Sunday was another day of getting up early. I didn't put on a costume settling for the "just another fanboy in a t-shirt" look. Packed the car. Checked out. Chocolate milk for breakfast. Off to panels.
I kept running into Claudius van der Graffe and Louis Nicoulin at panels as we apparently had the same interests in panels about metalworking and props.
Several months back, I was at a local gun show and bought a pair of fairly generic aviator wings. Unlike many that have crests or other identifiers, these wings simply had some concentric rings and I had some gears that would steam them up. There was another gun show this weekend that I was missing because I was in Chicago but I sent an email to my dad to find the dealer with the wings and buy him out. It turns out that the guy was sold out of them.
But the OK part of that is that there was a metalworking panel that reignited my interest in the metalworking stuff I have sitting unused in my basement. I have some mold making stuff and a melting pot, I could cast pins if I wanted. I also learned a technique for metalizing resin pins where, instead of using talc as a mold release you use bronze powder. And, a poor man's etching using a laserprint onto a transparency ironed onto metal. All sorts of good maker stuff.
At the last panel of the day, the panelists neglected to bring they gear to show off how found parts and odd things can be used to make props. Good thing that I want back to the car and grabbed a bag full of stuff.
I also showed the assembled an idea I call "Meta Steampunk". If there is one thing that makes someone an instant steampunk, it's goggles. I'm not sure where that came from exactly but there it is. People wear goggle. They will put goggles on their hats or hanging around their necks, even when they are also already wearing goggles on the faces. Goggles are the hamburger-helper of steampunk. Take any costume, add goggles, it's steampunk. Well, I was wearing a pair of welding goggles and said, "This is steampunk". When I removed those goggles, there was a pair of goggles underneath. "This is very steampunk." And when I removed those goggles, there were glasses underneath those. "This is meta-steampunk".
I'm wondering if I could somehow squeeze one more layer into the progression. Flip up lenses on the glasses? Pince-nez glasses like Orpheus from The Matrix had underneath the bottom layer of glasses?
A number of people took pictures of me doing this "demonstration". I don't have any of myself. I will need to remedy that.
Quote of the weekend: "Steampunk is what happens when goths discover brown."
Once the last panel was over, we hit the road immediately for the 8 hour drive home.
Along the Indiana tollroad, there were advertisements that included an Incredibles-esque super heroine promoting the EZ-pass system. I should have taken a picture because whoever did the eyes made her look a bit crazed. Maybe that's appropriate for turnpike superhero.
The bbq sandwich I had at a Dairy Queen was the worst sandwich ever. There were meat chunks that were still cold and some were nothing more than fatty gristle. At least they didn't screw up the milkshake.
Home again. Shower. Bed. Sleep. Unpack later.
In retrospect, having to spend an extra six hours turning around and going back for my costumes was totally worth it. I don't like to think of myself as an attention whore but I must be. I would have been absolutely miserable and generally bored if I was just dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Or rather, it's not so much being the center of attention (because there were plenty of costumes that I thought were far better than mine) but being dressed up like everyone else is an icebreaker. A beginning point of conversation.
Steel City Con is here in Pittsburgh in two weeks. I'll have to decide whether to go with my standard steampunk look or with the pith helmet and infantry tunic look but I will be going. Perhaps I'll be able to drum up a little more interest in steampunk in the area.
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