Party On
01/09/2007
I inadvertently found out how to switch off the fucking alarm which had woken me up at 7:30 a.m. on my first day and was roused by reception ringing to ask me, rather tersely, when I wanted my room cleaned. It was lunchtime.
Hazy memories surfaced, of whisky and coke being consumed in large quantities while chain-smoking with ‘Big Tim’ (pretty and female) and a couple of cool cats (plus one or two who were not so cool) at the abandoned concierge’s station in front of the Hotel Intercontinental at 4 a.m. that morning. This is why I like to stay within walking distance of the convention center.
And this was only the first of the party nights. Oh my…
Tonight would be bigger. Tonight was Hugo night. But first there was the small matter of me having volunteered my services. What if all the volunteers had overslept and the convention ground to a stuttering halt?
Thankfully, there was never any danger of that. Even among those who like to party, SF fans can drink me under the table any day. All that what was left to do was fill a couple of time-keeping slots. So, the red ribbon didn’t quite get me backstage for the Hugos (I think you need more than one ribbon for that) but I had exclusive access to a reading by G. David Nordley, swelling the audience numbers to four. As for the Kaffeeklatch I also timed: nobody showed up at all.
Quiet afternoon, busy night. The pattern was set.
I snuck onto the internet when the lobby emptied prior to the Hugo ceremony. From previous experience, I know that these things can take a notoriously long time to get going. But I hadn’t bet on the queues and by the time I ambled up to the hall, people were being turned away in droves. We watched the shenanigans from a video room on the fifth floor.
There’s no point in rehashing the results (here), but I’m pleased to say that I got six Hugos (and the Campbell) right. I’m less pleased to say that Blindsight wasn’t among them.
I got a whole lot closer to the Hugos when the winners made the rounds of the Sixth Floor and private room parties later.
I also got to hug Larry Niven (and then promptly got him mixed up when asking for an autograph), but that is probably another story.
And another hazy memory, of crowds of people lined up along the walls of the stuffy corridor, sweat-glistening faces pulled into grimaces and smiles.
“What’s going on here? Do you mind? I just have to nip over there—”
A deafening noise erupted: cheering, clapping and whooping. Arms were lowered to the floor as people bowed before me in adulation. Half-way through the passage I got it and promptly joined in at the end. Five minutes later, having shouted ourselves hoarse in the faces of surprised passers-by, the hotel staff arrived along with a cop and told us to can it.
I may have gone to a few more private room parties after that, until we all ended up back downstairs, smoking. Then the cool cats went out for a night on the tiles. And I slunk back to the hotel.
Tags: events, Japan without a Clue, NIPPON2007, Travel, Worldcon, Yokohama, Tag Index
Denni
September 28th, 2007 at 13:41
[…] I was half-way through my bento, so I nodded and he shot off to the lift. About two minutes later, he came back and placed a bottle of whisky and two cans of coke on the floor. It seems that Big Tim hadn’t been the only one to come prepared. […]