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bunnyhugger's panels this busy year at Anthrohio was Friday in the early evening. (I failed to put in any panels.) This was the Bunnies Meet and Greet, a slight shift in names from the Species/Special Interest Group/Gathering, yielding on this point to the change in common terminology. She also hoped to shift her plans for the meeting some. Usually she's done a round of everyone introducing themselves and then some trivia questions, rewarded with cheap bunny toys, and then prompting things rabbit- and hare-related to talk about. This time, she planned to relax on programming every minute of the panel and instead let folks get up from their seats and go around talking to each other instead. This has been the pattern at more Meet-and-Greets, earning them that distinction from the SIG name.
The room was packed, like every panel this year was. Not quite to crowds lined up standing on the edge of the room --- which up to an hour before had been Artists Alley, causing several people to step in and be disappointed --- but near enough, and far better than her usual turnout. (Granting her usual panel is scheduled for like Sunday at 10 am when nobody has woken up.) Not everyone was a rabbit but most everyone had some rabbit connection, including a good number of people with pet rabbit stories that avoided getting into sad pet rabbit stories.
bunnyhugger did toss out a couple of trivia questions, not so many as she usually would. Besides trying to schedule things less aggressively she also had fewer prizes to give away. She hadn't had the chance to raid stores just after Easter to get bunny-themed clutter on 90% off. The best thing she had left --- a cheap pair of bunny ears on a hairband --- she'd had to try, briefly, to wear, when it appeared that she had forgotten to bring her usual walking-around-the-convention ears. They turned out to be in my bin with my ears and tail and kigurumis, left over from Motor City Furry Con where we'd taken things off and forgotten about them. (She also had her headband, the small ears with a little crown, that she wears as Queen of the Morphicon Bunnies, but the headband snapped and it was beyond repair with what we had in the hotel room, despite attempts.) So the giveaways were fewer this round.
bunnyhugger worried that the just-get-out-and-talk part of the night wasn't as good as other people's panels had been. I don't see it myself, although things were less raucous than the panel that immediately followed in the same room, and that bunnyhugger had to excuse herself for to change her outfit. Coming back down in her peacock kigurumi she went from panelist to simple attendee of the Avians Meet and Greet.
This was a packed, standing-room-only house, maybe reflecting that there's more birds, or at least bird suiters, than you think at these things. It may also reflect that they gave away treats, small boxes of popcorn and gummi worms. One person wearing a raven beak was able even to pick this up in beak and toss it up where he could get it in his human face, if not his mouth. It made for a convincing illusion of eating, though, and eating bird-style.
Several people complimented bunnyhugger on her peacock kigurumi, and I'm glad for it. I don't remember people introducing themselves to the group as a whole, but I'd had to step out for something or other myself and might have just missed my chance.
Over the rest of the evening we did find the second of the cryptid not-necessarily-the-letterbox stamps, and I had the idea to stamp them in my letterboxing book just after the video game room closed, temporarily removing the stamp from it. And bunnyhugger jumped into the Friday night Jackbox Games panel, struggling against the crowd to get into a game at all, and to get into one she might like playing. These Jackbox Games panels at cons always go to the one where you design T-shirts which, she observes, involves about four hours of waiting around before the audience gets to do anything, and then wild hope that someone comes up with a T-shirt drawing that's recognizable as anything and a saying that makes for a joke. But it keeps getting picked by crowds so they must like it. I don't believe she ever got into a game Friday night, but there'd be other Jackbox sessions.
If there's a disappointing side to all the stuff we got around to doing it's that we got to the dance late in its progress. It might have been as little as 15-20 minutes that we were there, which isn't the worst we've done at least. It had been a very full day, though, and if we didn't have enough time at the dance I did not feel like we had wasted any important part of the time we had.
I know you're wondering what's next, pinball tournament or amusement park. The answer is neither: it's a street fair! But before we get to that ...
Mouse. This creature spent a couple days running along the side of our dining room, and then like a week or so running around the humane trap; you can see the combination of popcorn and peanut butter was finally enough. We set them out in the garage where we trust they had an unbothered winter surrounded by not-snow, not-predators, and sunflower seeds falling out of the bird and squirrel feeder buckets.
But here we are at the fair, which included over 3200 vendors selling barbecue and like two places selling things vegetarians might eat (fries).
It may have been a barbecue-themed food festival, really, but you get some idea how many places were set up and how packed it was.
The main drag of downtown was blocked off for --- I suppose it must have been Homecoming weekend; it'd be daft to schedule the fair otherwise. But the streets were lined with vendor tents for a solid quarter-mile or so, both sides.
Center of town! The bar-restaurant on the left is somewhere we'd often go to eat with bunnyhugger's parents, at least back before the start of the pandemic, and we're a little amazed it's stayed open despite the pandemic and the intrusion of hipster restaurants that offer less food for more money down the block.
Movies at the sidewalk theater. I assume The Nun II is a movie, at least, but if you told me it was a band performing I couldn't dispute you. Also we were happy to see they're still doing Rocky Horror midnight shows for events like Halloween.
Trivia: In May 1943 Bell Labs president Oliver E Buckley, speaking on the Bell System's Telephone Hour, introduced the American public to ``radar'', speaking in general terms which revealed nothing but the word about how it worked. Source: Telephone: The First Hundred Years, John Brooks.
Currently Reading: DC Comics Cover Art: 350 of the Greatest Covers in DC's History, Nick Jones. OK, but I do like the gentle covers, like Superman delighted by the geese flying under him, or Batman and Catwoman on a movie date surrounded by Batman cosplayers, or a Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen of Jimmy on his scooter, in the air, held up just by the arm of Superman coming from above frame. Which may all have nothing to do with anything but are endearing and evoke those goofy Golden Age covers where, like, Batman and Robin and Superman are playing carnival games to sell war stamps.
