Balticon report (part 3): webcomics, dancing and Neverwear

Photo by Allison. We ran into this fellow
in the lobby and chatted with him a bit. He ended up coming to
the open filk that night and performing (and he was good, too!).
He made the Vulcan lyre himself.


Balticon report continued...

One of the things I especially enjoyed about Balticon was checking out non-filk programming. I don't often get to general sf conventions anymore, and I was reminded of how much a con like Balticon has to offer.

One of the challenges, of course, is trying to decide what to attend. I'll have to come back someday as a regular attendee; there were so many panels I would have liked to see, but I had commitments as a guest that (of course) had to come first. I never was able to make it to any of the panels or presentations by Connie Willis, one of my favourite authors.



Thanks to the "Meet and Greet" gatherings, however, I was able to chat briefly with her. Urban Tapestry had guested with Connie some years ago at Ad Astra, though I doubt Connie would have remembered that. You can see a photo of me and Connie in my Ad Astra report.

I'm such a fangirl that my language skills totally fled me during the few words I exchanged with her. Instead of impressing her with my witty repartee and keen observations about her writing, I babbled about loving her work and being a fan and got completely tongue-tied. AUGH, how embarrassing!

I'll content myself in singing songs about her books instead. :-) Allison, Jodi and I performed In A Gown Too Blue in our main concert, a gorgeous and chilling song by Brenda Sutton of Three Weird Sisters. Thanks so much to Brenda for letting us cover her song.


Photo by Korak

I had a ton of fun at the Medieval Dance workshop, led by our patient instructor, Patches, and ably accompanied by a group of musicians including Gary Ehrlich and Maugorn. Many thanks to Walter and others for letting me tread on their toes.

Walter, by the way, hadn't warned us that he was coming to Balticon...his appearance during our Filk 101 panel on Friday night was a complete surprise!


Walter likes bacon.

I participated in the Writing For Webcomics I panel on Sunday afternoon with webcomic types like Rosscott, Bryan Prindiville, Marty Day, Barb Fischer, Darren Gendron, and James Hatton, among others -- I should have been writing down everyone's names and comic URLs, sorry.

I was a bit nervous since I suspected that everyone would already know each other and no one would know me, but the others made me feel welcome right away. Interesting panel, and I wish there had been more time to get to know some of the others better (especially Bryan Prindiville). Unfortunately I wasn't able to sign up for more webcomic programming because of conflicts; as it was, the one webcomic panel I participated on was scheduled at the same time as Connie Willis's Guest of Honor Presentation...figures. :-)



And to give you more of an idea of the depth and expanse of Balticon's programming, panels also scheduled in that same time slot included "Infectious Diseases", "Trek - Back to the Future", "End of a Podcasting Era", "Costuming from the Written Word", a reading by Emily Rudegair, "Sock Puppets" (children's programming, I think), "Space Western in Anime", "Linguistics for Artificial Languages", "Live! Lancelot Biggs Pod Play", as well as the Connie Willis GoH presentation. Plus the 24-hour movie room, gaming, and other on-going activities.

And that was only from the Sunday 4-5 pm time slot.




It was great fun participating in the children's programming with Gary, Dave, Sue and Tom. And there actually were CHILDREN there! We never know what kind of audience we're going to get at children's concerts. Some of our kids' concerts have had packed audiences of adults only. Sometimes we get teens, other times babies and toddlers.

This time, we had a great mix of all ages, and they even got up and danced.



Photo by Kathryn Cramer


Another thing I loved about Balticon: all the costumes. Some (like Rin Barton, pictured below in her Princess Koneko outfit at the Neverwear booth; her costume ended up winning Best-in-Class Journeyman) wore the costumes they planned to showcase in the Masquerade while others just wore them for the heck of it.



Speaking of Neverwear...Balticon sure does treat its guests well! Not only did we each get a daily stipend for expenses but we also each received a cool black messenger bag with a Baltimore Science Fiction Society logo, filled with goodies:



Photo by Allison


One of the goodies was a coupon for ANY item at the Neverwear booth! I chose a "Scary Trousers" t-shirt and also bought some NeverWear sparkly hairpins as well as a sparkly soft belt made by Kitty.

As for the dealers' room, WHOA. The photo below only shows part of the dealer's area, which spilled out into the main hallway as well:



I was SO tempted by a colourful and jangly bellydancer's belt-skirt but managed to resist. While browsing the Wrap Pants booth out in the hall, I was mesmerized by this woman's performance:



SO much to see and do at Balticon. So much more to talk about, too, but I have to get back to work. More in upcoming posts!

Babylon Five Virgin update

SPOILER WARNING: The blog below focuses on my reports while watching Babylon Five for the first time. An LJ feed is also available. If you haven't seen B5 yet and don't want spoilers, please DO NOT click below.

Season 4, Episode 69: The Summoning
Season 4, Episode 70: Falling Towards Apotheosis
Season 4, Episode 71: The Long Night





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