early to pick up Phil and carry. Ellen showed up about 6:30. The plan was for the 8 of us leave from ken’s house in the 15 person van at 7am, due into marscon about 2:30pm. I printed out some flyers and tricked out the back of the van. The Illinois license plate says “land of Lincoln” so I covered Lincoln with “dementia”. We also came up with the slogan “marscon and busts” and put those up. Just around 7, ken, phil, and carry showed up, we packed up the van, and left. So the 8 of us at that point were Me, Ken, Ken’s wife Ronnie, Carry, Ellen, phil, Jayekitty, and Kristi. We had a pretty sleepy uneventful trip up to near Madison where we picked up the 9th and final member of the group, Ben aka Breakman Z. this was nearing noon and we started waking up and being a bit more noisy and rowdy. We pulled up to the marscon hotel just about 3pm meet by the great luke ski and poohbear and his family. The party started instantly and we knew a good time was going to be had that weekend.
After checking into my hotel room and regging for the con, I went and took a look around. It was just about time for emi to start her show. I walked up to her and said hi not introducing my self to see how long it would take for her to figure out who I was. Didn’t take long with my con badge, DOH! We said our hellos and settled in for the show. We got all kinds of ppl stopping by and saying hi and it was great fun. More of the group emerged from there settling in to their rooms and the party really started. Unfortunately, they put us RIGHT next to some guests signing autographs who didn’t appreciate all the noise we were making, but a compromise was reached and it was all good. During all this I was attempting to get my laptop on the free wireless and having no luck at all. I finally figured out that it was the configing that jayekitty and I were playing around with the night before that was messing things up. DOH! So I undid those configs and everything worked fine. Imagine that. Some time during the show, blacksmith was finally able to get from the airport to the hotel. We ended the show at 7 and headed to opening ceremonies.
Marscon always has great entertainment for there opening ceremonies. This year was no exception. The theme was “things that go bump in the night” so luke, earl, and brian came out as vampire extras from buffy and angel. It was hilarious. At one point luke told earl “go bite a kid with riddelin” and I couldn’t help my self. I had to say it and I yelled out “but tony’s not here”, which got several laughs, several groins, and luke and earl quickly said “moving right along….” So they introduced the goh’s and the co chairs n’stuff and we were off to a great con. We had time to kill before the gothsicles, so we headed up to karaoke and the party floor. Blak, me, ben, and ken performed bohemin rhapsody and it was great fun. We got a few more in, but then some others came in and started doing slow songs and brought the room down and the karaoke guy was letting any one who hadn’t sang a song yet sing 1st before letting ppl repeat. So with a stream of new ppl coming in, we couldn’t get a turn again, all the energy got sucked out of the room, and a lot of ppl left, so we left too. During this, blaksmith was able to set up the stream from his laptop and cast as we walked around. About 11, we headed down to the gothsicles concert. There was a bunch of others hanging out in the lobby waiting for the concert too. There was a band that wasn’t very interesting to us playing before the gothsicles, so we waited in the lobby. It was very high energy mode and every one was having a great time. It was about this time that shoebox and devo spice got in and the place went nuts welcoming them. I introduced myself to the gothsicles, who were hang out with the rest of us, and got permission to stream their show live on dementia radio. They loved the idea. I saw steph for the 1st time of the weekend and gave her her much loved “tipy toe” hug. She brought as many of her goth friends to the con as she could for the concert and the parties.
Finally it was time for the concert. Every one was excited. I got in to the room and most of the good 1st and 2nd row seats where taken, so I said, ok, the 3rd row is the official dementia group row, and several of us started sitting down. Some con official type ppl started coming up and moving ppl out of the 1st two rows and removing the seats, so suddenly, we were all in the front row! WOOT! There was lots of set up to do for the show and me being my usual hyper, egotisical, leo self took it as my job to keep the group entertained, leading every one in chants and songs. Random words would appear on the video projection screen and we would start chanting it. At one point and time, I went to yell out “wisky tango foxtrot” as in wtf. But me being the typo king, even in rl, said “wisky tango bravo.” So every one else started chanting “what the bill!” it was great fun. At one point, the girl who plays keyboards in the group said to me “good job, keep the crowd warmed up for us.” So finally the concert starts and if you don’t know it or haven’t heard it yet, THE GOTHSICLES ROCK!!!! Dark Nes, the lead singer, was down where the 1st and 2nd rows use to be screaming the lyrics to thier songs and dancing all around. I had heard some of there songs before and enjoyed them well enough, but to fully understand the gothsicels, you need to see them live. They have a full multimedia presentation to go with the songs that add so much to the experience. They had songs about old video games, being goth, transformers, and all manner of things 80’s. Maybe some day they’ll do a song about garbage pail kids. The highlight of the show was “komoni code”. The game manufacturer komoni put a hidden code into thier games that started to be called “the konomi code”. The most famous of these was the one in contra that gave you 30 lifes. So gothsicles did a song about this code where they chant what the code was. So the entire room was screaming “UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A SELECT START!” it was one of the best moments of the whole con!! The rest of the weekend we were chanting that.
So the concert ended much to our sadness, but several of us went back up to the party floor. I got to hang out with 2 of the members of the gothsicles, steph, and 2 of her super hot goth chick friends. We hit several of the parties and finally ended up in the karaoke room. I stayed up tell about 4am and finally called it a night.
I didn’t have to be up until about 10:30 as I needed to be at the buffy rehearsal. But in my usual con fashion, at 9am, BEING! I was wide awake and couldn’t go back to sleep. I went to the consuite for some food and pop…… FREAKIN CLOSED!!!!! What party con closes the consuite!???!!!??! Small cons with small staffs close consuites, not a marscon!?!??! The consuite sucked the entire weekend to boot. Smelled like CRAP. You didn’t even want to stay in there long. Just grab a pop and leave. I found better food at the room parties. Fortunately, the hotel had a small stand that was reasonably priced. So I bought a couple of doughnuts from then and geeked on my laptop and hung out with folks. Just about 11, I went up to the buffy rehearsal. It went pretty well. It ended at 1 but me and a few others had some changes to make, so we went up to my room to practice a bit more before the concerts started at 2. We got to the concert and got seats near the front. There was lots of set up so devo spice, who was up 1st, didn’t get on stage until about 10 after. He was confused though and thought he started at 2:30 so he let emi perform a song, and then he started his concert. Great as always, loved his multimedia and loved his new whoops song(currently released on technobabble).
I forget if eric colemen or hot waffles came up after devo, but they were both great of course. 1st time I got to see hot waffles performing in full effect. I saw chris at alcon 3. banjo and bass, what a unique sound. I was watching luke’s cd’s off to the side during eric’s set and sadly, I fell asleep through a large part of it. I was REALY getting tired by then. Went back to my normal seat for worm quartet who rocked has he always does. I had to leave about 4 songs in though, so I missed his new song ): I came back part way into the Raymond and scum set. It was awesome to see r&s for the 1st time. Plus the 2 members of the nick atoms who were at the con where on stage with them so it was a full band. By this time I was nearly asleep in my chair, so I HAD to take a nap. I can see tom smith at almost every con I go to, so I figured I could afford to miss his concert and slept from about 4 to about 6:30ish. By the time I got up, most every one had eaten already, so I grabbed more food from the hotel counter.
The masquarde was due to start at 7, luke’s concert at 10 and buffy at midnight. The masquarde didn’t actually start until closer to 9. I had to go back stage and help ken with some luke roadie things. Originally I was going to stay outside and be surprised, but I’m always there to help luke if I can. A few surprises got ruined for me but not many. I also helped Carry with several things while back stage. The lady who was running the masquarde was some where else. I think they were doing pre judging of the costumes. But because she wasn’t around, the masquarded didn’t actually start until about an hour and 20 minutes late. So the lady stalling for time was like what do I do? So luke actually came out to stall for time BEFORE the masquarded started. The masquarded went on WAY to long. The mc got off the stage, sat down, then stood back up and walked back on stage for every act. There were TONS of acts, and most of them not funny, cleaver, or interesting. A tip for masquaraders, unless you’re a master level customers, don’t go in the masquerade unless your costume WILL get ohhh’s, ahhh’s, or laughs. We just don’t care other wise. So the last contestant finally came through and the judges left for the judging. Luke came on with grease wars and did an AWESEOME job as always with the help of Carry. They looked for the stalling for time signal and it was stall time. Luke continued to stall at least another 30 minutes. He prolly could have fit his entire show into the masquarde and have been just fine. So finally the masquarde clears. Everything is set for it to go but 2 of girls who were helping on luke’s 1st song. They were in the masquarde and had to change before we could start. Finally they showed up and it was near 11 by the time we started.
I was honored by being asked to introduce luke. Luke originally was going to write up my introduction, but of course ran out of time. So I wrote up something earlier based on some input he gave me and then spent the rest of the night trying to memorize it. So the big moment came, camera’s were rolling (this was the big dvd show btw), and I came out and introduced him to thunderous applause. I didn’t do to bad stumbling over my damn long tongue and dyslexic brain, and the show was on it’s way. It was a great show. There were only 2 new songs though, but very good set. Want to know how it went? Then buy the dvd in august (:
So the show ended with no major problems and we started setting up for buffy. We were told months ago they had a dvd player for us, then we get there, no dvd player. So we had to scramble to get that set up. By the time we started, I started having a stomach ache something bad. I got through the opening bit, but about 15 minutes in, I had to go. I went back to my room for a bit. Then grabbed a pepsi in consuite and was feeling a bit better. I got back down just in time to be buffy’s punching bag, but that’s the only other part I felt up to playing that night. I sat and tried not to be too miserable. For “let it burn” I wanted to do something as the fire truck that flies by on the “burn.” The inflatable daleic from the masquarde was still in the audience and I thought it would be funny to run on stage with the daleic playing the part of the fire engine, but the owners said no when I asked if I could barrow it. ): it’s prolly rare and expensive so I understand. By the end of the film I was hurting badly again and was lying on the chairs. I wanted to help luke pack up, but I was hurting so bad. I got breakman z to help in my place. I sat around with some other dementia folks smoding(secret masters of dementia). As things were whining down, I found my self having to run towards the men’s room as fast as I could, nearly knocking down matt. I’ll spare you the details, but I’m sure I had food poising or some flu bug. If it was the flu, only blaksmth seems to have gotten it. I went back to my room and rested awhile and felt better and didn’t want to miss out on all the great Saturday night parting. I went up to the 13 floor and hung out awhile, but eventually got to sick and went back to bed.
I woke about 9 again, but didn’t feel too bad as I went to bed early. I went hot tubing as I felt it was my only chance to do so. I fortunely didn’t have to pack up right away as blak was staying Sunday night. After swimming, I hung out in the lobby until the tom/luke request concert. It was cool. Tom made up new songs on the spot and luke performed old songs that he had back ground tracks for. I managed to stump him with gump and some one else with back one week to the future, but almost everything else, he had.
Several ppl went to eat in the hour and a half we had before the dementia smackdown. I took luke’s laptop to karaoke and fixed it up for him while listening to some friends sing. I was still feeling horrible. The smack down was cool, much shorter then I was expecting, but that’s ok, the artists got to sell cd’s and we got to take some pictures. Check out madmanotl’s lj to see them.
The egg. THE EGG!!! Hot Waffles apparently were challenged to write a song about an egg the night before. They did a simple little song called the yoke’s on you. I thought it was passable and a bit funny but every one went totally nuts as if it was the greatest song ever written. I thought I was missing something. I thought maybe they were making fun of something that happened over the weekend that I missed. I was even looking around for a camera pointed at me to see if every one was like “hey, act like hot waffles song is the best song ever but don’t tell bill, he’ll be all confused.” However, no one could explain to me why they thought it was funny. The only thing I can think is that I just didn’t find the song nearly as funny as every one else did and was looking for something I was missing. *shrug*. Anyways, kudos to hot waffles for a song that got a standing O. Chris claims he will dedicate the song to me when next he performs it which will be cool.
After the good buys and the good byes, we packed up the van. We went out to eat with the Winslow family and Carry’s father at a Denny’s. I actually didn’t eat, I had a shake. The thought of food was still upsetting my stomach. We started our sad journey home, but not before putting in some awesome tracks, like the gothsicles, and having several more group sings. We dropped bmz off at his house. I was actually feeling pretty good at the next stop and was hungry so I grabbed a burger. By the time we got home, I was very exhausted and was asleep. Ellen was picked up, jayekitty decided to keep heading home to Ohio, and Kristi stayed the night. I had to help pick up ken’s wife’s car still. We took the van and dropped off Carry and Phil, picked up the car. I drove the van and followed ken. I had to turn off the heat, crank up the music, and chug my Pepsi to stay awake. Got back to ken’s, parked the van, flopped on the couch, and was OUT. I heard Kristi saying goodbye to me at some point, but I was pretty much still out. I wook up about 11 and we took the van back, got ken’s car, and headed for carry’s place.
Carry’s computer was running very slow and Tseran sent her some memory that I was going to put in. She lost it and ken and her tore her place apart looking for it but we could not find it. Another channel member is going to give her a new computer, so we weren’t terribly concerned about upgrade her old one all that much. I was able to clean it up and recovered about 6 gigs by deleting all the temporary internet files. It was running much better when I left. We went out to a local restaurant down the way and had a nice meal. It was good to just hang out with Carry. She’s always so busy with Luke and all at cons. We got back to her place just a few minutes after her show was to start. She casted from my laptop as I worked on her computer. We had a few tech glitchs but mostly it went well. After the show and after I got as much done on her computer as I could, we headed back to Ken’s place. Had one more small computer glitch at Ken’s. I fixed it then went to bed. We wook up butt early in the morning and got to the train station in plenty of time. I managed to find the food court and the mc donald’s with my mc donalds sense(I didn’t even know I was LOOKING for a mc donald’s and it was pointing me in the right direction) despite total lack of decent signage. Jumped on the train, had a pleasant ride, got back to Michigan, drove to my place about 4pm, and then went to bed and slept till about 3am.
It was a great con and I encourage every one to try to make it to marscon next year. Thank you to every one who helped me and every one who helped make it a great con.
Well, another Marscon is over. This year was even better then the one I got to go to in 2004. It’s defiantly a MUST go to if you are interested in dementia in any way shape or form. We were joking at the con that there was no other place on earth with a higher concentration of dementia then at that point in time. It’s almost everything I always hoped my and Luke’s dementia cons would become. I’m starting this post from the train station on Tuesday morning while waiting to board the train.
My trip started out badly. I was going to get on the train in Pontiac and it left at 6:40 Thursday morning. The station is only about 10 minutes away from my house, if that. After my show in Wednesday, I packed everything so I just had to wake up and go. I woke up at 6:00, grabbed my bags, throw them in my car, went to leave, but there was an ice storm the night before and the drive way, car, house, EVERYTHING had a ¼ Inch layer of ice on it. I scrapped off what I could with out my scrapper, which was buried in my car in a place that was totally unreachable in any decent amount of time. The road was very bad and every one was driving slow, so I got to the station right at 6:40 and got to watch my train pull away. Fortunately, I had prepared for this problem and knew where the Ann Arbor station was and was able to drive to there in time. Annoying, but I made it. I slept almost the entire trip. We were running about 30 minutes late when Ken aka madman called to check my status. By the time we got to the station, we were only 8 minutes late. I walked out of the station just as Ken was pulling up.
It was good I came in a day early as Ken needed help getting the van. We drove to the van pick up location, but the van we were going to rent was damaged, so we had to wait for them to find a new one, then we had to drive to the other location to pick it up. So it took much longer to get the van then we thought. We got back to ken’s place, we took the back seat of the van out for luggage room, I worked on fixing his daughters computer, jayekitty from the channel showed up, we ordered pizza, we started ken’s show early, Kristi aka Mrs. Throwing toasters showed up, jayekitty and I geeked on ken’s computer trying to get 2 laptops online at once, but we only managed to mess up my network config, then we went to bed. The couch in the basement was making me sneeze like crazy, so I slepted up stairs.
Ken left early to pick up Phil and carry. Ellen showed up about 6:30. The plan was for the 8 of us leave from ken’s house in the 15 person van at 7am, due into marscon about 2:30pm. I printed out some flyers and tricked out the back of the van. The Illinois license plate says “land of Lincoln” so I covered Lincoln with “dementia”. We also came up with the slogan “marscon and busts” and put those up. Just around 7, ken, phil, and carry showed up, we packed up the van, and left. So the 8 of us at that point were Me, Ken, Ken’s wife Ronnie, Carry, Ellen, phil, Jayekitty, and Kristi. We had a pretty sleepy uneventful trip up to near Madison where we picked up the 9th and final member of the group, Ben aka Breakman Z. this was nearing noon and we started waking up and being a bit more noisy and rowdy. We pulled up to the marscon hotel just about 3pm meet by the great luke ski and poohbear and his family. The party started instantly and we knew a good time was going to be had that weekend.
After checking into my hotel room and regging for the con, I went and took a look around. It was just about time for emi to start her show. I walked up to her and said hi not introducing my self to see how long it would take for her to figure out who I was. Didn’t take long with my con badge, DOH! We said our hellos and settled in for the show. We got all kinds of ppl stopping by and saying hi and it was great fun. More of the group emerged from there settling in to their rooms and the party really started. Unfortunately, they put us RIGHT next to some guests signing autographs who didn’t appreciate all the noise we were making, but a compromise was reached and it was all good. During all this I was attempting to get my laptop on the free wireless and having no luck at all. I finally figured out that it was the configing that jayekitty and I were playing around with the night before that was messing things up. DOH! So I undid those configs and everything worked fine. Imagine that. Some time during the show, blacksmith was finally able to get from the airport to the hotel. We ended the show at 7 and headed to opening ceremonies.
Marscon always has great entertainment for there opening ceremonies. This year was no exception. The theme was “things that go bump in the night” so luke, earl, and brian came out as vampire extras from buffy and angel. It was hilarious. At one point luke told earl “go bite a kid with riddelin” and I couldn’t help my self. I had to say it and I yelled out “but tony’s not here”, which got several laughs, several groins, and luke and earl quickly said “moving right along….” So they introduced the goh’s and the co chairs n’stuff and we were off to a great con. We had time to kill before the gothsicles, so we headed up to karaoke and the party floor. Blak, me, ben, and ken performed bohemin rhapsody and it was great fun. We got a few more in, but then some others came in and started doing slow songs and brought the room down and the karaoke guy was letting any one who hadn’t sang a song yet sing 1st before letting ppl repeat. So with a stream of new ppl coming in, we couldn’t get a turn again, all the energy got sucked out of the room, and a lot of ppl left, so we left too. During this, blaksmith was able to set up the stream from his laptop and cast as we walked around. About 11, we headed down to the gothsicles concert. There was a bunch of others hanging out in the lobby waiting for the concert too. There was a band that wasn’t very interesting to us playing before the gothsicles, so we waited in the lobby. It was very high energy mode and every one was having a great time. It was about this time that shoebox and devo spice got in and the place went nuts welcoming them. I introduced myself to the gothsicles, who were hang out with the rest of us, and got permission to stream their show live on dementia radio. They loved the idea. I saw steph for the 1st time of the weekend and gave her her much loved “tipy toe” hug. She brought as many of her goth friends to the con as she could for the concert and the parties.
Finally it was time for the concert. Every one was excited. I got in to the room and most of the good 1st and 2nd row seats where taken, so I said, ok, the 3rd row is the official dementia group row, and several of us started sitting down. Some con official type ppl started coming up and moving ppl out of the 1st two rows and removing the seats, so suddenly, we were all in the front row! WOOT! There was lots of set up to do for the show and me being my usual hyper, egotisical, leo self took it as my job to keep the group entertained, leading every one in chants and songs. Random words would appear on the video projection screen and we would start chanting it. At one point and time, I went to yell out “wisky tango foxtrot” as in wtf. But me being the typo king, even in rl, said “wisky tango bravo.” So every one else started chanting “what the bill!” it was great fun. At one point, the girl who plays keyboards in the group said to me “good job, keep the crowd warmed up for us.” So finally the concert starts and if you don’t know it or haven’t heard it yet, THE GOTHSICLES ROCK!!!! Dark Nes, the lead singer, was down where the 1st and 2nd rows use to be screaming the lyrics to thier songs and dancing all around. I had heard some of there songs before and enjoyed them well enough, but to fully understand the gothsicels, you need to see them live. They have a full multimedia presentation to go with the songs that add so much to the experience. They had songs about old video games, being goth, transformers, and all manner of things 80’s. Maybe some day they’ll do a song about garbage pail kids. The highlight of the show was “komoni code”. The game manufacturer komoni put a hidden code into thier games that started to be called “the konomi code”. The most famous of these was the one in contra that gave you 30 lifes. So gothsicles did a song about this code where they chant what the code was. So the entire room was screaming “UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A SELECT START!” it was one of the best moments of the whole con!! The rest of the weekend we were chanting that.
So the concert ended much to our sadness, but several of us went back up to the party floor. I got to hang out with 2 of the members of the gothsicles, steph, and 2 of her super hot goth chick friends. We hit several of the parties and finally ended up in the karaoke room. I stayed up tell about 4am and finally called it a night.
I didn’t have to be up until about 10:30 as I needed to be at the buffy rehearsal. But in my usual con fashion, at 9am, BEING! I was wide awake and couldn’t go back to sleep. I went to the consuite for some food and pop…… FREAKIN CLOSED!!!!! What party con closes the consuite!???!!!??! Small cons with small staffs close consuites, not a marscon!?!??! The consuite sucked the entire weekend to boot. Smelled like CRAP. You didn’t even want to stay in there long. Just grab a pop and leave. I found better food at the room parties. Fortunately, the hotel had a small stand that was reasonably priced. So I bought a couple of doughnuts from then and geeked on my laptop and hung out with folks. Just about 11, I went up to the buffy rehearsal. It went pretty well. It ended at 1 but me and a few others had some changes to make, so we went up to my room to practice a bit more before the concerts started at 2. We got to the concert and got seats near the front. There was lots of set up so devo spice, who was up 1st, didn’t get on stage until about 10 after. He was confused though and thought he started at 2:30 so he let emi perform a song, and then he started his concert. Great as always, loved his multimedia and loved his new whoops song(currently released on technobabble).
I forget if eric colemen or hot waffles came up after devo, but they were both great of course. 1st time I got to see hot waffles performing in full effect. I saw chris at alcon 3. banjo and bass, what a unique sound. I was watching luke’s cd’s off to the side during eric’s set and sadly, I fell asleep through a large part of it. I was REALY getting tired by then. Went back to my normal seat for worm quartet who rocked has he always does. I had to leave about 4 songs in though, so I missed his new song ): I came back part way into the Raymond and scum set. It was awesome to see r&s for the 1st time. Plus the 2 members of the nick atoms who were at the con where on stage with them so it was a full band. By this time I was nearly asleep in my chair, so I HAD to take a nap. I can see tom smith at almost every con I go to, so I figured I could afford to miss his concert and slept from about 4 to about 6:30ish. By the time I got up, most every one had eaten already, so I grabbed more food from the hotel counter.
The masquarde was due to start at 7, luke’s concert at 10 and buffy at midnight. The masquarde didn’t actually start until closer to 9. I had to go back stage and help ken with some luke roadie things. Originally I was going to stay outside and be surprised, but I’m always there to help luke if I can. A few surprises got ruined for me but not many. I also helped Carry with several things while back stage. The lady who was running the masquarde was some where else. I think they were doing pre judging of the costumes. But because she wasn’t around, the masquarded didn’t actually start until about an hour and 20 minutes late. So the lady stalling for time was like what do I do? So luke actually came out to stall for time BEFORE the masquarded started. The masquarded went on WAY to long. The mc got off the stage, sat down, then stood back up and walked back on stage for every act. There were TONS of acts, and most of them not funny, cleaver, or interesting. A tip for masquaraders, unless you’re a master level customers, don’t go in the masquerade unless your costume WILL get ohhh’s, ahhh’s, or laughs. We just don’t care other wise. So the last contestant finally came through and the judges left for the judging. Luke came on with grease wars and did an AWESEOME job as always with the help of Carry. They looked for the stalling for time signal and it was stall time. Luke continued to stall at least another 30 minutes. He prolly could have fit his entire show into the masquarde and have been just fine. So finally the masquarde clears. Everything is set for it to go but 2 of girls who were helping on luke’s 1st song. They were in the masquarde and had to change before we could start. Finally they showed up and it was near 11 by the time we started.
I was honored by being asked to introduce luke. Luke originally was going to write up my introduction, but of course ran out of time. So I wrote up something earlier based on some input he gave me and then spent the rest of the night trying to memorize it. So the big moment came, camera’s were rolling (this was the big dvd show btw), and I came out and introduced him to thunderous applause. I didn’t do to bad stumbling over my damn long tongue and dyslexic brain, and the show was on it’s way. It was a great show. There were only 2 new songs though, but very good set. Want to know how it went? Then buy the dvd in august (:
So the show ended with no major problems and we started setting up for buffy. We were told months ago they had a dvd player for us, then we get there, no dvd player. So we had to scramble to get that set up. By the time we started, I started having a stomach ache something bad. I got through the opening bit, but about 15 minutes in, I had to go. I went back to my room for a bit. Then grabbed a pepsi in consuite and was feeling a bit better. I got back down just in time to be buffy’s punching bag, but that’s the only other part I felt up to playing that night. I sat and tried not to be too miserable. For “let it burn” I wanted to do something as the fire truck that flies by on the “burn.” The inflatable daleic from the masquarde was still in the audience and I thought it would be funny to run on stage with the daleic playing the part of the fire engine, but the owners said no when I asked if I could barrow it. ): it’s prolly rare and expensive so I understand. By the end of the film I was hurting badly again and was lying on the chairs. I wanted to help luke pack up, but I was hurting so bad. I got breakman z to help in my place. I sat around with some other dementia folks smoding(secret masters of dementia). As things were whining down, I found my self having to run towards the men’s room as fast as I could, nearly knocking down matt. I’ll spare you the details, but I’m sure I had food poising or some flu bug. If it was the flu, only blaksmth seems to have gotten it. I went back to my room and rested awhile and felt better and didn’t want to miss out on all the great Saturday night parting. I went up to the 13 floor and hung out awhile, but eventually got to sick and went back to bed.
I woke about 9 again, but didn’t feel too bad as I went to bed early. I went hot tubing as I felt it was my only chance to do so. I fortunely didn’t have to pack up right away as blak was staying Sunday night. After swimming, I hung out in the lobby until the tom/luke request concert. It was cool. Tom made up new songs on the spot and luke performed old songs that he had back ground tracks for. I managed to stump him with gump and some one else with back one week to the future, but almost everything else, he had.
Several ppl went to eat in the hour and a half we had before the dementia smackdown. I took luke’s laptop to karaoke and fixed it up for him while listening to some friends sing. I was still feeling horrible. The smack down was cool, much shorter then I was expecting, but that’s ok, the artists got to sell cd’s and we got to take some pictures. Check out madmanotl’s lj to see them.
The egg. THE EGG!!! Hot Waffles apparently were challenged to write a song about an egg the night before. They did a simple little song called the yoke’s on you. I thought it was passable and a bit funny but every one went totally nuts as if it was the greatest song ever written. I thought I was missing something. I thought maybe they were making fun of something that happened over the weekend that I missed. I was even looking around for a camera pointed at me to see if every one was like “hey, act like hot waffles song is the best song ever but don’t tell bill, he’ll be all confused.” However, no one could explain to me why they thought it was funny. The only thing I can think is that I just didn’t find the song nearly as funny as every one else did and was looking for something I was missing. *shrug*. Anyways, kudos to hot waffles for a song that got a standing O. Chris claims he will dedicate the song to me when next he performs it which will be cool.
After the good buys and the good byes, we packed up the van. We went out to eat with the Winslow family and Carry’s father at a Denny’s. I actually didn’t eat, I had a shake. The thought of food was still upsetting my stomach. We started our sad journey home, but not before putting in some awesome tracks, like the gothsicles, and having several more group sings. We dropped bmz off at his house. I was actually feeling pretty good at the next stop and was hungry so I grabbed a burger. By the time we got home, I was very exhausted and was asleep. Ellen was picked up, jayekitty decided to keep heading home to Ohio, and Kristi stayed the night. I had to help pick up ken’s wife’s car still. We took the van and dropped off Carry and Phil, picked up the car. I drove the van and followed ken. I had to turn off the heat, crank up the music, and chug my Pepsi to stay awake. Got back to ken’s, parked the van, flopped on the couch, and was OUT. I heard Kristi saying goodbye to me at some point, but I was pretty much still out. I wook up about 11 and we took the van back, got ken’s car, and headed for carry’s place.
Carry’s computer was running very slow and Tseran sent her some memory that I was going to put in. She lost it and ken and her tore her place apart looking for it but we could not find it. Another channel member is going to give her a new computer, so we weren’t terribly concerned about upgrade her old one all that much. I was able to clean it up and recovered about 6 gigs by deleting all the temporary internet files. It was running much better when I left. We went out to a local restaurant down the way and had a nice meal. It was good to just hang out with Carry. She’s always so busy with Luke and all at cons. We got back to her place just a few minutes after her show was to start. She casted from my laptop as I worked on her computer. We had a few tech glitchs but mostly it went well. After the show and after I got as much done on her computer as I could, we headed back to Ken’s place. Had one more small computer glitch at Ken’s. I fixed it then went to bed. We wook up butt early in the morning and got to the train station in plenty of time. I managed to find the food court and the mc donald’s with my mc donalds sense(I didn’t even know I was LOOKING for a mc donald’s and it was pointing me in the right direction) despite total lack of decent signage. Jumped on the train, had a pleasant ride, got back to Michigan, drove to my place about 4pm, and then went to bed and slept till about 3am.
It was a great con and I encourage every one to try to make it to marscon next year. Thank you to every one who helped me and every one who helped make it a great con.