Shore Leave
Jul. 11th, 2005 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsSo exhausted I'm barely upright. The bottom line: 31 entries (down from last year, but a thoroughly respectable number), database passed with flying colors, tight show that ran ontime, extraordinarily successful halftime act (last year, people were hunting me out to yell at me for the comic's jokes. This year, we had celebrities joining them onstage and guests coming backstage to rave with delight), and a generally happy post-mortem.
Are there things I need to fix/add/do better next year? Yeah.
Did we kick ass this year? YEAH!
The long story below the cuts:
Listen to your paranoia. It has a point.
Got there on Friday, still feeling relaxed and in control, checked in, treated myself to a huge dinner at Outback. They've rebuilt the mall over there so that it's now one of those pseudo-villages. I don't like that kind of mall; it paves over too much land and it's unpleasant to window shop when it's raining buckets or steamingly hot.
On the plus side, there is now a Quiznos, a Noodles & Co, and a Paneria Bread Bakery over there instead of just an Outback and a Carrabbas. Which means that it is possible to get good, fast, cheap, healthy food - all of which is damned important with a con going on.
I got to talk to both of our celebrity judges, hand them the "how to judge" sheets, and answered questions. That was nice, to get it done on Friday before the con explodes. Note to self - continue arriving early on Friday.
When I packed, something at the back of my brain tickled at me to write down the phone number for the halftime act, The Chromatics. But naw, we'd been emailing regularly, things were fine. When I checked in, something at the back of my brain tickled at me to check the Sunday schedule. But no, things were fine, I'd been talking with Marilyn. Had I done those two little things, my life would have been a LOT less stressful on Saturday and Sunday morning! But no, it was big dinner and to bed. Hell would have to wait.
Welcome to my nightmare
Saturday started off fine - opened the signup table early and to my surprise, there were people coming by at 9:30 too. Eventually the rest of my crew came and we settled down to doing our jobs. Things were just peachy until about 1:00ish.
It's not that something went wrong then, it's that I wasn't getting enough feedback that things were going right. My workmanship judge was MIA and his badge hadn't been picked up. I was having trouble finding someone to cover photo (my fault, I didn't at the time have someone permanently on my staff for that.) The Chromatics hadn't arrived.
When things go wrong, I try to panic productively. We were sussing out a backup workmanship judge when Tom arrived; he had arrived late and gone directly to his panels before checking in. So that was okay. I finally got in contact with Jennifer, who'd done photo last year (and is now willing to be permanent photo-op person, yay!).
So there was nothing left to do but deal with the little stuff and sweat blood over the Chromatics.
At three and a half hours to showtime the Boogie Knights, bless them to the bottom of their boots, were working up the material for a second emergency concert while I checked my email for last-minute messages and FINALLY had the brains God gave a duck to turn on my own computer and dig up the cell phone number. Turns out that they were on their way, they had always meant to arrive at 6pm, and that they had told someone in tech that and the news hadn't reached me.
So that just left setup; wherein time management mistakes (for which I bear part responsibility) led to a truncated rehearsal for the special effects leading into the halftime act; I pissed off a fair number of people by opening the house before the rehearsal was done.
I confess - one of the big sticks up my ass is getting the show to run on time. The Masq. is a juggernaut; I don't care who it crushes to go off as scheduled.
Which is why, for the second time in a row, the show was about to start without the celebrity I most wanted to interact with...
Allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster... Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Dave the MC went out exactly on time by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shawan_7's watch (she's Backstage Manager). It was a tight show and a really funny one; literally every other costume was humor. I had a personal fondness for the presentation of Luke from Star Wars, Ep whateverthehell they're calling Jedi these days, who walked out, gestured at the judges, and announced, "I will win." The costumes that particularly got the judge's attention were:
- Starfleet Tango. Kirk's assorted women gang up on him, to the tune of "He had it coming! He had it coming!"
- Depp Charge. To the tune of "YMCA," Capt. Jack Sparrow is introduced to his new crew - all Depp characters from different movies.
- 6 Flags Couriscant (sp?). The Emporer of Star Wars turns into the dancing guy from 6 Flags and boogies offstage, followed by Darth, who had on a hawaiian shirt and shorts under the cape.
- Kosh and the Mimbarettes, which rather defies description.
- Autumn Leaves. A classic costume presentation of a stunning dress.
And most particularly, one which was deemed by a judge "So wrong on so many levels" - SpongeBorg Cube Pants.
In addition, we also had two presentations to Boogie Knights tunes, a fair number of Star Wars recreations, another parody of current commercials, and the return of Spork Man from Farpoint.
The audience had a great time and were terribly rowdy (lots of chanting, usually character names.) We didn't want everyone to get up and leave for the Chromatics, so they were introduced as "Entry Number 32 in the Halftime Category." I got yelled at for not leaving time for potty breaks (a fair cop; people were in that room for close to 4 hours) but even so, people said they liked that intro.
Sunday was quiet except for the fact that I'd forgotten to check the schedule and didn't realize that the masq. post-mortem wasn't ON it. Fortunately, there was a room already assigned, it just wasn't printed. I commandeered it early and listened to the Chromie concert while I printed out the workmanship forms.
All's well that ends well, and I'm already starting work for next year. I'm going to do cleanup and prep for the rest of the month, and next year we'll hopefully be even bigger and better.
Are there things I need to fix/add/do better next year? Yeah.
Did we kick ass this year? YEAH!
The long story below the cuts:
Listen to your paranoia. It has a point.
Got there on Friday, still feeling relaxed and in control, checked in, treated myself to a huge dinner at Outback. They've rebuilt the mall over there so that it's now one of those pseudo-villages. I don't like that kind of mall; it paves over too much land and it's unpleasant to window shop when it's raining buckets or steamingly hot.
On the plus side, there is now a Quiznos, a Noodles & Co, and a Paneria Bread Bakery over there instead of just an Outback and a Carrabbas. Which means that it is possible to get good, fast, cheap, healthy food - all of which is damned important with a con going on.
I got to talk to both of our celebrity judges, hand them the "how to judge" sheets, and answered questions. That was nice, to get it done on Friday before the con explodes. Note to self - continue arriving early on Friday.
When I packed, something at the back of my brain tickled at me to write down the phone number for the halftime act, The Chromatics. But naw, we'd been emailing regularly, things were fine. When I checked in, something at the back of my brain tickled at me to check the Sunday schedule. But no, things were fine, I'd been talking with Marilyn. Had I done those two little things, my life would have been a LOT less stressful on Saturday and Sunday morning! But no, it was big dinner and to bed. Hell would have to wait.
Welcome to my nightmare
Saturday started off fine - opened the signup table early and to my surprise, there were people coming by at 9:30 too. Eventually the rest of my crew came and we settled down to doing our jobs. Things were just peachy until about 1:00ish.
It's not that something went wrong then, it's that I wasn't getting enough feedback that things were going right. My workmanship judge was MIA and his badge hadn't been picked up. I was having trouble finding someone to cover photo (my fault, I didn't at the time have someone permanently on my staff for that.) The Chromatics hadn't arrived.
When things go wrong, I try to panic productively. We were sussing out a backup workmanship judge when Tom arrived; he had arrived late and gone directly to his panels before checking in. So that was okay. I finally got in contact with Jennifer, who'd done photo last year (and is now willing to be permanent photo-op person, yay!).
So there was nothing left to do but deal with the little stuff and sweat blood over the Chromatics.
At three and a half hours to showtime the Boogie Knights, bless them to the bottom of their boots, were working up the material for a second emergency concert while I checked my email for last-minute messages and FINALLY had the brains God gave a duck to turn on my own computer and dig up the cell phone number. Turns out that they were on their way, they had always meant to arrive at 6pm, and that they had told someone in tech that and the news hadn't reached me.
So that just left setup; wherein time management mistakes (for which I bear part responsibility) led to a truncated rehearsal for the special effects leading into the halftime act; I pissed off a fair number of people by opening the house before the rehearsal was done.
I confess - one of the big sticks up my ass is getting the show to run on time. The Masq. is a juggernaut; I don't care who it crushes to go off as scheduled.
Which is why, for the second time in a row, the show was about to start without the celebrity I most wanted to interact with...
Allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster... Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Dave the MC went out exactly on time by
shawan_7's watch (she's Backstage Manager). It was a tight show and a really funny one; literally every other costume was humor. I had a personal fondness for the presentation of Luke from Star Wars, Ep whateverthehell they're calling Jedi these days, who walked out, gestured at the judges, and announced, "I will win." The costumes that particularly got the judge's attention were:- Starfleet Tango. Kirk's assorted women gang up on him, to the tune of "He had it coming! He had it coming!"
- Depp Charge. To the tune of "YMCA," Capt. Jack Sparrow is introduced to his new crew - all Depp characters from different movies.
- 6 Flags Couriscant (sp?). The Emporer of Star Wars turns into the dancing guy from 6 Flags and boogies offstage, followed by Darth, who had on a hawaiian shirt and shorts under the cape.
- Kosh and the Mimbarettes, which rather defies description.
- Autumn Leaves. A classic costume presentation of a stunning dress.
And most particularly, one which was deemed by a judge "So wrong on so many levels" - SpongeBorg Cube Pants.
In addition, we also had two presentations to Boogie Knights tunes, a fair number of Star Wars recreations, another parody of current commercials, and the return of Spork Man from Farpoint.
The audience had a great time and were terribly rowdy (lots of chanting, usually character names.) We didn't want everyone to get up and leave for the Chromatics, so they were introduced as "Entry Number 32 in the Halftime Category." I got yelled at for not leaving time for potty breaks (a fair cop; people were in that room for close to 4 hours) but even so, people said they liked that intro.
Sunday was quiet except for the fact that I'd forgotten to check the schedule and didn't realize that the masq. post-mortem wasn't ON it. Fortunately, there was a room already assigned, it just wasn't printed. I commandeered it early and listened to the Chromie concert while I printed out the workmanship forms.
All's well that ends well, and I'm already starting work for next year. I'm going to do cleanup and prep for the rest of the month, and next year we'll hopefully be even bigger and better.
