You know that you are looking for a rare thing indeed when you cannot find the LEAST mention of it anywhere online (or at least anywhere the NSA-riddled tentacles of Google can probe). What I seek is perhaps the Worst SF Con ever. (No, Michael, not the Con of Wrath!)
Birmingham, AL has an apparent curse. Con sustainability is alarmingly low, just like the supply of illudium phosdex, the shaving cream atom. Whether it is because of internal politics, personality clashes, or bad juju, cons in B'ham reflect the area politics: contentious and often corrupt. Stupidity often plays a role *coughImagiconcough*.
But this...thing...was the baddest of the bad. Hight "TrandimensiCon", it was the brainchild of whom I don't remember. I met him at a room party at a DeepSouthCon or somesuch, and courted their con shirt business. He had a remarkably good punch. More on that later.
We came to an agreement, and he actually drove up from B'ham with his artwork a few weeks later...I scanned it, burned a screen and I printed a sample shirt for him within an hour or so of the start. The arrangement was going to be that I would take a press to the con and print on-demand. They bought several cases of shirts to have for me there. They would pay me for the shirts I printed. That would work.
Their uber media con turned into less-than-uber. It was low-attendance-con. Story goes that someone involved with the con was caught making off with art auction money for to make a house payment. I have friends scrabbling through their memories for any intel on this thing, and it increasingly appears to have been a screen-opener-spray-induced hallucination on my part, except that I DO have the artwork Somewhere in the upstairs bowels of the shop (it might do not to dwell on that imagery overlong...).
It was between '93 and '98. We have narrowed it down that much. a friend messaged:
Well it was after we were married but before **** (we think) came to live with us, so that puts it after summer 93 and before March 98.
The game is afoot....
(More to come)
8 comments:
"Story goes that someone involved with the con was caught making off with art auction money for to make a house payment."
For the longest time I held a firm belief that people involved in cons were idiots, crooks or both. Of course that notion flew out the window after I met Bonnie Auten (who I maintain is way the heck too nice to be involved in SF conventions).
But yeah, unfortunately I've seen too much of this sort of stuff happening. And if this convention you're speaking of was truly worse than the Con of Wrath then I hope to meet the person responsible and shake his hand because that'd truly be a monumental effort.
(Of course afterwards I'd turn him over to the cops. Or, worse yet, the fans.)
I can't always remember which century I am in when I wake, until I do a weapons check. So... Yeah... just do your best. :)
By the bye, Aard, you do have a way with words and Michael makes an excellent partner in that. Ts'why I do read here, even as a stranger in a strange land often.
Kick to teh quads, I tell ya.
@Michael- I've long considered being con chair IDs one as certifiable. Miss Bonnie IS the exception and all. She is in her glory!
TDC may only have been worse because I was there to experience it, rather than reading about it. OTOH, I believe that it was worse, because the ST Experience guys (apparently) put their all into it, and were caught unawares by the non-attendance. TDC was in part due to stoopid and a touch of avarice.
@Doom- You humble me, sir. I look at the English language as a playground. Really. It is too much fun, even when writing about things dire.
@Doom --- How kind! It certainly helps when I can correspond with someone like the Aardvark: another veteran of the late night monster movie/Frank Frazetta magazine covers/Irwin Allen television/Atom sitting on the tiny floating chair/classic Twilight Zone method of growing up in America.
Lots of my friends were older, as you two. There was a craft to my choice. Plus I got beer earlier than most, but... that's... not... mostly... the gig. Yeah, it's nice to have a partner in resonance.
In the land of giants, myself, I am. A fly on the wall, just a loud one. :)
"In the land of giants, myself, I am."
Really? How's Stefan Arngrim and Denna Lund doing these days?
And I should really try to behave. Really. I should.
Michael, I think you are being-as-have as you can.
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