Here’s another snippet from the 2000 Nebulas Awards ceremony during which I played the role of Toastmaster.

Prepare yourself for what follows my introduction of Joe Haldeman. I’m sure you’ll get choked up, as did I, when you see the late Octavia Butler take the stage to accept her trophy. You’ll easily be able to tell how much she was loved—the announcement of her win produced the most enthusiastic applause of the evening.

As for my joke about Paul Levinson and singing at Nebulas, that refers back to a clip from the evening which I haven’t yet shared here … but which I’ll upload soon if you all behave.

Is it possible to overdose on ham? Today’s the day we find out, because this restaurant is serving up another helping of me from the 2000 Nebula Awards weekend. The latest clip shows me introducing John Kessel, who then announces the winner in the Best Novella category.

If you bother to watch this all the way through, you’ll learn who won that year, but you won’t see anyone take the stage to claim the trophy, because a) the winner wasn’t present (and SFWA long ago abandoned the “you must be present to win” rule), plus b) even without the acceptor reading the e-mailed speech, the clip was already at 9:50, and if included would have put it way over YouTube’s 10-minute limit.

Even if you don’t want to watch this because I bore you to tears, watch it for John—he’s hilarious!

For those of you who weren’t put off by my first serving of shtick from the 2000 Nebula Awards banquet and have stomach for more, here am I razzing Terry Bisson as he takes the stage to present the award for Best Short Story. To preserve the suspense, I won’t tell you who else gets to take the stage once he opens the envelope, even though since this was almost a decade ago, I realize it’s a false sense of suspense.

You’ll note that both my name and his are misspelled in the subtitles, but that shouldn’t matter, since you know who we are. And we know who you are …

It’s been almost 10 years since Paul Levinson, then president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, approached me at the 1999 Philcon and asked if I would act as Toastmaster for the following year’s Nebula Awards ceremony in New York.

Ham that I am, I immediately accepted. Click below to see how I repaid Paul for that honor.

The event was recorded by a group called the Rochester Fantasy Fans, something which I’d completely forgotten. At the Montreal Worldcon last weekend, they presented me with a DVD containing a complete video of that evening, which contains speeches by Daniel Keyes and Brian Aldiss, plus stage appearances by Octavia Butler, Nancy Kress, John Kessel, and others.

Maybe you’ll get to see them in the future. But for now, here’s a brief taste of my shtick. If you behave, I may inflict more of it on you.

I started the day at 10:00 a.m. at the WGA/SFWA mixer, which tossed the print writers and the visual writers in the bar together with fruit, cheese, and muffins in the hopes that we’d all just get along, instead of starting a rumble. We seemed to behave professionally. No drinks were tossed, and all of the silverware in the room was used for its intended purpose.

I did try to mingle, as the organizers of the event intended, so I tried to stay away from the usual suspects, though that was hard. Who would not want to discover, via a conversation with Michael Cassutt and Craig Miller, that they’d gone to grade school together? The longest conversation I had with any single person was the time I sat with D. C. Fontana (below), and probably bored her to tears reminiscing of the time I got her autograph at the first Star Trek convention back in 1972. She did her best to smile and tolerate me as we talked of the old days at the Statler-Hilton Hotel.

As the event died down, I took a shuttle bus over to the UCLA campus with Connie Willis, Cynthia Felice, Sheila Williams, John Moore and others so we could attend the Festival of the Book. Connie headed off to sign books at a bookstore’s booth, but Sheila and I wandered the massive campus in search of the auditorium housing the Grand Masters panel on which Robert Silverberg, Harry Harrison, and Joe Haldeman would pontificate. (more…)

Based on this entry’s time stamp, I should be asleep, since my head only hit the pillow about five hours ago, but my body thinks it’s back home, and that it’s already 8:00 a.m., and long past time to be awake. So here I am, typing up my thoughts on the first day of the Nebula Awards weekend in L.A.

For me, the weekend started not at the Luxe Hotel, but at the airport, where Jim Kelly and John Kessel, who’d rented a car for the weekend, met me at United’s baggage claim. We were all coming in on different airlines at around the same time, which allowed for us to meet and then have lunch together. We drove to the hotel while comparing notes on two foreign conventions we’d attended—my 2002 trip to Cuba and their recent trip to Columbia. At the Luxe, we quickly dumped our bags, picked up our badges, and headed off for lunch at Musso and Frank, Hollywood’s oldest restaurant.

As John drove, he pointed out various locations in the life of Preston Sturges, whom John had researched for his homage story “The Miracle of Ivar Avenue.” (And yes, after lunch, we did end up walking briefly along Ivar Avenue.) The restaurant was filled with dark wood paneling and ghosts, the latter since Mary Pickford, Edward G. Robinson, Cesar Romero and other stars used to dine there. At meal’s end, in the bathroom, I couldn’t help but think … hmmm, I wonder if Cary Cooper once stood right here where I’m standing? (OK, maybe that was too much information … ) (more…)

I’d thought I was done with the 2008 Nebula Awards weekend, and that it was done with me, so I started out the morning packing, figuring that once I was done I’d spend the few hours until my airport shuttle working in the room. Then the phone rang and I heard the mellifluous voice of Connie Willis. She was about to have breakfast with Cynthia Felice and Joe and Gay Haldeman over at the Driskoll Hotel, and wanted to know if I’d recovered enough from our feast of the night before to be able to join them.

Never one to pass up such an invitation, I changed into less scruffy garb to be worthy of both the company and the locale. The food was excellent, and was also, in one instance, art. Gay’s waffle was cooked in the shape of the great state of Texas! I don’t know why she was the one so blessed, because the rest of our food was just shaped like, well, food.

As usual, the topics of conversation varied widely, and included House, The Office, Steinbeck, Mencken, Herodotus, Hemingway, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Father Coughlin, Clay Shirky’s recent essay about the true reason for the rise of the sitcom, and more. Then we toured the hotel, where Connie and Cynthia made a new friend, as you can see below.

And that, now that I’m back home, is definitely the end of the 2008 Nebula Awards weekend!

Sundays at conventions and conferences are always lazy days, and this is particularly true during Nebula Awards weekends. With no scheduled programming, Sunday tends to be spent primarily in the bar, hospitality suite, and restaurants, and that was how I spent the day, except for the hours I returned to my hotel room to either work on Science Fiction Weekly or update this blog.

I wandered over to the Hickory Street Bar & Grill with Mike Marano and Laura Domitz for brunch. Mike and I know the insides of each other’s heads far too well, but I’d never had a chance to catch up that intimately with Laura before, which is strange, considering that, as I learned over waffles, we’d been at many of the same conventions in the early ’70s, including the first Star Trek convention. While we exchanged convention war stories, Mike got along so well with our waitress that it almost felt as if Laura and I were intruding, but as far as I could tell, no phone numbers were exchanged.

Between bunch and dinner I hung out with Connie Willis and Liza Groen Trombi in the bar, oohing and aahing over baby pictures (and a video) before Liza headed for home. (more…)

I started Saturday by brunching with the Dell Magazines gang for the annual combined Analog AnLab Awards/Asimov’s Readers Awards breakfast ceremony. I was seated at a long table at Ancho’s restaurant between Connie Willis and Liza Groen Trombi and across from Nancy Kress, Jack Skillingstead, and Trevor Quachri. The food was fine (though only Connie was enthusiastic about the grits), and the conversation was compelling (as usual). What was unusual this year is that we seemed to expend a great deal of energy before the awards were handed out trying to convince Nancy not to steal one of the miniature milk bottles that contained the cream for her coffee.

Though Nancy will try to tell you that I have a larcenous soul, do not believe her—I am the most honest of men. I was merely far more creative in suggesting the many ways in which she could exercise her thieving inner nature. Connie was equally horrified by both of us, however, which raises the question&#151which is worse, the thought or the deed? The egger-on or the eggee?

After brunch, Gabrielle Faust, Michael Marano and I visited two unique museums—the Museum of Natural and Artificial Ephemerata and the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture.

The Museum of Natural and Artificial Ephemerata is meant to replicate the experience of visiting wunderkammern&#151those curiosity cabinets popular in the 17th century which were the precursors of our modern museums—and of dime museums, in which fraudulent fabulations were often exhibited. You could find on display as part of the museum’s Impermanent Collection a taxidermy pheasant given by John Wayne to a member of one of his film crews, a fudge eyeball handed out by George Bush, Sr. one Halloween during trick or treating, and rivets from George W.G. Ferris’ first ferris wheel. The patter offered by curator Jill Hirt during our tour was as much fun as the exhibits themselves. I enjoyed our visit so much that I’m thinking of offering to loan them a key once bent by Uri Geller when visiting the offices of Marvel Comics. (more…)

I began Friday by sneaking out of the hotel to once more absorb at little bit of Austin culture. I decided to hit the Austin Museum of Art, which turned out to be having an exhibit titled “New Art in Austin: 20 to Watch,” featuring original works by local artists.

You already know how I feel about much of what passes for modern art based on my February 20 visit to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, but there were actually a few people whose work I found intellectually stimulating, notably Jill Pangallo and the team of Jen Hirt and Scott Webel, who create as the collective the Museum of Natural and Artificial Ephemerata. Those latter two turn out to have their own gallery here in Austin, and I intend to make it over there Saturday after lunch.

I then returned to the hotel, where I found the following battle in progress between competing Nebula nominees Jennifer Pelland and Mary Turzillo.

We won’t learn until Saturday night whether Jennifer’s “Captive Girl” or Mary’s “Pride” will take the trophy in the short fiction category, or whether one of their talented competitors such as David Levine, Karen Joy Fowler, Andy Duncan, or Vera Nazarian will win, but since I think that literary competitions should always be resolved by fisticuffs in hotel hallways, I have to believe that Jennifer and Mary have the edge. (more…)