A slightly less sleep-dep'ed post about Costume Con (Part 1?)

So, first off, Hilton Hasbrouck Heights wins the "Would Not Stay Again, Ever" award. They gave away our room to someone who had stitchy's same last name but was not even of the same gender. They didn't even check this person's ID. For that matter, they didn't check our IDs either. They didn't have any other rooms available until the next day. They also rekeyed our room at midnight two days before we were to check out. Also, there were no food options within walking distance. The hotel restaurant (which was actually pretty good and had good service) was the only noms in town. Not a great setup for a convention, no matter how small. (I had pre-registered; I was #20. stitchy, who was the first at-con registration, was #198. I'm used to cons that number in the thousands....)

The convention itself was pretty good, and the two instructional panels I attended actually quite interesting. The dealer's room was very small (only seven booths, I believe?) but at least a couple of them had things that would have been of interest to me if I wasn't trying (and failing at the airport, but that's later...) to watch my budget.

The Sci-Fi/Fantasy Masquerade was smallish (anime cons generally have and meet a cap of fifty entries; this one had only thirtyish entrants). It was also as INTIMIDATING AS HELL. Almost everyone in the room was Master class and it showed. We pretty much walked in, looked around, and realized we weren't going to win anything. Of our group of six, only one was Master class. And no matter how proud I am of having made Lottie's dress from the underwear up in three weeks while working a full-time job, there was no way we were going to stack up. Still, we walked away with Judge's Awards for recreation (not "Best Recreation," mind, that was an entirely separate award) and one for our skit. And now I have a better understanding of what to expect next time.

One thing that was great was getting to see people. Not only did I get to hang out with stitchy and hoshikage, I got to spend time with fairegoddess, who now lives about an hour away from me, and ladyaxum, as well as meet Kim, our Snow White. Andandand, shefytbast came and graciously drove me to my hair styling appointment and hung out with us and did all kinds of wonderful things on Saturday! If anyone ends up in New Jersey and needs their hair styled, BTW, I highly recommend Salon X in Jersey City. ChaCha did a fabulous job on my hair. The only downside to people meeting this weekend, in fact, was that ghilledhu was struck down by the flu and couldn't come. ;_;

And now I'm hitting the incoherency zone again (6 hour flight today, plus it's three time zones later than I woke up this morning), so I'll write more tomorrow, and hopefully yoink some pictures off my camera for you all to be terrified by.

Geekish Trauma Note

Okay, I've just watched the new Transformers 3 trailer a couple of times (was not able to until now, for varying reasons), and am mostly ending up with one thought.

Apparently it's been long enough since 9/11 that we (wherein "we" means the movie industry) can get away with doing things like that to skyscrapers....

Though time has dulled the reaction somewhat, I wonder if my generation will ever stop reacting to that particular image set. I don't think our instinctive recoil will ever fully go away, though, and I think that Michael Bay is deliberately using it for shock value. Because sinking an aircraft carrier in 2 was a horrifying act, but didn't have the same impact that just this trailer does. I suppose part of it is because "skyscraper" equates with non-combatants while "aircraft carrier" doesn't, and that more of us have been in a skyscraper than have been on an aircraft carrier, and can therefore imagine ourselves inside more easily, but I still think that most of the shock value he's going for is in that 9/11 reaction.

And I'm not sure if I'm horrified about that, or if it has been enough time to start picking at the scabs on the wound.