Reprieve and Delay

Reprieve and Delay
Originally uploaded by stevepack.

Sunday at most cons is an exercise in futility. The main events are over and the circus is leaving town. But you have to be there. We had two good prospects for sales when two bouncy chicks tried on corsets and promissed to return Sunday. They didnt. I began to do some rough calculations in my head. Airfare, hotel and food...slowish sales...hmmm. I was starting to feel like a man on death row. Things are looking grim and I'm eating my last meal when suddenly there's a call from the governor. The dealers room closes at 2 and at 1:39 three women step up and make last minute purchases. I breath a sigh of relief. Looks like we'll not just break even but pull ahead. Tear down goes smoothly but we have to guess the weight of our bags and hope we don't get nailed at the airport.



We eat a great meal on a virtually empty patio by the small courtyard garden. The dead dog party is just that. A sad room with the last dregs of the con participants. We turn in early.



6am comes with a loud wakeup call. We catch a cab to the airport and are checking in (curbside strip search and standard luggage manhandling) when I get a call from the airline. Our plane is broken. We will now get to spend 5 hours at the airport. Joy.

Vampires to the left of me...

The San Marcos hotel was built in 1913. It is a grand Spanish Revival structure with gracefull arches and ivy covered pergolas. Errol Flynn stayed here, along with other Hollywood notables. I'm not sure what the original owners would think of the current Vampiric infestation.

It seems incongruous that creatures of darkness would choose to meet at such a warm and sunny location. But meet they do. Fewer than I'd like. The dealers room has several vacant tables where expected merchants failed to appear. The corsets are of course, well received. Their workmanship is appreciated. But the life of the undead obviously doesn't pay very well. We will likely break even. A few sales will show up later on line. After all, it took a lot of money to get here.

In the great tradition of the suburbs, none of the normal guess seem to see anything strange going on. Rossana wore a stunning hard leather corset and bra with matching arm and leg guards along with six inch platform heels and it barely raised an eyebrow at the Italian restaurant we had lunch at.

Tonight was the big shindig with everyone dressed to the nines. Tonight some major event takes place in the Vampire world but you wouldnt know it from the crowd. Quiet and subdued until the booze kicks in. We glide past on our way to dinner. But its late and all we find open is a Jack in the Box. "I thought these all closed" my wife says after "jeff" falrteringly takes our order.
" They hit a rough patch after the first four deaths from food poisoning a few years ago".

Rossana eyed her salad suspiciously. "Dont worry, it was the beef" I said taking a big bite of my greasy Jackburger.

Death is all around us tonight.

Steven Pack
Renaissance Fashions
www.Ren-Fashions.com

Come fly with me...

Come fly with me...
Originally uploaded by stevepack.

Thanks to the wonder of modern science we're soaring high above America. No problems at the airport, which is odd. Our bags were not overtly scanned. I always enjoy the look on TSA employees when they see a suitcase full of corsets, fetish wear, inflatable mannequins and strange copper tubes. Oh well.



Steven Pack

Renaissance Fashions

www.Ren-Fashions.com

Sulu is gay

Waiting for a shuttle, checking my treo to see in any indictments have been announced and I find out that George Takai just came out of the closet. Good for him.

He's 62 and was interred with his family during WWII from age 4 to age 8 but he still loves america. So why doesn't his government love him? Or rather, why wont it grant him equal rights. Back then, it was obvious. Because he was Japanese he posed a threat to the country, even though he was a citizen. Today, he poses a threat because...eh hmm. Well, he's gay. So that is reason enough for the religious nuts to have him locked up again.

Steven Pack
Renaissance Fashions
www.Ren-Fashions.com

TV Cream's Top 100 Toys

TV Cream's Top 100 Toys

I was send this by a friend and once I visited the sight, I was stunned by how many of these toys I'd had or played with. Man, I was a consumer whore. And I loved it.

An exercise in stupidity

So we're off to Phoenix for a Vampire LARP convention. As we will be flying in, we need to take everything with us. Stock, sales equipment, racks, leatherwork, personal clothes etc etc. Our first headache was figuring out racks. Because stock takes up so much room, we have used up our luggage allotment with 2 huge suitcases, a medium size case and a large duffle IN ADDITION TO out two carry ons. This is just to carry a basic slection of corsets etc. But what the hell are we gonna put stock on? The answer came in the form of last years Las Vegas Fantasy Fetish Ball where we faced the same problem. Rossana thought we just took a large rack. Actually we did not. But I spent a good hour designing a portable rack before remembering that I bought 2 portable racks for just such an situation last year at this time. Problem solved, all is well...or is it?

A call to America West tells us that out bags can be no heavier than 50 lbs each. Anything over and we get raped for $50 per bag. Do you know what corsets weight? So this morning was spent carefully adjusting all the luggage. Jettisoning anything that wasn't crucial (my toiletries now consist of a tissue and a toothpick). But lacking an accurate way to measure the weight of the bags we had to drive into Oberlin to borrow the scale at the UPS store.

"But Steve, if you have a houshold scale you could have easily gotten an accurate weight by first weighing yourself and then weighing yourself with the bag, and then subtracking your weight."

My answer? "Shut the hell up, you...something something...smartass.....coulda figured that out grumble..."

Once we get back we will at last haved a little time off, but there is no rest for the wicked. I have something big in the works. I will share it with everyone next week.

7-Foot Great Dane Is World's Tallest Dog

local6.com - Family - 7-Foot Great Dane Is World's Tallest Dog

I don't know if I like the idea of a dog that can look me in the eye and punch me in the jaw.

Wal-Mart only wants to hire the healthy.

Labor Blog

And this a day after announcing they were going to offer a more affordable health care plan. Fuckers.

Last day Ohio Ren

Last day Ohio Ren
Originally uploaded by stevepack.

Cold and rainy. With little to do until the patrons have been properly liquered up I depart the booth and make my way to Parker's where the famous 'Scotch Fairy' has arrived with a dozen or so kinds of Scotch for sampling. I taste a few including one called 'Sheep Dip'.



After that it was off to The Blonde Swan hat shop where I was fed the best damn sugar cookie I have ever eaten and pink champaign. Back at the booth my minions are drinking warm spiced wine. Honestly, how can anyone be expected to work under these brutal conditions?



Steven Pack

Renaissance Fashions

www.Ren-Fashions.com

nbc4.com - News - Girl, Father Suffer Burns At Md. Renaissance Festival

This is why you DO NOT have the audience help you with the fire part of the act. The most I ever did was let an audience member hold a torch, and ONLY for a short time. Then they clear off. What were these morons thinking??
nbc4.com - News - Girl, Father Suffer Burns At Md. Renaissance Festival

Clever coding ninjas

Back during the Dot Com bubble there was a website called desktop.com that attempted to recreate the functions of an OS using nothing but clever code and a browser. It looked great but suffered from a few things. 1) Lack of apps 2) Slow and 3) No business model.

In time desktop.com went the way of so many other Dot coms. But fear not! All that is old is new again! A company called Goovy has created an pretty damn spiffy application in Macromedia Flash. The system is not only good looking, but it actually does things.

The psaudo-desktop features an email client (which can access POP3 accounts) a contacts manager (which can import contacts from Outlook) a Beta Calendar app, a News reader, a ton of games and other bells and whistles.

I have to say that from a visual and usability point of view this system is very slick. A clean interface without excessive animated crap. The mail client features right-mouse menus. Thgis might mean little to you, but if you've ever worked with flash you know that right-mouse clicks are verbotten. These clever monkeys made it work. Go check it out. (Make sure you hhave the latest flash plugin first) The account is free and its fun to play with. Leave your impressions in the comments.

Do NOT f*ck with Vets who are bikers

Fred Phelps is a crazy 'preacher' who runs a website that is so vile I won't event link to it. His bigest pet peeve is gays but he's taken to protesting at the funerals of kids killed in Iraq. Apparently he's quite happy that IED's are killing these kids. These are not gay soldiers, but he's happy they are dying nonetheless. Apparently every second that isn't spent grovelling before GOD(tm) is a SIN and must be punnished! He has already protested at several funerals and I'm amazed a Marine Vet hasn't beaten the living shit out of this moron.

Phelps went to the funeral of a soldier recently but his hateful signs and bullhorn gibberish was drowned out by over 100 Veteran Bikers. Good for them. Of course, the evil part of me wishes that Phelps had run into the street brandishing a protest sign and was "accidently" run over by 100 plus bikes, but we can't have everything.

Words cannot express..

If you were at Pennsic this year, and you were in camp at just the right time. You witnessed an event so mindbendingly stupid and funny that words cannot describe it.

Somehow Trent (AKA Danger Trent) obtained a parachute. How he obtained the parachute is a story best left for another time. When he mentioned this fact I asked to see it, thinking it was just the canopy from an old parachute, which might be put to use as a shade of some kind. What he produced was a complete rig, including harness. Well.... that kind of toy is just begging to played with. So through trial and error we strapped Trent into the parachute and sent him to the highest part of the camp. What happened next is the stuff of legends. All I can say is "OolalaOolalaOolala!!!!


Thank you Trent. You are a pioneer and a man without fear.

Mystery Man buys $2500 to Serenity and gives them away...

God bless you sir.

If you haven't watched the series go get it on DVD. Then go watch the film. It indeed holds more emotional and visual appeal that the latest Star Wars (and I'm a Star Wars fan). The show was awesome and the movie is great. I hope there will be others.

Where ships go to die.

I will someday have to visit this place. A sargasso sea, a cemetary for boats who rust away slowly into sad corpses. If you use Google Earth you can actually spy some of these wrecks from orbit along the shores of Staten Island.

More clever monkeys

This is a heads up from my semi-cybernetic friend who tells me that this website shows some disturbingly clever images of gutted pumpkins. Go look and be amazed.

Baby squeezins at last!

Baby squeezins at last!
Originally uploaded by stevepack.

Our attempt at a whirlwind shopping trip to the Flower Factory, Hobby Lobby, Harbor Freight & Tool and Jungle Jims has been thwarted or at least delayed by a lack of places willing to serve us breakfast. Our third attempt landed us at The Original Pancake House where I was able to order this, a Dutch Baby. Only the Germans would name a pancake this. Wacky Germans.

Secrets....

Few places can possibly exceed the imagination of writers or artists. After all, they can create anything with their minds. But the Winchester house in San Diego does just that. Built by the widow of the inventor of the Winchester rifle the house was in a constant state of construction (and re-construction) is a supposed attempt to confuse the ghosts of those killed by her husbands guns. It features hundreds of rooms, doors and stairs to nowhere, intricate stained glass windows that may hold secret meanings.

Now there is a photo blog that shows some off limits areas of the house. Go take a look and be amazed. Very cool indeed.

Like Vampyres?

An old school friend of mine is putting on a production at the Cleveland Public Theater called 'The Vampyres'. It's pretty damn cool (otherwise I wouldn't post it). The play opens October 5th and runs for 2 weeks. You can fine more information about the play here.

Here's some more details:

THE VAMPYRES by David Hansen, directed by Alison Hernan Garrigan
Featuring Sadie Grossman, Margi Herwald, Tim Keo, Doug Kusak & Matt Zitelli
Wed at 8 PM, Thu - Sat at 11 PM, Sun at 6 PM
The Levin Theatre at CPT, 6415 Detroit Avenue.
216-631-2727