Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

We had a really nice slot for doing Match Game SF at Loscon this year. Because of the way the evening schedule worked, we had three hours to set up before our 8:00 PM Saturday night showtime, and (after Programming moved the item immediately after us a couple of rooms over, which does not seem to have been a problem; we had a sign on the door pointing people to the other room) unlimited time after the show to pack up. This meant that Lisa did not have to rush either setting up or packing things away.

I did not "count the house" but we had a decent turnout. During our 90-minute show, we played four games. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. There were lots of laughs, and some pretty sharp players and panelists, so we gave away some nice prizes including a gift certificate to Cargo Cult Books, and a membership to Westercon 76 Utah.

Lisa was able to set up the video recorder, and she recorded the final game of the evening. If you've ever wondered what the show is like, here's a chance to have a look at it. I'm posting this while the video is still processing in YouTube, so if you get a check-back-later message, it means you're reading this within the first hour after it finished uploading. Do come back later and take a look.



We were very tired when we got the set packed up, the room restored more or less to its original state, and headed back to our hotel room, but we were also very happy. That was one of our better shows, and it proved to ourselves how good our show can be if we're allowed time to set it up rather than be rushed into it like what has sometimes happened.

Regrettably, Lisa found herself completely alone at the TCC at 2 AM. With nobody else in the building and no sign of anyone else coming, she decided to lock the building for the night and came back to the hotel room. My job was to hold the keys and reopen the doors at 7 AM because Programming starts there at 8 AM (the remote online program viewing room). Chris Marble, Lisa's remaining deputy (the other two having been taken out for medical reasons either for themselves or their families) came and took charge of Hospitality, while I got my computer and worked on convention social media and also printing some more signs, replacing some hand-lettered signs with printed ones.

I did not have a lot of responsibilities during the day today. I spent nearly all of my time hanging around the TCC Main Hall. The convention seems to be mostly running smoothly. There were little hiccups here and there, but people dealt with them. I spent more time sitting, which my feet and legs appreciated. I did take charge of a reporter from the local weekly newspaper and tried to fill her in about what Westercon is and how it works, and I gave her way more material than she needs, but she said that was fine.

In the mid afternoon, I got lunch from the A&W (incidentally also picking up lunch for Sharon Sbarsky, who was running Site Selection), went back to the hotel room, ate lunch, and took a 90-minute nap. Lisa had retreated to the room earlier and also got some sleep. This helped.

Around 5:30, we bestirred ourselves and I changed from my "Western Sheriff" Westercon outfit to my "Game Show host" costume, as tonight we were running Match Game SF on the Main Stage from 7-9 pm. That's a bit earlier than we usually run the show, but we needed to end before 9 in order to turn the room back into main Hospitality and parties. Everyone pitched in, including Christopher Carson and Scott Sanford, but also many others, to get everything reset for the show. Lisa made the tech work, and we proceeded to have a good time playing five games of Match Game, giving away prizes, and making people laugh.

After the show, we cleared the way for Hospitality to restart. Kevin Roche and Andy Trembley opened the bar, the Hospitality team restocked food and drink, and the evening festivities commenced.

I spent the rest of the evening after we put way the game show gear talking with people and enjoying myself. At times, that meant discussing fine points of parliamentary procedure and Westercon rules, but anyone who knows me knows that is one way that I enjoy myself. The Westercon site selection election that ended this evening, which has only one bid, a write-in for Utah in 2024, has elements that may complicate Sunday's Business Meeting. I and others including Rick Kovalcik, Sharon Sbarsky, and Martin Pyne (who is making his debut this year as Secretary of the Westercon Business Meeting) gamed out likely scenarios.

Because of last nights overnight closure, we officially said that we would close the TCC between 1-7am unless there was interest from members to stay open all night long and staff to keep it open. People have come forward to do this tonight. Therefore, Lisa and I could leave the TCC in their hands, go back to the hotel room, have some dinner, and get some sleep. They have my telephone number and they know where I'm staying. (My hotel room is just about as close to the TCC as it is possible to be and still be a hotel room.) Hopefully, I'll get a few hours of sleep tonight, and then I can come back to the TCC and relieve the overnight volunteers.

Kuma Bear couldn't help either me or Lisa, but he did his part as a member of my staff (Stuffed Members Liaison).

( Kuma's Korner )

Sunday's Westercon Business Meeting will be interesting. Not likely as interesting as the 2011 meeting with the deadlocked election, four contending bids, and a three-hour meeting, but interesting nonetheless.

The pedometer claims more than 27,000 steps today, which doesn't seem right, as I wasn't constantly running back and forth between buildings, but I was on my feet a lot. I had to keep reminding myself to sit down when not doing anything that needs me on my feet.

Day 2 (Saturday) of Loscon 47/Westercon 73 was just packed with activity for Lisa and me. We managed to make breakfast happen in the room this time with less hassles than yesterday. We were able to open up the Westercon 74 Fan Table by 10 AM, but had to leave it in the hands of other members of the convention committee: Lisa and I had to go sort out getting an output from the sound board in California 4 (where the Business Meeting would be held at 11:30) run to Lisa's Panasonic P2 camera, in order to get better sound.

This was the first time Lisa's camera was in the field using the new camera case. It seemed to work well, and it was easier to transport than in the box we've used for the past few years. If we'd had some more time to work on it (we never seem to get enough time), we could have had better audio; however, this was still better than it would have been if all we had was the in-camera microphone.

After the Business Meeting, we took that camera gear back to the hotel room and then returned to the Westercon 74 table. My time was split between talking to people about Westercon 74 and discussing possible Westercon 75 sites with multiple people. I told several people variations of the same thing: come to Lisa and me with a proposal for a viable site and committee and we'll consider it. We're making no decisions here today, nor this month, nor probably until February.

It appears to me that some people think that because I gave the same answer to everyone, that I somehow have already made a decision, which is silly. I have said what I personally would like to happen, but we have to think of Westercon overall. I can't make a decision until we hear from more interested entities. Who knows, maybe not having to go through the bid-campaigning process may shake loose some more viable bids.

Meanwhile, I managed to shoot a small number of photos of people in costume as they came by.

( Only a couple of those who passed the table )

In the mid-afternoon, Lisa and I went down to Carl's Jr. again for lunch. I was not going to face doing Match Game SF on an empty stomach.

Loscon programming, at my request, scheduled MGSF a little later than the regular program grid would have called for, and left the space open after us. Both of these things were important. It still put Lisa in a pickle, because the technical set-up can be tricky, and when there are bleeps and feedback (which is almost inevitable) while people are coming in to the room, people complain or laugh, and Lisa really dislikes the pressure this puts on her.

( Match Game at Loscon )

It was a great load off our minds that there was nothing after us. That gave us a relatively easy hour or so of disassembling the gear and storing it back away. We'd borrowed a cart from ConOps for a few hours, and thanks to having moved the minivan over to a good space in the parking garage, we were able to move three cartloads of gear out to the Astro tonight. We returned the cart to Ops, went and got burgers again and had dinner.

There are parties here at Loscon, but we are too worn out to attend them. Besides, it took a few hours to edit the material from the Business Meeting out of the camera and into the form for the two videos I uploaded to YouTube, then to post them on Twitter, Facebook, File 770, and DreamWidth/LiveJournal.

Sunday should be somewhat easier. We still have the Westercon 74 table, but not much else until Closing Ceremonies, where it will be my honor to receive the Gavel of Westercon in my capacity of next year's convention chair (in contrast to my temporary custody of the Gavel to chair the Business Meeting). But meanwhile, it's time to try and get a few hours of sleep. Other folks at Loscon will party overnight, and I wish them well.

Because most of our "regulars" aren't attending Loscon 47 (Westercon 73) this Thanksgiving, we are a couple of seats short on our regular panelists. If you are coming to the convention and want to be a panelist, let me know. It would probably be better if you've seen the show (either our live version or the classic television show). If you think it's a quiz show where you need a knowledge of trivia, you've got the wrong game!

Lisa is in the process of staging and checking out all of the stuff it takes to put on Match Game SF.

( Well, It's a Start )

Note that all of this stuff has to fit into the minivan before we even put our personal luggage on board. Transporting MGSF to a convention is an exercise in three-dimensional logistics, and this is why we aren't likely to do the show again any farther than we can drive.

Westercon 70 was very good about giving us a good-sized room for a long time. We got the room from 6 PM with "curtain" at 8, a scheduled run from 8 to 10 PM, and an open ended move-out. As it happens, we needed it all.

I had moved the van closer to that side of the building last night to facilitate move-in, and borrowed a bell cart to move the kit from the van. It took two trips. Lisa had to leave things like the computers and sound board to cool off because they were painful to the touch after having baked out there for days. The hotel brought the tables that Westercon (following our request) had ordered, and we rearranged the room, strung the vinyl banners that Sasquan bought us, set up the tables and chairs the way we liked, and so forth. Lisa worked her usual magic on getting the sound equipment working. Judy Bemis once again did wonderful service running the Prize Table.

At 7:30, I went back to the room and changed into my game show host costume. Shortly after I got back to the Xavier Room, the audience started arriving. Lisa later counted the house, and we estimated that somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-10% of the estimated attendance of this year's Westercon came to our show, resulting in a roughly two-thirds full house.

( Showtime! )

Tonight's show went really well. We (and I mean both me and Lisa) got lots of compliments from both returning and new audience members. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I was tired but happy and energized, as I always am after a good show. We had someone from TARDIS, the Arizona fan group who ran Match Game at Westercolt .45 in Phoenix twenty-five years ago and gave me a starter set of questions that formed the core of the show we do today, came up and expressed admiration of how we've polished the show and that we continue to give TARDIS credit.

Move out was more challenging than move in. We couldn't take the gear out of the (alarmed) rear door of the Xavier Room, and while the Astro was physically close to where we were, there were two locked doors (the ballroom lobby) between us and the van. Fortunately, when I got a bell cart to start moving out (while Lisa packed the tech gear away), hotel security helpfully unlocked the intervening doors for us, so we were able to make two runs over with the box of Tech, speakers, game gear, etc. without having to circle clear around the hotel.

After putting everything away, we made a relatively brief stop at Westercon 72's Victory Party, which was still going strong approaching midnight. We would have loved to stay longer, but we need to check out Tuesday morning, and we have a drive to Kingman, Arizona ahead of us. Our goal is to be on the road by Noon for the 200 mile drive to Kingman, in order to give me some chance of getting back on my "normal" work schedule so I can work from the hotel room on Wednesday.

Those of you who have been saying for a while now that you've been writing questions for Match Game SF have until mid-day Monday to get them to me for them to have a chance of making the show in Tempe at Westercon, because I expect to be assembling the question packs on Monday night. My e-mail address is my first and middle initials (KA) followed by my last name @gmail.com. My full name is Kevin Allen Standlee. Thanks for your contributions!

We underestimated just how long it would take to get the Match Game SF gear moved from our room to the function room where we would be doing the show. We should have started at least two hours in advance rather than 90 minutes. It would have made the set-up less frantic for us. However, Lisa got the show assembled, and jcbemis, lindadee, and scott_sanford helped me and Lisa get everything in place for our 9 PM show. We had a good turnout, there were no serious glitches, we gave away lots of prizes, and everyone seemed to have a good time. I was very pleased. But also very sore. Three hours on my feet and my back and right ankle pained me considerably. This became very obvious to me when Lisa and I walked over to Safeway to get some food to bring back to our hotel room after the show.

I don't have any photos of our Friday night show, but Lisa shot some video that I may post late where I get a chance.

We'll be back for a second show on Sunday night. Our big commitment on Saturday is the Westercon Business Meeting, which should be short; however, it is also a technical rehearsal for Worldcon as Lisa exercises the recording gear.

We packed most of the Match Game gear and much of our traveling kit into the Astro last night when it wasn't so hot. Lisa is very good at packing the vehicles. Things that are heat-sensitive or very obviously valuable we'll put in just before we go. We're mostly ready to go except for our "hand baggage" and the fact that I'm still at work for a while. When I'm released (I hope no later than 2 PM), we'll finish packing and hit the road for Alturas, the first leg of our trip up to Portland and Westercon.

At least two banker's boxes are MGSF prizes, some of which are now sufficiently old that every contestant is going to get one, win or lose, until they're gone. This will (we hope) make the return trip lighter.

This time we remembered the MGSF banners. We've forgotten them in the past, which is annoying. And now we have nice permanent vinyl banners, thanks to Sasquan who made them for us last year.

Looking at how difficult it was to fit everything into the minivan, Lisa said she's relieved we decided to not try and carry the show to Kansas City in August.

I woke up ahead of my alarm on Wednesday morning, and we would have been really out ahead of schedule if I hadn't spent more time that I should reading my e-mail and commenting on web sites. Nevertheless, we got out of the hotel, had breakfast at Jake's in downtown Bishop, and were on the road two hours ahead of my originally planned schedule.

( Bishop to San Diego )

What I hadn't expected was that it would be raining much of today. I cannot really complain about the monsoonal moisture (any rain at all is welcome), but it means that San Diego is way more humid than we expected, and we are pretty hot and sticky.

( Town & Country Hotel Challenges )

The cart Lisa built helps enormously (and seems to have held up under the rain better than we feared), but it still takes three loads of cart to move the show gear.