Balticon

[kmusser]

Gaming: I spent most of my time in the gaming room, as usual. The weekend included Carcassone, Aladdin's Dragons, Ra, St. Petersburg, Ticket to Ride, Elasund, Caylus, TransEuropa, Dvonn, and Bootleggers. Last two were the only new ones. Dvonn is an abstract two player that I quite liked. In Bootleggers you play mobsters running whiskey during the prohibition era and was also quite fun.

Neil Gaiman: Not much to say except that he seems as nice and as funny in person as you'd expect him to be. For his reading he did a couple of short stories and a poem which were all fabulous - I believe they were all from his upcoming short story collection Fragile Things. He also did a couple of interviews, talking mostly about the upcoming movies, Beowulf, Stardust, and Coraline. He seemed most excited about Stardust, said they were aiming for something in the style of Princess Bride, so that's a good sign. Gave a glowing description of fellow guest, Gene Wolfe's writing - I guess I need to read some of it.

Concerts: Lorraine a'Malena - Gothy music, with a heavy dose of humour, and some songs by Gaiman. They were pretty good. I thought it was amusing - Malena was all glammed out ala Elvira, but sometimes she'd drop character and it was like she was suddenly replaced by Gilly - very cute, though cute probably wasn't what she was aiming for. Other band I saw was Boogie Knights, one of the staples of filk. Filk isn't really my thing, but they were funny. I didn't know that the prologue to Romeo and Juliet scanned to "My Sharona," now I do. Also I did get to see maugorn briefly, so yay for that.

The Con: This was my first Balticon, and while I had fun, I wasn't impressed by the con in general. My apologies to all the folks on my friends list that are staff for it. Everything dealing with the guests of honor was very well done, but otherwise was pretty marginal. Gaming room was dark and cramped, and the con suite was I think the saddest I've ever seen. Dealers room was fine, and I didn't go to any of the panels, but they were probably fine too (actual descriptions in the program rather than just titles might've convinced me to go though). Having the parties in what might as well have been a different building was awkward, though I could see where they were running out of function space. Anyway, I might be back, but won't go out of my way to do so.

Special thanks to squire_liz and blueinva for being such excellent company.

Comments

[wanderingbastet.livejournal.com]

Ooooh I had heard about Coraline (Dakota Fanning?!? Oooookay...) and Beowulf, but hadn't heard about Stardust. All of them have the possibility to be either really awesome, or horribly sad and wrong.

We'll see, I guess. :-)

[kmusser]

His comment on Beowulf, "I'm hoping its a really good movie, but I have no idea." Though I think Crispin Glover as Grendel is brilliant.

I got the impression that Coraline wasn't nearly as far along as the other two as he didn't talk about it as much.

That he was obviously pretty excited about Stardust I think bodes well for it.

[patches023.livejournal.com]

I would love to have discriptions of the pannels too. When I've made that suggestion, I've gotten back "This is a volunteer run con, if you want that done, do it yourself." A very sad attitude.

[yellojkt.livejournal.com]

According to Neil, Stardust is filming as we speak. I don't remember what he said about Coraline. I think maybe that it will be stop-motion animated. I saw that on his journal.

Neil was cool

[wolfdancer.livejournal.com]

But Peter S.Beagle was much cooler. But then I have been in love with his work for a lot longer.