Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 25 the Devil in the Dark
As a kid the Horta scared the crap out of me. It was way worse than Jaws, Freddy, Jason, or any other horror film I have seen ever since (except maybe Punpkinhead. Also Pennywise from it, but that is a clown. Jaws is a close second and the image I got from one of the many Jaws t shirts in our horror collection). An invulnerable rock monster that looks like a moving pile of guts and dissolves men alive in acid? Good thing I’m not Kirk as I would have evacuated every human on the planet and cut it in half with the Enterprise phasers. Gah. Odds are it was worse because it involved characters I knew and loved but still.
When you think about it was saving the Horta (was that the single creatures name or the race?) the right thing to do? I mean how do they keep all those baby Hortas from attacking humans? What if one of them turns out to be the Horta equivalent of Ted Bundy and just opts to kill people? How do you track him down? Can you pick out which Horta did what out of a lineup? Let us not disregard the commercial value of novelty Horta eggs (or silicon nodules). I could totally see these selling at Ikea as a table centerpiece. I’m just saying.
The Infamous Dave Inman.
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 26 Errand of Mercy
This is an episode I kind of like but kind of don’t really care a lot about. All it resulted in was a peace treaty and the set up for the Trouble With Tribbles. The Organians as super powerful energy beings honestly got kind of boring once you learn who they really are. The only real fun was watching Kirk and Kor verbally spar and treat the peace loving Organians with absolute contempt for their unwillingness to kill people. Also, what is the deal with the letter K? Kirk, Kor, Kang, Khan. Is that the recommended letter for future Star Trek Alpha males in the Roddenberry universe?
I supposed one cool thing was the idea of so powerful a being shown as so innocuous. Usually when we think powerful we see something like the guy on this Attack on Titan t shirt but really the powerful people in the universe are usually the ones you least expect. In comic books it’s always the brainy villains who are the most dangerous. You can avoid Killer Krok but Joker is not to be messed with. It’s not always about obvious brawn.
The Infamous Dave Inman
The Pros at Cons A Review of Convolution 2014: Halfway Home Part 7
Day 2 Continued: Star Trek or Star Wars, LARP, and making new friends.
On my way back down in the elevator, there was another convention-goer and a layman on the lift with me. The non-Con attendee asked us, “Are you guys with the Star Wars convention or the Star Trek Convention?” And we were like, “No, it’s all one big Science Fiction Convention. We’re with both.” (Image courtesy of the Star Wars t-shirt category) After that, I had every intention of going to panels, but they were hard to find and I kept getting distracted. Plus, all of the panels were scheduled in blocks from 10-12, 12-2 and 2-4, and it was already around 3pm by the time I left the hospitality suite. There may have been a fourth block of panels from 4-6 on Saturday only, but the schedule guide and key to where to find things was small, poorly designed and hard to understand unless you had used it before. Then there was the mighty task of choosing between similar panels that were held on opposite ends of the hotel at the same time, which is something I always detest about the whole convention-going experience. So I went in search of LARP groups instead in order to pass the time until Day 2 was concluded.
I did not find the Firefly LARP group (that day) and it might not have mattered if I had since their game for the night was for 21 people and 25 had pre-registered, not including the people actually working the Con or helping to run the game itself. But I did stumble across the table of the Victorian World of Darkness game, “Gaslight”. They invited me to sit and have a cup of fresh brewed tea from a nice China tea set and I ended up spending the next 2-1/2 hours talking with them about writing, running game vs. playing NPCs vs. being a PC and having less control and less responsibility. Then I sat down with Glenn Barett, the only founding member of the group still on and running things after several incarnations, and we talked OOC about RL stuff, like family and feeling like a creeper at Cons because you’re getting older while fans are getting younger, and about feminism and the school system and California’s crisis with prisons and how that relates to youth, feminism and what we as individuals can do about it. That’s all not as deep or hysterical or even as liberal-hippie-fight-the-power as it sounds, either. It was just a gentle yet sweeping reminder that I get to be myself at these things. I come to Conventions to have fun, to spend money and to meet new people. Vendors come for the same reasons, but also to make money, to make inroads towards a better future and connections within their industries. Convolution was convoluted, poorly advertised and expensive, but it was also the single best experience I’ve had at a Convention so far yet, and it was for no other reason than that these people weren’t just other fans at the same place as me, these were my people. I went for work reasons and came out with new personal friends. That is not to say that I didn’t learn anything. More on that in my next post.
The Pros at Cons A Review of Convolution 2014: Halfway Home Part 6
Day 2 Continued: Firefly, Pew-Pew Guns, Game of Thrones, and George Lucas.
My final stop before heading out of the vendor’s room was right of the exit to the hall, where two ladies were selling various sci-fi themed toys and some official Convention swag at an otherwise unadorned table. (I’ve looked all over my notes for their info, but I never got it, which sucks.) They were amazing. They explained the whole history of Convolution to me, that it used to be just a meet-up for hard sci-fi writers in the bay area, and then it opened a little to include fantasy and other genre fiction, then it was just about writing all fiction and over the past couple of years they’ve wanted to open it up more to a wider audience and make it about all things pop culture, sci-fi, speculative fiction, science and engineering, fandom and Cosplay. They told me about a Firefly LARP and a hospitality room with free food upstairs for Con goers, and one of them played me an original Serenity Filk (that’s fan-folk, as in music that would be played in-universe of a given series) on her acoustic guitar. She lives in Colorado or Seattle or something so I not only regret not writing down all her info, but that I’ll probably never cross paths with her again. Oh, and they sold me weapons. Well, I mean I purchased a small pew-pew gun that lights up and makes fun sounds for my four year old son for $6 to be donated to the charity (Chabot Space & Science Center, of that year. They also had bigger pew-pew guns for $10 each, but I thought the smaller one was better for my purposes. For the first time that day I felt like I looked like I belonged there in my red leather jacket and my tiny plastic firearm tucked into my front pocket as conspicuously as I dared.
Finally, around 2pm I left the vendors room like a shot to find the hospitality suite and nosh some free cutlets. It was far better than anything I expected and I saw a lot of great cosplayers around the hotel too, including a fully detailed Zoe from Firefly that I complimented in passing. The suite was exactly that: just a room in the hotel with the door standing open and a full buffet table taking up most of it. I ate some of everything and there were maybe 2-3 other people in the room with me also quietly eating and resting their feet. Then I noticed there was a chocolate sheet cake on the table with the only Con employee there behind it, and I asked if I could have some. I thought it might be just for VIP’s or volunteers or something, but no, it was donated for everyone and I was told to please help myself, so I ate more of that than anything else because I like cake and it was there. “The cake was not a lie.” 
I was just about to leave when a new wave of people began to file into the room and I somehow got sucked into several conversations, which then morphed into me giving loud overtures about things like the necessity of Netflix streaming, Game of Thrones spoilers and the documentary film, “The People vs. George Lucas”. (image courtesy of the Game of Thrones t shirt category)
The Pros at Cons A Review of Convolution 2014: Halfway Home Part 5
Day 2 continued. Arachnid Tribbles, More Corsets, and Lasers.
Turning around I talked with a very striking and tall young lady with a shaved head whom I’d seen wondering the floor in the convention earlier. She sat at a booth of splendid little hand-made black fuzzy things that looked like arachnid tribbles as designed by Jim Henson’s creature shop (I mean that in the best possible way). The shop is called Monster Pet Emporium and the young lady was named Alice, I think (I didn’t write it down because I’m not a very good journalist). You can find them on Etsy or Facebook and the monsters are made by someone with the handle of Grue, which I also dig. (The facehugger image I pulled from Dave’s horror movie t shirt collection and seem appropriate especially given the next paragraph)
I was feeling a bit fatigued by then and went to a dim corner where the dudes who run Corset.net, Ben and Dan, were hanging out and talking about other upcoming conventions they would be attending either as fans or as vendors. They were going directly to Gilroy after the vendor room closed that day to party with the Northern California Renaissance Faire people. Then in February in San Jose they were talking up Panthea Con, an alternative and pagan spiritual con. They also had some really beautiful stuff at their booth, from Elizabethan era recreations to very high-fashion modern boned corsets, but unfortunately I had already found the only corset for me and I was anxious to leave the vendor’s room at that point.
Next to them was a small booth with a young man sitting and he seemed a bit ignored with all the larger booths surrounding him so far from the entrances to the hall. So I stopped to talk to him. His name is Barry Figgins and he is a laser-smith at his own company, called Lyris, which sounds every bit as awesome as it in reality is. He had hand made (well, laser cut from fitted wood pieces a Settlers of Catan game board to look like it was actually made in medieval times. I don’t play that game, but I know a ton of people who would love that kind of thing. What really spoke to me was that he had a bunch of cool functional art pieces that he’d made, like a wood box held together with tiny magnets to hold dice or a 3-d map of San Francisco. Plus, he was laid back and cool in that way that makes nerds think, “This is the kind of guy I want to show up at my weekly game”, regardless of what type of game it is you’re running. He handed me a wood carved, laser inscribed business card and told me he has more free time than sense, so it’s actually a lot more cost effective than it seems.
The Pros at Cons A Review of Convolution 2014: Halfway Home Part 4
Day 2 continued. Corsets, pirates, and writers.
I found a table full of books with two gentlemen sitting in attendance and a hand-drawn sign above them that read, “Silicon Valley Writers Community”. I primarily spoke with Jason Stewart, who gave me his business card and told me that my writing would be welcome to peer review for their group, which also served as a resource for finding agents, editors, publishers and just a connected friendly group of resources and support. I need to get in touch with them ASAP.
There was a tap on my shoulder while I tried to process the idea of joining a writer’s group and a small woman was asking me if I was the person interested in the Hugging Corset. Indeed I was, so I followed her back to her booth. Her name is Andrea Edelman, and she was the leather worker responsible for the piece. She helped me try it on and we talked about it for about ten minutes, discussing how unique it is and how it’s in between an under or over-bust corset. Then we ran back over to the Blue Moon Designs booth to borrow their full-length mirror, where (blonde) Kat and Rob were amazed by the corset and how it looked like it had been made for me, which I and Andrea agreed wholehearted. “I haven’t felt this good about a single item of clothing since the first time I tried on my wedding dress,” I told my reflection mournfully.
“Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that,” Andrea said. I asked her if I could come back tomorrow in my pirate costume and wear the corset over that during the day and advertise for her (in a not terribly dissimilar way to how I had originally proposed to work for Dave at Nerdkungfu when I’d met him at Big WOW San Jose a few months before). She said she’d consider it, and let me know that she would work with me to make sure I could have a workable payment plan if I decided I really wanted to buy it outright. I thanked her and sadly took off the corset and went back around the vendor’s room, having only covered less than half of it at that point. (the pirate image is not part of my costume. Just one of the cool pirate funny t shirts I found on Dave’s site).
The Pros at Cons A Review of Convolution 2014: Halfway Home Part 3
Day 2 continued: Steampunk, Games, Jewelry, and The One.
Next up was one of the more Steampunk themed booths, appropriately titled Steamy Tech, it was wood-carved original gear themed, interlocking, moving art and jewelry. A married couple, Greg and Lora Price had created the company a few years ago and recently added a professional jeweler to add some real pizzazz to the smaller projects. His name is Jay Shoemaker and maybe because he reminded me of my grandfather (another Jay, who was a gregarious and charming blue-eyed woodworker who passed a bit over a year ago), I ended up spending much of the convention just hanging out with him. This booth more than the others made me realize two things about the atmosphere of Convolution: 1) Bring money, because the quality of the goods being sold is worth every shiny penny and if you didn’t come prepared, you’ll leave brokenhearted, and 2) You get out of it what you put into it. If you come in with a good attitude, they will like you and accept you, if you come into it expecting something more like a typical “ComiCon” experience, you’ll be disappointed and ignored by much of the staff, unless you say “Shut up and take my money,” which they will happily accept before forgetting you (in my opinion, rightfully so).
Featherweight Finery was the next booth, a splendid display of artisan vibrant handcrafted jewelry by Sue Toorans, who was also there in the booth and very kind to chat with. She makes aluminum ring chain mail creations that are all unique and fabulous, look sort of fantastical and badass, but classy enough to match with evening wear or light enough to wear all day. (I couldn’t find any good jewelry on Dave’s site but figured this power ring image from the Green Lantern t shirts was close enough).
I wondered around a fair bit, saying hi, explaining about the blog and about what I do, trying to see what the vendors thought of the Con so far (they liked it, many were repeat vendors). Games of Berkeley were there in all their dice and bag ’n’ board glory. Having recently visited their store in person, I didn’t loiter there too long.
Then everything changed: I found her: “The One” who was made just for me. At one of the island booths, near the center of the room, on a table marked “Lucrezia’s Delight” were a stack of fine under-bust boned corsets. On top of the stack, middle of the table surrounded by tiny Gothic-Lolita hats and some other do-dads was a dark green and blue paneled hand-dyed leather corset with punk spikes riveted right into it on the outside, in 4 rows each, front and back. On the tag it said “Hugging Corset, $400”. I was dismayed, as I don’t make a lot of money and I have a lot of responsibilities so there’s just no way I could ever outright buy this beautiful thing that was my perfect size and color and cut and oh my goddess, I’m getting sweaty just thinking about it. I was literally a day late, a dollar short (okay, like 350 dollars short) and underdressed for the occasion. “I should have worn my pirate outfit,” I said out loud for the 8th time that day. The young man working the booth asked me if I liked it and I said something about how it’s the single most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, so he told me that the woman who made it would be back in a few minutes. He pointed to his name badge (which was from the Steamy Tech booth) that lit up and said only “Loyal Minion”. I told him I wanted to try it on and talk to the person responsible. (Although, I had no idea what I’d say. Like, “Hey, I don’t make any money, but I need this in my life. Can I just take it home with me and write nice things about you forever and ever amen?”
He agreed so off I wondered to the next several tables and booths.
(continued next post)
The Pros at Cons A Review of Convolution 2014: Halfway Home Part 2
Day Two: “Come play with us!”
Because we had to kind of guess when the Con opened on Saturday, Dave and I arrived there around noon, when festivities and panels were already well underway. After negotiating with Christine Doyle, the woman in charge of security and front end badge sales, she allowed me to enter with a discount on behalf of my journalistic status; I was to help them by blogging about all the great things I witnessed, and in turn they would put up links on their site to advertise for us as well. I went in feeling optimistic, yet embarrassingly under-dressed. I was wearing jeans, comfortable shoes, my “Paper Street Soap Co.” T-shirt and my red leather “Starlord” jacket, but most of the people I saw were in costume as a character or uniform from one of their favorite sci-fi franchises. As much as I adore Fight Club, it’s not quite sci-fi, and it’s not much of a cosplay to just wear what I thought would look inconspicuous on the bus. Even the people working behind the badge booth were wearing colorful and unique nerd tees and seemed to be having the time of their lives working the Con. I watched a team of 5 fully decked out 501st members march by, lead by a Darth Vader who was fully in character and bigger than life. 
Then I saw two steampunk gear-heads and a Klingon warrior looking at the vendor’s wares (the Steampunk butterfly image I pulled off Dave’s novelty t shirt collection). The whole section of the hotel was refitted with various recycled goods and dressed to look like a late 60’s set for a space station or like the underground vaults of the “Fallout” video game series. I was excited, if a little overwhelmed.
The first person I met inside was a lovely young woman named Chantelle Aimee who was selling some Doctor Who themed T-shirts she had designed herself, as well as some words of advice on writing and some books. She had written and published a few books independently, including books on how to write, structure, edit, pitch and advertise independent books and just some regular fiction prose, but she was also helping a friend sell the books he’d written. Chantelle told me about her books on writing and she had brought them with her in the form of $15 thumb drives that were 3 books of information each (the set of two thumb drives or 6 books was just $25, but I was more interested in one, so I bought that straight off) because she didn’t want to have to pay for printing and shipping, and didn’t want to have to charge the people she was trying to help more for hard copies.
The booth next to hers was full of colorful silks and other rich fabrics and was tended by three colorfully dressed and dapper individuals named Katherine, Rob and Katherine (a blonde, a brunette and a redhead, my favorite!). The place they were working for was called “Blue Moon Designs”. Katherine (the blonde) rushed over to me and enthusiastically asked, “Come play with us!” and right after that, seeing my second-guessing, Rob (the only man in the booth and the brunette) very gently said, “Would you like to come play dress up with us today? It’s fun and you don’t have to buy anything. You look like you’d really fit in here.” I said okay. They tried some things on me, a dark gray vest with flask-holder layered pockets, a blue-green utility belt. It wasn’t quite right. Then they looked at what I had come in wearing and at my face, my coloring, the bright red of my hair and how I had matched my jacket to it. Then they put a rusty red vest with ruffles over the shoulders and D-ring details on the bottom that you could hook keys or a fob watch to, and a matching belt in a different velvety fabric. They topped the look off with a smoke colored silk scarf that had been burned and dyed on the ends by hand to make it look really textured, antiqued, and in close detail, like it was actually glowing embers on the tattered ends. I was a pirate. I promised them I would return the following day in my proper pirate regalia, and we would exchange ideas then. Rob was right. It was fun and I didn’t have to buy anything. And I did fit right in there.
(continued next post)
The Pros at Cons A Review of Convolution 2014: Halfway Home Part 1
By Jae Gibbs
September 25-28, at the SFO Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, CA
Day One: “What the Heck is Convolution?”
I had heard about Convolution when I attended Kubla-Con, a gaming convention which was also held at the Burlingame Hyatt a few months ago. The thing is when I heard about it, I didn’t hear much. What is Convolution? I was told it was just a general pop-culture convention, then a sci-fi and fantasy specific convention, then that it was about writers and finally that it was supposed to be focusing on sci-fi and the ways that fans of science fiction communicate and interact with one another. That still seemed very nonspecific to me, but I liked the concept and the location and I had heard something about a lot of the proceeds from the Con going to local charities, so why not, right?
As time went on I periodically would check the site to see if any more specific updates were added, but I was disappointed by the lack of user-friendly data on the site. I had a nearly impossible time finding usable links to the named guests’ websites, the accurate schedule for each of the days, or even a clear mission statement for the theme and reason for holding the convention this year (or how it related to charity, or how long this specific Con had been held at said location… ) so it was all rather frustrating, especially for Dave, who didn’t know if it was worth paying for a badge to go for just me or if he should (and would be able to) attend himself, or if we should try setting up a booth there this or next year. “I have no patience for bad marketing or poor web design,” he told me, and I was sad to agree. Things looked grim.
Due to all this plus unforeseen schedule conflicts, neither David nor myself were able to attend day one of Convolution, and that’s a shame. A friend of mine, author Fred Wiehe, was giving a lecture that day on something he knows a great deal about: Witches, Vampires and the Walking Dead 
(The Walking Dead image of The Walking Dead category.)
You can check out His book, “Alreric: Monster Hunter” on Amazon. This is how and when I realized that’s what this convention was all about: authors and artists and craftspeople taking their wares straight to the people and teaching them how to do these things themselves for fun and profit. It’s not just about going to Con to show off and argue and prove your fandom is better or your geek cred more true, it’s about community and education. That’s a worthy cause which feels very close to my heart.
15 Fictional Characters I wish were real life friends of mine: 1 of 15
I don’t want to disparage any of my actual friends but there are days when I wish they did more exciting things then release engineering or biological science. My friends are great people and I love to hang with them, but every once in a while you can’t help but wish you had a cadre of really, really cool fun friends who would make even more people want to hang out with you.
Thus we come to this list of fictional characters I wish were real and would hang out with me on a Friday night at the local coffee hole. These aren’t necessarily the coolest characters ever but just people I think would be great to have as friends. When you think about it does hanging out with Darth Vader or the Predator really sound like fun? Not really but these are all other characters that I think would be a blast to chill with who may or may not have some kind of super power or technology. So here we go:
15. Optimus Prime
Everyone needs a friend who owns a truck, and what could be better than that? How about a friend who IS a truck? Talk about making your next move easy. Plus he seems to have a pretty good sense of humor, and his fatherly voice just oozes comfort. This is a good example of a character who might not be the coolest but who would make a better friend. Megatron is actually cooler but if you called him to help you move a refrigerator he would probably just finger flick you into the next county.
Why would Optimus Prime want to be my friend you ask? Good question. I suppose I could give him a good wash once in a while. Plus I’m really good about not eating food in the car so he wouldn’t have to worry about that. If he and the rest of the Autobots were going into action and he told me to stay back at headquarters I would be totally OK with that. I specifically would not sneak aboard his trailer or talk Bumblebee into giving me a lift to the battle so I could totally distract him or be used as a hostage. I would also work to become friends with the guys who run the local police impound yard so if he is ever towed I could get him out quick.
Optimus Prime image courtesy of the Transformers t shirt category.
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