Holiday Cons - Page 5

There were a great many more skits, entertaining and original and they happened at these conventions each holiday weekend, excepting Christmas.

After the talent show, we were free to roam the hotel all night if we wished to. There would be many parties to attend so that many of us would wander in and out, sampling parties the way wine connoisseur sample wine. These would go on throughout the night.

Parties might be about filking; filks are popular songs that are rewritten to make them sci-fi songs, as in, "What do you do with a drunken Cpt. Kirk?"

Other rooms might have a guest talking about his latest movie, TV show or book. We tended to get more writers than stars.

Another room might be a talk festival, the next, a joke room. I regret to report I never did find any orgy rooms, darn, darn, darn.

Saturday night, after another full day of function rooms much like Friday, we would have the costume contest where there are no skits, sketches or acting allowed, it's just about costumes, again with something like a $200.00 cash prize and so on, to encourage all participants into their very best efforts. One group recreated the "Star Wars" cast, with a great home-made brass C3P0, a radio-controlled R2D2 which was so real if I didn't know the builder I would've assumed Lucas had loaned them one of the film models, a seven foot tall Chewbacca, a full dress Han Solo, Luke in the tan costume, Princess Lea in her Dantooine winter costume. These costume parties themselves could last up to three or four hours. And again, after the show, we had the run of the hotel all night, parties again all night.

Sunday was the only short day. All function rooms were used until closing with the show technically ending about 5:00. Even then, we could find a "Dead Dog Party", which is the winding down last day, final party of the convention.

We delighted in three days of real convention fun, being anyone you wanted to be, three days not even leaving the hotel, we would rent rooms to keep our costume in, to sleep (what little of it we got) three days of heaven where you could spend every minute immersed in science fiction fun.

Almost a world of make believe, were we could do things like wearing your favorite costume all day long, this was called Hall costumeing. Talking, walking, seeing and buying our own special products made by us, for us, not the store-bought crap, special items like the real trim used to make a Galactica costume, a special raygun, specialty jewelry, also fan-written, fan-printed fanzines filled with stories from your favorite show. The dealers' room was a special haven then with fan made products, not a overpriced K-Mart in miniature.

Great Being, Great Bird of the Galaxy, how I do miss those days and conventions.

Next time, I'll tell the "Legend of the '85 WorldCon".

 

.........Fin...........................

 

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