If its Thanksgiving weekend, it's time for ItzaCon! I really enjoy
this con: it's relatively small and I get to hang out with my family
and friends. What else can you ask for?
This year I did something totally different. We had set up The
Collector Times table, and were just getting settled and getting
to know our table mates when this lady arrived looking for
volunteers. She explained that she had a game to run, and she
needed some folks to get the first game of the day going.
Wellllll...fine. I volunteered me and Sidra (who was less than
thrilled that Mom had volunteered her.) I actually volunteered
Zack, too, but he hadn't arrived so Sidra and I arrived at the
appointed time. I have never done any Live Action Role Playing
Game (or LARP, for short,) but I'll try anything once. As this
was a Beta version of a game that is going to be coming out, I
don't really want to get into to many details. I played "The
Teacher" role, which was a stereotypical helping type of
personality, and hell, I'm a nurse, this was *easy* for me to do.
Sidra said I was incredibly annoying (she was The Succubus)
and another guy said that I scared him. It was a lot of fun, and
I'm sure I'll try LARPing again.
Once Mat found out that they weren't going to harm him in the
game, he decided to give it a shot next. We volunteered Zack
again, since he was there. Mat called it "interesting" and Zack,
the pro of gaming, said it was "sorta boring." His was the
minority opinion, though. It was pretty funny to watch the folks
who we played with the rest of the weekend and to find out how
very different their personalities were from the characters they
played.
The dealers room was very nice. I got to pick up Drew
Edward's Halloween Man trade paper back. It's a collection of
the first year of the comic, and it also has a story in it drawn by
our own Joe Singleton. If you are interested, you can pick it up
from Drew's website www.halloweenman.com. Of course
Drew was there, and we were taking bets on what color his hair
was this time, and we were all wrong: it was two toned...mwah
ha ha. It was good to see Drew again, too...he's such a nice,
interesting guy.
We had a large amount of anime fans there this year. There was
this anime character costume contest, and whereas the costumes
were interesting, I honestly don't get the entire anime thing. I'm
sure there are folks who don't get my Legion of Superheroes
obsession, either, and if we were all alike, it would be boring.
Our table mate was a very nice, friendly guy named James
Dawsey, who had driven all the way from Atlanta for this con.
He, like Joe at our table, was doing commissioned art. James
has that anime style, but it's very pretty. He was explaining to us
his admiration for the Japanese artists who color their work with
markers and was showing us some examples. I think I can
appreciate the art more, now that James explained it to us. If
you'd like to look at James' work, this is his website:
Like I said, the costume contest was all anime costumes. We
had guys in dresses, guys kissing guys, it was all pretty amusing
stuff. Mat tells me that A-kon has about 200 times more anime
decked out crazed fans. Guess you have to like that stuff : )
The dance was cool. I always like cons with dances. The music
wasn't quite as good as last years, but damn, they played the
porn Speed Racer remix, and you can't argue with that! We
danced, we grooved in our seats, and we generally enjoyed
ourselves.
We were dead Sunday, but we gainfully manned the tables.
Sidra and Zack disappeared into the gaming room to play some
sort of tiddly winks game with bugs. Yes, tiddly winks game
with bugs. Don't ask me, I just watched it for awhile. They
seemed to like it alot.
Paul went shopping in the dealers room. They had sharp knives
in there, and Paul had to have one. Man, it had a wavy blade
and it was sharp, so I knew that Mr. Roberts was going to pout
all the way back to Houston if he didn't get it. He got his toy and
was a happy camper. We also bought a pair of cheesy gloves
that blink with lights. We figure we can use those as props in one
of our bad movies.
Joe sold some commissioned artwork, and we had the joy of
watching him work. All in all, it was a great con!
