Whew. It’s been a long time since I was at a gencon, but I’ve been having a great time at this one.
After getting up and getting a shower, we wandered over to the nearby mall for a late breakfast/early lunch. We ended up getting reasonably tasty teriyaki chicken from the food court, and had a great time watching the skaters on the ice rink in the middle of the mall while we ate.
Between panels I was on and things I wanted to attend, I had a pretty full day. First up was “Can Movies Capture The Joy of Comics”, which was a lively panel. We talked about the many various successful and unsuccessful attempts to adapt comics to the screen, and got a lot of input from the audience.
Immediately following was a panel called “Books to Movies to Comics to Movies to Books”, which was all about adaptation. While some of it focused on similar topics to the first panel, we were a bit broader in the discussion, and got in several examples of cross-medium adaptation, including movie novelisations, TV series continuing as comics, and even the recent trend of taking a bunch of disparate iconic concepts and blending them into a new series, such as “Once Upon A Time” and “Grimm” have been doing.1
We had a brief break before a 6pm panel on “Developing Convention Policies”, which was attended by my wife and the husband of one of my co-panelists.2 After 10 minutes of no one being there, the panel and audience decided that we ought to continue our conversation on convention policy over dinner, and adjourned as a group to the restaurant.
After dinner, we got to the filk room in time to hear most of Frank Hayes’s concert. I had arranged with the filk track to present Frank with his Pegasus Award for Best Alien Song,3 and as luck would have it, he played it in his set. We interrupted the concert in order to present the award, which was great fun, since he hadn’t been warned this was going to happen.
Next up was the Filk Guest of Honour concert performance from Debs and Errol. I was already quite familiar with their work via recording, but it was great to finally see them perform live.4 I hope to spend more time with them as the weekend progresses, but after the concert they had the usual press of folks wanting to meet them, so I briefly introduced myself and figured I’d see them again as the weekend progressed. Tremendous fun duo. Do *not* miss them if you get the chance.
As I’m writing this, I have one more duty, which is to be part of the Polyamory panel at 11pm. After which I think I will sleep soundly. Tomorrow has another full day in store!
Science Reporter Emily Graslie Reads Her Mail – And It’s Not So NiceI’ve said it before, so I’ll say it again: Emily Graslie’s ” The Brain Scoop” is one of the warmest, slyest video blogs on the web.
Somebody Put a Camera on a Toy Car and Drove It Into a Pride of LionsEight curious lions and a remote control buggy with a camera on top make for one gorgeous viral video.
The Most Heartbreaking “Winnie The Pooh” Comic You’ll Ever ReadChristopher Robin Milne’s original stuffed animals, which inspired Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, and Kanga (now displayed at New York Public Library). The real Christopher Robin had a fraught relationship with his famous playwright/ literary editor father. A. A. Milne based “Winnie the Pooh” on his son’s childhood, which the real Christopher Robin Milne grew up to resent.
