Business to take care of before of pleasure this morning: since James was going to be busy tomorrow, I just went out and did some shopping: Publix and then Kroger. It was spattering rain at this point, but by the time I finished the sun was trying to peek through. We eventually never got the rain they had been predicting all week.

Kept a weather eye out on the traffic. It was still green eastbound when I left about two. After stopping at the ATM, I headed for the hotel where 221B Con was being held. The parking lot didn't look overwhelmed, so I drove up to Barnes & Noble and killed an hour there. By that time it was 3:30 and I was going to have to think about dinner, since I was pretty much blocked for panels from five to eight. So I drove a little further up the road and picked up a cup of soup, a half a tuna salad sandwich on honey wheat, and a bagel with cream cheese at Panera.

There was quite a lengthy line already formed at four when I got back into the hotel, so I just took a bathroom break. Registration opened at four so the line had already moved once I emerged. Got in line behind two people, one dressed as Molly from Sherlock (there are a lot of Mollys here, also a lot of Irene Adlers from the same series, several with "riding crops"), and listened to the babble around me and hoped I'd get my badge before my soup got too cold!

Registration took twenty minutes all told, and then I retreated to a little nook at the end of one corridor where there were two armchairs and a table to eat my soup and peruse the con booklet and the pocket program. Then I took a turn around the hotel to see where things were. Where panel rooms were at Anachrocon were the dealer's room here, and what had been the dealer's room was the tea, which will be panel rooms tomorrow. Here I stopped to talk to Anthony Taylor for a few minutes. All my panels tonight were in the side corridor near the pool; actually all of them were in one room, Polk.

The first panel was "Minorities in Elementary," which was entertaining but eventually wavered into discussion about Irene Adler's character and why people felt no adaptation ever gets close to her real character. The moderator was very opinionated! (Not necessarily a bad thing, but slightly off-putting.) Detective Bell has a lot of fans. :-) They also discussed non-traditional teamings of Holmes/Watson on the web.

The next panel was about Sherlock Holmes as featured in radio series. This was talk about both British and American productions, as well as adaptations from companies like Big Finish. One of the gentlemen on the panel had something like 500 recordings of Sherlock Holmes radio shows! (He asked some trivia questions; this is the person who will be setting the questions for the trivia contest. Yikes! These were hard! Do you know the first television Sherlock was not Ronald Howard?) A few excerpts were played, including a funny sketch from what sounded like a Command Performance radio show during World War II era, in which Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce switched roles (Rathbone was supposed to be Watson and Bruce Holmes, but it got a bit mixed up at the end, and Dick Powell even showed up), and a special treat from Big Finish at Christmastime, in which Holmes stays up to catch Father Christmas.

Louis Robinson was sitting in on that panel, and during the break between the radio panel and the next, he asked me if we had enjoyed the performance at UUMAN two weeks ago. I told him we had and he said that the pianist (Brian) had been a last-minute substitution and they had come up with all the things I loved, like "Pennies from Heaven" and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" at the last moment. Well, you really couldn't have told that at all.

The last panel was "British Panel Shows." Louis was on this panel as well as he used to work for "Auntie Beeb" and he gave us some idea how these "unscripted shows" were scripted. The panel show was something we used to have here—What's My Line, for instance, and I've Got a Secret—but faded out, which were a pity, because those shows are classic. I hadn't heard of several of the panel shows discussed; they were both on television and on the radio, with most of the conversation concentrated on QI, which you can find online and which is really a very funny series with Stephen Fry as the perfect host. I've seen some of the radio ones which they mentioned on the BBC schedule but have never listened to them; I must try them. I also didn't know there was an unexpurgated version of QI. I'm sure that gets very rowdy!

Well, I'd toyed with going to the Canon 101 panel at nine, but after wandering around a bit, peeking into the dealer's room, which I never did get into, and taking a picture of a super TARDIS they had in the middle of the floor, and talking to Caran Wilbanks, I figured I would just head for home. I have a full day tomorrow and it would be nice to have a couple of hours with James.

But I had to laugh when I headed out to the parking lot; the lights around the hotel and the close lot were so bright that the birds were still shouting from tree to tree and it was nearly dark! I stopped under one tree where a mockingbird was beating out one song after the other and started to imitate him. You really piss off mockingbirds this way. :-) Anyway, traffic was normal as it usually is by this time, and James played Tom Bodett (he left the light on for me &lt:g>).

So we talked and Snowy sang and we watched the "viewer-built" episode of Hawaii Five-0 and I cooled off and watched the weather report with horror because now it's going to pour on Monday. Just what I need...grrrrr!

And I have no idea what happened to my glasses; I took them off at some point when I got home and now can't find them. Where's good ol' Sherlock when you need him? Good thing I have a spare pair!

Labels: books, conventions, errands, radio, television

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:30:00 PM

Comments: Post a Comment