During the lunch break, while Andy Hooper and company are rehearsing the play, I used the internet kiosk here in the lobby to inspect the online video. There was a lively group online, including Curt Phillips, Geri Sullivan and Dian Crayne. Curt confirmed that the video feed is good enough, and the audio is very good, although a buffering problem causes periodic freezes and drop outs. (James Taylor just came by, and answered my question about archives, that he thinks Bill Mills plans to put these up on his Voices of Fandom site).

This morning’s panel of Arnie Katz, Andy Hooper, James Taylor, Randy Byers and Mark Plummer assayed the future of Core Fandom. If there is an archival copy of the video feed that will help me — I made lots of notes, but didn’t end up with many good verbatim quotes, and those always make for a better report than just my homogized idea of what they said.

The panelists’ emphatic view that Core Fandom is not connected with science fiction may not have been new, and is doubtless correct, but when Arnie added the thought that, within an censorious society, which oppresses the weird, Core Fandom is a place where people can express themselves freely. While that came as part of an overall view different from mine, that individual point clicked as a possible explanation of why Archon looks as it does — an alternate culture gathering as much as an sf con.

By 7 p.m. people were back from dinner (Marty Cantor extolling the virtues of his favorite LV restaurant, where he and Rob Jackson ate) and Opening Ceremonies began. Bill Mills, Arnie and Joyce Katz made a few alarming (which is to say, humorous) announcements of the meeting they were convening before admitting this was really Corflu — it wasn’t an N3F meeting after all.

The one bit of formal business to be taken care of was drawing the name of the Guest of Honor. This has furnished some lively conversation all afternoon, Hope Leibowitz asking if I’d slipped $20 to the right person and had my name taken out of the hat, and Murray Moore pointing out that when the name of a previous GoH is picked, they pick again, and plenty of former GoH’s were on hand, so there weren’t too many prospective GoHs in the room. The general idea was that any sensible person should be nervous about his chances.

Joyce Katz held the sack with the names and Teresa Cochran picked. Teresa apparently grabbed two names the first go-round, so they were put back unexamined. She came up with one slip of paper on the second attempt. And so, Andy Hooper was named GoH of Corflu. He stood and doffed his red cap while we all applauded.

While people were getting prepared for Opening Ceremonies a mishap was narrowly averted. Visualize that the meeting room carpet runs from the floor right up over the podium, which is about 18 inches tall, without a border or break, and the busy yellow-and-brown pattern has been making it tough on some of the people moving on and off. There was an anxious moment when Arnie Katz tripped on to the podium, went one step and took a header down to the floor. Fortunately he was unhurt. For the rest of the evening, several fans made sure to offer assistance when people left the podium.

Once the business was done, Bill Mills sang “Corflu Blues” to great applause, and a second tune was also well received. Teresa Cochran joined him for another number. Art Widner volunteered an amazingly good rendition of a blues tune, “Rock City.” And he also sang a set of lyrics written long ago by Jack Speer, who was present. The music continued into the evening….

An easy morning’s drive across the high desert brought me to Corflu Silver, happening in downtown Las Vegas. While there are a lot of people besides fans in the Plaza, I had a piece of luck in that almost the first person I ran into was Alan White, who made sure I knew where everything was — hotel registration, the Corflu con suites, etc.

When I reached the con suite (whichever of the two I was in), Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer were among those sharing squirrel anecodtes with Catherine Crockett, who surely had the funniest of the lot. (Did an L.A. squirrel really stow away in the back of pickup trucks to reach its feeding ground, and commute home again, every day?)

A steady stream of folks returned from the Red Rock Canyon hike, showing off the heavy layer of dust on their shoes. These included Murray Moore, Lloyd and Yvonne Penney. A bit later, Ken Forman and Andy Hooper also returned, presumably having done the whole route.

Around 3 p.m. the consuites closed and the meeting room opened (which happened to be directly across from hotel registration.)  In theory some music or open mike activity was scheduled. While Bill and Roxanne worked heroically on the tech (and in fact had the internet video up and running), the dozens of us in the room continued conversations and handing out fanzines.

Marty Cantor had a new No Award with a color Schirmeister cover — which is stopped to explicate each time handed out a zine. Later Rob Jackson and I renewed our fanzine trade after a mere 28-year gap — the time between issues of his genzine Inca.  Jackson’s zine was full of color phots. And Gary Mattingly gave out copies of Skug, which also boasted a great color Schirmister cover. All three seemed to agree it was worth pulling out all the stops once they were ready to produce their new issues.