Jeremiah Tolbert

My time at WorldCon is rapidly reced­ing  into the past, but the mem­o­ries, much like the car­cino­gens I inhaled, will stay with me for years to come. WorldCon 2011 was a mixed bag, but over­all, a pos­i­tive one.   Let’s break it down into bul­let points, because I can’t be both­ered to assem­ble a coher­ent nar­ra­tive out of the bits and pieces fiz­zling in my brainmeats.

The Shuttle of Khazad Dum

The dis­tance between the two hotels, the Atlantis and the Peppermill, is approx­i­mately 1.5 miles, or, when adjusted for the desert heat index, 627 miles. The Atlantis has the advan­tage of being attached to the Sparks Convention Center, wherein the bulk of con­ven­tion activ­i­ties take place.  The Peppermill has the advan­tage of being where I kept my stuff. And about 80% of the rest of the atten­dees too, it turns out.

The con­ven­tion help­fully offers a shut­tle ser­vice between the two loca­tions, span­ning the fiery chasm of asphalt and strip malls between.  On day one, return­ing to my hotel in the late evening, the air con­di­tion­ing is bro­ken, and the heat is stuck on “Furnace.”  The dri­ver barks over and over, as if to no one in par­tic­u­lar, “it’s not my fault.  I’m not allowed to open the windows.”

Day two, I wait 45 min­utes for a shut­tle to arrive. It is only day two, and the wait is sup­posed to be only 15 min­utes, but oh well.  I am late for a panel, but no big deal.

Day three, I stand in line for the shut­tle for 25 min­utes before some­one comes out to address the line.  “Uh, the shut­tle isn’t com­ing.  A girl threw up all over it and they’re still argu­ing over who is sup­posed to clean it up.  The dri­ver is refus­ing to drive until it’s cleaned.” I take a taxi.

Day four, I step out of the con­ven­tion cen­ter to go back to my room before din­ner.  The line is 4 shut­tles worth of peo­ple, wind­ing far down the bak­ing side­walk. I take a taxi again.

Meeting New People

Many awe­some peo­ples cross my path for the first, but not the last, time. I meet Doug Cohen, Alliette De Bodard, Erika Holt, Chris Kastensmidt’s room­mate Dru (whose name I never remem­bered because it was miss­ing from his badge), Lee Harris, Alex Lencicki, and many oth­ers whose names have left me but whose faces have not.

Despite my snark, there is one mes­sage I receive loud and clear at every Worldcon:  You Are Not Alone.  I wish every­one could have the expe­ri­ence of being told this over the course of a four day cel­e­bra­tion.  You are not alone in your pas­sions or inter­ests, or your odd­ness.  You have a place of belong­ing.  It’s only a mat­ter of find­ing it.

Eating Pastrami

A few of us gather at the New York Deli for lunch.

“I’ve never had pas­trami,” I say. “What’s it like?”

“It’s like pas­trami,” says one of the New Yorkers at the table.

The wait­ress comes to take our order.  “I’ll have the pas­trami,” I say.  I turn to my com­pan­ions when the wait­ress asks what kind of bread.

“RYE,” they demand in unison.

“Do you want swiss cheese on that?” she asks.

Once again, I turn to my din­ing com­pan­ions.  Nick actu­ally shrieks in horror.

“So, uh, no cheese then,” I say.

Later, as I eat the most deli­cious sand­wich ever, I ask for some ketchup.

“For your sand­wich?” Nick demands, eyes narrowed.

“No, no,” I say.  “For the french fries.”  Grudgingly, I am given the ketchup.  I  won­der what pas­trami tastes like drenched in ketchup, but I do not dare to attempt it.  This, I know now, could cost me my life.

The Case of Cory Doctorow and the Pilfered Chicken

Matt, Jordan, Chris, and I sit and eat some of the most expen­sive and ter­ri­ble tast­ing buf­fet food we have ever had in the Peppermill’s Island Buffet.  The con­ver­sa­tion is good, but many of our friends are up for Hugos and an anx­i­ety looms over the table.

Suddenly, we spot Cory Doctorow in a very nice suit strolling through the room like a man with a mis­sion.  He aims straight for the buf­fet, tucks some­thing large and brown under his arm, turns neatly, and walks toward the exit, pass­ing us quickly.

Chris and I exchange glances.

“What…?” I say.

“Was that a whole rotis­serie chicken?” Chris asks, voice even more full of won­der than mine.

We agree quickly.  Cory Doctorow appears to have taken a chicken from the casino buf­fet and fled.

“We can’t ques­tion this too deeply. I am sure there is a ratio­nal rea­son, but I don’t want to know what it is,” I say.

The Long Walk Back

Nick and I pick our way across the crum­bling side­walk back towards the Peppermill.  Forget fry­ing an egg in this heat; you could cook bacon on my forehead.

I look up at the mas­sive mar­quee out front fac­ing us. It says “Renovation!” in large let­ters.  I watch as a car slows down, its occu­pants star­ing up at the mar­quee with con­ster­na­tion.  They drive on.

“It occurs to me that nam­ing a con­ven­tion “Renovation” might not be the best idea for the host­ing hotel,” I say.

The Electronic Publishing Panel

I come into the panel 20 min­utes late, and already the audi­ence is ask­ing ques­tions like “But how do you han­dle the design?”  I quickly check Twitter and find that Pablo is present and about to lose his mind.  I bog­gle at the sight of Gordon Van Gelder, a man I have long con­sid­ered one small step above a Luddite, front and cen­ter in the panel dis­cus­sion.  An argu­ment between art and com­merce breaks out for no appar­ent reason.

I am pretty sure this panel was beamed here from 2003 just to piss me off.  I com­mis­er­ate with fel­low inter­net afi­ciona­dos in the hall afterward.

A Business Plan For Riches and Success

I wake up one morn­ing with this thought on my head:

“Why isn’t there a strip club across the street from the Peppermill called the Salt Shaker?”

Someone is going to make a mint from that idea.  My wife informs me that it will not be me. Sad panda.

The Prostitute and the Old Man

A group of us sit lis­ten­ing to the worst cover band ever to play for human ears. They per­form by rote, with no pas­sion or emo­tion what­so­ever, except per­haps a hint of despair.  The keyboardist’s eyes seem to shim­mer with tears.

“I’m pretty sure they are all going to pull out guns and kill them­selves as a finale,” I mutter.

“Wow, look at that,” Chris points out to John and me. “That can’t be what I think it is?”

I turn and look.  A rotund man in his six­ties sits with a very petite Asian girl, touch­ing hands and talk­ing very inti­mately.  They are most def­i­nitely not father and daughter.

“Forget the pros­ti­tute thing, that’s just a given,” Chris  says to gen­eral agree­ment.  “But she can­not be legal.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She could just have a youth­ful appearance.”

At that moment, she tilts her head back and laughs loudly, reveal­ing a full set of braces gleam­ing in the bloody light of the bar.

“Uh, do you sup­pose those costs extra?” I ask.

The Art Show Bet

“You want to go see the art show?” Nick asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “But let’s make it inter­est­ing. I bet there will be…” I pick a num­ber from thin air. “Seven ani­mals with com­pletely unnec­es­sary sets of wings. How many do you think?”

“Not nearly enough,” Nick quips, and off we go.  We are accom­pa­nied by a cadre young, enthu­si­as­tic women writ­ers: Elsa, Jaym, and Carrie.  They glee­fully point at naughty bits and women in ridicu­lous poses. “See! Sexism is dead,” they proclaim.

“I wish I was rich, so I could col­lect all the really awful stuff,” I say.  “I could invite peo­ple to come see col­lec­tion, just to see their reac­tions when they real­ized it was made up entirely of picaresque paint­ings of kit­tens cud­dling with baby drag­ons and Kirk taste­fully plow­ing a very stoic Spock.”

“Look at this one!  This wench is gonna get raped,” Elsa says. She points at the paint­ing of a drunk woman in a corset sprawled at the base of a tree. She is sur­rounded by empty bot­tles with lit­tle Xs on them so you don’t con­fuse their con­tents with, what, apple juice?  I think the girl in the paint­ing has eyes that look in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. I am not even sure if that’s intentional.

“Why would any­one paint this?” I ask not just my com­pan­ions but also the uni­verse.  Elsa makes a very filthy com­ment about the paint­ing, and I find I’m actu­ally blush­ing.  Also, laugh­ing. We move on.

I count the ani­mals with wings; wolves and cats mostly.  We dis­qual­ify the griffins and chimerae.  The total comes to seven exactly.

“I win!” I declare. “But really, I think we all lose.”

Waiting for the Awards

The Hugo Award cer­e­mony is about to begin, but we are sprawled on com­fort­able chairs while nearly half the con­ven­tion stands in line out­side the doors.

“Look, the cast of Wall-​​E is here,” some­one says, and points at the scores of dis­abled and large fans sit­ting impa­tiently on red scoot­ers.  I laugh, but I imme­di­ately feel bad about it.  So I’m prob­a­bly only going to what, the third or fourth level of hell?

Music strikes up from some kind of 8-​​bit key­board played by a man who is almost cer­tainly called “Filthy Pierre.”  It’s the Star Wars theme song.  He segues into a num­ber of other classics.

“Is this music part of the cer­e­mony?” Alex asks. “This is my first Hugos, and…”

“Nope,” I say.  “It’s just some­thing the fans do.”  For all I know, it really is, but I’ve never heard it before.

Now the line is wrap­ping out of the room and down past the restau­rant.  We begin to exchange ner­vous looks.

“Maybe we should get in line?”

“You guys get in line. I’m going to sit com­fort­ably right here.  There is no way they are fill­ing that place up,” Alex says.

We jump in line, leav­ing behind Alex to the com­fort­able seats to shuf­fle slowly for­ward.  People behind us begin to moo loudly, and a middle-​​aged woman demands we stay four peo­ple deep in the line.  “This is the line for the Hugos,” she growls at a small fam­ily of four attempt­ing to escape the cat­tle sounds.

After a long and ardu­ous walk, we take our seats in an arena that appears to have been built on Hoth.

“You just wait,” I say to Jordan. “You’ll be happy for it once this place is packed with people.”

Soon enough, it grows very warm.  I look over my shoul­der.  Alex has stepped in moments before the awards.  He takes a seat two rows back from us.  My feet hate him.

In Summary

I can’t wait until next year!  See you all there.  Or bet­ter yet, at World Fantasy.