On The Road Again
Having gained wisdom from previous trips, I booked a flight out of the
local Tallahassee airport instead of the Jacksonville airport, which probably
cost me a little extra, but meant I could just wander about five miles down
the road from my place of employment and hop right on the plane. It was
quite handy, really. Wander in, and they started boarding almost immediately.
Of course, the problem with Tallahassee airport is that it's not mighty
enough to send you directly to your destination. Instead, you have to go
through Atlanta. This may not sound like much, but Atlanta is Delta's hub
for the area, so it's a mighty airport indeed. It's also only about thirty
minutes flying time away, so the stewardesses barely have time to finish
passing out your airline snacks (sealed in impenetrable kevlar packets) and
drinks before you're suddenly approaching Atlanta. Having gone through Atlanta
a mind-boggling number of times, it's almost a tradition for the youngest
stewardess to mutter, at some point in the process "This is really stupid.
Why _are_ we doing this?" But, of course, it's a plane. You've got to pass
out peanuts when you're on a plane. It's just the done thing. While I didn't
get to hear the requisite gripe on the way up, it must have been voiced. I
mean, it's just the thing to do.
In the mighty airport of Atlanta (which is pretty sodding enormous) I got what would pass for dinner, a deli sandwich with mind-bogglingly hot mustard, and listened to the people in line chatting happily about their trips, this being the South, where it's considered the done thing to share such details with all and sundry. Then there was a brief, two hour, layover while waiting for the flight up to Newark, during which time I read _Learn Java 1.1 Programming in 24 Hours_ because I'd claimed to know Java on my resume', and figured now was as good a time as any to actually learn it.
And then there was Newark.
Newark airport was as large as Atlanta's, but with several distinguishing features, namely that it was designed to be as inconvenient as possible, and large chunks of the interior, and the entirety of the surrounding road network, seemed to be in a state of perpetual construction. This, as you might well expect, made leaving Newark rather interesting.
Gina was there, with car, and with her father, who had tagged along with the obvious justification that people ought not to venture alone into Newark. And the unobvious justification that it's difficult enough to drive in New Jersey, let alone navigate in any reasonable way. This was proven when, shortly later, we took a wrong turn and ended up shooting down a random highway into the distance, which, inexplicably, got us where we needed to go anyway. Which was, due to a complicated bit of logistics, not the convention, or, indeed, even Gina's place of residence, but, instead, a random hotel at which had two younger siblings had inexplicably ended up.
It would be too much to describe all the randomness that occurred, including Gina complaining about Java, which was amusing as I'd just learned it that afternoon, Gina's siblings taunting the assorted kipple in her vehicle, and the wind blowing bitingly though the gaping hole in the passenger side door.
Oh, and, of course, seeing how long a car can be driven without running out of gas.
And then, eventually, there was the trip to the actual convention itself, a battle against elements and fate that involved only one (1) injury to the local wildlife, when a deranged skunk attempted to play chicken with the vehicle while we were going 75 on the interstate. The skunk lost.
Welcome to the Hotel Piscator
The Rye Brook Hilton loomed, Hilton-like, out of the night, surrounded by
rocky walls, menacing forest, and parking lots which failed to be menacing
but did manage a bit of rockiness.
It looked perfectly normal, inside, despite the disturbing people dressed as elves. Well, until we actually tried to find our room, of course. It was on the first floor, which was not the same as the ground floor, which opened onto the second floor (or, alternately, the seventh). No signs helpfully pointed out that the first floor was, in fact, further down. The elevator might have helped, but was feeling temperamental and wasn't coming up any more. Eventually, of course, we managed to find the place, but only after wandering through a low-budget Dr. Who film ("...these corridors all look alike!"). This, at last, achieved, it was time to seek out everyone else.
Severe Tire Damage
Oh, we did find everyone else, eventually. Among the teeming throngs were
such as Eric "Sabre" Burns, several people named Jon, several people named
Chris, and, just to be different, a Mason. It's a testament to how late it
was that I don't actually remember much of what went on, except for the
Moxie. Moxie, you see, is a vaguely beverage-like liquid developed in ages
past by an ancestor of Eric's. It is not particularly amenable to consumption
by humans, but in small doses is not actually fatal. Being manly (Gina, having
a functioning brain, abstained) it was necessary for me to try this grim and
terrifying edifice of awfulness. It was, I discovered, every bit as icky as
I'd anticipated. It was approximately equivalent to drinking high quality root
beer out of an old tire, with an extra tang of fetid, rotting leaves thrown
in for good measure. It tasted okay at first, but the aftertaste was enough to
make you swear off soft drinks forever.
Some foolhardy soul had also purchased a two-liter container of Diet Moxie, which is now legal in the U.S. following extensive bribes to the FDA. Nobody actually tried this borderline bio-weapon, and it was left, at the end of the weekend, as a 'present' for whoever cleaned up the place. I hope they didn't try and drink it.
Breakfast at Rose's
There's only but so long that people can go without food, and when the cravings
started the next morning, there was only one place we were awake enough to go.
The Hotel's restaurant.
They had a breakfast buffet, of course, with coffee, assorted juices ("Jooos!") plus scrambled eggs, potatoes, grilled ham, and all that. And rolls which had been around since the Eisenhower administration and passed from cook to cook as a legacy of staleness. It was, naturally, thirteen dollars. A person. I considered charging it to someone else's room, but I hadn't quite obtained consiousness yet and so had to discard that plan.
Chibi-Fanboy
One of the interesting features of the Convention was the number of children
around. Not, like, tons of them, but certainly around a dozen distinct spawn
running about, peering at things, and asking difficult questions like "why
does that person in that picture have no clothes on?"
Which brings us to the art show. Of course there was an art show. It involved lots of people who paint covers for real books showing off their work, assorted amateurs trying to sell stuff, and, in marked contrast to your typical anime con art show, very few manga-style and 'furry' drawings. It did, however, have a drawing which was apparently trying to match up the Gundam Wing pilots to the Backstreet Boys, which left me forever scarred. But we digress.
It also, of course, involved assorted wanna-be artists wandering around, peering at art, and occasionally whimpering, "I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!"
Lastly, it involved pron. Er, porn. Yup, you just can't get away from those bits of art involving naked (vampires|demonesses|et cetera). For shame, for shame. However, only about 5 percent of the art room was kinky, so that's fairly acceptable as conventions go. They'll have to strive for at least 10 in the future.
Oh, yes. And sculpture. Not of naked people, this time. There were various fully-functional fountains trickling water, a veritable plethora of little shiny doo-dads, and a model of a blimp, of sorts, which rotated slowly, with sparkly crystal thingies fore and aft. All evidence of people who were either extremely artistic or had far too much time on their hands. Possibly both.
Non-Euclidian Dealer's Room
Wedged between the second floor, the seventh floor, and the fourth floor
(don't try too hard to think about it) was a sprawling mass of corridors
containing people selling things and/or trying to suck you into other
conventions or, worse yet, LARP societies. Plus the usual plethora of
kipple dealers. Some of these were the usual "look! bits of pewter! shaped
like wossnames!" people, some had vast piles of books on display, luring in
unsuspecting fen and slowly, viciously draining them of all money. There was
a guy who'd draw art on t-shirts for a fee (very nice art, too, I might add).
There was the inevitable pagan-esque dealer of tarot cards and books like
_Witchery and You_ or _Stealing Souls in Three Easy Steps_. There was the one
lonely anime kipple dealer wedged into one corner. There was the fellow selling
enlarged prints of book and comic covers (although why anyone would want to
buy poster-sized images of Lady Death is beyond me).
And, of course, the button and bumper sticker place, where everyone is obliged to stop and pick their own surly slogans. (Mine were "Oh, no! Not another learning experience!", "All I ask of a gun is that it be reliable, accurate, and capable of dropping a god at 500 meters." and the eponymous "Elf - the other white meat!").
Fifty-Three Panels and Nothin's On
Around this time, regularly scheduled activities were given over to meandering
about and remarking with amusement upon various things. There was an
Anime Room, of course, but around this time it was just showing some ancient,
black-and-white anime which was so obscure even I didn't recognize it. There
were, at the time, various panels on things which weren't at all interesting
to me in particular (or Gina, who was milling around also) - this was because
it was only about 11 or 12 at this time. So we just milled, watching the
antics of assorted spawn (one of whom had set herself up as a gatekeeper in
the middle of a hallway and demanding that people asked nicely before they
could pass, and another that just seemed inclined to run around), remarking
on the amusement of the Internet Connectivity room...
Wherein lies a story. Every room, you see, has the potential for direct connection Internet access, for a modest fee of $10 a night. To wire a "conference room", however (or, more accurately, turn on the connection there) costs $600 a day. So, being the surly types that fen usually are, it was determined that they would do no such thing. Instead, they set up a wireless hub in the "Internet room" and a second hub in a hotel room which had line of sight, and thus funnelled the Internet room's computers through the much less expensive hotel room link. Of course, it wasn't that simple, since it involved the two WaveLAN wireless widgets, plus a BSD box for NAT, plus a Windows 2000 box in the mix for some arcane purpose, et cetera, but still, by god, they weren't going to pay $590 extra for that conference room.
We didn't actually use the Internet Room at any point (I didn't head two thirds of the way up the East Coast to sit down and use the 'Net), but still, it was enough to know that such a feat of technical surl was possible.
The Quest for Chai
The sights had been seen, the dealer's room had been suitably looted, and
now it was time for lunch.
The entire group gathered for this quest, as many of them had been to the goal of our quest in the previous day, and discovered a restaurant that not only served food, but also served a strange and terrible tea-like beverage called Chai. (Gina, who had worked at Starbuck's and was aware that they, also, had Chai, somehow managed not to snicker.) For this trip, we'd also acquired a Deb, who might or might not have been from the general area, but was nonetheless foolhardy enough to embark on the quest for Chai.
It was a long and arduous journey, indeed, lasting at least a few minutes - albeit minutes stretched into terrifying eternity by the fact that I, among others, was in Gina's car. Lunch itself was well worth it, and we did, in fact, consume non-trivial portions of the restaurant's cache of Chai. And... er... well, it was good. Sorry, I've used up my ration of poetic waxing for this entry already.
There was also a vending machine there, which dispensed small, bouncy balls colored like pool balls. As none of us had gotten adequate sleep the night before, we were all quite fascinated by this, and many a quarter was expended on a substantial number of the li'l balls, many of which were bounced under furniture and promptly forgotten about.
Must... have... tea!
The rest of the afternoon and early evening was more of the same, with
wandering, poking about, occasionally getting lost in the Hotel, wondering
why there were so many panels related to vampires, learning strange, new
things about writing, watching children getting lured into the anime room
and exposed to the strange, new world of Japanese Animation, and, finally,
spending far too much time taunting Sailor Stars.
But the highlight of the evening was the quest down to the hotel bar in search for coffee, or, failing that, tea. The cravings had overcome us, or, at least, most of us, and like a tired, surly and amusingly dressed barbarian horde, we ventured down in search of caffeine.
The bar, like most bars, did not actually seem to have coffee, for some strange and arcane reason. It did have a whole bunch of hotel denizens hanging out and not dancing, possibly due to the fact that the D.J. had the musical tastes of a crack-addled ferret. In the end, however, we were induced to stay by the lure of iced tea, of which they had plenty. Perhaps the bartender wept at our unwillingness to test his skills, or perhaps not, but nonetheless, the only thing there was to drink was tea and soft drinks, as it was far too late to delve into alcoholia.
There was the usual bar-ish fairly comfortable couches, a bit of bouncing, a bowl of nuts, and music that got progressively worse. Oh, they started off with Dire Straits, but soon progressed to Phil Collins. Phil Collins? The man's completely depressing! It doesn't make you want to get up and dance, it makes you want to hurl yourself into the pool and quietly drown! Clearly, the DJ had been replaced by his arch-nemesis, Awful Music Man! Could we triumph over this fiend?! Could the forces of good smash evil? Could... zzzzzz...
Frolic, frolic
The next morning, the plan went something like this. Get up, clean out, wander
over to Denville (Gina's home town) to poke around before taking a leisurely
drive back to Newark and airplaneage. Naturally, it didn't work out this way.
I, being quite productive, managed to have everything set for departure quite
early (helpfully assisted by the hotel's automated check-out feature, which
allowed us to just leave the keys and wander out, no fuss, no muss). Everyone
else, of course, being slackers, we ended up just sort of waiting around for
an hour. Why? Because we all wanted to go to lunch at the Chai place. Why?
Because... well, Chai, man. Chai! CHAI!!
Everyone snorked down lunch, after waiting for the restaurant to set up a table long enough for our teeming throng, of course. After another round of Chai, that sweet beverage of life, everyone said goodbye, and Gina and I, having used up our margin of error, headed off into the wilderness of New York State. Naturally, we promptly made an error anyway.
All roads lead to New York
Literally, in this case. There we are, going down the highway, merrily
oblivious to the world, when, suddenly, we're in New York. It's just one
of those things that happens. Through the Bronx we go, growing increasingly
surly. It's rather fascinating, the network of roads in and around New York.
I can see why it's been known to drive strong men to tears. However, at
least the slow travel speed didn't lead to very many incidents of death
defying feats of driving. In fact, it didn't seem to lead to very much
movement speed at all.
It was pretty impressive, as cities go. Lots of buildings larger than the state capital down south. Traffic thick enough that the brickwork and concrete lining the road was literally dissolved away in places from the exhaust. It did have some incongruities, too, like the pleasant enough looking concrete balconies and steps and ramps and things going down to the water on one section of the river, the terminus of some concrete path that wandered about beneath the roadways. It looked rather neat, and empty, and no doubt full of lurking types who would be more than happy to relieve you of your wallet.
Then, of course, we passed over a river as wide as the day is long, and into Harlem, only to quickly flee across another bridge to the relative freedom of Newark. Where, after battling the bizarre construction zones and terrifying traffic, we emerged once more at the airport, parked, and headed in for... chai! Yep, there was a Starbucks there, and we had to acquire yet more chai, this time good chai, as in not from a little packet of instant powder. It was chai of might. And then, staggering to the plane. Good-bye, fair New Jersey! It would be a quick trip home, home to the safety and only moderate insanity of the deep, deep south.
Yeah, right
But it was not to be that easy. Oh, getting out of Newark was easy. But
Atlanta (of course planes stop in Atlanta. It's the done thing.) proved to
be as difficult to escape as New York was. First of all, there was the need
to travel the entire length of the airport to reach the connecting flight.
This was only moderately irritating. Then there was the tragic, tragic,
spill of magazines on the runway. Apparently someone had done a bit of an
oopsie while... well, actually, I'm boggled as to how magazines got there.
The pilot was, too. "Well, er. Apparently they've got a bit of a problem
with, er, magazines on the south runway. But they're sending someone out
to, uh, clean them up, er, now."
Then another plane had 'trouble' and we waited around for it to come in. Then we waited behind a queue of increasingly surly aircraft which, when everything was finally cleared off, shot off the runway like corks out of bottles, fired off in rapid succession by the tower crew. Surprisingly, nobody died.
And, this time, I got to hear the "Why /are/ we doing this? This is stupid!" from one of the stewardesses. The tradition upheld. Aaah... that warm glow of tradition.
But fate was still not done with me yet, as I had to wait for the parking lot checkpoint to fix a computer problem before I could pay my parking fees for the airport lot and finally, finally, head home at last.
Whew.
Waltzing through the subway, speeding through the darkness, look at how the people stare... I plant a kiss on your hand - everyone loves a mad-man, living it up without a care... C'mon, kitten, don't be blind, they can't stand against our might - You and I could rule the world, a super-villain and his girl, a super-villain and his girl... Flickering your bright eyes, slicker than a magpie's, lonely as a sattelite... I can tell you trust me, and you know it must be, something in the air tonight... And once my little scheme's complete, we'll have people at our feet - You and I will rule the world, a super-villain and his girl, a super-villain and his girl... (do, do, do, do-do-do, la-la-la-la-la-la-la...) It's lovely having you here, to see my super-nuclear, hydro-thermal neuron ray.. And once this neuron ray's complete, we'll have people at our feet - You and I will rule the world, a super-villain and his girl, a super-villain and his girl... - William Ether, _Super Villain_
Rant 'o the day contains no additives, preservatives or alien spores of any kind. Use only as directed. Do not expose to direct sunlight. Do not fold, spindle, multilate or remove identifying tags. Handle with care. Contains less than 3% milk fat by weight, not by volume. Certified 'Syndicate Approved'. Squeeze the lemon. Remember, kids, only users lose drugs.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT