Birthday Pictures

Finally posted some of the pictures from my niece Emelia's second birthday party. You can find the album here. (I'm still working on my SoonerCon 2008 pictures and should have those and a con report posted sometime soon.)

SoonerCon 2008 Video (and other things)

Weather: Sunny, hot and a little humid (and we may get some more thunderstorms over the next few days).

Music: Nothing at the moment.

Mood: Restless and a little frustrated--mostly because Saturday night is when I usually hang out with my friends, but there's nothing going on tonight so I've been spending the evening trying to find other things to do and not being terribly successful. (There are plenty of things I need to do around the house, I just don't feel like doing any of them right now.)

What I've been doing lately (aside from the usual): I spent last weekend at SoonerCon 2008 and had a very good time (and I promise to post a con report and my con photos sometime in the next week). In the meantime, here's a video montage that someone else made with pictures she took at the convention:

SoonerCon 2008 Commercial

TrickConTreat 2008 Videos

Some video from last year's TrickConTreat:

SoonerCon 2007 Video

TrickConTreat 2008 Pictures and Review

(Which I should have posted a month ago, but I did get it posted before the end of the year like I said I would.)

On Saturday, Oct. 6, I spent the day at TrickConTreat, a one-day horror/Halloween convention put on by the same people who work on SoonerCon (and held at Soonercon's current hotel, the Biltmore at I-40 and Meridian).

Attendance was okay, but lower than I expected, even for a first-time, one-day convention. The probable culprit was the OU-Texas game; I'm surprised that the con was scheduled for the same day as a major football game, but it's possible that that was the only date that would work for the hotel, or the staff, or maybe both. Hopefully, they'll be able to avoid having the con on the same weekend as the game next year.

The dealer's room was small but had a good selection of new and used books and movies, t-shirts, toys, artwork (by my friend Kevin Hopkins), and a few other things, and the four authors who were there (Craig Wolf, Steven Wedel, Bill Allen and my friend Bev Hale) had tables in the outer lobby where they were selling and signing books and visiting with congoers. There were also four local clubs/organizations that had display tables: the Oklahoma Space Alliance, the Ghostbusters: Central Oklahoma Division, the Colonial Marines (an "Alien" fan club), and an animal rescue/welfare group whose name escapes me at the moment..

Activities included two tracks of programming, one primarily for adults and one for kids. The adult panels were focused mainly on Halloween themes: horror readings, a history of Halloween, monster make-up, planning parties, decorating pumpkins, and paranormal investigation (which I planned to attend but didn't and I can't remember why). The two panels I did attend were a writers' panel on "What's Happening in Horror and Fantasy" and a panel called "Horror Hosts" with Dr. Fear (Brian Young, a radio and cable horror host from Enid) and Count Gregore (John Ferguson, who became the country's first horror movie host back in May, 1958, and has hosted several local horror movie shows over the years).

There were two other activities that I passed up: a "Zombie Ball" (an "adults-only" costume dance) on Saturday night, and a ghost tour of Ft. Reno in El Reno on Friday evening (which I'm hoping they have again next year because I heard it was a lot of fun and I'm sorry I missed it this year).

Overall, it was a good event and I'm already looking forward to next year (the theme for which is "A Tribute to "B" Movies," and I'm eager to see what sort of movie-related guests and activities they have planned).

(The handful of pictures I took at the con are posted in my Photobucket account, the link to which is in the sidebar on the right.)

Just a little news . . .

Weather: Nice but steadily getting colder.

Music: Nothing at the moment.

Mood: Somewhere between "okay" and "bleah." I came down with a cold the Thursday before Halloween after waking up with a sore throat for several days. This one has been pretty mild as colds go, but the symptoms have been hanging on for dear life . . . I'm still dealing with some coughing and congestion (although neither is particularly bad) and I'm still tired most of the time because I haven't been sleeping well. Other than that, I'm feeling pretty good.

What I've been doing lately: Aside from the usual, trying to catch up on my reading (I just finished Listening Woman by Tony Hillerman and I'm trying to finish The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman before the movie comes out in December) and trying to finish a review of a one-day horror convention I went to back in October so I can post it here (and there's no good excuse for not having it done and posted already and I'm going to try really, really hard to start working on it again this week so I can finish it and get it posted sometime before the end of the year).

Photo Stuff

Just remembered a few things I've been intending to post about (and kept forgetting because I've had a lot of other things on my mind lately) . . .

First, I finally got around to posting some of the pictures I took at my niece Emelia's first birthday party back in June. They're in my Photobucket account in the sub-album titled--what else?--"Emelia and her First Birthday Party."

Also, I noticed recently that the SoonerCon website has been redesigned. There's a new discussion forum and a photo gallery with pictures from SoonerCon 2007 and one of the con committee meetings. There's also a space for pictures from SoonerCon 2006, but no pictures posted yet.

Finally, I took down all of the pictures I had posted in my Yahoo! photo account. They stopped accepting new uploads and announced that the photo service would be shut down for good in September, so I decided to go ahead and take everything down since I'm sure most of the folks I know have already seen everything that was posted there.

Birthday Greetings and New SoonerCon Link

Happy Birthday to my sister-in-law Charlotte (hope the card I sent got to you on time).

************

I found out a few days ago that SoonerCon has opened an online store where they're going to be selling t-shirts, caps, posters, coffee mugs, tote bags, and maybe some other stuff later on. Scooter says check it out. (I've added it to my list of local science fiction links in case anyone needs to find it later.)

Holiday Greetings and More SoonerCon Photos

Happy Fourth of July! I hope everybody has had/is having/is going to have a safe and fun holiday. (Nothing special going on here . . . I was invited to join some friends for dinner and a trip to a local park to watch the fireworks from downtown Okla. City, but I decided to stay home and try to catch up on some rest since I haven't been sleeping well for the past few nights.)

I've been intending to mention (and kept forgetting until tonight) that JediOKC has seven pages of SoonerCon 2007 photos posted on their site, including some good ones from the charity dinner and show on Friday night and the costume contest on Saturday night. Just go to the main page of their site and look for the photo album link on the left side of the page, under "Board Navigation."

"The Merlene Show"--A Right Good Thing

"The Merlene Show" was a skit that the funny and talented folks at Yard Dog Press performed on Saturday evening at SoonerCon. I thought it would be a good idea to discuss it in a separate post since a lot of people may not be familiar with the history behind it.


Several years ago, the writers at Yard Dog Press came up with an idea for a collection of humorous stories about a plague called Yuppie 25 that kills off most of the people on Earth and turns them into brain-eating, yuppie zombies, or "Yumbies." The only survivors of the plague are the "Bubbas," the redneck, white-trash, trailer park denizens who are rendered immune to the virus by the ingredients in the cheap barbecue sauce that they put on everything they eat

The first collection of stories was called Bubbas of the Apocalypse, followed by The Four Bubbas of the Apocalypse: Flatulence, Halitosis, Incest, and . . . Ned and International House of Bubbas. A fourth collection, .Houston: We've got Bubbas, is currently in the works.

(Still with me? Good. If you're not, it's not going to get any clearer. Sorry.)

"The Merlene Show" was intended to be the Bubba version of "The Martha Stewart Show"--arts and crafts and home decor with a redneck, white-trash twist, plus a beauty pageant between a couple of trailer park beauty queens, Harley Dee and Nova Dawn. The final production was loud, raunchy and incredibly funny, and I hope whoever took the video of the show will post it on the net sometime soon. (If I see it posted anywhere, I'll post a link here or send it out by e-mail, or both.)

Here's the cast:

Merlene--Sherri Dean
Billy Dee--Bill Allen
Nedina--Selina Rosen
Security guards--M.H. Bonham and Rie Sheridan
Rhonda Lee--Rhonda Eudaly
Harley Dee--Audree Hitchcock
Nova Dawn--Sally Allen
Pearl Mae Ledbetter--Susan Satterfield
Glen Tirwiliger--Glenn Sixbury
David Lee Anderson--playing himself
Bennie Grezlik--also playing himself (I think)
Plus the Stonebender Sisters:
Cary On--Cary Osborn
Berly Ann--Beverly Hale
Katie Ellen--Katharine E. Kimbriel
Ruby Sue--Kristi Hutson-Price

If you have any questions about "The Merlene Show," SoonerCon, or any of the pictures I posted, please e-mail me or leave a comment and let me know.

SoonerCon 2007 Pictures and Review

Finally got all of my SoonerCon 2007 pictures resized, tweaked and posted. Just click on my Photobucket link in the sidebar and look in my sub-albums. I have a separate sub-album for my pictures from "The Merlene Show," but I'll post more about that tomorrow. Most of the pictures I took came out pretty well, but there were a few that were too dark and needed to be lightened and a couple that came out fuzzy and had to be sharpened (and even then they don't look as good as they could have).

I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I intended to, usually because I'd see someone or something interesting, think "I really need to get a picture of him/her/that before the weekend is over," then I'd get lazy or sidetracked and never get around to taking one. I already promised myself I'd take more next year (and anyone who reads this has my permission to nag me next year to make sure I do it!).


This year's SoonerCon was very well-run and very well-attended--the last attendance estimate I heard was about 1000 people, which is very good for the second year of a convention. It was good to just hang out with friends for three days, including a few that I hadn't seen in a long time.

Correction from the comments: the actual attendance this year was around 700 people. Thanks to Angie for posting the correction.

The art show and dealer's room were both good, but the dealer's room really needed a button dealer, since buttons are inexpensive and one of the things that lot of people (including me) usually look for at conventions.

The programming schedule had a good selection of panels and other activities, and the ones that I went to, or saw in passing, were usually well-attended. (The children's writing workshop I went to on Sunday morning didn't attract any kids, but the adults that were there had a lot of fun.)

The con suite seemed a little small for a con this size, but it was always kept neat and clean and had a good selection of consumables available (including fresh fruit, which is always a nice change from cookies and donuts).

The one big disappointment about the con was the lack of room parties. At a convention this big, there are usually at least one or two open parties on Friday night and three or four on Saturday night. This time, however, there was one party on Friday (hosted by the ladies of Yard Dog Press, who can always be counted on to throw a good room party) and none at all on Saturday. I know there were two local clubs that usually throw parties that decided not to this time, but nobody knows what happened to all of the groups from other conventions that are usually on hand to throw parties to promote their cons. Hopefully this was just a fluke and we'll have a lot of parties next year.

The con hotel (the Biltmore at I-40 and S. Meridian) handled their first science fiction convention pretty well (or seemed to) from what I could see, although I heard about some problems some other folks had with them later on. The sleeping rooms were clean and comfortable and reasonably priced and I hope the con can arrange the same price or something close to it for next year. The hotel restaurant was good and also reasonably priced, although the wait staff was sometimes a little slow about bringing drinks or refills. There were plenty of couches and chairs in most areas of the hotel, so there were always places for the fans to sit and visit.

My one big complaint about the hotel (and the weekend in general) had to do with the location of my room. The hotel is divided into three buildings--the main building, the south wing, and the west wing. All of the convention function areas were in the main building and the south wing, while my room was in the back hallway of the west wing, which meant a seven-minute walk to get from my room to the art show/dealer's room area. (The only way my room could have been any farther would be if it had been across the hall and up on the second floor.) Needless to say, I didn't make any trips back to my room unless I absolutely had to.

Next year, the con needs to strongly encourage the hotel (and maybe require it via their hotel contract) to keep all of the convention sleeping rooms as close to each other and to the convention function areas as possible, and they have enough rooms available that this shouldn't be a problem. The only convention guests who need to be in the west wing, IMHO, are the ones who specifically ask to be there for any reason.

Overall I had a great time and I'm already looking forward to next year (and I'm already thinking about volunteering to work on the con next year, but I haven't made a final decision yet).

Birthday Greetings and Feelin' The Blues

Happy Birthday to my friend Nancy (who I shared a room with at SoonerCon this past weekend) and a belated Happy Birthday to my friend Rosemary (who I also saw at the con and whose birthday was a week ago when I was taking a break from posting).

The con was great and I had a wonderful time, but I'm still incredibly tired and sore and feeling generally lousy, so it may be a few days before I'll feel up to posting a con report and my con pictures. I'm also having a really severe bout of the "post-convention blues"--which, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is the condition of feeling depressed about a con being over or about to come to an end and having to go back to dealing with the "real" world again. It's a pretty common condition among science fiction fans, and I've discovered today (from doing a couple of Google searches) that it can affect anyone who attends any sort of special interest convention or gathering, not just science fiction conventions. (Do your own search of Google Groups if you want to learn more--you can also search using "letdown" or "depression" in place of "blues" to get some alternate results.)

Taking A Break

Next weekend I'm going to be attending SoonerCon, so I was planning to be away from my computer from Thursday evening until Sunday evening/late night or maybe even Monday morning (depending on what time I get home from the con and how much energy I have left by then).

However, I still have a lot of things I still need to do before then, so I've decided to start my "vacation" from posting today. Once the con is over I'll be in a better frame of mind to deal with blog stuff.

Hope everyone has a good week, and I promise to be back on my blog a week from tomorrow.