My favorite photo from Readercon (my favorite of all conventions) was taken during my final moments of the con, almost immediately before I began my trip home. I’d paused on the way out to visit a lobby bathroom (as one does before a long drive) opposite the hotel restaurant. After I’d taken care of business, I noticed that on the other side of the glass wall separating the hallway from the restaurant was a large circular table of other attendees which included K. Tempest Bradford, who sat with her back toward me.

I tapped on the glass while pointing at Tempest until someone else at the table gestured that she should turn around. Once I’d caught her eye, I placed my hand against the glass, hoping she would raise her hand to mine.

And she did!

So as soon as our fingers were separated by only a pane of glass, I slowly intoned, with a voice I tried to make sound hoarse and weary …

“I have been … ”

And the table roared, for all recognized (1982 spoiler alert!) Spock’s dying words to Kirk from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. (more…)

I never noticed this while watching any of Mel Brooks’ movie or TV appearances, but apparently the man has pointy ears, just like Mr. Spock. And Brooks even got his at the same time as Leonard Nimoy!

If you believe what he had to say in a February 1975 Playboy interview, that is …

Playboy: Tell us about your ears.

Brooks: My ears are very much like Leonard Nimoy’s—you know, Mr. Spock on Star Trek, the guy whose ears come to a point. It happened like this: One night Leonard and I went out and before dinner we had 35 margaritas. We woke up in a kennel. There were four great Danes, two on each side of us. Their ears had already been clipped. And so had Leonard’s. I reached up, felt my ears and, alas, mine had, too.

Now you know.

Plenty of other fun—though highly suspect—anecdotes there. But you’d better bring your own Raisinets.

Last weekend, when I wasn’t schmoozing with friends at SFWA’s Nebula Awards weekend, I was off at the nearby Artomatic, an arts installation I’d heard about in years past but had never managed to attend. Since the last Artomatic was in 2009, and who knew when I’d ever be spending a couple of nights just a few blocks away from one, I knew I had to sneak over.

What is Artomatic? It’s 1,300 artists taking over an 11-story building that’s soon to be demolished, and surprisingly, amid the tens of thousands of works of art, plenty of science fiction, fantasy, and horror turned up. In an effort to get those who come here to read about those sorts of things to drop by—Artomatic runs through June 23—I thought I’d share a fraction of the art of the fantastic that I spotted.

(To my great horror and regret, after I got home, I discovered that I’d misplaced some of the artists’ names, so in the event you do head on over to Artomatic and see some of the paintings I’ve included below without attribution, could you please let me know the names of the creators. Artists need all the publicity they can get! All artists have now been identified. Whew!)

Dana Ellyn

“Darth Vay-Deer,” by Isaac Otto Lange

(more…)

When I heard that Majel Barrett-Roddenberry had died, I immediately remembered the first time I’d met her, which sent me scurrying back to the autographs I’d gathered as a teen at my early conventions. What I found, which you can see at right (click to view at a larger size), showed that what I’d always thought occurred never did, that I hadn’t met her when I thought I had.

The image I’d always held in my mind was very specific. It was back at the Statler-Hilton Hotel in 1972, either at the first Star Trek convention or a Creation Con, and if I close my eyes I can even see the interior of the small room where I filled this page, which was off a corridor near the elevators. Yet when I found this sheet which was supposed to contain her signature, her name was nowhere to be seen.

Ah, fickle memory! (more…)

I don’t usually leap into the fray when memes spread across LJ, but this one intrigued me:

Rules:
* Post 3 things you’ve done that you believe nobody else on your F-list has done.
* If anybody responds with “I’ve done that,” add another thing.

So here’s my attempt to come up with three things I’ve done which I doubt any of you could have possibly done:

1) Jumped out of a plane—while wearing a parachute, of course—with an Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics.

2) Looked into the eyes of Ted Kennedy as we stood alone in the rotunda of the Supreme Court at opposite ends of the coffin of a Chief Justice.

3) Received the very first badge the very first day of the very first Star Trek convention.

Any challengers?