Minicon part 2

[naomikritzer]

The Choose Your Own Adventure Panel was a lot of fun. Rachel and I had chatted about CYOA books when we were on our way back from WisCon last year, and I think I told her about the one my Rabbi wrote, and I'm pretty sure that's how I wound up moderating. Also on the panel: Sarah Monette, Patrick Rothfuss, Joseph Scrimshaw, and Thorin Tatge. Thorin had written a choose-your-own-adventure SONG, which he performed at the end; it was hilarious. Joseph Scrimshaw is well known in the Twin Cities theater community -- he and his brother were responsible for Macbeth's Awesome Scottish Castle Party, which I saw at last year's Fringe Festival. (I think the best description I saw of that show was, "it was disgusting! and repugnant! and yet I laughed so hard I almost wet my pants.") Anyway, he was on the panel because he's also got an ongoing show called Adventures In Mating that's a choose-your-own-adventure play. Each time the couple reaches an impasse, the waiter dings a bell and has the audience choose what to have the couple do. He noted that somewhere in the script was a scene that they have never once done because the audience never makes the necessary series of choices, and the scene is so atrophied at this point that if by some freak chance the audience went for it, they'd have to admit they couldn't remember the lines and choose the other scene.

After the panel, I had a theoretical signing, but no one came. At some point a couple of college kids passed by and wanted to know what I was doing, and then had me sign a robot, and a ukulele. And then we chatted about ukuleles (Kiera wants one). Ukuleles are tougher than they look; this guy's first ukulele got into a fight with his bike and broke the bike. He had to replace it after it broke a second bike (yeah, I was kind of wondering if maybe this guy should switch to rollerblades or, you know, walking) and was damaged in the process. The one I signed was a $30 uke and sounded pretty good, although it really did look like a toy.

Harry LeBlanc wandered by and we wound up rounding up a couple more people and going off to Khan's for an early dinner.

After dinner, I was on the Minneapolis Magic / St. Paul Magic panel, moderated by Lyda. I've tried to do panels along these lines in the past and they did not work at all because I didn't have the right people on the panel with me. This time, I was on the panel with Lyda, Betsy Lundsten, Michael Merriam, and CJ Mills, and those folks, plus the audience, were the right people. What made this panel really fun was that everyone was willing to play the game (what IF magic were real? how many weird things about the Twin Cities would make perfect sense with a magical explanation? because the Queen of Air and Darkness totally lives in the Witch Hat Tower just like Emma Bull said) while also not taking it too seriously.

At one point Lyda brought up the Mayday Parade and I started talking about how incredibly magical that event is, and it turned out that one of the executive organizing folks from the Heart of the Beast Theatre was at the panel and was really pleased to hear how excited people got (seriously, as soon as the words "Mayday Parade" were mentioned, everyone in the audience who'd been to it straightened up and got these excited looks). She told us a story about how one year, there was a terrible headwind as the paddlers were rowing the sun across the lake during the pageant, and the phrase they repeated like a mantra to get themselves across was, I smell corndogs. Which then got us talking about the State Fair. Apparently mrissa has a story set at the Minnesota State Fair that involves the butter heads eating people. Alas, I don't know where it was published.

My final event of the day was a reading. Alas, I was up against Jane Yolen, but C.J. Mills and pegkerr came anyway, bless them. I read them the beginning of Castaways, including the aforementioned explicit potty scene.

After which I went off to the LJ party and completely forgot that ericcoleman's concert was starting in a half hour; I looked at my watch later (it seemed like about fifteen minutes later; naturally, at that point it was 11:30) and said, "shit."

The LJ party was fun, though; I chatted with cakmpls and carbonel about burial customs, moderation styles in online communities, and the insane shit technical writers have flame wars over. (This is a whole different post, but one fascinating thing about online communities is that nearly all of them have flame wars, and in nearly every case the flame wars follow some of the same rhetorical patterns -- but over wildly variant topics. On TECHWR-L, which I subscribed to for a while back in the mid-1990s, there was once a flame war over the use of the serial comma. There are some serious word geeks on the mommy board where I post now, but I am pretty sure no one would be able to get it up for or against the serial comma. Carseats, now, that's good material for a flame.)

Comments

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed being on the Minneapolis / St. Paul magic panel with you and everyone else. It was one of the highlights of the Con for me.

Another butterhead

[romsfuulynn.livejournal.com]

Connie Brockway's book Hot Dish http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Dish-Connie-Brockway/dp/045121983X also has a butterhead in it.

[jiawen]

Did Nicollet Island and the Elf House (in the base of the tree on Lake Harriet or whichever it is) get brought up in Minneapolis Magic/St. Paul Magic? I wish I could've gone to that, but I had something else opposite.

[naomikritzer]

The elf house did. I thought about Nic Island at some point but never had the chance to bring it up.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Butterhead" was in Speculon webzine in '01, then reprinted in the short-lived Twin Cities Magazine of SF and Fantasy in '02. I should probably put it up on my website, since I'm not all that keen on putting the work into trying to sell it a third time.

Also, hi, good to see you again.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I missed way too many panels thanks to being in the dealer's room and Art Show most of the time. Sigh. It's just not worth it.