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There was a moment at Hurricane Who this weekend in which I was trying to decide how much fun I was having.
This has nothing to do with the sterling job Jarrod Cooper and his co-conspirators did in pulling together their first convention. Yeah, there were some problems with the hotel — lack of working Wi-Fi and generally execrable food for starters — but the guests, topics of conversation and entertainment were perfectly scaled for roughly 350 first-timers. Programming and personnel-wise, this was a great convention.
(And, indeed, the reason I came to Hurricane Who was Toby Hadoke, and his currently-penultimate "Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf" performance expressly did not disappoint. I ran into him, pacing and smoking outside, an hour before the show, as the foyer's cash bar was completely failing to fill up with people in that slower-to-gather way perhaps peculiar to American fandom. Would people show up? he asked me. Where are all these people? I managed expectations down: "You'll have a great audience, no matter its size." At least a couple hundred people gave him a standing ovation. And I saw one unnamed writer, despite having seen "Moths" a few times before, shed a manly tear at the end. All right, it was Rob Shearman. But I digress.)
So I had a brilliant experience, got to interview and re-interview wonderful people, and learned more about a show that I love. Got turned on to Torchwood Babiez — YES — snagged far too many toys for a one-child household, and saw formerly respectable entertainment professionals abase themselves utterly in Just a DWNY Minute. I was thoroughly entertained. I would come back in a DWNY minute.
And yet.