JournalCon 2004

Yeah, this is pretty late for a JournalCon entry. Too bad. I hope my lateness will be balanced by the MILLIONS OF PICTURES.

Okay, let's get going.

My flight out got changed at the last second, and I had to be up at 3:30 in the morning for my ride to the airport. The trip to Washington DC was uneventful, although you should now have a sense of foreboding about my trip back home, which was less pleasant. I got to the hotel, and it was kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I had the coolest hotel room I've ever had in my life. Here's a diagram:

(Note: I stole the diagram picture from sock-girlie, who, along with Sassy, provided my support group for most of the convention. Strega too, but she wasn't there the whole time. Okay, back to the story. That was the diagram I drew to explain my room to them: when you come into the room, there's a little hallway on the right, where the cool minibar lives. Look at how stylin' the minibar is:

Ooh, bright Hipster Green! And so . . . fifties! Ah, but what's inside?

Tomato soup, Pop Rocks, and wax lips, apparently. That's just weird. Now for the interesting part. Most hotel rooms I've had have been small. Tiny. So small you couldn't swing a cat. Of course, that didn't matter, since they didn't allow animals anyway (page 51). Okay, anyway, there was basically a living room with a curtain. On the diagram, the curtain is sealing off an alcove in the upper left. Here's the curtain:

Know what's behind that? The bed! Really! Here's what the bed looks like if you get artsy and look through the three mirrors on the wall (two of which fold out so you can pretend you're at the Gap, I guess):

And here's the other side of the room, which has a little futon-like couch-thing and a triangular table, also through the mirrors:

So by now you've noticed that the room is fancy. The thing is, though, the whole hotel was like that. Instead of having a proper lobby, it had a lounge. And not the sort of lounge where you lounge about; the sort of lounge where you sit around and look hip, and, if it's night time, listen to extremely loud music and drink.

Okay, let me back up a little bit. When I got to Washington, I got picked up at the airport by Strega and we went to this really odd sandwich place. I mean that it was a weird place that sold sandwiches, but the other interpretation also applies, because they did have some really odd sandwiches.

Then we watched a terrible movie about wife-swapping and went back to the hotel, where we met up with Lisa and Phil (of TeeVee, and is it just me or is this a lot of URLs to type in?) and went to dinner at, I think a place called "Legal Seafood". I was a little leery of it, on the theory that "It's not against the law!" isn't the most dramatic claim ever. But it was good fun.

Okay, anyway, on Friday night, Sassy, sock-girlie, Strega, and I hung out and talked. It was good fun.

See how much fun we're having? Whee! Incidentally, if you're wondering why she's called "sock-girlie," it may have something to do with this:

That's Tim. He's got a website.

On Saturday, I got up early enough to go to Lisa's panel, which was about writing for free on the web while at the same time having a paying job that involves writing. Then Strega showed up and we snuck out to go to the American Dime Museum!

The Dime Museum is a really neat little museum out in Baltimore; the old dime museums were like mini-sideshows that traveled from town to town, showing off jackalopes and Fiji Mermaids along with mummies, historical artifacts, and all sorts of things that were probably fake. So here's some of the things they had:

According to the note, this vial contains vapor captured at a performance of Le Petomane, who was a French performer who used to fart music. This sort of exhibit was pretty common: there'd be a thing and a handwritten affidavit claiming that it was Abraham Lincoln's poop or something. And no, I'm not making that example up. Apparently, people used to believe pretty much anything they read. That's different now, right? Right?

A variety of exotic animals, both real and fake! You can't see the dancing lizard in the case very well, but it was pretty funny.

Remember shrunken heads? Here are some! One of then is clearly carved from a coconut, too.

Sometimes the exhibits didn't even try to be realistic. The plaque here says "MYSTERIOUS DETECTOR DEER: In response to flying saucer sightings in the early 1950s, the U.S. Army biomechanically altered deer that prowled dark woods to detect alien presence and radio that knowledge to top-secret receiving stations." Neat!

It's always fun to see animals in wacky poses, like squirrels riding iguanas or carrying rifles.

This two-headed calf could well be real. If it is, though, it's a terrible job of taxidermy. The important thing, though, is that every museum of this sort needs to have a two-headed calf. It's almost as traditional as...

...a Fiji Mermaid! A classic fake creature.

I like this one a lot. The idea of a fossilized fairy is great. And the misspelling "Fairye" entertains me no end.

Okay, so as you can see, we had a lot of fun at the Dime Museum, and then we returned to the hotel. I mean, you probably can't see that we returned to the hotel, but you could just take my word for it, couldn't you? Why must you question me at every turn? Damn you!

For dinner, Strega and I glommed on to the Threeway Action dinner, which was fun. Although since I don't drink, I didn't get full value out of the million microbrews available. Then it was time for karaoke!

Last year, karaoke was a lot of fun. A triumph! And I got a lot of very nice compliments on my performance. This year, things didn't go as well. Apparently, Washington DC isn't all that into karaoke, so they had to find a convenient bar and hire a karaoke company to come in and set things up. So they were working with a bar that didn't have a stage, and the karaoke company -- well, they weren't on top of their game. There were some technical problems, and the guy who was sent to fix things did not seem capable of the task. After a few hours of delightful staticky noise, we (Sassy, sock-girlie, Strega, and I) gave up and walked back to the hotel.

We hung out in front, griping amiably, and it was my favorite part of the weekend. From time to time, another group of stragglers would show up, having given up after us -- it was somewhere around now that the word "karaNOke" was coined. There were two instances of impromptu a capella karaoke -- I did a little bit of "One Night In Bangkok", and about six people did "Shoop" in unison. After several more hours, the valet parking guy finally arrived with Strega's car, so she went home. I think I hung out a little bit longer, but I didn't go up to the various room parties. I remember that Chiara was in one of the straggler groups, but she kindly stopped to chat with us for awhile.

Sunday morning, I again was awake early enough to get to the Invited Readings panel, because I wanted to see Chiara's two pieces. And they were good! Oh, and here's Chiara and I making a pair of goofy faces:

Then I grabbed the rest of my swag and mostly hid in my room and watched the Olympics the rest of the day. I flew home on Monday. The end!