MediaWest IV - A New Hope
Jun. 4th, 2001 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phosfateFriday. Registration purgatory. Nobody can get signed in, so those of us who have business in the dealers room get our hands stamped…with a little stamp of a hand. Susan sets up her equipment at her table and enjoys many cell-phone conversations with the boys and girls at tech support. Bonita and I do art show paperwork and eventually we schlep downstairs to the home of the Overworked Art Show Staff[TM] and get hung. 'Nita's done some really cool stuff with rubber stamping and collage and turpentine transfer and nailing very small animals to hang tags. I have done my usual assortment of desperate crap. A very nice show this year. The traditional stuff is very high quality (fab portraiture by Kate Neurnberg, whose name I've probably just mangled, and Jesse McCain, ditto), and there's a lot of cool odd stuff - Waldo's checkers sets, and amazing stuffed gargoyles by someone whose name was unfortunately erased from my brain by Susan's booze. We offer up small prayers to the art gods that our work will not be dropped and shattered, and that we will be showered with big piles of cash for it. The art gods, in return, giggle.
Back to the dealers room, alternating shopping with asking Susan if she needs anything ("Tea! Bring me tea, damn you!"), which requires considerable bravery as she is fully in Work Mode, and it’s like the bits in Sherlock Holmes stories where Holmes goes apeshit and starts sniffing walls and taking samples from Persian carpets. The survey thing is going well, with MediaWesters eating up the mousepads like the lunches that the hotel restaurant seems unable to deliver. Cool shopping – while the dealers room, as usual, features more Sentinel fanzines with color covers featuring Blair and/or Jim’s naked behinds than any sane person should ever have to look at, one can also find cool movie freebies and near-freebies (the best by far is the fur-covered Planet of the Apes luggage tag with the legend, “Get your paws off my luggage, you damn dirty ape!” – though ironically the large solid metal logo attached to it means that nobody will ever be able to get it through an airport metal detector), toys new and used, homemade goodies of various sorts, art prints, and giant neon penis candles. That’s candles in the shape of penises, not candles designed to be attached to…never mind. My haul for the weekend will be: 1 cool Mummy Returns promo parchment notebook, 2 Kate N bookmarks, a set of the new XF trading cards, a l’il Gabrielle pin, a half-dozen West Wing fanzines that I am still afraid to read, a copy of the last Modesty Blaise hardback (thanks, Gretchen!), and a copy of The Secret Confessions of Rustin Parr, and a big flickery Storm trading card, and an Avengers bookmark. The TV show, not the comic.
Sharon, the third of our four roommates, shows up sometime during the day. Eventually I remember that hey, Gretchen (Roomie #4) rang up from California earlier and that someone sort of needs to get her at the airport. I know how to find the airport, and Susan is still looking for people to kill via cell phone, so I'm volunteered. Bonita volunteers to bodyguard. We head off down the freeway - "I'll be there - FUCK YOU!!!" - and actually manage to find the place. Bonita sets off the metal detector with her change and convention badge, then alarms the X-ray guy with the tiny bar kit (corkscrew, knife, bottle opener, and...I'm not sure what the hell the fourth thing is, an IUD or something) Susan gave her earlier. "I can't take you anywhere!"
Turns out Gretchen's plane arrived early, and we have to track her to baggage, and finally spot her waiting on the front walk. We shove her into the car - "I'll be there - FUCK YOU!!!" - make the obligatory Meijer's stop for booze, which doesn't work because Gretchen leaves her ID in the car and the Booze Lady is in a foul mood and will not sell wine cooler to someone who is very likely older than she is. "I can't take you anywhere, either," I tell her. Bonita points out that smugness is not becoming, especially since it seems that I'm next. Which turns out to be true, since Gretchen wants Taco Bell, and it takes me three attempts to find the correct way in.
We drive back to the HI - "I'll be there - FUCK YOU!!!" - and turn in for the night.
Except Susan has her laptop set up and shows me how to play The Sims...
Back to the dealers room, alternating shopping with asking Susan if she needs anything ("Tea! Bring me tea, damn you!"), which requires considerable bravery as she is fully in Work Mode, and it’s like the bits in Sherlock Holmes stories where Holmes goes apeshit and starts sniffing walls and taking samples from Persian carpets. The survey thing is going well, with MediaWesters eating up the mousepads like the lunches that the hotel restaurant seems unable to deliver. Cool shopping – while the dealers room, as usual, features more Sentinel fanzines with color covers featuring Blair and/or Jim’s naked behinds than any sane person should ever have to look at, one can also find cool movie freebies and near-freebies (the best by far is the fur-covered Planet of the Apes luggage tag with the legend, “Get your paws off my luggage, you damn dirty ape!” – though ironically the large solid metal logo attached to it means that nobody will ever be able to get it through an airport metal detector), toys new and used, homemade goodies of various sorts, art prints, and giant neon penis candles. That’s candles in the shape of penises, not candles designed to be attached to…never mind. My haul for the weekend will be: 1 cool Mummy Returns promo parchment notebook, 2 Kate N bookmarks, a set of the new XF trading cards, a l’il Gabrielle pin, a half-dozen West Wing fanzines that I am still afraid to read, a copy of the last Modesty Blaise hardback (thanks, Gretchen!), and a copy of The Secret Confessions of Rustin Parr, and a big flickery Storm trading card, and an Avengers bookmark. The TV show, not the comic.
Sharon, the third of our four roommates, shows up sometime during the day. Eventually I remember that hey, Gretchen (Roomie #4) rang up from California earlier and that someone sort of needs to get her at the airport. I know how to find the airport, and Susan is still looking for people to kill via cell phone, so I'm volunteered. Bonita volunteers to bodyguard. We head off down the freeway - "I'll be there - FUCK YOU!!!" - and actually manage to find the place. Bonita sets off the metal detector with her change and convention badge, then alarms the X-ray guy with the tiny bar kit (corkscrew, knife, bottle opener, and...I'm not sure what the hell the fourth thing is, an IUD or something) Susan gave her earlier. "I can't take you anywhere!"
Turns out Gretchen's plane arrived early, and we have to track her to baggage, and finally spot her waiting on the front walk. We shove her into the car - "I'll be there - FUCK YOU!!!" - make the obligatory Meijer's stop for booze, which doesn't work because Gretchen leaves her ID in the car and the Booze Lady is in a foul mood and will not sell wine cooler to someone who is very likely older than she is. "I can't take you anywhere, either," I tell her. Bonita points out that smugness is not becoming, especially since it seems that I'm next. Which turns out to be true, since Gretchen wants Taco Bell, and it takes me three attempts to find the correct way in.
We drive back to the HI - "I'll be there - FUCK YOU!!!" - and turn in for the night.
Except Susan has her laptop set up and shows me how to play The Sims...
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Date: 2001-06-04 01:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)