Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts
By Alyce Wilson
August 9, 2006 - Touch My Monkey
Alyce on Friday morning
We started off Friday morning at Otakon with breakfast in the staff suite. Several people were already in there, many of them from Registration, who had to be at the BCC bright and early.
There were some rather amusing conversations going on, so I jumped in and joked around with people. I can't remember everything we talked about, but some of it was about a staffer who was joking about her Asian mother's lack of English skills. She joked that she ought to tell her mother the wrong names for things, in order to further the linguistic mistakes.
We decided that her mother had gotten back at her by instilling a fear of the number 14, which is bad luck in her mother's culture.
Between that and breakfast of oatmeal, a banana and coffee, I was soon feeling alert and ready to go.
I saw one of the staffers from Otakafe in there, wearing dress pants and
a button-down shirt, which I don't think I'd ever seen him in before.
So I got a picture.
This would probably be a good time to mention the strange dream I had Thursday night. I dreamt that I was with some people at a party and that a sleazy looking guy who happened to be named Willie Geist (the producer for the Tucker Carlson show on MSNBC) was serving the drinks. He dosed a couple of the drinks with psychedelic drugs, and soon two of my friends were tripping hard.
So I had to spend the rest of a long, complicated dream that seemed to take hours, trying to get these tripping people home safely. At one point, I was carrying one of them in a plastic bag, checking on her occasionally to make sure she was OK.
The dream ended when I arrived at another party with them, and somebody had a badly trained pit bull. It jumped up and bit my vintage cardigan, presumably bought, like much of my clothing, in a consignment store. The dog left holes, so I shouted, "It bit my sweater! You owe me $5!" and promptly woke up.
If you think about it, the dream is a little bit like being a staffer: trying to keep things organized, keep people from doing things that will hurt them or others, when they're often paying about as much attention as somebody on acid.
I had already told The Gryphon about the dream, so as we were heading to the BCC, I said, "I want it known, I'm not carrying anyone in a bag today."
Friday got busier as the members arrived, but it started out fairly quiet. The Gryphon and I stuck close to Con Ops, so we could keep on top of situations as they arose.
We ran into
a fellow staffer who told us that he was now helping at the VIP suite
as a "translator". As he said this, he made the quote symbol
with his fingers. We asked him if he did this every time he translated
something. He laughed and did it again.
Since it was so hot outside, somebody got the idea of giving a super soaker to a staffer and see if they wanted to go down the line outside the BCC with it. But not, of course, before The Cosplayer could use it to threaten The Godfather. Awfully early in the weekend for mutiny.
Lots of people stop by Con Ops, so if you stay there long enough, the con basically comes to you. At least, the con staff. Mr. Kitty stopped by, in costume, of course, along with one of my favorite gophers from registration last year, now a staffer.
Batman came through on his way to help with LARP, and when I asked him how he was, he seemed to be experiencing morning crankiness. He said, "Let me put it this way. If you need someone beat up, send them to LARP and tell them to ask for me."
I suggested that we needed a code word, because otherwise, how could he know he was supposed to beat them up? He said, "Fluffernutter."
So for the rest of the day, I went up to fellow staffers, told them the story and suggested they stop by LARP, find Batman and say, "Fluffernutter." I went out of my way to ask some of the more intimidating looking staffers, such as The Werebear (who came up with this nickname himself, an online handle, I believe), as well as old friends, such as The Paper.
For a short while, I helped distribute badges to staff members. We change them every year, and this year we added photos. I had a lot of people coming in with photos freshly taken in Photo Suite that needed to be affixed to the preprinted badges.
If Thursday's trend was bunnies, Friday's was monkeys, as evidenced by a pink stuffed monkey which was sitting on the desk where we distributed badges, or the inflatable monkey down the hall in Spec Ops. I even found a giant banana in the hallway.
I wouldn't have minded helping longer, but then The Gryphon came back for me. We walked down to Video Ops, where we ate the lunches we'd brought over earlier from Staff Suite. Then we took care of a couple things before walking around to the various departments to check on them. We wanted to make sure their needs were being met and that their staffers were fed or knew how to get food.
The convention center is very big, and you never know how big until you walk from one end of it to the other. It's hard to judge how long the walking part actually took us, though, because we were stopping and talking to so many people.
One of the most amusing moments was when we checked in with the head of the Dealers' Room. I asked him how he was doing, and he barked like a small dog. I asked him something else, and he barked again. So then his second in command, without missing a beat, starting answering in English, as if translating. It was hilarious.
While in
the Dealers' Room, we picked up this year's Otakon baby T-shirt for me
and a couple polos for The Gryphon. We also ran into someone we knew and
got a picture of The Gryphon with a very large prop weapon.
Most
of my photos this year were actually pictures of staffers, rather than
costumers, although I found some cool cosplayers, as well, including Buddy
Christ.
There were also some staffers wearing costumes, such as the staffer who plays Ota Klause, dressed in a Godzilla costume in preparation for stomping the streets of Baltimore (OK, only a model). Also, another staffer was dressed as a Ghostbuster.
The Gryphon and I ate at a local sushi place for dinner. We had to take
a cab to get to it, but it was no trouble to find one. We loved being
able to get away to a quieter place for a short while and enjoy some good
food before returning to the fray.
The evening was very busy, putting out fires in our capacity as the Human Resources department, but we did manage to find a little down time in which to do some browsing and purchasing in the Dealers' Room. That's where I had someone get this picture of The Gryphon and me, which is the only photo I have of us at any Otakon together.
By the end
of the day, I'd filled up both the camera cards I'd brought, partly because
The Pirate had changed some settings on my camera and, unbeknownst to
me, had increased the quality from Fine to Superfine. So he offered to
lend us his card reader so that we could transfer the pictures to The
Gryphon's laptop and I could safely erase the cards and reuse them.
More from Otakon 2006:
August 8, 2006 - Bunny Ears of Command
August 10, 2006 - Here There Be Dragons
August 12, 2006 - Red Bull Express
August 17, 2006 - Otakon Photos
Musings on Otakon 2005:
Musings on Otakon 2004:
August 10 , 2004 - Overture to Otakon
Musings
on Otakon 2003:
Moral:
Monkeys brighten busy days.
Copyright
2006 by Alyce Wilson
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