07/09/03’s illustrious band:

Slot Cars of the Living Dead

Day 2 of CONvergence Week is brought to you by one of the three or so dozen room parties in the cabana rooms overlooking the hotel pool area.

Like several of the much-touted room parties at this year’s con, the Living Dead party was more dead than living when I wandered past (which doesn’t mean it didn’t liven up later, of course). I was intrigued by the posters for this party, which contributed greatly to the palimpsest of literature papering the hotel walls. But there were no living dead, brain-eating zombies on display in the suite. Just a TV playing an old movie, and a kid’s slot car track set up on a table. Slot cars? I missed the connection to science fiction, but I did spend several minutes watching the hypnotic spin of the tiny cars through their loop-de-loops. Maybe that was the point.

I also dropped by Captain Kirk’s House of Ill Repute a couple times but came away disappointed. Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, if you’ll recall, was notorious for making out with any and every attractive female life form in the galaxy, human or not, so I figured a Kirk party would be pretty wild and crazy. But the place was deserted every time I happened past. Maybe all the make-out artists decided to get their own rooms.

Editor’s note: You should be laughing right now. I just suggested that con geeks could actually get some action.

Other parties did a better job of living up to their billing. I returned, like a moth to a glowing heating element, to last year’s hands-down favorite, the House of Toast. (HOT note: The interior of the room is draped with silvery fabric and strewn with strips of red lights so it looks like you’re inside a giant toaster.) The HOT people were again serving, at the front of the room, several flavors of toasted bread with a bewildering variety of toppings (including Chef Boy R De beef ravioli), and at the back, vegetarian sushi rolled while you wait. Can’t beat a combo like that.

I placed an unimaginative order for whole wheat topped with grape jelly. As I waited out the heating process, I took part in the great debate rocking the House. You see, every time a slice of the house specialty popped up, a server would yell “Toast!” And every time a sushi roll was completed, a server would holler “Sushi!” Soon the crowd took up the opposing chants -- “Toast!” “Sushi!” -- in the vein of “Less filling!” “Tastes great!” I lent my lung power to the cause of toast, of course. But finally somebody bellowed “WASABI!!” And everybody could agree on wasabi, so the rumble was off.

My second favorite room party turned out to be Vice City, the only venue serving ice cream. I quality-checked several samples and found all to be in order, including the colorful candy sprinkles. The Vice squad’s signature drink was that summertime favorite, spiked lemonade, but it was really more like lemonade-tinted spike. If any making out occurred at this con, that drink had a lot more to do with it than Captain Kirk did.

There were several different Klingon parties, as usual, including a beach bash and a trial of the reviled war criminal Jar Jar Binks that ended, naturally enough, in execution. I never quite made it into the open-mike music performance party, nor the dream interpretation suite. But I did have a dandy time and even found some jugglers to play with for a little while. How juggling relates to science fiction, I don’t know, but nobody cared. My mission was to sample a smorgasbord of enjoyments, and I succeeded.

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