Survivor

We have watched Survivor since the first season. It’s always interesting to see how people think and scheme – it’s like watching a Diplomacy LARP. The only other “reality shows” (which we used to call “game shows”) that we regularly follow are the Amazing Race and the Last Comic Standing (stupid Dat Phan). We used to follow Celebrity The Mole because Corbin and Stephen were hilarious. The wife also follows Big Brother but I usually try to avoid getting sucked into it as it takes up three nights a week.

At work, for the last several seasons, I have run a fun pool as well. Basically, you pick 5 Survivors following a basic guideline and get points based on what they do and how long they last. We’ve modified it a bit from the original to include being exiled or captured and the extra hidden immunity idol. The other big change is that we don’t take picks until after the first show – so no-one gets the person who was first voted out. Plus this gives you a small chance to see if any of the Survivors make an impression on you.

The rules for picking your team vary depending on how they split up the Survivors in the first show. Usually they have two distinct teams so you would pick two Survivors from each team and then pick an extra Survivor who would be your “wild card”. The wild card would count as part of your team and would be used to break ties if the players otherwise had the same scores. When they have done three teams, you would pick one Survivor from each team, plus two extra players – one of which would be your wild card.

The points accrue each episode as follows:
- Survival = 5 points per episode / tribal council
- Being on a team that wins a Reward Challenge = 1 point
- Being on a team that wins an Immunity Challenge = 2 points
- Winning individual Reward Challenge = 2 points
- Winning individual Immunity Challenge = 3 points
- Being the Ultimate Survivor = 20 points
- Coming in second place = 10 points
- Being sent to Exile Island = 1 point
- Being kidnapped = 1 point
- Finding the Individual Immunity Idol = 3 points
- Using the Individual Immunity Idol = 2 points

filking

It was at Keycon that I first encountered Filking. They had done some at the costume contest as a way to pass the time while the judges voted. The songs were similar in tune to regular songs but had different lyrics – usually with a sci-fi, fantasy, or gaming theme. The most common of this would be Wierd Al’s version of ‘Yoda’ based on the Kink’s tune ‘Lola’.

I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
where it bubbles at the time
like a giant carbonated soda.
S – O – D – A, soda.
Saw the little runt sitting there on a log
I asked him his name
and in a raspy voice he said Yoda.
Y – O – D – A, Yoda, Yo – Yo – Yo – Yo – Yoda

Two of the songs sung were ‘Banned from Argo’ and ‘I want a beer.’ The Argo song is pretty easy to find but I can’t find the other on the web. I do recall part of the chorus though.

I want a beer.
It’s a mundane drink but give it here.
No, I don’t want a pan-galactic gargle blaster,
I want a beer.

After the interlude, they mentioned that people could join them afterwards in the Filking room. They were pretty open to people of different vocal abilities, as long as the enthusiasm was high. There were a few people playing guitars and a bunch of people singing the songs. You could join in on the chorus if you could pick it up. I found out later that in the states, they usually have song sheets while up here we didn’t.

The Filking room was usually set up after hours, often starting after 10pm and running through until early morning. When I was younger, the lack of sleep didn’t affect me as much and I used to stay up all night in the filk room. Between that, running Circus Imperium, and living on a steady diet of caffeine, I often found myself losing most of my voice by the Sunday.

For a lot of songs, including a few I recall, see:
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/swil/FILKS/

ConAdian memories - scavenger hunt

With all the surpluses we all had, after a few days we were making some odd trades. “Okay, we will take a box of oranges, but then you have to take two cases of pop.” We ended up finding out what everyone had as surpluses, and put together a scavenger hunt list that included many of those items. We also included a lot of the guests – we figured that if we weren’t able to see them at the con, maybe someone would bring them by to see us. When we went to get copies of the list printed off, we ran into grief from the publications department – who were being all proprietary about the photocopiers. This is how we met Shannon and Kim who were with the publications department.

Eventually we were able to sort out our differences and had a small stack printed up. It went pretty well, and led to us running scavenger hunts at the next few Keycons – again, mostly for our amusement. Kim helped out by being a co-judge for the Keycon hunts. We always had bribes for the judges built in for bonus points and usually included the guests as well.

Since he was being overly precious, we also had Carey on the list as ‘Victor’s evil son’ and later gave bonus point for having him gagged. He really enjoyed the notoriety and even headed up a team at one of the last ones we ran. Eventually, we had kids and stopped going to Keycon nearly as much.

ConAdian memories - part 4

For ConAdian, there were lots of meetings. There were mini meetings with our department and then the big meeting with everyone. I have fond memories of one big meeting near the end, close to the convention itself. Paul and I had decided to show up in trench coats and fedoras. We listened as the other groups droned on about the minutia of their departments. A few of the groups made an impression on us - the publications department, the tech ops, etc. Publications went on at length in great detail about all aspects of their daily newsletter.

The people who were in charge of the Hugo award droned on about how the spaceship was going to be made from metal that had been shot into near space from the rocket range in Churchill and how it would be mounted on a laser-cut base that had been cut by a laser into the shape of a maple leaf – with a laser. The edges of the base would be black because of having been cut by the laser. He kept going on and on about the laser-cut base. It’s more common now, but in the early 90s it was still on the cutting edge. This phrase has long since entered my vocabulary as something that is overly keen to the person describing it – “y’know, it was laser-cut - by a laser”.



When it came to our turn, Paul and I basically stood up, said that we were going to have themes and badges for each day as well as actually food for the gophers instead of just chips and pop. Then we sat down. Short and quick was our presentation. Then they started to ask all kinds of questions about the details. We had all the information – we just didn’t want to be another group going on and on about it.

ConAdian memories - part 3

We had come up with a name for the volunteer hospitality suite. We decided to call it the Gopher Hole. I believe the ConAdian mascot was a either a beaver or a maple leaf. Ours was a gopher.
We came up with a theme for each day and made badges for each of them. I drew them and Paul scanned them into the computer to clean them up and add text.
I remember we had a gopher in an old sci-fi bubble suit for the classic sci-fi day and a gopher in a hockey mask and machete for the horror day. I also remember a picture of a gopher with shades floating in an inner tube.

I have them all packed away and will dig them out someday to post.

ConAdian memories - part 2

Originally, we had been thinking of carbohydrates and caffeine (chips and pop) for munchies but we were told that our budget was a bit more involved. We ended up with coffee service, cold cuts and bread for sandwiches, fruit, as well as some pop.

We had one of those large coffee urns and found out that we could basically use regular coffee and add a small amount of premium coffee and let it brew. We would start it in the morning and were always getting comments on how good it was. It seemed the longer it brewed, the better the comments about it’s quality.

For food, we had worked out a certain amount of food each hour and had bought ham, salami, roast beef, and chicken in presliced packages. We had fridges rented to store all the food before using. What we hadn’t counted on was that if people didn’t show up, we didn’t have to take out the food for that hour. We had budgeted food replacement for each hour and didn’t need to replace nearly as much – we were on the second floor and the Concom hospitality suite was on the main floor. A lot of the volunteers didn’t make it upstairs.
We ended up putting out a few puzzles and had a few people working away at them over the week.

The original idea was to allow in volunteers for a snack after a certain amount of hours worked. After a day or two we were a lot less picky about volunteers having fulfilled their requirements and were looking to keep them fed and happy. The times that we were out of the room, we were always trying to send volunteers back to make sure they had food and drinks as needed.

ConAdian memories - part 1

It was the early 90s. Christine was in charge of the Services division (and deputy Chair) for ConAdian – which was the ‘94 WorldCon held up here in the geographic center of North America. She went to the people she knew for help on her committee. Being in that group, I ended up being in charge of the Volunteer hospitality suite for ConAdian. It involved a certain amount of pre-con prep work and (hopefully) a lesser amount of at-con time.

I got my fencing buddy Paul Obirek (future PM of Canada) to help as my co-conspirator. We were responsible for the care and feeding of the volunteers. Space was booked for us in the hotel across from the convention centre and we had to make sure there were people in charge of the room, and that there was food, refreshments, and a quiet place for volunteers to unwind after they had put in some actual volunteer time.

We ended up being at the suite more than we had hoped. We were able to get away for a panel or two and were able to find some great volunteers to leave in charge here and there but we didn’t get to see much of the convention at all.