Over 4th of July weekend, Qarly (supetoope) and I jumped ship on any Juplaya plans, got on a plane and headed to Minneapolis for CONvergence. I didn’t really know what to except other then a convention filled with folks that enjoy sci-fi. No one, except for a secret contact, knew about our visit plans, so it was a bit of a surprise.
As it turned out, this Con is big, to the point where hotel rooms sold out before I had a chance to snag one. Being unfamiliar with anywhere but the Bay Area, I entrusted Google and Orbitz to find me and fine place to stay within walking distance. Once we arrived we quickly found out that freeways over run the rest of the US, and that walking from our hotel to the Con was out of the question. This photo was shot out of our hotel window. You can see the hotel CONvergence was taking place in way off in the background. Suck.
Before we left, I mailed out one of the Dance Dance Immolation proc suits to my secret agent, to be used as a costume on the first day. We were able to get said suit from said contact a few hours after we had landed. After I got it on, and we walked out of our hotel, waiting on a shuttle to take us to the event, I quickly realized how fucking hot it was. 20 minutes later we were there, going through registration. Qarly was my handler as I couldn’t see shit through the mask or touch anything thanks to the gloves. Giving up on waiting for things to open, we busted into the Space Lounge so that friends could do the whole, “WHO IS THAT?!” which would eventually lead me to getting the hell out of the suit. Qarly has photos somewhere.
Fun was had, some were surprised, some were very much expecting it. Qarly was introduced to new faces. The doors opened for the masses. Con awaited us. star5 suggested we tag along with the 5p4ce C4d3t5 for some cheering, we did.
The Con was filled with folks dressed up as anything and everything. Comic book heros, wizards, Star Wars, Trekies, Hary Potter. You name it, if it’s fiction, it happens here.
Photos by Chase and Jason Weberg.
Some of it reminded me of BM, a whole bunch of it didn’t. At BM, from me at least, there were many times where I felt like the level of weird outside my body was much greater then on the inside, other times the other way around, sort of like pH balance being off. At CONvergence I never felt that. I was ok with the level of freak going on on the outside, and the outside was ok with the level of freak going on inside of me.
Photos by Stephen Stephens and Abra Staffin Wiebe.
Here’s earlapricot, spacebug, r0ckc4ndy, Amy and Laura giving a very uplifting cheer.
At some point in time, I ended up being the space man.
The whole time there was sci-fi battle weapon jousting, which at first looked nerdy as hell, ended up being a whole lot of fun to watch.
Many of the first and second floor hotel rooms had themes, one of which was the 2008 CONvergence elections.
I totally voted for Rimmer.
Photos by Molly Cat Glover and Inter-Planetary Photo Journalists Union.
There were posters and flyers stuck up EVERYWHERE for pretty much every event and room happening. Qarly and I found this one particularly entertaining. More so later when we actually didn’t hear anyone else talk about Tiwttering in passing.
We caught Spider-Man in the buff. So know who he is now.
Photos by Drayke Larson and Heather K.
This other room was The House of Toast. You could get toast with anything on it. I saw some kid run out holding toast covered in mac’n’cheese and bbq sauce.
Back at the Space Lounge, there was Nano Putt. Really fun to play, really hard when you’re drunk.
During this whole trip, it was my first major outing with the lovely loaned camera from sol3. I learned a few things at Con…
- Taking photos in low light is hard.
- Taking photos of moving people is costumes is hard.
- Taking photos drunk is hard.
- CONvergence hits all of the above.
At some point in time we found transporters. I was hoping to be transported to more alcohol. Ended up walking was faster.
Photos by Inter-Planetary Photo Journalists Union and Chase.
The first night quickly got to a point where honestly, I had no idea what the fuck we were doing there.
On our second day there, I opted to only tote my smaller point and shoot, as my secondary objective after BRAINS was to get very fucking trashed.
Photo by Inter-Planetary Photo Journalists Union.
At some point we were teaching some very intimidating kids how to play Set.
Someone setup a mars lander in one of the lobbies that I found cute.
Photo by Warphammer.
NASA was doing it wrong.
Photos by Inter-Planetary Photo Journalists Union and jdharringt.
On the last day there was the Space Cabaret. Burn Unit was our grand host.
More cheering involved.
There was a black light puppet show and strip tease. Very hot, let me tell you.
Sci-fi movie charades proved to be extremely entertaining.
Last but not least, The American Astronaut.
OMG glow sticks!
By the end of it, Qarly and I agreed that, in addition to hanging out with a rag tag team of bad ass friends I don’t ever get to see, CONvergence was worth it all.
You can find more of the (poor) photos I took in my Flickr stream. At some point in the next week I’ll toss up photos from our day trips into downtown.
