Hugo Awards- simulpost with danjite
Folks- Being asked to accept the Hugo award for frankwu was a great honor in itself. Getting to actually do so was freaking amazing. We love Frank; but- to geeks such as we- this was an A-number-1 big dealie O. As it turns out, it was an incredible party, too!
The ceremony was held a couple hours earlier than usual, due to the cost of space at the convention center. As a result of this, the pre-awards reception started at 4:30 PM. This meant getting dressed up really early and missing out on some afternoon panels, but we didn’t mind.
One thing many people didn’t notice was the accessibility problems that this theatre had. Despite the great improvements made in Japan in the last 20 years, there were seats for only six manual or four motorized mobility devices (wheelchairs and such) in a 1,000 seat theater. All of these seats were behind the last row with no companion seating, so if you are in a wheelchair, you can’t sit with your friends/ lovers/ bodyguards. There had obviously never been any thought by the designers of the theatre that a person with mobility issues might be wanted on the actual stage. That said, the people who put this show together (John Pomeranz and company) did a wonderful job with ramps and ingenuity making everything possible, not just for Kelly, but for one of the Japanese guests of honor who had mobility issues.
The reception was set up like a cocktail party with tables of food and drink and people milling around eating and drinking. And talking. We had brought our pair of giant Frank Wu heads, and we were having a wonderful time getting people to pose with Frank. We had decided that rather than just bring Frank’s head on stage, we wanted to give Frank’s head a full Japanese WorldCon experience. Just ‘cause Frank himself couldn’t make it, didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be seen having a great time mingling with pros-and-fen alike.
Frank's head with Guest of Honor Sakyo Komatsu, a very important Japanese author
Credit for this and all other photos goes to lasirenadolce
Frank's head with Kevin Standlee
Once we had all suffered the depredations of top-notch Japanese cocktail party food and consumed all of the giant and delicious pieces of sushi and eaten up all of the incredible bits of dim sum and such, there was a pause for a short announcement by the organizers, which included a preview of this year’s award. We were lucky to be standing next to the dashingly handsome and wildly talented artist and Hugo nominee John Picacio when the awards statue was unveiled. Everyone applauded wildly, and John was heard to loudly proclaim: “Now it’s really going to suck to lose.” We were just thinking about how much Frank was going to love this award, which we had no doubt he was going to win.
The official unveiling of the award
We were soon led into the auditorium and seated right in the first row next to the stairs so it would be easy to get to the stage. We played around taking pictures of Frank’s giant head mingling with the notables of Science Fiction until it was time for the ceremony to begin. The ceremony was fun and fast moving and we had a great time.
Frank's head with jaylake and lasirenadolce
Frank's head with khaybee and klingonguy
Frank's head with John Picacio
George Takei- the man who played Lieutenant Sulu on the original Star Trek- was one of the hosts of the event, team hosting with, uh…. A guy who is an important Japanese book translator- or something like that. They had a lot of fun with the co-hosting, especially as the each spoke both Japanese and English, and would occasionally switch off in humorous ways.
Frank's head with George Takei
The ceremony itself? Over the top. The usual awards show things, but with occasional on-stage battles between people wearing the various Ultraman and related hero suits and other folks wearing 1960’s style giant rubber monster suits. The feeling to the event was wonderfully Japanese all the way through.
Frank's heads accept his award
At the end of the ceremonies, we were invited up onto the stage for some press photos. There was more posing with Frank’s giant head, then we were off to the official Hugo losers party. (Note: Even the winners are welcome at the losers’ party, but a Hugo Winners party would be way too exclusive. This is one of them tradition things…) The party was a lot of fun, with more sushi, various hors’douveres, and a fine array of liquors. As the award was just so amazingly cool, lots of people stopped by to admire or touch or pose with Frank’s Hugo. One of our favorite quotations from the party was: “Wow, Frank is gonna love that- he can put it in the middle of his shelf with his awards on the rocket side and his action figures on the Ultraman side.”
End of ceremony group shot
After a short time at the party, we decided that if Frank were here in the flesh, he would not spend the evening at an exclusive invite-only event. What would Frank do? After all, we were accepting the award and at this party thanks to his good graces- we had to represent the Spirit of the Wu! Obvious to us, the ever-gracious Wu-man would take his award to the party floor and personally thank as many fans as he could find. We had been on the party floor the night before, so we knew it was very humid and nearly 100 degrees F (38c), so we made our apologies to our hosts with the explanation that we were off to the “Celebratory Sauna”.
Frank's head with Bob Eggleton
We made our way to the party floor where- due to the excessive crowding- we left the wheelchair in the elevator lobby, Kelly deciding t’was best to wobble her way through the crowds. We removed our shoes- one would never enter a party with shoes on in Japan- and headed down the hall to the first party. This party was hosted by Japanese who- like at all the Japanese parties we wound up at- were honored that we were there. Deeply honored that we would share the honor of the award by visiting it to their humble (wild, giant) party. Most of them wanted to take photos of Frank’s trophy with his giant head. There was much cheering and someone tied a banzai/SF headband around Kelly’s head. After all the practice Daniel had before the ceremony, he was quite adept at saying in Japanese “Frank Wu loves you” (Culled from "Thank you, I love you all", Frank’s regular acceptance speech), and there was a round of cheering every time he said it.
There is about a ten year old convention tradition of some folks- for whatever motivation- giving out ribbons to affix to one’s convention admittance badge. We were armed with two sets- about 200 red ribbons with gold foil writing which read: “Frank Wu loves you” and another 200 blue and gold ribbons with the title of the book we produced: “Greetings from Lake Wu”.
These 400 ribbons were distributed to eager fans on the party floor within about 20 minutes!
The next party had western hosts, but they were also glad to see the amazing Ultraman Hugo statue. We explained to everyone we talked to all night that Frank would want to thank them personally for the award, and since we were acting on Frank’s behalf, we were there to thank them. We went to a couple more western parties including the Norway-Sweden party, which was astonishingly hot and crowded. It was even precipitating condensation inside the room!
After many more, the final party we went into on the 6th floor was also a Japanese-run party. When we entered with the Hugo, the entire room broke into screaming cheers. The party runner yelled until there was enough quiet for Daniel to be heard when he yelled in Japanese as loud as he could “Frank Wu loves you”. This got another round of screaming and cheering. There were lots and lots of photos taken. Someone in the crowd who spoke a little English asked if they could touch the statue. We said yes. There was a three-minute frenzy of hands reaching out and touching the rocket and the Ultraman. Everyone was simultaneously both very respectful and desperately enthusiastic- a grand combination if ever there were one!
The party host yelled something in Japanese, and suddenly everyone in the room was facing us, occasionally bowing and singing the theme song from Ultraman at the tops of their lungs. It was lovely. It was surreal. It was sweaty. It was loud. It was… in-freaking-tense in the best of ways. They really got across their enthusiasm at being part of the awards process, their gratitude at our coming to share with them. Humbling. Amazing. Huge.
Being as how he was still at this point wearing his fancy awards suit, Daniel was about to fall over from the heat. Fortunately, some clever soul put a sealed bottle of ice-cold water in his shirt pocket- and did him a world of good. We slowly left the room and headed back to the wheelchair for a break.
The rest of the night dashed by quickly as we went to a couple small parties upstairs, and turned the Hugo over to jaylake for the night- as we didn’t want to carry it on the subway or taxi or however we would wind up getting the few miles back to our hostel. Hugo safely deposited and hundreds-and-hundreds of fans thanked, we returned to the losers’ party for some quiet socializing and rehydration.
Although we are saddened that Frank himself could not have been the one to experience that final Japanese room party, we will truly treasure it as a peak experience in a fabulous lifetime full of tremendous peak experiences.
Wild. Truly, amazingly wild.
Thanks, Frank!
The ceremony was held a couple hours earlier than usual, due to the cost of space at the convention center. As a result of this, the pre-awards reception started at 4:30 PM. This meant getting dressed up really early and missing out on some afternoon panels, but we didn’t mind.
One thing many people didn’t notice was the accessibility problems that this theatre had. Despite the great improvements made in Japan in the last 20 years, there were seats for only six manual or four motorized mobility devices (wheelchairs and such) in a 1,000 seat theater. All of these seats were behind the last row with no companion seating, so if you are in a wheelchair, you can’t sit with your friends/ lovers/ bodyguards. There had obviously never been any thought by the designers of the theatre that a person with mobility issues might be wanted on the actual stage. That said, the people who put this show together (John Pomeranz and company) did a wonderful job with ramps and ingenuity making everything possible, not just for Kelly, but for one of the Japanese guests of honor who had mobility issues.
The reception was set up like a cocktail party with tables of food and drink and people milling around eating and drinking. And talking. We had brought our pair of giant Frank Wu heads, and we were having a wonderful time getting people to pose with Frank. We had decided that rather than just bring Frank’s head on stage, we wanted to give Frank’s head a full Japanese WorldCon experience. Just ‘cause Frank himself couldn’t make it, didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be seen having a great time mingling with pros-and-fen alike.
Frank's head with Guest of Honor Sakyo Komatsu, a very important Japanese author
Credit for this and all other photos goes to lasirenadolce
Frank's head with Kevin Standlee
Once we had all suffered the depredations of top-notch Japanese cocktail party food and consumed all of the giant and delicious pieces of sushi and eaten up all of the incredible bits of dim sum and such, there was a pause for a short announcement by the organizers, which included a preview of this year’s award. We were lucky to be standing next to the dashingly handsome and wildly talented artist and Hugo nominee John Picacio when the awards statue was unveiled. Everyone applauded wildly, and John was heard to loudly proclaim: “Now it’s really going to suck to lose.” We were just thinking about how much Frank was going to love this award, which we had no doubt he was going to win.
The official unveiling of the award
We were soon led into the auditorium and seated right in the first row next to the stairs so it would be easy to get to the stage. We played around taking pictures of Frank’s giant head mingling with the notables of Science Fiction until it was time for the ceremony to begin. The ceremony was fun and fast moving and we had a great time.
Frank's head with jaylake and lasirenadolce
Frank's head with khaybee and klingonguy
Frank's head with John Picacio
George Takei- the man who played Lieutenant Sulu on the original Star Trek- was one of the hosts of the event, team hosting with, uh…. A guy who is an important Japanese book translator- or something like that. They had a lot of fun with the co-hosting, especially as the each spoke both Japanese and English, and would occasionally switch off in humorous ways.
Frank's head with George Takei
The ceremony itself? Over the top. The usual awards show things, but with occasional on-stage battles between people wearing the various Ultraman and related hero suits and other folks wearing 1960’s style giant rubber monster suits. The feeling to the event was wonderfully Japanese all the way through.
Frank's heads accept his award
At the end of the ceremonies, we were invited up onto the stage for some press photos. There was more posing with Frank’s giant head, then we were off to the official Hugo losers party. (Note: Even the winners are welcome at the losers’ party, but a Hugo Winners party would be way too exclusive. This is one of them tradition things…) The party was a lot of fun, with more sushi, various hors’douveres, and a fine array of liquors. As the award was just so amazingly cool, lots of people stopped by to admire or touch or pose with Frank’s Hugo. One of our favorite quotations from the party was: “Wow, Frank is gonna love that- he can put it in the middle of his shelf with his awards on the rocket side and his action figures on the Ultraman side.”
End of ceremony group shot
After a short time at the party, we decided that if Frank were here in the flesh, he would not spend the evening at an exclusive invite-only event. What would Frank do? After all, we were accepting the award and at this party thanks to his good graces- we had to represent the Spirit of the Wu! Obvious to us, the ever-gracious Wu-man would take his award to the party floor and personally thank as many fans as he could find. We had been on the party floor the night before, so we knew it was very humid and nearly 100 degrees F (38c), so we made our apologies to our hosts with the explanation that we were off to the “Celebratory Sauna”.
Frank's head with Bob Eggleton
We made our way to the party floor where- due to the excessive crowding- we left the wheelchair in the elevator lobby, Kelly deciding t’was best to wobble her way through the crowds. We removed our shoes- one would never enter a party with shoes on in Japan- and headed down the hall to the first party. This party was hosted by Japanese who- like at all the Japanese parties we wound up at- were honored that we were there. Deeply honored that we would share the honor of the award by visiting it to their humble (wild, giant) party. Most of them wanted to take photos of Frank’s trophy with his giant head. There was much cheering and someone tied a banzai/SF headband around Kelly’s head. After all the practice Daniel had before the ceremony, he was quite adept at saying in Japanese “Frank Wu loves you” (Culled from "Thank you, I love you all", Frank’s regular acceptance speech), and there was a round of cheering every time he said it.
There is about a ten year old convention tradition of some folks- for whatever motivation- giving out ribbons to affix to one’s convention admittance badge. We were armed with two sets- about 200 red ribbons with gold foil writing which read: “Frank Wu loves you” and another 200 blue and gold ribbons with the title of the book we produced: “Greetings from Lake Wu”.
These 400 ribbons were distributed to eager fans on the party floor within about 20 minutes!
The next party had western hosts, but they were also glad to see the amazing Ultraman Hugo statue. We explained to everyone we talked to all night that Frank would want to thank them personally for the award, and since we were acting on Frank’s behalf, we were there to thank them. We went to a couple more western parties including the Norway-Sweden party, which was astonishingly hot and crowded. It was even precipitating condensation inside the room!
After many more, the final party we went into on the 6th floor was also a Japanese-run party. When we entered with the Hugo, the entire room broke into screaming cheers. The party runner yelled until there was enough quiet for Daniel to be heard when he yelled in Japanese as loud as he could “Frank Wu loves you”. This got another round of screaming and cheering. There were lots and lots of photos taken. Someone in the crowd who spoke a little English asked if they could touch the statue. We said yes. There was a three-minute frenzy of hands reaching out and touching the rocket and the Ultraman. Everyone was simultaneously both very respectful and desperately enthusiastic- a grand combination if ever there were one!
The party host yelled something in Japanese, and suddenly everyone in the room was facing us, occasionally bowing and singing the theme song from Ultraman at the tops of their lungs. It was lovely. It was surreal. It was sweaty. It was loud. It was… in-freaking-tense in the best of ways. They really got across their enthusiasm at being part of the awards process, their gratitude at our coming to share with them. Humbling. Amazing. Huge.
Being as how he was still at this point wearing his fancy awards suit, Daniel was about to fall over from the heat. Fortunately, some clever soul put a sealed bottle of ice-cold water in his shirt pocket- and did him a world of good. We slowly left the room and headed back to the wheelchair for a break.
The rest of the night dashed by quickly as we went to a couple small parties upstairs, and turned the Hugo over to jaylake for the night- as we didn’t want to carry it on the subway or taxi or however we would wind up getting the few miles back to our hostel. Hugo safely deposited and hundreds-and-hundreds of fans thanked, we returned to the losers’ party for some quiet socializing and rehydration.
Although we are saddened that Frank himself could not have been the one to experience that final Japanese room party, we will truly treasure it as a peak experience in a fabulous lifetime full of tremendous peak experiences.
Wild. Truly, amazingly wild.
Thanks, Frank!