Andrew T Trembley

It's a bit long.

It's really funny.

If you like dark snark. It's the deadpan delivery that makes it.

...as Costume-Con ramps up hard.

Unless I'm totally wrong on our calendar.

This weekend was rough, more so because we were still recovering a bit from Gallifrey. Saturday morning we had a CC26 committee meeting, and it went pretty well. That was a good thing.

That was a good thing because we had to drive straight up to San Francisco for SF coronation that night. SF coronation is a relatively early event, with doors opening at 5:00pm. It has to be, because even with the best of efforts it's long.

So a wet and windy drive up to SF got us to WholeFoods at California & Franklin where we picked up our "catering" for our table. Yep, grocery shopping before checking in to the hotel. The schedule was tight.

Fortunately, the hotel was only a block away. Unfortunately, the hotel was the SF Holiday Inn Golden Gate, and more unfortunately, the weather was driving idiots under the canopy, making it difficult to check in. Still, we got in and got our room with time to spare (about an hour to clean up and change).

Time was definitely tight, because the tickets for our table were in K's name, and we had to get the gatelist to the will-call desk before anybody else showed up (in the crappy weather). We did get there (along with a pair of gals from Seattle) in reasonable time. We had karisu_sama, didjiman, Princess Jennifer, Sarah Dreaming, Tommy & Michelle at our table, along with a pair of last-minute replacements for folks who couldn't show.

We got the table set, and the show started on schedule. The opening number was a bit incoherent; some sort of thing about getting in trouble, going to jail, getting broken out. I didn't really get it.

We walked early (with in-town organizations, instead of with the San Jose court). This was a good thing.

The acts were pretty good. Three candidates for Emperor. Steven's candidate number was better than his attempt last year, but a bit weird. John's candidate number was great. I heard a rumor it was choreographed by Cockatelia, and it looked it. Paul's candidate number was a bit odd, but not bad. Two candidates for Empress. I was apparently looking the wrong direction during one of them. Cher's was a good number, but she had this nude-look showgirl outfit that she should have either been wearing no fake boobs under or bigger fake boobs under. As it was, she looked like a boy.

Alexis Miranda did a big flashy anniversary number. Marcus Hernandez did a short, nice presentation for his 35th anniversary. Steven Rasher had the audience falling out of their chairs, doing "Sexy Back" and entering using a walker.

John and Cher were elected Emperor and Empress, and were crowned before midnight. There are rumblings of concern over John from some locals, but it's not my town, I don't know the details, I don't have to live there.

All in all, it was a great show, and unlike other years (where 6 hours felt like 12), it just breezed by. That may, though, have been because we walked early. didjiman got some great photos. I hope that he's going to post some more later.

Afterwards we ran out to Marlena's. A bunch of the Imperial old guard was there. We had a few drinks, walked (most of the way, caught a cab for the last bit) back to the hotel.

After much sleep and breakfast at Mel's, we drove back South. Sunday was an aggressively unproductive day. We hit Costco and TJ's, and that was about it.

I really hope that I'm right and San Jose Coronation is the only big all-weekend event we've got left before CC.

The new Peruvian Riot Police gear photo is spreading across the internet like wildfire.

It's kind of hot (in addition to likely being toasty).

Made it through the weekend.

Friday afternoon we headed up to San Francisco to the Cathedral Hill Hotel for the GSGRA Best Buck In The Bay sponsors reception. It was pretty quiet compared to previous years. I think the transit time from SF to LaHonda is really cutting into the entrants (and the crew) showing up for the social events.

(Yes, the old Hyatt Rickey's in Palo Alto was closer, but transit time wasn't much different)

The food and drink was good, and we got to see a few people. We followed it up with a run to the Sundance Saloon (at Space 550 in Bayview, mere blocks from jorhett's house, and K got some dancing in. Then it was time to head back to the hotel and get some sleep; Saturday was going to be a long day.

Saturday we got up, got some breakfast (the Jack Tar cafe at the hotel isn't impressive) and drove down to San Gregorio (yeah, I know it's La Honda, but the ranch is closer to San Gregorio than La Honda), where we met howierd. We were both planning to shoot as many events as possible, and he started with Mounted Breakaway (roping) and Chute Dogging (rough stock) before I arrived. We proceeded to shoot a lot, and stayed until the last event of the day (shortly before 7:00pm). It took quite a while to transfer pictures over to my laptop. Most of the ride home was spent copying pictures.

We got in a shower (the rodeo grounds are very dusty), some quick dinner at Mel's (much better than the hotel food) and headed over to the Buckin' Ball. Looked around at the shopping, chatted with a few people, watched the show stumble and finally (I think) lurch to a start, and then headed to bed.

Sunday we got up, got some breakfast (Mel's), packed up the car and got to San Gregorio at about the same time as Saturday. Did a bit of shopping in the vendor area before starting to shoot, and then repeated Saturday.

Between howeird and myself, we shot somewhere around 10,000 frames over the two days. howeird is a very good sports photographer, and has a real knack for keeping the action in frame. He's definitely got a much lower crap ratio than I do. Looking at some of the files, though, my results fared much better than I expected based on what I was seeing in the viewfinder.

Unfortunately, with 10,000 frames, there was a lot more fiddling around before I could show off pictures that evening. I didn't really have anything until after dinner was served (and dinner was good). If we do this again next year, I'm going to be asking around August for folks to join in. We need a few more photographers (so folks can take breaks and nobody has to spend the whole day shooting) and a processing team to retrieve chips and get them to disk and sorted as the day moves along. It might even be possible to have pictures to show Saturday night at the dance (which would have been cool).

Awards ran very efficiently, and we handed out buckles to the folks who won Goat Dressing.

Oh, on the goat dressing... this year's goats were a bit bigger and more ornery than in past years, and it was much more of a challenge than usual.

So y'all remember this?


( Well, I found some more... )

No, really.

Gay Pimp!

Check out the "media" tab and watch some trashy music videos.

Because K and I don't have enough to do already, on Saturday night we went to the San Francisco GLAAD Media Awards banquet.

After two years of different venues, the event returned to the Westin St. Francis. We came in early in the afternoon so we could drop off our Costume-Con donation for the silent auction. One info card an a fabulous art-print by didjiman, johno and karisu_sama were delivered and set up.

Since we had some time to kill, we walked around the Union Square area, picked up drinks at Cafe Fresco (at the Crowne Plaza), stopped at the Hannspree store to look at the weird TVs, and then went back to the room to clean up.

Note for the future. Showing up any less than 15 minutes late for the reception is pointless. Nobody is there except the bartenders and the silent auction volunteers.

The silent auction was a bit strange. There were far fewer physical items in the auction this year. There were a lot of certificates for services, certificates for dinners, certificates for hotel stays, certificates for flights... you get the idea. Minimum bids were set to 50% of retail value.

Decor in the auction lounge was... amusing. There was a definite "Cherry Blossom Festival" theme, with large origami cranes, shoji screens, and a few panels. There was a column of Japanese writing on one panel that was upside-down (no, I can't read Japanese, but I can still tell when it's right-side-up). Several info cards for large live-auction items were on light-box tables with inset Naruto pictures. Definitely a mixed bag.

The bar was as expected, all the Absolut you could drink. Fortunately, we didn't. lobolance showed up and we went over for a cocktail. Absolut Ruby Red makes a pretty good Cosmopolitan. Cocktails were spaced out with bottles of water in between.

Doors opened for dinner, and once again we were in the back of the house. Of course, so was Donna Sachet and a bunch of other folks. We were joined at our table by the auctioneer and his wife, and some folks (including some we know from San Jose) from Deloitte Consulting. Dinner was pretty impressive, starting with a vegetable (fava bean?) mousse, followed by stuffed chicken breast with artichokes and finishing up with a chocolate mousse.

The silent auction hadn't gone that well (our donation got no bids, and there wasn't really that much bidding going on), but the voice auction (for the big-ticket over-$5,000 items) was more successful; Doug (I never did get Doug's last name) got somewhere in the range of 80% of retail value for most items, and one went for only a few hundred dollars under its value.

Then there was the show.

Nobody stayed on-prompt. Well, nobody except Donna Sachet and Neil Giuliano stayed on-prompt. When Donna is the shining example of discipline on the microphone, it's not good. We could see the prompter from our table. When it started rolling from "Wind it up!" to "Wind it up now!" to "You don't have any time!" things got painful.

That's not to say that the show was awful. It just had awful moments. Most awful moments were presenters, not recipients.

Kim Coles was hysterical, and only went off-prompt with some short snarky asides. Sally Kirkland went off prompt to offer a rather long prayer for the event. Margie Adams stayed on prompt, and provided a powerful introduction for Phyllis Lyon (who, with her wife Del Martin, won the Pioneer award). Wilson Cruz went off-prompt with one of the only really relevant and meaningful tangents, about how GLAAD's work with Spanish-language media helped his relationship with his recently deceased grandmother. Too bad the show was already running long.

As for recipients? Phyllis Lyon was fantastic. The manager of the Emeryville Ikea (accepting for their award-winning advertisement) kept his acceptance short and to the point. Jacob Reitan, accepting for the MTV News series about The Equality Ride was excellent. Robert Gant had some really important things to say, and if other folks hadn't gone off-prompt and over time, he would have had more time to say them. Philip Krupp and Zev Braun, executive producers of A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story went long, and probably should have kept their mouths shut. Gloria Allred said more in two sentences than they did in several minutes.

So, yeah, not as good a show as in past years. They definitely need better talent-wranglers.

The post-party was up on the top floor again, and this year they had both lounges. One was set up for dancing, and the other had a chill DJ. Cocktail waiters carried around trays of cosmopolitans and lemon drops. The party was a bit slow to start, but soon the room was packed. I snagged our gift bags and hauled them down to the room, and then returned to the party.

We were smart. We left the party around midnight, instead of staying up until close and getting blitzed. Have to remember that option more often.

Sunday morning we got up, packed, did breakfast at the Lori's Diner down the street, and headed home via Alameda. With everybody worried about traffic because of the great freeway meltdown, it was clear sailing across the Bay Bridge.

All in all, a fun stay in San Francisco.

It's just fucking hysterical.

Oh. My. God.

ratcreature (whom I don't know) posted scans of a few pages of Wizard's How to Draw: Heroic Anatomy after somebody asked how female comic characters could end up with such wonky anatomy. It's kind of amusing, and yes, people who want to become comic artists read this kind of thing, so it has influence.

Then vito_excalibur (whom I'm sure I've met somewhere) posted a tweaked version completely redrawn with the genders reversed.

Damn, that's brilliant...