Madison: Report

From: VINES@UIMRL3.MRL.UIUC.EDU (Rob Vines)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett
Subject: *F* Madison 1.0 report
Date: 4 Oct 1996 20:26:25 GMT
Message-ID: <533rth$47u@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>

Well, I'm back from Madison afpmeet 1.0.  Spoilers coming up.  ;-)


There, that ought to be enough space.

I had a good time in Madison.  Got to meet Terry; had some books signed;
hung out with Rocky Frisco and Joann Dominik.  Some highlights:


Terry had two appearances at Madison: one at the University bookstore,
and one at a Barnes and Noble store out at the edge of town.  Both
were scheduled for an hour; at both, he talked for well over that hour
and then signed books and chatted with people afterwards.  Attendence
at the first signing was 20 or so; the second was probably closer to
35 or 40.  Some quotes:

"A chimpanzee will take a camera out of a person's hands and smash it.
A gorilla will take a camera out of a person's hands, sniff it, and
hand it back to him.  An orangutang will take a camera out of a person's
hands, take it to pieces, and hand the pieces back to them."

"When an orangutang tries to start an outboard motor, it *starts*.  Either
that, or the piston flies out the top."

"I do what I love to do all day long, and I get paid a lot of money to do
it.  As far as I'm concerned, there's no drawbacks."

"There was a certain...pinkness...to the magazines in the upper racks."

"You can be sick even after you run out of stuff to be sick with."

"I was one of those students whose grades were about a third of the way
up from the bottom of the class.  Not high enough to be noticed, and
not low enough for anybody to worry about me."


After the B&N signing, a group of us went out to dinner together at
a nearby TGI Friday's restaurant.  The group consisted of myself,
Joann, her mother Shirley, Arthur Molin, James South, and...his wife,
whose name escapes me right now.  (Rocky couldn't attend; he had to get
up way early to drive to Chicago the following morning.)  We ate, we drank, 
we chatted.  Topics of conversation included frictionless elephants; MST3K, 
Terry Pratchett, and commercial failure in 'merika; the geekiness of the
people at the table; Significant Others who share/don't share our peculiar
fandoms; and Indian food restaurants situated next door to pet shops.

Joann brought her Paul Kidby Portfolio, which is a *wonderful* book.  I'm
going to have to get my grubby mitts on a copy of it.  My only beef was
that Vimes looked a bit too Clint-Eastwoodlike--I don't think Vimes is
quite as *squinty* as Clint is.  Since Vimes is one of my favorite
characters, that's a pretty big beef, but I'll cope.

Photos of people and photos of people taking photos were taken.  Joann
decided I looked like Kidby's Greebo when I smiled, which worried me.

A quote from Joann: "I can't get far enough away from you people!"

At elevenish the party broke up--everybody either had to leave early
the next morning or was heading directly home that night.  James and his
wife gave me a lift to my car, which was still parked on campus, and I
found my way back to my hotel, where I stayed up *way* too late reading
Feet of Clay.


To sum up: it was a good time, and I'm looking forward to Terry's next
'merkin tour.  He gives the impression that he's really surprised that
he's as popular as he is, but he's decided he'll enjoy it instead of
questioning it.  My one regret was that I didn't get to talk to Rocky
as much as I wanted to--he's a neat guy.


-- 
Rob Vines                                               r-vines@uiuc.edu
"We have met the enemy, and he is us." -- Walt Kelly's Pogo

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