David does Dallas
Oct. 29th, 2002 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyBeing a fairly full and probably inaccurate tale of Davids’ adventures in the new World.
Wednesday
Arrive at Gatwick with young![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cbvampst and twinkle my way through customs. No checks, nobody looking at me funny, no searches. This should have told me that this wasn’t to be the sort of trip to the US that I usually get, but instead I just assumed that my practise of calling Ozzy “Ozzy Beck-Laden”, and referring to him as effendi was what caused him to get stopped and searched and not me.
My confidence in the flight wasn’t helped by my being preceded through the metal detector by a couple of Arabic guys in full robes who both set the damn thing off, but fortunately our plane wasn’t blown up even slightly and I got to watch Panic Room (Jodie Foster, thriller, good film with disappointing ending) and Insomnia (Al Pacino & Robin Williams, thriller, very odd indeed but good for all of that) and having the nicest in-flight meal ever. BA and Virgin vie for my affections – BA has more legroom and nicer meals, but Virgin has better entertainment and better goodiebags. Which is best? You decide.
Arriving in the US, I’m greeted by a friendly and helpful customs official (blink) who waves me through without the usual questioning and cavity search (double blink). At the airport, volunteers help us find our way to the courtesy busses (such a good idea, the helpful volunteers, and one that we could do well to emulate) and I’m whizzed to the Hotel.
Texas isn’t what I expect. It’s raining with low cloud, which irritates as I didn’t bring a coat, expecting as I did hot, sunny, JR Ewing style weather. However, it could be worse as I see several people in ten gallon hats (they exist!) and nobody orders me to squeal like a pig all weekend - which is a weight off my mind.
The Hotel is HUGE. It’s cavernous, like an aircraft hangar with bedrooms. I’m supposed to be crashing on Ozzys floor for the first night, but I run into John Renfrey who has a spare bed in his room and so get a mattress to sleep on instead, which is preferable. All the rooms are very large, but underfurnished with slightly cheap furniture resulting in them feeling strangely empty. It’s a disorienting experience as I force myself to stay awake for hours until 11pm (to adjust my body clock) local time before retiring to bed.
Thursday
John & I awake and share the oddly stilted conversation of single men sharing a bedroom (“So, did you see the Bears game the other night?”) and watch Fierce Creatures on TV before heading for Breakfast. This is the usual American fare of enourmous portions of cheap foodstuffs freshly prepared and I’m reminded of one of the things that ticks me off about the US when the waitress presents my bill and I realise that the advertised prices are all less tax, meaning everything is more expensive than you first thought. I explain to some of the people I’ve met that back home we tend to put the full price on stuff to avoid this kind of shock. They gaze at me in wonder, as this is an idea that has obviously never occurred to them.
However, I forgive the hotel when I discover the free internet access portals in the lobby and from then on I check my mail at regular intervals and look for my wench on IRC, who seems to be studiously avoiding me all weekend (“She just left five minutes ago, Dave!”).
Thursday is mostly spent chatting to people in the lobby until the opening ceremony which, due to the hotel having double booked the ICC with a Frito-Lay sales conference, is held in the car park. That’s right – they double booked the ICC with a savoury snacks regional convention. I have to say I found this very funny indeed, for reasons I can’t quite identify.
So off to the car park for the opening ceremony, which for some reason lacks the usual “Who is here from which region?” bit, andthemadone and I don’t get to wave his Union Jack and shout “Huzzah!”. The ceremony consists of the usual gaming geeks self-congratulation which I’m as guilty of as anyone else, and only one bit sets my teeth firmly on edge (If your internal system works so well, why has the US exec so studiously avoided using it in the case of Sean Prather?). Oh, and what greebotrill said about not being able to let go was so utterly on the button it’s frightening.
After that, Chris & I head for the bar where we meeteddyfate and a pal of his for beer and I volunteer for NPCing the Sabbat game, on the proviso that I’ll do it if I can’t find the people I’ve been invited to go clubbing with.
I duly fail to findjennlyle or any of her friends, and so 9pm that night finds me playing a bad guy in the Sabbat game. The brief I’ve been given is pretty much “Get out there, cause trouble, kill a few people, and then die”, which is as fine an NPC brief I’ve seen in a while, and the NPC sheet is the biggest lump of cheese I’ve seen in on place in a very long time.
Needless to say, I have a whale of a time – easily the highlight of my weekend – as I successively tempt, patronise, threaten, beat, rant, and then pathetically beg for my life. I love playing villains – they get all the best dialogue – and I make a number of friends by screaming “Fall to your knees and beg and I may yet be merciful!” at them, which may be a first. The ST who ran the scene seems fairly nonplussed when I refuse to give him my name & Cam number for prestige allocation, and so mission accomplished all round, basically.
Once I’ve got changed it’s 1am and I fail utterly to find a party (“Someone said there was one on the 32nd floor. Or was it the 30th? And which room? Damn!”) and so I return to bed where I mess about with the TV and accidentally deactivate the all-night wanking channel. I’m dubious about the odds of getting it turned back on according to the instructions (“You have accidentally deactivated the masturbation channel. If you want it turned back on, please contact reception and we’ll patronise you and possibly mockingly announce your room number over the PA system.”) so I go to sleep instead.
Friday.
Well, I could have gamed during the day, but I didn’t. Instead, I bummed round for most of the day, greetfionn99 at the WW stand and spend most of the afternoon chatting to netgecko in the bar about cam politics, international relations and international documents. I’m pleasantly surprised at the fact that he seems to really want to get people involved internationally in what he’s doing and promise to get him some volunteers, although he doesn’t fully assuage some of my more deep seated concerns.
Friday evening is gaming night though and I bring out my Ventrue. As I haven’t played the character for more than 2 years, I know nobody at all ICly meaning that although people I know IRL are sitting at the next table, I have no reason to go and talk to them. As usual, this is inspiring to go and meet new people and I spend most of the evening at the poker table in the Giovanni-run entertainment hall where indeed I meet several new pals whose names I predictably promptly forget. They were nice whoever they were though. Plot intervenes after a while and the Ventrue all get together for clan meetings which are, I’m sad to relate, utterly dull and I quickly find myself wishing I’d found a way to avoid them – a lot of people I don’t know talking about a lot of other people I don’t know and little opportunity for input from me for that reason. I look at my watch to find it has gone midnight and so I claim jetlag and zoom out of there with a couple of others in tow.
After getting changed we make our way to the Tremere players party, which is the only one we know about, but which is full of…err…Tremere players. ‘Nuff said. I should have taken my No, I don’t want to hear about your character T-Shirt . If I had one. Which I don’t.
Saturday.
After breakfast I’m down to my last $10, which doesn’t bode well for me eating for the next 48 hours. However, I’m fortunate enough to find a kindly chap (whose name, as usual, escapes me) who offers to buy me beer for seemingly for no return other than the pleasure of my company. Naturally I expect a catch, but I spend a happy few hours in the bar being bought drink before I wander down to the ‘International meeting’, which consists of some of the UK people and nobody at all from Australia or Canada, which I feel is a tremendous disappointment. After having various Americans wander in and look at us in a “Gosh look at the foreigners” sort of way, we all return to the bar for more consumption. I have to say, the service and choice aren’t great, but they really know how to make a decent burger (I resort to my credit card to buy, dammit).
I can’t really remember much more about Saturday until the game starts at 6pm. And it is, despite my own best efforts, a good game. I show up as my FoS ICly with a fairly blinkered and monomaniacal mindset to achieve a fairly limited IC agenda, and get somewhat resentful when I realise that the plot just isn’t going to let me (We spend most of the evening fleeing from an Archon who wanted to kill us all). It’s an effort to stop myself and look about when I realise that I’m sulking at not getting my way, and when I open my eyes and come out from up myself, I realise what a good group of players many of the US FoS are, and that they’re making a genuine effort to help me fit in & enjoy myself despite me. For this, I’m really grateful – especially to the player of Christoff Beckett, who is a top bloke and no mistake. Eventually, I achieve nothing I wanted but end up enjoying myself ICly anyway. If anyone knows any of the players who were there, please pass on my thanks – I know I wasn’t really being of my best, and they were kindly to me anyway.
Post game, John & I find ourselves a party, but I’m having to hold down my drinking as I have to be up in the morning so we drop out fairly early and go to the Succubus cub party where I boogie for a while before bed (When I did my ankle last year, I really did do a job on myself – whenever I dance now I really feel the weakness of the joint, and have to be very careful not to have my foot tip over again. Given that I enjoy a good boogie with the best of them, this is very upsetting as my dancing style invol;ves bouncing up and down like a proper twat).
Sunday.
Home again, home again, Jiggetty Jig. Not searched at the airport. I must be looking more respectable as I grown older.
Watched Sexy beast (Ray Winstone & Ben Kingsley, East End Diamond geezers, good film) and Reign of Fire (Christina Bale & Matthew McConaughey, Dragons, Well made but ho-hum) and had a much less nice meal with time round.
Tried to sleep but turbulence meant I didn’t get much.
Overall.
Probably the least satisfying of all the international conventions I’ve been to (ICC 2000 was best); I knew so few people there it was difficult to make pals from a standing start when so many people there were there in their own little groups already. It makes me realise how much of the fun I’ve had in the past has been down to people liketyadda and Sean Prather – and this makes the incredibly petty way they got rid of Sean make my blood boil all the more.
I think the lack of satisfaction stemmed from several things: the venue just didn’t work for me – it was so damned huge that it felt empty even though the number of people was apparently up from last year, I just didn’t have the ‘right place at the right time’ luck of previous years, and the whole convention just seemed to me to lack atmosphere. In addition, some people I’d previously considered pals seemed to be blanking me for most of the weekend, and it’s really painful to realise that some people really did just want to know me when I wasuknc, and now I’m just plain old me again they don’t consider me worth their time any more. That probably hurt more than anything.
That said, I probably wasn’t the best guest in the world, and the realisation of that was important in me getting myself into gear and having more fun. However, I don’t think that all the disappointment I felt was entirely my own fault.
If I’d known, I probably wouldn’t have spent the money. Although four nights at the hotel actually cost less than one night in the placepuddingcat and I stayed at for the SE regional event the weekend before, I can’t help but think the expenditure wasn’t worth it, and it’s the first time I’ve ever said that after a trip to a US convention.
Wednesday
Arrive at Gatwick with young
cbvampst and twinkle my way through customs. No checks, nobody looking at me funny, no searches. This should have told me that this wasn’t to be the sort of trip to the US that I usually get, but instead I just assumed that my practise of calling Ozzy “Ozzy Beck-Laden”, and referring to him as effendi was what caused him to get stopped and searched and not me. My confidence in the flight wasn’t helped by my being preceded through the metal detector by a couple of Arabic guys in full robes who both set the damn thing off, but fortunately our plane wasn’t blown up even slightly and I got to watch Panic Room (Jodie Foster, thriller, good film with disappointing ending) and Insomnia (Al Pacino & Robin Williams, thriller, very odd indeed but good for all of that) and having the nicest in-flight meal ever. BA and Virgin vie for my affections – BA has more legroom and nicer meals, but Virgin has better entertainment and better goodiebags. Which is best? You decide.
Arriving in the US, I’m greeted by a friendly and helpful customs official (blink) who waves me through without the usual questioning and cavity search (double blink). At the airport, volunteers help us find our way to the courtesy busses (such a good idea, the helpful volunteers, and one that we could do well to emulate) and I’m whizzed to the Hotel.
Texas isn’t what I expect. It’s raining with low cloud, which irritates as I didn’t bring a coat, expecting as I did hot, sunny, JR Ewing style weather. However, it could be worse as I see several people in ten gallon hats (they exist!) and nobody orders me to squeal like a pig all weekend - which is a weight off my mind.
The Hotel is HUGE. It’s cavernous, like an aircraft hangar with bedrooms. I’m supposed to be crashing on Ozzys floor for the first night, but I run into John Renfrey who has a spare bed in his room and so get a mattress to sleep on instead, which is preferable. All the rooms are very large, but underfurnished with slightly cheap furniture resulting in them feeling strangely empty. It’s a disorienting experience as I force myself to stay awake for hours until 11pm (to adjust my body clock) local time before retiring to bed.
Thursday
John & I awake and share the oddly stilted conversation of single men sharing a bedroom (“So, did you see the Bears game the other night?”) and watch Fierce Creatures on TV before heading for Breakfast. This is the usual American fare of enourmous portions of cheap foodstuffs freshly prepared and I’m reminded of one of the things that ticks me off about the US when the waitress presents my bill and I realise that the advertised prices are all less tax, meaning everything is more expensive than you first thought. I explain to some of the people I’ve met that back home we tend to put the full price on stuff to avoid this kind of shock. They gaze at me in wonder, as this is an idea that has obviously never occurred to them.
However, I forgive the hotel when I discover the free internet access portals in the lobby and from then on I check my mail at regular intervals and look for my wench on IRC, who seems to be studiously avoiding me all weekend (“She just left five minutes ago, Dave!”).
Thursday is mostly spent chatting to people in the lobby until the opening ceremony which, due to the hotel having double booked the ICC with a Frito-Lay sales conference, is held in the car park. That’s right – they double booked the ICC with a savoury snacks regional convention. I have to say I found this very funny indeed, for reasons I can’t quite identify.
So off to the car park for the opening ceremony, which for some reason lacks the usual “Who is here from which region?” bit, and
themadone and I don’t get to wave his Union Jack and shout “Huzzah!”. The ceremony consists of the usual gaming geeks self-congratulation which I’m as guilty of as anyone else, and only one bit sets my teeth firmly on edge (If your internal system works so well, why has the US exec so studiously avoided using it in the case of Sean Prather?). Oh, and what greebotrill said about not being able to let go was so utterly on the button it’s frightening.After that, Chris & I head for the bar where we meet
eddyfate and a pal of his for beer and I volunteer for NPCing the Sabbat game, on the proviso that I’ll do it if I can’t find the people I’ve been invited to go clubbing with. I duly fail to find
jennlyle or any of her friends, and so 9pm that night finds me playing a bad guy in the Sabbat game. The brief I’ve been given is pretty much “Get out there, cause trouble, kill a few people, and then die”, which is as fine an NPC brief I’ve seen in a while, and the NPC sheet is the biggest lump of cheese I’ve seen in on place in a very long time.Needless to say, I have a whale of a time – easily the highlight of my weekend – as I successively tempt, patronise, threaten, beat, rant, and then pathetically beg for my life. I love playing villains – they get all the best dialogue – and I make a number of friends by screaming “Fall to your knees and beg and I may yet be merciful!” at them, which may be a first. The ST who ran the scene seems fairly nonplussed when I refuse to give him my name & Cam number for prestige allocation, and so mission accomplished all round, basically.
Once I’ve got changed it’s 1am and I fail utterly to find a party (“Someone said there was one on the 32nd floor. Or was it the 30th? And which room? Damn!”) and so I return to bed where I mess about with the TV and accidentally deactivate the all-night wanking channel. I’m dubious about the odds of getting it turned back on according to the instructions (“You have accidentally deactivated the masturbation channel. If you want it turned back on, please contact reception and we’ll patronise you and possibly mockingly announce your room number over the PA system.”) so I go to sleep instead.
Friday.
Well, I could have gamed during the day, but I didn’t. Instead, I bummed round for most of the day, greet
fionn99 at the WW stand and spend most of the afternoon chatting to netgecko in the bar about cam politics, international relations and international documents. I’m pleasantly surprised at the fact that he seems to really want to get people involved internationally in what he’s doing and promise to get him some volunteers, although he doesn’t fully assuage some of my more deep seated concerns.Friday evening is gaming night though and I bring out my Ventrue. As I haven’t played the character for more than 2 years, I know nobody at all ICly meaning that although people I know IRL are sitting at the next table, I have no reason to go and talk to them. As usual, this is inspiring to go and meet new people and I spend most of the evening at the poker table in the Giovanni-run entertainment hall where indeed I meet several new pals whose names I predictably promptly forget. They were nice whoever they were though. Plot intervenes after a while and the Ventrue all get together for clan meetings which are, I’m sad to relate, utterly dull and I quickly find myself wishing I’d found a way to avoid them – a lot of people I don’t know talking about a lot of other people I don’t know and little opportunity for input from me for that reason. I look at my watch to find it has gone midnight and so I claim jetlag and zoom out of there with a couple of others in tow.
After getting changed we make our way to the Tremere players party, which is the only one we know about, but which is full of…err…Tremere players. ‘Nuff said. I should have taken my No, I don’t want to hear about your character T-Shirt . If I had one. Which I don’t.
Saturday.
After breakfast I’m down to my last $10, which doesn’t bode well for me eating for the next 48 hours. However, I’m fortunate enough to find a kindly chap (whose name, as usual, escapes me) who offers to buy me beer for seemingly for no return other than the pleasure of my company. Naturally I expect a catch, but I spend a happy few hours in the bar being bought drink before I wander down to the ‘International meeting’, which consists of some of the UK people and nobody at all from Australia or Canada, which I feel is a tremendous disappointment. After having various Americans wander in and look at us in a “Gosh look at the foreigners” sort of way, we all return to the bar for more consumption. I have to say, the service and choice aren’t great, but they really know how to make a decent burger (I resort to my credit card to buy, dammit).
I can’t really remember much more about Saturday until the game starts at 6pm. And it is, despite my own best efforts, a good game. I show up as my FoS ICly with a fairly blinkered and monomaniacal mindset to achieve a fairly limited IC agenda, and get somewhat resentful when I realise that the plot just isn’t going to let me (We spend most of the evening fleeing from an Archon who wanted to kill us all). It’s an effort to stop myself and look about when I realise that I’m sulking at not getting my way, and when I open my eyes and come out from up myself, I realise what a good group of players many of the US FoS are, and that they’re making a genuine effort to help me fit in & enjoy myself despite me. For this, I’m really grateful – especially to the player of Christoff Beckett, who is a top bloke and no mistake. Eventually, I achieve nothing I wanted but end up enjoying myself ICly anyway. If anyone knows any of the players who were there, please pass on my thanks – I know I wasn’t really being of my best, and they were kindly to me anyway.
Post game, John & I find ourselves a party, but I’m having to hold down my drinking as I have to be up in the morning so we drop out fairly early and go to the Succubus cub party where I boogie for a while before bed (When I did my ankle last year, I really did do a job on myself – whenever I dance now I really feel the weakness of the joint, and have to be very careful not to have my foot tip over again. Given that I enjoy a good boogie with the best of them, this is very upsetting as my dancing style invol;ves bouncing up and down like a proper twat).
Sunday.
Home again, home again, Jiggetty Jig. Not searched at the airport. I must be looking more respectable as I grown older.
Watched Sexy beast (Ray Winstone & Ben Kingsley, East End Diamond geezers, good film) and Reign of Fire (Christina Bale & Matthew McConaughey, Dragons, Well made but ho-hum) and had a much less nice meal with time round.
Tried to sleep but turbulence meant I didn’t get much.
Overall.
Probably the least satisfying of all the international conventions I’ve been to (ICC 2000 was best); I knew so few people there it was difficult to make pals from a standing start when so many people there were there in their own little groups already. It makes me realise how much of the fun I’ve had in the past has been down to people like
tyadda and Sean Prather – and this makes the incredibly petty way they got rid of Sean make my blood boil all the more.I think the lack of satisfaction stemmed from several things: the venue just didn’t work for me – it was so damned huge that it felt empty even though the number of people was apparently up from last year, I just didn’t have the ‘right place at the right time’ luck of previous years, and the whole convention just seemed to me to lack atmosphere. In addition, some people I’d previously considered pals seemed to be blanking me for most of the weekend, and it’s really painful to realise that some people really did just want to know me when I was
uknc, and now I’m just plain old me again they don’t consider me worth their time any more. That probably hurt more than anything.That said, I probably wasn’t the best guest in the world, and the realisation of that was important in me getting myself into gear and having more fun. However, I don’t think that all the disappointment I felt was entirely my own fault.
If I’d known, I probably wouldn’t have spent the money. Although four nights at the hotel actually cost less than one night in the place
puddingcat and I stayed at for the SE regional event the weekend before, I can’t help but think the expenditure wasn’t worth it, and it’s the first time I’ve ever said that after a trip to a US convention.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Sorry to hear you had a bad time
Date: 2002-10-31 02:19 am (UTC)I take it that means you're unaware of the recent opinion polls in Jamaica that suggest that a sizeable majority of the population believe they'd have been better off just staying as a colony and never declaring independance in the first place, and would like to go back to being a colony if we'd take 'em back :)
Re: Sorry to hear you had a bad time
Date: 2002-10-31 09:28 am (UTC)Re: Sorry to hear you had a bad time
Date: 2002-11-01 01:31 am (UTC)