Category: Entertainment

Capricon 46 has come and, alas, gone, as is the way of annual conventions. I had waves of free time alternating with “why did I schedule myself like this” intervals… again, that’s kind of the way of conventions. The meal times I left myself were not necessarily convenient, except for breakfast, since most convention scheduling starts around 10am.

One of the first items on my checklist, after checking into the convention and hotel, was setting up my display in the Art Show. The bulk of my items were displayed on half a table (mental note: next year, get the whole table… bid sheets take up space), theoretically shared with another artist. As it happens, the other artist only sent items that needed hanging, so they were on the grid above my selection.

“Super Cabra,” however, was my Artist’s Challenge piece, and went in a separate space with other competing contributions, making it easy for attendees to see the choices they were voting on. There were three this year, all meeting the challenge requirements: “incorporate a goat (the convention’s mascot) and three of the following items: a flag, a hand, a brick, a broken robot or computer, or the color purple.”

As with my other pieces, “Super Cabra” had a bid sheet for people to purchase or – had he received 3 bids – send to auction. The Artist’s Challenge prize – a purple brick with “Capricon 46” on one long end, “Rise of the Humans” (this year’s theme) on the opposite, and goat head on one side – came home with me, while “Super Cabra” went home with the winning bidder.

Much of the convention was normal for me: I hosted a Stitch & Bitch, where people bring craft projects and chat while working on them; I volunteered in a couple places including at the art auction; I helped a little at Box Fort (more about that below). What was new this year were a couple “actual play” role-playing games – RPGs with an audience – and I was delighted to participate in a one-page RPG called “ShenaniGoblins,” where goblins working for the ominously named Dark Lord scramble to correct whatever they messed up on their assigned mission. Apparently setting buildings on fire and flinging goblins from trebuchets are fairly common in this setting, and our game was no exception.

My main duty at Box Fort is the Sunday morning collapse of the boxes for recycling, though I help sometimes with set-up and door duties. I did realize though, looking back at my previous posts about Box Fort, that I haven’t really explained convention parties here. To be clear, each convention has its own rules – if they officially allow parties – and each party may have separate rules too. And both of those must follow the rules established by the location hosting the convention.

In the case of Capricon, which is fresher in my mind than sister convention WindyCon (where Box Fort also had a party), the convention’s Code of Conduct explicitly requires all parties to be coordinated with the Party Liaison, who among other duties, assigns the appropriate rooms for each party based on preference and availability. The book launch party doesn’t usually need a suite; Box Fort and Barfleet (among several others) prefer to have the extra space.

While the parties are all technically private – not run by the convention – coordinating through the convention keeps the party hosts in both the convention’s and the hotel’s good graces, ensuring that the hosts and people attending the parties are all subject to the aforementioned Code of Conduct. This is also a reason to turn away normal people who may be staying at the hotel and happen to stumble into the party hallway (they may have seen the flyers display as the exited the elevator)… they haven’t agreed to the Code of Conduct, and if they misbehave, it’s your problem as the party host.

Some of those parties may be completely private: my bachelorette party, for example, was hosted many years ago at a Capricon, coordinated through the convention to have a suite not on the party floors. (There was also a wedding on-site that weekend, using a much larger area in programming space.) Some may be intermittently private: Barfleet shuts down “early” on Saturday (if you consider midnight early) to become a members-only event, and several parties will “soft-close” late at night as they prepare for the next day.

The difference between “open” – for anyone to walk in – and “soft-close” is also a difference between private and open parties: having the door fully open, sometimes with signage and people standing at the door to card partygoers, versus just propping it open with the security bolt, like when you dash down the hall to fill the ice bucket. If you don’t know the person with the barely open door, you don’t walk in; any conventiongoer (well, depending on party rules) is welcome to walk in and introduce themselves at the party with an open door.

Any open party serving alcohol has to verify your age, which is done either at the door or the bar; at the door typically gets you a stylish wristband that will last the rest of the evening. (Any private party hopefully knows your age, since they invited you.) Some parties will also restrict admission to people who have achieved drinking age or better, reducing the workload for their bartenders. You’ll still get a wristband, they just won’t need to check for it at the bar; they’ll check it at the door if you leave and come back in later. (For clarity, each party typically has a different colored wristband than the other parties, and different for each night as well.)

By the end of Saturday night, partygoers have usually perused the various parties and scanned the QR code to vote in the various party award categories for the year. This year, those voting categories were best mocktail, best alcoholic drink, and best overall party. And yes, Box Fort won the best overall party this year… by a single vote.

The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association is quite the handful for a book name, and I’m delighted that this book by Caitlin Rozakis lived up to that handful.

Our local library typically hosts summer and winter “reading” challenges, providing sheets to track your checkouts and rate them. Anything available through the library counts, whether books (in various formats), games, DVDs, or even “how to” kits that they have available. I’ve found these challenges offer a great opportunity to explore what’s available at the library, from movies we haven’t seen yet to picking up books off the new fiction or the recommended by staff shelves.

That’s how I found The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, on the new fiction shelf, as it was just published in May 2025. The basic premise is that Vivian and Daniel are struggling with their integration into a magical community after their daughter, Aria, was bitten by a werewolf. As mundanes, Vivian and Daniel are entirely out of their depth, lacking so much magical knowledge that the rest of the community takes for granted. This is, of course, an ideal perspective for telling such a story, as the readers are exposed to the worldbuilding along with the characters.

Having relocated to be closer to the exclusive Grimoire Grammar School, one of a handful of magical schools in North America, Vivian, as former accountant turned stay-at-home mom, throws herself into the school’s PTA and the parents’ WhatsApp group in an attempt to fit in. To her dismay, she discovers that the prophecy of doom overshadowing this hidden magical town sounds distressingly like it’s about Aria, and the town’s welcome becomes remarkably chilly as more signs of the Reckoning emerge. In the midst of that mess, she and Daniel struggle to prepare for the required testing that will allow Aria to remain at the school, particularly after discovering that other magical schools rarely mix different types of magical creatures and are much less likely to admit a werewolf with human parents. Navigating parent cliques and suppressed controversies from the school’s past, Vivian struggles to find where she fits and how she can express her experience to her mundane therapist without her sanity being questioned.

This is a refreshingly unique take on magic schools and how people interpret the concept of the Chosen one from a cryptic prophecy to their own advantage. And while it’s a standalone novel (for now?), our library has the author’s other book, Dreadful, which also sounds like a distinctive approach to a fantasy setting.

Come From Away just opened at the Paramount Theatre, and it is, as expected, fabulous. It does, however, need warning labels if you are unfamiliar with the plot, and in some cases, even if you are familiar with the story they’re unfolding on stage, particularly if you’re of an age to remember the foundational event: September 11th, 2001. In that case, it’s likely to bring up memories, shared these so many years, of near misses, such as the friend who was late for work that day or family members who flew out of New York the day before, or of the ones who weren’t so lucky.

Come From Away is not fundamentally about the disaster that occurred. Rather, it approaches this historic event from the town of Gander, on an island which is part of Newfoundland in Canada. If you can’t immediately place that on a map without help, don’t worry, neither could I. Or most of the people whose flights were stranded there – 38 planes were rerouted to Gander when US air space closed because of the terrorist attacks.

The story told is primarily about how Gander rallied to host these stranded travelers whose presence almost doubled Gander’s population, and the friendships that were formed in those handful of days. Instead of replaying the disaster details themselves, the horrors of that day are portrayed in the cast members’ reactions, particularly the desperate attempts by the travelers to reach family and friends back in a time when most of us weren’t carrying cell phones everywhere. The creators made a good effort to break up the serious moments with odd bits of appropriate humor, so rest assured, you won’t be crying the entire time.

There is a brief glimpse of the beginnings of the Islamophobia that spawned from September 11th, but the story ends before reaching the infringements on our constitutional rights from the Patriot Act and the blatant imperialism of the wars the United States launched in revenge. Instead, the story manages to end on a high note celebrating the friendships forged in Gander.

Yes, I’m late to this game, primarily because we don’t have a Netflix subscription. I’m a bit too young to have been original audience for the first Addams Family TV show in the 1960s and far too young for the debut of the standalone single-panel comics – started in the late 1930s – that inspired that show. My introduction to The Addams Family came through the movie in the early 1990s, when a group of friends walked from campus to a nearby movie theatre in that day or two between the ending of finals and everyone heading home for the holidays. Based on IMDB’s search results, I’ve apparently missed some iterations since then. But I heard of Wednesday when it aired and recently checked the library to see if the DVDs were available.

Wednesday Addams is the quintessential macabre goth girl, both in appearance and her general approach to life, clearly highlighted in the opening scenes where she walks into a normal school in her usual attire and through a quick sequence of events, proceeds to drop piranhas in a pool where the boys who were bullying her brother are swimming. As she proceeds with her family to Nevermore, the boarding school her parents attended, her regret regarding the piranhas is that she will be seen as a failure, having been expelled for attempted murder. (Rumors, of course, are flying regarding the new student, and nobody there realizes she failed in her murder attempt.)

While that sets the mood, Wednesday is about more than just some macabre goth jokes. Clearly intelligent and curious, she immediately becomes embroiled investigating what appear to be serial killings in the area, as well as a long-dormant murder accusation against her father. She notices minute details overlooked by others, assembling the pieces together while adjusting to her new school and the possibility of actual friendships. Ultimately, the first season is just as much about found family as it is about the mysteries she is trying to solve.

I look forward to Season 2… you know, some day, when it reaches DVD or we pick up a Netflix subscription.

It’s summer, and that means it’s Renaissance Faire season in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. We made our annual trek up to Kenosha last weekend, following a similar approach to last year – stopping for lunch on the way up to avoid both the parking and food lines at Bristol. When we arrived, a couple hours after opening, we easily parked (now $15 for “preferred parking”), stopped at security for the bag check (with our normal stash of bubble wrap and catnip to drop off with our friends), and handed off our tickets at the entrance.

We did a little shopping and a lot of shows this year, enjoying Dan the Bard, Adam Crack, the Brothers Blackquill, Dirk & Guido, Dungeons & Shakespeare, Don Juan & Esmeralda, and PlayWrecked. Wow, now that I’ve written that out, it sounds like a lot.

PlayWrecked is a musical improv show, combining the talents of the Brothers Blackquill with Ship Shape, developing into a hilarious musical, in this case about time travel using a pickle. And somehow, I had never seen Don Juan and Esmeralda’s show, so I was delighted to catch their final show at Bristol – Don Juan is retiring after 48 years of performing at Bristol.

As usual, the Bristol Renaissance Faire runs through Labor Day weekend. If you’re lucky, you’ll find yourself at Faire on a day that has as fabulous weather as what we experienced this past weekend. Sunday

I was surprised when the Paramount Theatre announced that Cats was in this Broadway season; Cats was part of the first Paramount season we subscribed to (2014-15?), and we’ve been season ticket holders since then. In fact, it was the first show of the season and the smoke effects set off the fire alarm that fall afternoon. The decision made more sense once they announced that it was a different interpretation – the classic music from Cats combined with a Cirque du Soleil style presentation created “Le Cirque du Chat.”

Your typical Cats performers are already more flexible than the average person, with assorted flips and balancing acts across the stage stretching the imagination as to the trouble cats can get into. Le Cirque du Chat adds gravity-defying acrobatics to the mix, with various characters twisting precariously above the stage, sometimes cavorting in pairs in displays of both trust and skill.

This is, of course, in addition to the singing and dancing on the stage; it is, after all, a Broadway show. As always, the Paramount shines in their selection of talented cast members; this would have been a fabulous show even without the circus re-imagining. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend seeing this distinctive rendition of Cats at the Paramount.