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Grex Scifi Item 136: Astromonical ConFusion, January 2002 discussion
Entered by tpryan on Sun Jan 20 18:32:32 UTC 2002:

        Astromonical ConFusion was at the Van Dyke hotel this past
weekend, January 18-20, 2002; Warren, Michigan.
        Many a grexer was there and this item is to discussion
the convention, or continue some of the discusssions started 
there.

9 responses total.

#1 of 9 by tpryan on Sun Jan 20 18:36:07 2002:

        I spotted drew, russ, Twila, Bruce, void, kami & polygon
amoung others.
        TUFKAs included griz, ec, Paul Hass.

        I think I'm not remembering many.  Check in, eh?

#2 of 9 by robh on Sun Jan 20 19:56:31 2002:

I wish I could have been there, but my finances wouldn't permit it.

#3 of 9 by flem on Mon Jan 21 20:16:54 2002:

I was there, with the SCA demo.  I didn't spot all of the above, but in
addition to what I mentioned elsewhere, I did spot kami in passing, and I
recall noticing pamphlets for politicalgraveyard.com, as well as a bumper
sticker (on a car, no less).  
  This was my first con.  Interesting experience.  I'm glad I went, and will
probably go to more cons in the future, but...  well, it was not an entirely
unalloyed positive experience.  Seemed like for every interesting, creative,
fun thing I saw, there were two or three annoying, boring, tasteless things
vying for attention.

#4 of 9 by blaise on Mon Jan 21 22:46:19 2002:

Re #3: Hey, that's a better average than Sturgeon's Law expects, so it sounds
like you're doing well by going to cons. ;->

#5 of 9 by tpryan on Mon Jan 21 23:07:49 2002:

        Care to expand more on what your found interesting?

#6 of 9 by anderyn on Tue Jan 22 03:10:04 2002:

I saw drew and tpryan, bruce saw polygon, but i didn't catch griz or
kami -- though i at least know both of them by sight! bruce and i
don't go to many cons, and i was kind of bummed about this one -- it
seemed to me that it didn't have as big a dealer's room nor as big an
art show, and some of the sf writers that were there weren't
well-advertised (gene wolfe was there! and i didn't know until he was
on a panel i went to!) and of course there's the perennial problem
that the panels i'd be interested in were either on friday night or
cross-programmed.

on the better hand, the programs i did make it to were interesting,
and i had fun at the heather alexander concert.

#7 of 9 by flem on Tue Jan 22 19:01:21 2002:

re #5:  Well, here's an example.  On Friday night, I went the the panel titled
"Sex tips for boys", 'cause I couldn't resist the title.  :)  To my
astonishment, one of my personal heroes, Eric Raymond, was on the panel, along
with his wife and two other ladies.  As the panel progressed, a pattern
established itself.  ESR would start talking about interesting sociological
research involving mating patterns in higher primates and how they applied
to human social situations, and just when he started to get really warmed up,
he would get interrupted by one of the other ladies (his wife spoke very
little) with an incredibly useful tip like "wash your hair", followed by a
lengthy recitation of horrible dates she'd been on with guys who failed to
do this.  All the women in the audience who had dragged their boyfriends there
(how insulting is that?) giggled and chimed in with their bad dating stories.
Eventually, after being interrupted ten or fifteen times, ESR would manage
to seize the floor again by main force and get briefly back on topic, until
the next round of time-wasting.  It was agonizing to watch.

#8 of 9 by tpryan on Wed Jan 23 23:04:25 2002:

        Also agonizing to watch was the "should have been 5 minutes" torg
ball skit before the GoH speaches.

#9 of 9 by flem on Thu Jan 24 18:02:33 2002:

Yeesh.  Glad I missed that.

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