Well, in the way that trips often do, time has flown and I'm only a few hours away from leaving Vancouver. This past weekend I was eMCeeing the HLWW8 event here. Eighteen months of planning and much like Christmas it's ages of anticpation and then it's all over again so quickly.

Being the eMCee is something of both a fun and thankless task. Fun in the sense that you get a completely unique insight into the event both before and after and thankless because... well, really the same reason - you aren't there as a paying fan nor a guest, so you have to balance deftly between the two. However according to most people I talked to, I did a decent job. My only moments of frustration were the od times when the panels didn't flow too well into each other and that was often only because the guests were stull en route to the backstage area - such is the way of cons and the fact that we ran almost to time every day except Sunday (when we lost the final panel to accomodate leaving guests and thus got back on schedule) is somethign to be proud of.

The Jim Byrnes concert and guest cabaret were quite amazing. Though I had the outline of a new skit - as discussed with Carmel - David A had been persuaded to write a new Duncan/Amanda scene and so that was used instead (no problem... I'd rather see David's work over mine anyday!). Equally, as carmel wanted to introduce some of the acts herself, I relinguished the role of eMCee for a few hours and enjoyed the event as a nomral con-goer. Rick Faraci and partner Sharon joined us for the evening show and as mentioned, it went down really well.

It as strange doing a 3-day event and I felt totally drained (in a good way) by the time it was all done. There were moment sof drama when Adrian's sword slipped from his hands and caught Sue's camera, but the fluke accident wasn't as bad as some people initially reported - still it was a wake-up call as to how dangerous swords can be.

There won't be another HLWW con for a long while now. That may be no bad thing as this event set a new standard that it would be hard to surpass in content and number/quality of guests. Give it a couple of years and we'll all be refreshed. Hopefully the mutually fun and reciporocal relationship between HLWW and me will continue and I'll be back to eMCee whenever that is...

Now staying at actor/stuntman/really big guy Rick Faraci's house, I'll be off on a plane in around 12hrs and on to Denver via LAX...
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

(Above photo courtesy of Sharon Smyth)