Summer in the City

Today’s trip to the Melbourne Showgrounds for Supanova was a recon mission. This pop culture expo has been on each year for the past decade, but I’ve never checked it out. Silly me. The atmosphere was fantastic. Despite the crowds, people were calm and well behaved – I’ve never experienced such orderly and good-natured queues, and because people weren’t jumping around trying to cheat the system and outmanoeuver each other, the lines moved quickly. There was lots of laughing, hugging, people complimenting each other on their costumes, like-minded friends greeting each other, and light-hearted discussions about the finer plot points of books/TV shows/movies/games.

Besides, there was always lots to look at and smile about – scary aliens, adorable aliens, sexy aliens, cloaked LOTR folk, cloaked Hogwarts students, the most amazingly detailed fantasy and Goth gowns with bead work that had me swooning with envy, big-horned demons, booted SF military aficionados wielding weaponry (Stargate, the Umbrella Corporation, a Zombie Protection Officer) scores of young girls in maid or sailor outfits wearing cute, fluffy cat ears, clutching cute, fluffy cat bags and/or hugging cute, fluffy toys (usually cats), priestesses, warrior and mainstream princesses, angels, Jedi knights, samurai of varying levels of cross-genre, people with cardboard boxes over their heads, The Hitcher from The Mighty Boosh, and a couple of guys in bright blue NASA overalls.

Even going to the loo was an adventure. Instead of the usual delicate powdering of noses and applying of eyeliner, there were ladies-who-lunch-on-brains smacking on another layer of grey foundation and freshening up their blood and gore. Instead of insecure teens endlessly fussing with their latest haircut, there were steampunk ladies adjusting their behatted wigs and space cadets confidently tossing their impossibly lustrous, fake locks. Instead of checking reflections to see if their bums looked big, woman were straightening their epaulets and realigning their wings. Girls valiantly negotiated hoop skirts around tight corners, or squeezed extremely wide and stiff, multiple layers of petticoats into narrow cubicles, thus demonstrating that the modern world does not design these spaces with the sartorially imaginative in mind, which I suppose illustrates another cookie cutter aspect of our society. Baroque will never make a comeback simply because it's too expansive, so we’re doomed to recycle the same 50 years worth of streamlined fashion.

Anyway, it was good to see the many stalls spruiking Australian ventures of all stripes- small press books, comics and artwork. I came across a few familiar faces at the author tables and bought raffle tickets to support Continuum 8 – cross fingers.

Summer Glau was also there somewhere with all the famous folk behind the barriers that admitted only folk with the big $$$ tickets. She was due for an appearance at 14.30, but we headed off just before then, our mission accomplished. T-shirts had been purchased, along with startup Aussie comics and hard to find DVDs. Next year will involve more planning – prepaid tix, an itinerary to cut down on aimless wandering, and perhaps I’ll sign up for a writing workshop. Foodwise, I’ll go into con mode, and stock up on cheese sandwiches, fresh fruit and gingerbread, and drag barrel of water on wheels along behind me. I’m still rehydrating

There might even be a costume, or at the very least a pair of fluffy cat ears...