Final Days at The Con

Since none of us had an event until late morning, we slept in. If memory serves, Charles had more Titan playing, Jon miniature playing, and Marv more seminars. For my part, I had time to blow until 12:30 or so when I was to start heading northeast to see a play and perhaps stop at the Easley Winery to pick up some local vino. The play I was to see was called "girls" and was part of the Indy Fringe Fest which was a 10-day event at a trio of theaters featuring avant garde/independent performance arts. Many of the performers were natives while the rest were brought in from around the country and the world. The playwright was a woman named Margaret Murray and it involved the lives of 3 young women struggling with questions such as "now that school is over, what do I do?", "how the hell did I get here?", and "where am I going?". So I grabbed a free shuttle bus and took it as far northeast as it would take me. I walked a few more blocks and found myself in a rather nice neighborhood with lots of old buildings including this church thingy or whatever it is:



The theater, The Aethenaeum, was built in 1894 and was absolutely fucking gorgeous! My pictures of the place suck for the most part, but I managed to salvage a couple. Here's the foyer:



I went to the restaurant downstairs to grab a bottle of water and found this scene:



The play was held in a fairly small room that maybe held 100 people and had the stage at the back of the center of the room. It was divided into 3 areas - one for each character. One area had a chair and lots of clocks. Another was adorned with a couple stools and lots of those hoolies you display cakes on the name of which I cannot recall right now. The final spot had a desk. At the back of the state were 3 easels each with a large drawing of a woman's face and some cue cards.

The performance began with Clockwoman running onto stage from behind us. She sat on the chair on kept on seriously pensive look on her face while some narration played about a relationship gone awry. After a short time, the other two women came out in succession. They each spouted lines in turn but occasionally they had dialogues with one another. ClockLady pondered her life and what to do with it. The CakeLady reminisced about a baker who influenced her life as well as about the distant relationship she has with her father. The woman in back toyed with a wedding dress for much of the time while complaining aloud about men and questioning love.

Although the play dragged a couple times, it never did so for very long. And I really liked it on the whole. The themes were universal even if I couldn't relate very well to the predicaments of women in their early to mid-20s. Plus the BakerLady's meandering thoughts about her relationship with her father (and food too!) hit home. After it was done, I headed back to one of the hotels because there was going to be some pre-costume contest belly dancing and I sure as shit wasn't going to miss that!

The dancers were a troup from Bloomington, Indiana called Different Drummer Belly Dancers. They mixed traditional belly dancing with all kinds of stuff like gypsy dancing and dressed all funky. Unfortunately, my pics didn't turn out too well but here's one that is OK:



However, I do have a video of the green hottie! Their performance was really cool. One woman did her solo bit to the Wonder Woman theme while most of the rest of the music was unknown to me. Anyone know what the green chickie is dancing to in the video?

The costume contest started around 4. The MC for the evening was Mon Motha from The Empire Strikes Back. There were some killer fucking costumes!

This woman is dressed, I believe, as a character from a video game.



Here we have 2 girls, aged 10 and 14, respectively, who did a killer routine. The had the black Sith robes with the red witch's cape w/hood plus Sith Lord face paint. Their routine was Sith Lord of the Dance. Star Wars + witches + Riverdance = AWESOME! The crowd ate it up! Just hilarious!



Here's Death from the Edgar Allen Poe story, Masque of the Red Death. It had to be over 7' tall! The eyes glowed an eerie red!



Here's the wizard Randolph promoting his upcoming film, The Dork of the Rings.



OK, this guy's girlfriend made him this costume so she'd have someone to go to a Ren Faire with in costume. Sweet!



I wanna say this harlequin chick is somehow Batman related but I can't recall. Mmmm...camel toe...



No comment needed.



I believe this hottie's costume was homemade.



I don't remember what this one was all about but I just had to have a picture.



Here's the evil Alice in Wonderland duo. Mmmm...Alice...:



Now, I've shown the crowd winner already but I'll post it again. This costume was entirely homemade and took 5 years. The wings are made of some 3000 feathers and they move! Add to this a hottie elf chick and you've got a real crowd pleaser.



Afterwards, I met up with my friends and we eventually went to Andrew & Glen's hotel room where we drank the mead and beer (New Glarus IPA) that I'd brought. After a while, Don came in and joined us. He had been GMing Call of Cthulhu sessions for much of the weekend and had earned a break. He related some funny tales of one campaing in which the players were all politicos: Bush, Cheney, Rice, Goss, Hastert, et al. During one game, Rice meets Goss and turns on Al Jazeera as the Syrian president had been assassinated and Damascus was falling into turmoil. After a few minutes, Goss says, "We don't need to watch this" and changes the channel to Charles in Charge! hehe Don had handed out copies of the 25th Amendment, which deals with Presidental succession, so, when the shooting started, they'd know who was leading the United States. In one session, everyone died in the bunker underneath the White House.

Ooh! I almost forgot! At the costume contest while the judges were voting, a local boy, Luke Ski sang for us. He was onstage with a woman dressed as Princess Leia and they did this Grease parody which covered all of Star Wars. For the encore, he did a rap song which had the phrase "cold LARPing" which I found to be hilarious. Also, when they handed out the awards, the MC was helped out by a guy who had a 2nd pair of arms attached ala Zaphod Beeblebrox. When he hugged some of the female winners, one of his spare arms would goose the contestant.

Anyway, we spent the late hours drinking in the hotel room and shooting the shit.

Sunday was mellow. Marv attended a couple seminars and I made some last minute purchases before watching some more anime. I watched a fair amount of anime throughout the 4 days (though not nearly as much as Charles). Honestly, I don't know squat about the genre and thought this would be a good time to check it out. I remember seeing a couple episode of Bastard! as well as a few of Bleach. Lots of guys with badass swords hackin'n'slashin' with helpless damsels. I enjoyed what I watched, for the most part, and plan to check out more at my local video store. I also bought a buncha stuff such as a Gandalf hat, a scroll (anyone do calligraphy?), a pin that says "Kiss me, I'm Eldritch", a book to host a murder mystery LARP, a funky mask, some miniatures for Pete's Oriental Adventures campaign, some Order of the Stick books as gifts, and more. For The Dulcinea I got a plush Killer Rabbit from Monty Python's Holy Grail, a Cthulhu coloring book, a graphic novel hoolie of some of Lovecraft's stories, and much bric-a-brac.

We started down I65 Sunday afternoon having had a fantastic time and we all plan to return next year. But we're gonna pre-register!