Yesterday's session of Necronomicon Providence 2015 was, for Liv and I, mostly helping out Sigh Co Graphics at their booth. But, we did get away to enjoy some of the day's panels and entertainment. I attended two panels: Non-Euclidean Science which was an entertaining and informative discussion of how the scientific discoveries of Lovecraft's time rattled his worldview, but which then degenerated into flakey questions; and Ah-Cult! Magick in Prose and Practice, which was a fairly mundane discussion of how the occult might have influenced Lovecraft's fiction. I asked the panel whether the occult community's embrace of Lovecraft's monsters as egregores might be an attempt to reconcile itself to Nietzschean ethics and metaphysics. They agreed that this was probably the case, and the panel moderator, Anthony Teth, coined the term "Nietzsche-Lovecraftian" to cover this marriage. (He also had a nice quip to go with that, but I can't remember it now.)
The "Non-Euclidean Science" panel, consisting of panelists with some scientific or mathematics background. Panelists: Professor Dan Look, Fred Lubnow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Pete Rawlik, Jeff Shanks. Moderator: Niels Hobbs
The "Ah-Cult! Magick in Prose and Practice" panel, consisting of panelists with some occult background: Richard Gavin, Scott R. Jones, Justin Woodman, Douglas Wynne. Moderator: Anthony Teth
And then of course we had the work of vending, vending, and more vending, including a run-in with Ross Lockhart.
Ross Lockhart, no bingo sheets this time, and Liv Rainey-Smith
As vending wrapped up we rushed to the Biltmore Hotel to see the evening's performances. First was David Neilsen's animated telling of The Call of Cthulhu.
He plays a convincing 1930's-era academic at the end of his rope.
The second was the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society's War of the Worlds style adaptation of several Lovecraft tales, including Dagon and Shadow over Innsmouth, appropriately enough with a 1930's radio styled happy ending.
Preparations are being made...for a radio play!
Liv and I ended the evening with dinner and drinks, after which I joined another convention-goer in serenading Joe Pulver with Tom Lehrer songs, while Pulver shouted abuse at my singing companion, begging his editor to release him from his contract with said companion. Liv took video of this, which I will try to post later. Joe seemed more satisfied with my rendition of Unacceptable, which I sang at my companion as he left:
Unacceptable, that's what you are Unacceptable, both near and far That's why darling it's regrettable That someone so unacceptable Should think I am unacceptable too....
Liv Rainey-Smith, Joe Pulver, and Pulver's editor. All three wear awesome t-shirts.
The first day of NecronomiCon Providence 2015 was a busy one for me and Liv. We started off bright and early helping Arkham Bazaar set up their display in the Lovecraft Grand Emporium (Rhode Island Convention Center, Hall D, free for attendees, $5 for the public). For me this entailed mostly standing around and schlepping, and driving their van around downtown Providence. And unpacking shirts. Lots and lots of shirts.
We gotta lotta shirts to sell!
Once we got things set up, our marching orders broke down into three tasks: selling merchandise, kibitzing with artists, and covering each other so we could eat/pee. Naturally I took photos:
Nick "The Hat" Gucker telling me to go away.
Cody Goodfellow enjoyed how Nick Gucker scared me away. He laughed long and hard.
Liv Rainey-Smith and Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Besides both having hyphenated names, Liv contributed an illustration to Silvia's project She Walks in Shadows, which recently has made the MRAs very sad. That much awesome in one photo naturally produces lens glare.
After vending Liv went to the opening reception in a very hot church; I had a nice long nap in the hotel (overzealous air conditioning REALLY IS the bomb, folks). From there we headed to the artist's reception at the Providence Art Club. The show stealer in our opinions was Santiago Caruso, whose primary medium is ink and scratch board. His finely crafted illustrations show a level of skill and thought that one doesn't often see in illustration work, and the originals are well worth their four-figure price tags. Liv didn't get into the show this year (we think this was because she was in the art show in 2013), but her work is showing in a separate show of prints at Julian's. Get there during off peak hours if you want to see the art.
I did manage to get a snapshot of a some of the featured artists:
So, that was yesterday. Today we're most of all looking forward to the Non-Euclidean Science panel, both because such topics interest me as a mathematician and because Silvia Moreno-Garcia is one of the panelists. It will be interesting to see whether She Walks In Shadows comes up.
Liv and I flew in to Providence today. The festivities don't start until tomorrow, and many of our friends (I'm looking at you Nikki) elected to take an ultra-red-eye trip and get here the next morning sleep deprived as shit and incoherent and unable to check into their hotels until late afternoon raring and ready to go. We're older and lamer so we chose to come in today and try to get a good night's sleep before vendor set-up starts at 8AM.
Rhode Island! I think.
Providence is hot and humid this time of year, as opposed to being hot and dry back in Oregon. To combat this, the hotel has the air conditioning cranked pretty high. The hallways are almost as humid as the outdoors, but the rooms themselves are practically freezing. Not that I'm complaining. Freezing rooms are awesome in summer!
So far we've run into a smattering of convention goers, and one Silvia Moreno-Garcia at the airport, who was kind enough to say hello. I also know that Brian and Gwen of Sigh Co Graphics have reported in, in accordance with prophecy.
Those of you who expect me to talk about politics all the time won't be too disappointed. We did run into one gent who was rather unhappy with Governor Lincoln Chafee and Democrats in general. It made me think of a joke:
Q: Is Lincoln Chaffee a Republican or a Democrat? A: Maybe.
One of the convention-goers also mentioned that Donald Trump would, if elected President, let Carl Icahn negotiate with China. I'm not sure if this idea is brilliant or homicidal.
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