Con Report:

ItzaCon 3: "Thank God for Sidra’s Friends"

For those of you who don’t know, UnCommonCon was cancelled and all of us here at The Collector Times were SO disappointed. It turned out that we weren’t the only ones. Some Elder Gods of Cepheid Variable (Graduates of Texas A&M University who also belonged to the SF Club Cepheid Variable) were jonesing for a con, so they threw this one together in 9 days. They were kind enough to spam the Cepheid Variable list serv and my daughter Sidra found out about it and told me. That’s all it took. Sidra got The Collector Times staff a guest slot at ItzaCon and we were off and running! I emailed Daniel Fu, who is a CT staffer but had his own table reserved for UnCommonCon and let him know about our new convention, and he got his own table, too. Paul worked his heinie off Thanksgiving week putting The Collector Times onto CD ROM. We packed enough clothes to sink a battleship, one of our computers and our youngest daughter Elaine into the purple geekmobile and made the run up I-45 to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. We got lost in Dallas. We got lost at the DFW Airport (we visited every restricted area in the airport!!) We checked in and started making our phone calls. Joe Singleton had already phoned the hotel before we checked in and we contacted him. Sidra spent Thanksgiving with Zack Roman’s family in Fort Worth, and we needed to drive over there to pick her up, so we phoned to arrange that. Elaine wanted to stay at the hotel to watch TV, so Paul and I headed over to Fort Worth to get Sidra. Of course, we got lost, but no where near as badly as we did at the airport. By the time we picked up Sidra, we had driven in the car for endless hours, and I’m sure our disheveled appearance gave the impression of winos or psychos or both. What a nice impression to give when meeting Sidra’s boyfriend’s parents for the first time. Mwah ha ha! Anyhoo, we collected Sidra, and made it back to the hotel without incident. When we arrived back into our room, we discovered that Mat Bredfeldt had phoned and that he was at the hotel somewhere. We sent Sidra off to find Mat, phoned Joe to come on over, and hoisted our new Collector Times banner up onto the drapes with duct tape. The Official CT Con Suite was open for business! Joe and Mat arrived, and we ordered room service, and basically shot the shit until the wee hours of the morning. Saturday morning we were up bright and early. We lugged the computer downstairs, along with The Collector Times banner, and set up our table. Daniel Fu had made it from Austin and had his table across the way from us. I introduced him to the folks he hadn’t met in person, and proceeded to look at his new comic work. Gorgeous stuff, as usual. Sidra had her Cepheid friends to visit with, and kept running into them all day. We decided on our ploy to get folks to our table early on...if the traffic slowed down, we’d crank up the Lord of the Rings Trailer, and have Sidra, in her low cut vinyl dress, drape herself strategically over the computer. We didn’t have to do that, but Sidra practiced draping herself over the computer several times. We met a bunch of nice folks, gave out some CT flyers, and had a chance to talk to each other in the slow times. Joe, Mat and Paul were very entertained by this one woman with huge boobs who was wearing a low cut shirt and a sarong type skirt. They tried to get her to let them take her photo, but she declined, which was a shame, cause we would have made her a superstar on the internet. They had to resign themselves to slobbering, I mean looking at her. At a slow moment, Sidra and I went into the dealers room. We saw our friend that we see at a lot of conventions in Texas, he sells official David Weber Honor Harrington apparel and Paul and Joe are two of his repeat customers. Not only did this guy bring along his t-shirts, polo shirts, and other clothing; he also brought along free kittens. Yes, kittens. Three of them, all male, all orange, all little, and all *cute.* Damn him. I spent the weekend trying to pimp those kittens off to unsuspecting CT staffers, my mother, and when all else failed, Zack’s mother! No such luck. The fellow got rid of them anyway, without my help. Man, but I did try. Sidra and I found a couple of issues of DC’s Fanboy in the comic boxes, and bought them, and headed back to the table to read. It’s really funny stuff, now we have to get the rest of the mini-series. Zack finally arrived about 4:30 in the afternoon. You’d think he didn’t want to hang out with his girlfriend’s parents or something! The dealer’s room closed at 6 pm, so we hauled the computer up to our hotel room, and then we all went out to dinner at a local BBQ place. We tried to get Daniel Fu to go out with us, but he was staying with friends in Dallas, and was afraid they’d leave him stranded if he didn’t go with them. He went to see Harry Potter with them, instead. The movie from Daniel gets a big thumbs up, by the way. I think I probably live under a rock or something, but I haven’t read the book and I am sick of the trailers. But I’m frothing at the mouth at the prospect of The Lord of the Rings movie. Go figure. I can already tell that we are all going to be sick of seeing Harry Potter costumes at various conventions over the next few years. This may end up being more endemic than Sailor Moon. After dinner, we headed back to our hotel room and entertained our guests with mp3’s that Paul has stored on his computer. Funny mp3’s ranging in subject from road rage to men’s issues to bestiality. Zack got so comfortable that he fell asleep on the bed that he was lying on with Sidra. Paul and I just looked at this scenario and decided not to ask questions we didn’t want the answers to. After 9 pm, we woke up Sleepy Boy and headed off to the dance. Yes, the dance! The dance made everything worth it. The dance was fun! Man, am *I* out of shape, but I still managed to get up and shake my booty, huffing and puffing when I was done. I was not alone, either...Mat, Sidra, Zack and Paul all got up and danced too. We couldn’t get Weenie Singleton out on the dance floor THIS TIME, but we have plans for the future, whether he likes it or not. Maw ha ha. One of the impressive high points of the dance was some spontaneous break dancing that was actually quite good. It just sorta happened. One fellow was trying to teach his 2-3 year old son how to dance with glow sticks and that was just cute beyond words. We danced, we boogied in our chairs, we sang, we acted like idiots...and had a fabulous time! I now need the .mp3 of "Zombie Jamboree" by Rock Capella. Sunday was work time for all of us. Mat, Joe and Paul held down the fort at the table while the rest of us did interviews. You can see Zack’s interview this month. Sidra had to kick his butt over to the table, because Zack is shy, but he thanked her for it later (Thank you Mistress, may I have another?) We also did some other interviews, which you will see in the next few months. Paul and I had to head out early, because the goblins that be at my workplace decided that I had to work Sunday night. Around Corsicana Paul said to me, "Ya know, those were sure cute kittens. I wish we had gotten one." I could have killed him. A great big shout out to Meri and to the rest of the folks who put on ItzaCon. We had a great time, and we were quite impressed at this con that was put together in 9 days.