AggieCon 36 Report
by Sheryl Roberts
|
|
AggieCon has expanded quite a lot into other genres over the years. It has many gaming rooms, including board games, RPGS, LARPS and computer gaming. It has comic guests, and panels featuring comics creators. There's a 24 hour anime room, where they run various anime series. Of course there are a whole host of SF related activities, and guest(s.) It also features a large dealers room, an art show, a charity auction, and on Friday and Saturday night, a Rocky Horror Picture Show production, complete with cast. Anyway, there's a whole lot to do for the 4 day con. This year's con was very well organized and run. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The con hotel was the Fairfield Marriott, and I always enjoy staying there whether I get a con rate or not. So, all in all, it was a great experience this year. Thursday was spent setting up The Collector Times table, and getting caught up with Joe Singleton, who drove down from the Dallas area. Not many folks are there on Thursday, and it's an excellent opportunity to set up, casually browse dealer's tables, and chat with folks. Friday morning early I hit the art auction. The art auction features all types of art, ranging from fantasy/SF to cartoon to duct tape sculptures to stained glass to jewelry. I have learned from past experience to get to the art show early, and if there is something I am totally enamored of, to buy it right then and there at the quick sale price. I bought a nice print of a cat and dragon anxiously watching a bird on a tree limb outside of a castle window. Yeah, had to have it, $30 down the drain right there. There was a lot of nice stuff at the auction, and since my future son-in-law Zack has been writing for me at the last minute lately, I put a bid down on a nice Theresa Mather print. Zack already has one Mather print hanging in his bedroom, so I know he likes the artist. I spent most of my time Friday flitting around the dealer's room, the art auction, the charity auction, sitting at the CT table, and hanging with Joe and Sidra. Each year the convention hosts an Iron Artist competition. They select 3 artist guests, hand them an artistic challenge, and select the materials for the artists to work with. This year the medium was black construction paper and little kid chalk. The subject matter was Godzilla and pickles. Each year Brian Stelfreeze is a guest, and each year he gets put on this panel. The Cepheids all heckle Brian as he works, too, and it makes for a good time. Brian also wins this competition hands down every year, no matter how diplomatic the real judges are. This year the end products were quite amusing, and amazing. Brian's Godzilla was stomping through a city of pickles, and there were people running from the rampaging monster. Another artist had Godzilla hugging the pickle. The third artist had a chick with a Godzilla tattoo eating a pickle, with Godzilla in the background. All three pictures were amazingly good, and inventive. Saturday morning started with a trip to the Cushing Library at the University. For the first time, Cepheid arranged to have fan tours of the extensive science fiction collection. Texas A&M has one of the top 5 SF collections in North America. Anyway, usually only the guests get the tours, but this year they opened it up to the con goers, too. Paul, Joe and I all went. What made this tour special for us was that Elizabeth Moon, writer of military SF books and regional guest of honor, went with us on this tour. She was a very nice and warm lady, too. Anyway, we got to see the SF collection, which included 90% of most of the runs of SF pulps, the 3rd printing of Shelly's Frankenstein, a painting of Andre Norton, and a host of fine books from many science fiction authors. Chad Oliver has his entire (and growing) archive of writing there. The collection features manuscripts and writings from Martha Wells and Andre Norton, too. Paul and I plan on sending the archive copies of Omni magazine, which we don't need any more, and the curator plans on trading them for foreign language SF magazines which the collection doesn't have. We also have some books that we plan on donating to the collection once Sidra reads a few of them. Anyway, it was a really fascinating experience . . . I could have spent several hours in there looking at various SF books. I went to the art show again, this time with Paul, who bid on a piece of art he's been wanting. It's a Lord of the Ring's piece, featuring a road sign in The Shire. Sidra broke down and bid on a piece featuring aliens and alien cats. I also put a couple of bids down on one of Sidra's friend's art, for which the proceeds go to Cepheid Variable. Amazingly enough, this year no one bid at the art show, and the art auction wasn't as exciting as in years past, but it worked out great for us. We got all of the pieces we bid on this year, and paid minimum bid on each. You'll be seeing the art from Sidra's friend in the art gallery. I look Saturday afternoon off, and took a nap. I knew it would be a late night and I was already tired. Saturday evening I went to a panel about page layout. The panel guests featured Joe Singleton and Will Lloyd, indy comics creator. It was an informal panel, and the audience chimed in. Not only did we talk about page layout, which comic cons were best, and finding artists to work on ideas, but we all had such a grand time that we all stayed there for an hour and half shooting the breeze. I then went to the dance. It wasn't as well attended as years past, but it was fun. This year they had a projector projecting pictures from last AggieCon on the screen, too. It added to the ambience. The dance was populated by folks in costume dancing in character. It's always amusing, no matter how many people attend. Prior to The Rocky Horror Picture Show getting started, one of the Cepheid Variable members, with the D name (a la Animal House) of Morpheus, surprised his girlfriend by asking her to marry him in front of the whole audience. They blindfolded her, led her to the room, unmasked her, led her through an honor guard of light sabers, axes, swords, foils and other instruments of destruction to the stage, where Morpheus awaited. He got down on one knee, opened up the ring box, and asked her to marry him. Of course she said, "Yes," to the hooting and hollering of the audience. Then she started to cry. She wasn't the only one. At midnight, we watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This year featured a gender bender cast . . . every character that was supposed to be male, was female, and vice versa. It was really worth it to see one of Sidra's male friends in makeup and a maid's dress. I think I laughed for most of the show, and a good time was really had by all. Sunday I was dead, because we had stayed up past 2 am the previous night. Still, I managed to make it to the remnants of the charity auction. The charity auction was a relative bust this year, too, in terms of profits. I think this year they made about $900 for the Bryan/College Station charity they sponsor, which is a lot less than they usually give them. However, the day after the auction, I picked up a nice carved cane for my mother for $4. Can't beat that price! I went to the drawing anatomy panel on Sunday. It not only featured Joe as one of the panelists, it featured Sidra as the model. Joe joked that technically Sidra should be naked, but she remained fully clothed for the panel. I just sat and watched all of the artists working at drawing Sidra and talking about anatomy. It was fun, and I was just a spectator. Sidra did all of her shopping on Sunday. She got a Munchkin Blender expansion pack and a t-shirt that says, "You don't need to look at my chest. These aren't the breasts you're looking for, move along." Cepheid appears to have made quite a nice profit this year. However, the art show and the charity auction didn't do as well as in years past. That was fine with me, though, because I got a lot of nice things at bargain basement prices . . . and I had a great time.
|
| [Back to Collector Times] |
| [Prev.] | [Return to Conventions] | [Disclaimer] | [Next] |
|