Saturday at Anthrohio, in the absense of a fursuit parade for noon, could start late for us. The first thing we particularly wanted to do was --- well, I forget when we checked the Artists Alley, but at some point in the day ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger found an artist willing to draw a picture in her BunnyHugger-and-Austin sketchbook, but the artist wanted to take the sketchbook the next day, rather than hold it overnight. So we probably went closer to the close of the day, for Artists Alley, at that.
So the first thing to specifically get to was the Jackbox games, and this time around the all-ages one. This meant there was tougher competition for a spot at the games, and also the jokes were funnier. It was also in a bigger room, Main Events, so there wasn't trouble finding seating, just in getting into the game. You have to sign in with a text code and there wasn't any sort of signup sheet where people could take turns; instead, at the start of a game was a free-for-all. I think she didn't get to play at all; at least the Friday night game she had joined in once and won in the last round of the last game.
At some point we got to the Dealer's Den, and I think we got lunch from one of the grease trucks. We'd had crepes on Friday and I think Saturday was from the potatoes truck. Something like that. Doesn't much matter. We had gotten occasional snacks from Hospitality but once the bagels ran out there wasn't much for us besides Cheetos and cookies.
Hospitality, now, they did something new for the first time: they closed between 3 and 4:00, allowing the staff to re-set the room and have at least some scheduled break. Anthrohio has always provided food to all of its attending members, not just sponsors, and solid enough food, not just popcorn or other light snacks (as at Motor City Furry Con). The rapidly growing population seems to be taxing what they can support, though, and I'm wondering if we're reaching the end of free food at hospitality.
Still, we saw where this offered a nice prospect. The cake decorating contest was set for the reopening of Hospitality at 4 pm Saturday. We went to the door, joining the modest line, and overheard the person monitoring the desk explain to a person in a wheelchair that they needed to go around, taking the short ramp up to the hotel restaurant and go into Hospitality from there to join the cake-decorating contest. This revealed to us that Hospitality was letting people in early if they were joining the cake-decorating contest. It also revealed to us that the person watching the door to Hospitality was unaware that the path from the hotel restaurant to the Hospitality is a couple of steps, with no ramp.
In any event, we followed the implicit direction and went around to the restaurant, to take the back door into Cake Decorating and discovered that Hospitality --- still closed to the general public, and a few minutes away from the nominal start of the contest --- was packed. Every table had a population, and the event-runner was explaining they only had 25 cakes and had about 60 people already in, so everyone had to share cakes.
While, in principle, we could probably have found someone we knew or who would accept our presence alongside cake decorating, we weren't feeling it. We left, instead, only the second or third time we've ever missed the cake-decorating contest (I know one time we had the time wrong, I think because the con booklet was misprinted; I feel like there was another incident but don't remember the details), and tried to reconstruct the sequence of decisions that led to the scene we saw. It's still a sore point. Do not make the Portal reference you're thinking of now.
Had we known that we were not going to make it to Cake Decorating, there was something that it turns out we'd have liked to see going on. This was not at Anthrohio. The first Nancy Fest, at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum and Library, was going on even as we waited for cakes that were not there. In fact, right then, Bill Griffith of Zippy the Pinhead fame was giving his big talk, exploring Nancy cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller's life and career. He signed books afterward, too. If we'd had any idea we would have had to think very hard whether we wanted to go to Cake Decorating or wanted to go to see the play Tom Gammill --- yes, of early Saturday Night Live, of It's Garry Shandling's Show, The Simpsons, and more --- wrote about A Day In The Life of Ernie Bushmiller. We'd probably have picked Cake Decorating, which would have made the disappointment even worse. Instead, we only found out later about what we could have done. Probably for the better.
Getting back to the Festival of the Forks, which is the name of that town festival in Albion we went to last September. Hey, I'm marginally closer to caught up!
Hey look, everybody, it's pizza's fursuit! ... Boy, you don't expect to see Richie Rich working like that.
North end of town, where they have the music company and somewhere to the right of this a pretty solid taco place.
Here I'm just enjoying the freedom of standing in the middle of the street, taking my photos without the very slight risk of a car coming up behind me. (We usually visit on Sundays or holidays when the traffic is light.)
If you want a pancake cat you ... probably can get them still, but there was this chance last year too. Maybe next year's festival.
Chalk and sidewalks means we're going to be seeing fan art and here we are, for One Piece.
Here, now, we see the work of fans of ... snakes and of octopuses. I think Hungry Howie had gone in by this time.
Trivia: In the Ordinances of Justice, from 1293, the republic of Florence banished from political life anyone who could be nobility, both old landed nobility and the business oligarchy, with a list of 147 families specifically targeted as disallowed from holding office. Source: Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages, Jean Favier. Wikipedia describes this as a series of statutes from 1293 to 1295 and notes that named family members could, if committing certain crimes, see their punishment doubled.
Currently Reading: Michigan History, May/June 2024, Editor Katlyne Danko.
