We got GREAT seats! One row back and I was two seats away from Sir Terry! So my lame attempts to video the masquerade were shots of the back of his head. I was hoping to get his reactions to the costumes and skits as opposed to capturing the actual skits, but I don’t know how well that worked out. He laughed a lot, which was really sweet.
We are in love with the MC. Monkeys even stopped him later to get a picture with him. He joked about the shaky relationship between Great Britain and American in the past – Britain kept all the U’s from us making it so that we couldn’t correctly spell words like humour and hid the proper pronunciation of “yogurt” from us. In retribution we gave the world Paris Hilton. He was also an incredibly good sport when the judges took longer than expected to deliberate and the Morris Dancers had to drag out the half-time show.
The costumes and skits themselves were impressive. It was much shorter than a Dragoncon Masquerade, so that was nice. Someone made a working Clax tower! And it was a sarcastic one, too. It had to have been heavy to wear it with all the mechanics and clicking shutters. Another person dressed as Two Flowers and made not only a working Iconograph but also a remote controlled, life-sized luggage. The crowd went crazy. My favorite was the father and son dressed as Mac Feegles. I don’t quite remember the dad’s lines, but I remember his son’s enthusiastic shouting. D:What’s the first ??? S:“Fighting!” D:What’s the second ?? S:Drinking! D:What’s the third? S:Theiving! D: But what’s the most important ?? (pause) S:Fighting, drinking and thieving!!! D:Oy, where’d you get that ax, that’s not a Feegle weapon, lad. S:Dinna fash yourself, I stole it! It was adorable. They got the judge’s award for best brogue! I got to talk to them the next day and congratulate them. The kid did not stop talking, he was so excited. Not only did he win a prize at the costume contest he got to spend an hour with Sir Terry at a kids’ session and sing Yellow Submarine with Pratchett and the other kids afterwards.
But I confess my favorite part about the Maskerade was the Morris Dancers. They agreed to do two or three dances while the judges deliberated. So they alternated between explaining Morris dancing and doing their dances. The first dance three people broke their sticks and sent splinters everywhere. It was awesome. Anyway, after the finished they were told the judges were still working, so could they do some more. They ended up doing about eight or twelve dances! They were exhausted! They did ones they hadn’t practiced, so they were missing steps. They flat out announced they were doing the blahblahblah dance because only four people moved at any one time so that meant four could be standing still and resting – LOL! They took questions from the crowd to stall and catch their breath, and that was funny, too. Finally, they convinced the MC to learn a dance and took a few people from the audience who’d attended their panel earlier and learned a basic dance and got them on stage which was BEYOND AWESOME AND FUNNY to see them leaping around hitting things and missing steps. So brave!!! Also, in the middle of everything a different crew of Morris Dancers in Discworld costumes came up and did their version of the dance for a joke. Toaster got that on tape. So after watching that, I’ve decided I really want to learn Morris Dancing now.
In case you do not know, please refer to the staff bio page for this year's convention. I have run many masquerades all over the country. I am accustomed to much better communication amoungst con staff, which there was not. It made all the difference.
If you are going to be sad for me, be sad that a major part of the con could have been better.
I'm sorry, my phrasing probably didn't come across well - you can tell I'm not a writer. I was surprised and saddened that you had had such a bad experience because our experience of it was so enjoyable - and your post about it was very frustrated and explicit about the problems. My use of feeling sad for you was truly just about how I was and still am sad that you had a negative experience. I removed those lines from my post.
For what it's worth - none of the negative came across to my group watching it. We enjoyed the show immensely.