VividCon - the Radio Cut (Sunday)

[tzikeh]

Sunday morning after breakfast with, oh, everyone, we headed to the Vid Review. Usually, this kind of panel is a combination of "vids that worked and why" and "vids that didn't work and why". Man, spoiled for choice on the vids that worked -- not so much on the vids that didn't. So we got two hours of reliving some truly amazing vids and discussing how they affected us, and what kind of tightrope each vidder walked so successfully. Seriously, we could have talked about every single vid that premiered, but we didn't have that kind of time. laurashapiro and sockkpuppett did the best they could with this embarrassment of riches and only two hours.

This is the point, I think, where heres_luck gave me a bag of cheese curds, therefore ensuring my delight for the rest of the day. I could be wrong; it could have been earlier. At any rate, cheese curds! Yay!

And then - the challenge vids. Again, the crowd was blown away by the quality of these vids, each created to have something to do with dreams. Showing the vids and then discussing them right there also gave people a chance to explain immediate reactions, which we don't often get a chance to do. Usually our discussion of vids comes after we've thought about them for a bit. That was interesting.

The final vid show was Con Vids, which I thought was a terrific way to end the official programming - vids that are great to watch with a large group of people, that generally don't require huge brain power, but engage on a purely gut level, whether bouncy or silly or sad.

Afterwards, the concom and our hostages various volunteers quickly broke down and catalogued the vidshow room and the panel room, and we all gathered for Calls from the Public, which was our Dead Dog panel - how did you like the con, what would you change, what do you want to see next year, etc. We chose a theme for the challenge for 2004 ("luck", as the con will begin on Friday the 13th), we all seemed to agree that the silent door buzzer was a brilliant idea and worked perfectly, and I got a massage from heres_luck. All was right with the world. Sadly, people started leaving, and there was a real desire among those who remained to hang on to the con as long as we could.

So, we did.

About 25 of us went to the steakhouse next door again for a great big dinner and chat festival, during which I regaled my table with the Most Tragicall Tale of The Nobel-Prize-Winning Quantum Physicist and the Idiot Quantum Leap Fan, which Cesca decided wasn't funny enough on its own and kept topping when she wasn't whispering with katallison about Due South. There was much drinking of wine and sharing of desserts, and laughter and screaming and scaring the wait-staff and generally having a fabulous time. That, however, wasn't nearly enough for us, so we adjourned to the swimming pool in the con hotel for, well... basically wandering around in the pool and laughing and singing in harmony and admiring one another's invisible llamas. After we tired of the pool, we all crowded into one of our hotel rooms and discussed what could and what could not be used as lube, and, amazing as it seems, we watched some vids.

And we were still cramming every last bit of fun con-going in that we could the following morning, even while packing up my car to get all the equipment back to the Loop House. And then about 12 of us went out for late pancakes.

Man, what a time.

I realize, as I read these over, that I don't really talk about the *vids*. I will try to do that when I do the behind-the-scenes stuff.