Box of Barbies

CONvergence 2005, Episode II

The dealers' room at a sci-fi con looks like a dozen geek basements exploded simultaneously, spewing their contents into a badly ventilated hotel ballroom. I'm assuming it's a hotel employee who apportions the space, unprepared for the prodigious butts and frontbutts that will be negotiating the aisles. Still, you can't beat geeks for creative merchandising. The dealers' room is always one of my first stops; you never know when you're going to find that rare, decades-out-of-print "City on the Edge of Forever" photonovel for a steal.

The dealers' room at CONvergence is typically more fantasy- than sci-fi-oriented, which is fine with me, but this year, sadly, the knife and sword sellers outnumbered the used booksellers three to two. There were plenty of your standard pewter wizard/dragon/prism figurines, some papier mache masks I?m pretty sure I recognize from the Renaissance festival, cloaks in leather and velvet, and a corsetier whose wares start at size XL. You can also purchase soft-sculpture dragons with bendy tails so you can perch them on your shoulder. And there's plenty of handmade jewelry ? silver, glasswork, beading ? that's neither science fictional nor fantastical, but still very pretty.

On the sci-fi end of things, you can shop for used books, videos, comics and graphic novels, action figures, ship models, autographed photos, lunch boxes, and golden throat albums by William Shatner. On the just plain geeky front, you'll always see several tables selling T-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers sporting clever sayings. I've never before seen so many variations on the Jesus fish car ornament.

My favorite of this year's dealers was a manic woman whose stock consisted of several boxes of used, nude, not particularly clean Barbie dolls and tray upon tray of tiny clothes and accessories for dressing them. ??? Yeah, I didn't get it, either, so I went over and asked the nice lady how Barbies tie in with sci-fi and/or fantasy. Ask a silly question . . .

Delighted to be interviewed, the dealer introduced me to her signature creation, the Drag Queen Amidala. The Drag Queen Amidala is a hapless G.I. Joe cross-dressed in a handmade outfit and hand-sculpted headpiece/hairpiece to look like Anakin/Darth Vader's unfortunate girlfriend. Just in case you find the clothes and hair too convincing, though, the dealer has spent several hours blending acrylic paint to just the shade and consistency to daub some beard stubble on the figure's face. She had tried using eyeliner and eyebrow pencil, she said, but they smeared too easily.

Clearly quite a lot of thought and effort went into the Drag Queen Amidala. It was this woman's pride and joy. When I asked permission to photograph the doll, she actually blushed with pride, then tripped over herself to dig out a display stand to prop up Amidala for a close-up. By the time she was done primping and posing and arranging the background for the portrait, I was starting to feel guilty about taking up so much of her time. But there wasn't a huge crowd clamoring for Barbies, so I guess it was OK.

Today around the world: July 6 is the Anniversary of the Coronation of King Mindaugas in Lithuania.