Sunday Morning
InFusion #4
Masquerade Winners
Best in Show:
“Darkness” by Kenneth Darden

Special 1970s Theme Masquerade Costume Award:
“Sandman and Runner” by Debra Zimmerlee and Logan Zimmerlee

Best Presentation:
“The Rainbow Fairies” by Xaina (and her bevy of Lovely Ladies)

Best Novice:
“Peacock Queen” by Mandy Wasson-Cassidy

Young Fan Award:
“Punk Rock Pixie” by Zoe Ahlquist

Workmanship Award:
“Duffman” by Lyle MacDougall & Adam English

Lightning Round (Junk Pile Wars):
“Political Party” by Tor

Special Early 1970s Theme Hall Costume Award:
“Darth Vader (1977)” by John Redmond

Hall Costume Awards:
“Southern Belle” by Pam Gannon
“Vinyl Witchy Chick” by Randy Snellgrove
“Flemish Lady” by Terri
“Darth Vader (1977)” by John Redmond
“Belly Dancer” by MLO
“Claire” by Ray van Tilburg
“Sindie de Sade” by Michael
“His Excellency the Pope” by Bill
“Lavender Princess” by Alice

All winners received their awards except Darth Vader, who can pick his ribbon at Ops.

Notice to ConFusion 2003 Masquerade winners: Certificates will be available in Ops on Sunday.

Sunday Programming Changes

KidFusion programming changes:
10 am: Open gaming replaces Sunday am cartoons.
1pm: Steven Lee Climer reading from his fantasy series Pieces of the World.
2pm Oobleck.  What is it?

Other programming changes:
11am (Dennison III): Mars Society Meeting
The monthly meeting of the Mars Society, which is an organization of scientists with interest in the happenings on and around Mars.

Coffee with Ron Westrum, originally scheduled for Sunday at 12 noon, has been canceled.

Geri Sullivan will NOT be participating on Sunday in "What's Cooking in the Tidal Pools of Fandom?" due to her need to make sure the Dead Dog Party (at 4pm) will be fun for all.

Hotel Information Reminder

Checkout on Sunday is extended till 4pm for all.  You can checkout via the TV system, or, if you have left a credit card on file and are satisfied with your bill charges, you can just go!

Saturday Party Winners

Saturday night continued the excellent party scene started on Friday, with even more parties too choose from.  

GT/DI and Penguicon – These two parties ran again on Saturday night, and continued to be great places to hang out, seen and be seen.  But they didn’t do anything to particularly distinguish themselves from their Friday night accomplishments, so no new awards for them today. 

ConClave – ConClave was here, selling memberships and recruiting ideas on what you want to see at ConClave.  And with Chair Steve Macdonald playing music and a bubble machine from time to time, it was a popping place to visit.  We award ConClave Best Live Music.

Midwestcon – The Midwest’s longest running convention and the original relaxicon, Midwestcon’s party offered great food, great ambience, elegant decorations and great conversation.  Not to mention stamina, being our latest running Saturday night party.  The food is what stood out most for our panel of judges, so Midwestcon gets Best Food for Saturday night.

Amber Fox Pre-Over-the-Hill Party – Rick Fox celebrated his 50th birthday in style, with a wonderful cake featuring a picture of him and glow in the dark decorations.  Party favors included some glowing mouth guards, so that makes them the clear winner of the K. G. Kofmel Award for Best Use of Glow-in-the-Dark Items.

Ad Astra – Our neighbors from the north return to ConFusion after a long hiatus, bringing with them drinks both alcoholic and non with gummy worms in them.  We weren’t sure if this was a pro or a con.  In any case, for their excellent party, we are pleased to award them the Canadian Content Award.

Subgenius – Although they closed a bit early, when this party was open they easily earned their Best Ribbons award, with multiple excellent ribbons to choose from.  FNORD!

Great Lakes Gaylaxians – While not the astoundingly decorated room of some year’s past, the Gaylaxians still have a startling array of alien tchotckes.  And the raffle prizes were the best yet, with cardboard stand-ups of both Aragorn and Legolas and a personal DVD player.  Clearly, they had the Best Stuff.

Farscape – People were in here, watching Farscape and eating yummy cookies and maybe occasionally being too caught up in the love scenes on screen.  Best Clench During a TV Love Scene.

Josh Sweden Party – Located down on the 9th floor far from party land, you could go here to for Buffy, Angel, Firefly and… Karaoke?  Weirdest Party on a Floor That Wasn’t Supposed to Have a Party.

And before we make any final and official announcements, a word about our ConSuites.  Both the smoking and non-smoking portions of the consuite were social centers throughout the night and into the morning, proving that ConFusion fans really know how to party.

Saturday night had a few good contenders for the Best Saturday Night party award, but after a long deliberation by the judges, we are pleased to award Midwestcon with our Saturday night prize.  

Deliberations for Best Overall Party (and winner of a free night to do it again next year) were even more heated.  But in the end, we have to give it to Minneapolis in ‘73/Minicon.  But only by a hair, err, pickle hat.  Since they and the Midwestcon crew shared a space this year, we’d like to encourage them to continue their collaborative spirit next year too, so we can have both groups back.

Thanks to all of our party hosts.  And we’ll see you again next year.

Other Information

Highest Weirdness

The "High Weirdness" tour of the Dealer's Room proved highly entertaining and yielded more than a tad bit of weird merchandise for sale. Here are a few pointers from your team of discerning shoppers.

First, to establish our credentials, the team of six shoppers spent $90 during the research phase of the expedition, another USD$45and CDN$77 during the actual outing, and at least one of the guides returned to pick up $14 of books set aside during the tour. And that was without any budget being allocated by the ConFusion programming department. (Not that we expected any, mind you.) I took notes and Colin Hinz served as our unofficial photographer, capturing the visual proof that such weirdness existed for at least a few moments in the ConFusion Dimension.

We started with a bring'n'brag of research purchases: penguin slippers and copy number 73 of the Nybor Tarot deck that I'd ordered roughly 17 years ago. Then we checked out all of the dice in the front of the room; our favorite was the blank Zen dice. If we'd been giving awards for practical items, the pizza dice promised to cut those interminable topping debates into three easy rolls. 

The award for Weirdest T-shirt goes to the rat promising "Will Press Lever for Food," at the Earth Wisdom Music table. An honorable mention goes to "Kthulhu Kreme Doughnuts" at the Pegasus table. The logo says they're infernally delicious and that the horrid red light is always on....

Pegasus also had the stuffed viruses, so you can give the Black Death, Ebola, or Halitosis to your friends and loved ones. Um, er.

One would think that would take the Weirdest Stuffed Object award, but Santa's Books and Treasures had these...creatures. And more creatures. There was the Barbie Dragon, and, umm, we don't know what they were, but they were stuffed, and we'd swear they were weird.

Larry Smith and Sally Kobee seemed to have all of the contenders for Weirdest Book. Several of our shoppers supported "The Origins of Tolkien's Middle-Earth for Dummies" until Larry brought Andrew Fox's "Fat White Vampire Blues" to our attention. Fox's book went on to be the unanimous winner. 

The action figures at Fantasy Fashions didn't trigger the weirdness meter until we found the Anakin Skywalker Collector Watch for only $9.99. To see the time, you flip Anakin's face up.... Barbies in Leather and Medieval Barbies are hanging out at Costumes by Loren - Barbies and Cthulhus waited unwary shoppers throughout the room.

The Weirdest Ribbon award goes to something we were each given by Earth Wisdom Music, rather than something they were selling: "Shordurpursav." That's weird. It stands for "Short Duration Personal Savior." Okay, that's weird, too. Then there was the highly weird button: "Oh, god, my dog's found the chainsaw."

Our tour time rapidly drawing to a close, we gathered in a quiet corner of the room to finish our deliberations. The High Weirdness Award for the ConFusion 30 Dealer's Room goes to Santa's Books and Treasures. In addition to those stuffed...creatures...they're also your source for hats with horns, and -- for one lucky shopper -- the hard-to-find 1970s book Golden denies ever publishing: "The Golden Guide to Psychoactive Plants."

There was more weirdness in the Dealer's Room than we could absorb in our scant hour. Fortunately, the room is open from 11am to 3pm Sunday, giving all ConFusion members a few last hours to ferret out the abundance of weirdness and other treasures awaiting whoever gets there first today.
	- Geri Sullivan

Overheard outside Masquerade: “Wow!  That was awesome.  More cleavage than I’ve ever seen at this con!”

Geri Sullivan Does it Again!

“TrainCon” will consist of a Pullman car, a club car, and a restaurant car, pulling out of Worldcon and stopping for the weekend at one convention after another for the year until it pulls into the next Worldcon.

People will be able to join for a few weeks along the way, boarding and leaving at various cons.

Traincon will follow someone winning really big in the lottery, the next time there are consecutive North American Worldcons. Fortunately, this was conceived and developed in the SMOF-in-the-jacuzzi session when no one had $20 bills to throw at Geri.
	-Neil Rest

Stilyagi Spring Business Party

It's time again for the Stilyagi Spring Elections party. This year, as last year, we'll be holding the party at the WRAP house, 325 Braun Ct, in downtown Ann Arbor. Parking is free and plentiful at the time of the party, which is 7pm on March 20.

The parties are a lot of fun. They follow the age-old Stilyagi tradition: bring your own or, better yet, bring some to share. The WRAP house is smoke- and alcohol-free, but there is a friendly bar across the courtyard, for those who would like to indulge.

Speechifying for elections will start at 8pm, and voting at 9pm, for the following positions (nominations for these positions will be announced on the Stilyagi and stilyagi-announce mailing lists at least 3 weeks prior to the meeting):

Con Name (must include the word "ConFusion" spelled forward)
Con Chair

AASFA board members #1, #2, #3, and #4
Stilyagi Social Director
Stilyagi Membership Director
Tanstaafl editor

How can you tell if you're a voting member? To vote for a Stilyagi position (all of them except the ones titled "AASFA"), you must be at least six years old and have gone to at least one Stilyagi event in the last three months. A Stilyagi event includes but is not limited to:

First Thursdays, parties, concom meetings; book club discussions, posting opinions to the mailing list, participating in a Stilyagi club event. Ask the membership director Sarah Lewis (haplo24601@yahoo.com) or the president of AASFA Tammy Coxen (tammylc@comcast.net) if you are not sure of your status.

How can you tell if you can vote for AASFA board members? You must have worked 6 hours on one of the last two conventions, and attended two of the Stilyagi-criteria meetings over twelve months. Not sure? Ask Tammy Coxen (tammylc@comcast.net).

Infusion has been brought to you by editor Paul Estin, with lots of help from Tammy Coxen, Krysta December, Kim Kofmel, Geri Sullivan, Neil Rest… and other submitters of information… and of course by the letters XXX .  No Trojans were harmed in this project.

Issue #4, Sunday morning, year 2004