E Corflu Vitus highlights

[randy_byers]

Now that I've gotten the anxiety out of my system, I can maybe report a few highlights of the recent Corflu, although I guess if I were doing a proper con report I'd merge those comments with these. E Corflu Vitus was held in Sunnyvale, California this year, right next to San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley. "That's where the first Fry's store was," said magscanner as we drove by on Thursday. It wasn't until I arrived Wednesday night and drove through the area in a taxi that I really understood that I was in Silicon Valley, with many a familiar tech logo gleaming in the night. Then I arrived at the hotel, the Domain, and suddenly realized why it was called that. Duh.



On Thursday voidampersand picked me up bright and early at the hotel and drove me into the hills between San Jose and Oakland. We first stopped at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, which wasn't open but was still fun to see. Then, continuing the exploration of my obsession with culture of that era, we drove around Castro Valley and Dublin Canyon to get some sense of the area in which early pulp SF writer Homer Eon Flint plummeted to his mysterious death in 1924. It was a lot greener and lusher in those hills than I think of when I think California, but Tom said it was at least partly because of the wet winter they've had in the Bay Area. The thickly-forested hills, however, indicated a different ecology than the dry grass hills of other parts of California. Anyway, it wasn't what I had imagined when I read about Flint's death, so it was very interesting to see the real terrain.

We then drove through Oakland to Alameda Island, where I met up with a gang of people for winery and distillery tours. This was again a lesson in geography for me, because I really had no idea where I was going to be in relation to anywhere else I'd been in the Bay Area before I got down there. I had no idea that Alameda Island is right by Oakland, for example. I did know more or less who I would be hanging out with, however, since the prospect of this excursion had come to my attention as early as Novacon back in November. Thus I knew that I'd be seeing the fishlifters and other Brits like Mike and Pat Meara and Rob Jackson, as well as tour guide spikeiowa. I'm not sure it had been established yet that Corflu 50 winner grytpype_thynne would join us, but I was certainly happy to see that he had survived the trans-atlantic voyage (his first) and seemed to be having a good time of it. I'm pretty damned sure Pat Virzi wasn't in the original plan, but she has an uncanny talent for showing up where she's needed. Also guiding us were magscanner and his wife, Karen, whom I knew from past Potlatches and Corflus. (Karen, bless her soul, is chair of the upcoming Potlatch, also at the Domain.) We visited two wineries, Rosenblum Cellars (where we also ate a lovely picnic in the sun) and Rock Wall Wines, with a stop at St George Spirits in between. I'd heard about the latter from kproche and bovil at the Montreal Worldcon in 2009, where they gave me a taste of something, perhaps the absinthe.

Back at the Domain, a few people had begun to congregate in the lobby around Chairman johnnyeponymous. Eventually I headed off to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Mountain View with spikeiowa, voidampersand, grytpype_thynne, and the fishlifters. Then back to the hotel, where Lobbycon was in full swing, including unexpected visitor Graham Charnock, of London. (Which is a reminder: Graham Charnock for TAFF!) We basically hung out until the hotel bar closed at 11pm. Somewhere along the line ron_drummond called from New York to say "boo!", which was great fun: Corflu coast-to-coast.

So the pre-convention festivities were topnotch, and of course everything gets much more chaotic after that, as the convention got rolling on Friday. Highlights of Friday included more of Lobbycon as more people arrived over the course of the day before the consuite had opened. I drank fine wine with the fishlifters and grytpype_thynne in the mid-afternoon, and got quite a disquisition on cricket in the bargain. When I finally spotted Art Widner, I was able to hand him a copy of Travlin' Jiant which was the sekrit projekt I mentioned that I was printing before the convention -- a collection of Art's fannish travelogues from the early '40s that kim_huett put together in his honor. Art was clearly moved by the collection (good on yer, Kim), and he and I retired to the bar to talk about other possible projects of a similar nature. I had dinner with Ted White, Bill Burns, and Michael Dobson before opening ceremonies. After opening ceremonies, where Carrie Root was chosen Random Guest of Honor, I spent the rest of the evening in the consuite, where I gabbed with a great many people and literally made a drunken ass of myself on the virtual consuite. (At least I didn't drop trou in the process, which is more than I can say for Charnock.) The next day molesworth, posting in the virtual consuite as bustopboxer, said I had looked well langered (mate), which was a word I'd never heard before. I tried it on several conveniently located Brits, and none of them had heard of it either. So either he made it up, or it's some kind of South London slang unknown elsewhere. (Well, except for Wiktionary, which suggests that it's actually Irish slang for "extremely drunk". Fair enough.) On the plus side, however, was finally getting a chance to meet the virtual consuite wrangler, katster, who was a total delight and seemed to be having one of those religious experiences that we've all had when first meeting Our People at a convention. Meanwhile, in the surprising attendees category for Friday were Victor and Tamara, who showed up unexpected by anybody except perhaps Andy Hooper, after driving from Seattle.

Saturday is the day of the official program at Corflu. It was perhaps a bit light this year, but probably not, because Corflu is never heavily programmed. The fanzine review panel I was scheduled to be on was canceled, but I was fine with that because it was just causing anxiety for me anyway. The highlight of the main program was probably grytpype_thynne's very funny discussion of fan art, which focused on his own brilliant work over the years, some of which I'd never seen before because it was from the '90s, before I was really paying attention to fanzines. I could have sworn that I've seen the Ustream video of this performance embedded somewhere on LJ, but I can't find it now. Can anybody help me with that? Another highlight of Saturday was when the_maenad told me that she had a car and had spotted a brewpub in downtown Sunnyvale, would I be interested in having dinner there? Certainly I would. It wasn't the greatest brewpub in the world, but it was a fun expedition and a rare chance to talk to the_maenad one-on-one. Well, okay, on Thursday at Lobbycon we'd chatted about her folk punk band, the Donutsh, and why it has such a ridiculous name. Bloody gamers! After that, on Saturday, that is, was Andy's latest radio play, "His Ghu Friday", which was based on Howard Hawks' adaptation of The Front Page. Lots of good performances, but the best may have been kevin_standlee, who, as he put it, was typecast as the Evil Worldcon Chairman Barkenhorst. After that was more consuite action, including a long conversation with calimac about classical music and Peter Jackson's LOTR films. bovil and kproche showed up in costume, much to the consternation of Marty Cantor. They were dressed as huggable sharks, which may have been a reference to the San Jose NHL team, even worse. Kevin also showed me production pics of his sekrit projekt costume for Gallifrey, which was a true work of art. Tiki art, mind you, but tiki Dr. Who art, which makes mad sense. I was about to go to bed at a reasonable hour when Mike Meara offered to bring more wine down from his room. Ah well, best intentions and all that. This was definitely the Corflu of the muchness of wine, for me.

Sunday was the banquet and the final ceremonies, including the FAAn Awards, which this year consisted of brass plates hand-lettered (apparently very loudly) by voidampersand. The plaques were based on a famous California hoax perpetrated by E Clampus Vitus (the source of the convention's name), and Tom gave a bit of the history at the ceremony. It's well worth reading the Wikipedia page about the hoax. It would have been great to win one of those lovely objects, but Chunga at least finished in the top five, which was lovely enough. Congrats to Trap Door, Roy Kettle, Steve Stiles, Robert Lichtman, and efanzines.com for their awards, and Art Widner for his well-deserved lifetime achievement award from the committee. Congrats to spikeiowa, too, for winning a well-deserved past presidency of fwa. Then Carrie finally got to release her nervous energy on the RGOH speech, which was about the trip that she and Andy took through the natural wonders of the Southwest after Corflu Silver in 2008, with a slide show to illustrate. Then it was on to the dead dog portions of the convention, and boy was I a dead dog. All I can remember is that I found myself surrounded by Brits in the bathroom at one point. They claimed that they were going to adopt me. Can't remember if this was before or after grytpype_thynne spilled a glass of wine on Lady fishlifter's shoe and was forced to lick it off. Well, reverendjim wasn't around to do the honors, although his name was certainly mentioned under the circumstances. Oh yes, and there was the trip to the grocery store with Ian Sorensen and Jeanne Bowman to buy alcohol for the dead dogs. Jesus, you try going shopping with those two sometime! We had to pry Ian away from the checkout counter, where he was trying out all his old bad gags on an unsuspecting audience of clerks and innocent customers. "It's okay," he explained, "I'm leaving the country shortly." Ah well, it all went on his credit card.

And I think that's about it for now. There's more where that came from, of course, and I'll probably modify these notes going forward. Many thanks to johnnyeponymous for all his efforts on the convention. He seemed to be everywhere at once. At one point he unblurred briefly to say to me, "I don't remember seeing you run around this much at your Corflu."

"True," I said. "I had minions."