Mission to Marscon by Michael Lee

I'm putting this in as a view instead of a Party entry because this is my personal con report; this is my personal experience, and not any sort of official MISFITS thing. I imagine that an official MISFITS party report will show up at some point, but that's not what I'm going for here. And, as always, a view isn't an official statement of MISFITS, and that is true here as well. I encourage other people to send in convention reports they go to as well -- not just for our party descriptions, but so we can get some views of the conventions as well. I hope to have pictures as well at some point -- if anyone has them, let me know!

I am somewhat torn about having convention reports on this site -- especially my own. MISFITS does, after all, sponsor our own convention. But I think one of the things to get across on the site is that each convention is a bit different, and there are lots of places for you to go if you want to meet people that are fans of science fiction, and if you find that one convention isn't to your taste -- another one quite likely will be. This is especially true if you are used to the Minicon of old, but aren't sure where you belong today, or have just discovered science fiction fandom. As such, I encourage other convention reports as well. Send them to views@misfit.org.

I drove down to Marscon on Friday night after stopping at home. Normally, this wouldn't be worth mentioning -- just shoot down Highway 100 to the Rad South, but there is only one lane of the highway right now. So, I took backroads down to the hotel to park. And, since I haven't been in my house for that long, they were roads I hadn't taken before. Amazingly, I didn't find myself stuck anywhere or forced to backtrack, so I made it there without having to sit in the parking lot that was Highway 100 South.

After picking up my convention materials, I stopped by the MISFITS room to help set things up. I hadn't seen the actual Chernobyl in 2011 T-Shirts and display yet -- a definite classic.

Didn't find anything that really grabbed me in the dealers room -- though I wasn't really looking for anything. The borg-tribble was amusing. It also provided a chance to say hello to Mark Allan Shepard, who I've seen the last couple of years at Gallifrey in LA. I enjoyed wandering through the art show and science room -- I definitely need to pick up some art for my place one of these days.

Spent a while paging through the program -- the Marscon t-shirts turned out really well. Open ceremonies ran a little long (as they often do) -- but the room was full.

I followed my usual programming track -- Buffy, Doctor Who, and Babylon 5. Normally I'd also hit the Star Wars panel, but they scheduled it against the party. The Buffy panel was good, but I think the midnight panel meant many of us were a little tired. But I love a good conversation about the series. I hope that many of the people there are also at the various Buffy panels that are planned for CONvergence.

I attended the Klingon presentation by the IKV RakeHell... there's something disturbing about Klingons doing bad puns and Monty Python skits. But there were moments when it was very funny. Klingons do seem to have a lot of fun at conventions.

I sat on the Doctor Who panel -- it was well attended, but I think we need to find a little bit more of a topic focus. Though we managed to get our theory that the Doctor was replaced by a Dalek duplicate in the middle of Resurrection of the Daleks and so we never see the real Doctor again for the rest of the series.

The Babylon 5 panel was interesting, now that the series is complete there's more an analysis of the series. It was interesting to compare with the Who panel -- they covered a lot more about the nature of the series as fiction -- where we went more into issues of recolorizing episodes, the ways for the series to be successful on the air.

After the B5 panel I quick drove home to get some CDs for the MISFITS party -- what would The Hunt For Red Octoberfest be without Boney M's Rasputin? MISFITS helped out the belly dancers when their audio equipment in main stage went missing -- but I don't think we minded much taking a break from the party so they could do their show, I know I didn't. Kathy Pepmiller's setup was great, though I think if you are going to be cooking food in a room with people dancing, you also need to get the air circulating as well. I danced and chatted away with people until 3:00 AM.

I also had a chance to swing by many of the other parties -- The Berh'ak had a great prop of part of their ship, and their game to guess which Trek character you were (identified by a piece of paper on your back) was good fun. I had an easy one -- Wesley Crusher. Several of the Klingon groups had well made props and designs to look at.

I think things might have been a bit too spread out -- the hotel felt a lot emptier than I was used to. It was friendly though, and people were having fun.

After being up so late on Saturday I slept in and decided that there was nothing on the programming that I wanted to drive back down to the hotel to go to -- so I slept most of the day, completely ruining my sleep schedule for the week. This meant I missed closing ceremonies, and there was a panel about when science fiction become fantasy that looked interesting and I would have gone to if I was in the hotel, but I was tired and sleepy.

I'll definitely head back to Marscon next year. Free Mars!

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Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Michael Lee stepped into the MISFITS Website and vanished .... He woke to find himself trapped on the Internet, facing pages that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change the MISFITS Website for the better. His only guide on this journey is Professor Maxwell Misfittle, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Mike can see and hear. And so Mr. Lee finds himself leaping from site to site, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home. Michael has previously written a Peter Jones Obituary.

Klingons do seem to have a lot of fun at conventions.