Below is a review of Lazlar Lyricon 2, held in May 1998 - we're not entirely sure who wrote it.... Were you there? We'd love to add some photos! Please email us if you have any we can use. Likewise, if you were at Lazlar Lyricon 1 and have writeups or photos from that, please let us know.
The convention was a massive success and made over £460 for the convention charities chosen by Douglas Adams (Save the Rhino International and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund). Rob McKenna drove past quickly at one point but mainly the weather held out.
Review
The complete write-up of everything: If you didn't attend, this is what you missed. Three Germans, one Israeli, several people from Wales and Scotland and a whole hoard of barbarian invaders from Ireland managed to attend. The eldest was over 50, and the Youngest 15.
Journal
Read about all the fun stuff that happened....
Friday
Afternoon
The Convention crawled into life on Friday with a showing of the TV series in the video room. The second programme sprung into life at 6pm as Amyl and Simo told anecdotes about previous conventions until the hotel demanded that someone went and ate in their restaurant at which point the room emptied!
At 7 Alan Sullivan took the mickey out of the Ever So Personal Column of MH and at 8 the main programme erupted with "The Opening Ceremony".
Opening Ceremony
Hosted by Jerry "Springer" Thomas and with fantastic special effects by our Techmeister - Rich Challis - all attendees were introduced to the "two team" theme of the Con as Vl'Hurgs Mike Cule, Amyl and Alan S shook fists at the evil G'Gugvuntts Simo, Squaddie and Silas.
This was followed by the Terry Vogon Show as Terry, in genuine TV series costume loaned to the Con by John Philpott, interviewed people and touched their knees while threatening to read them poetry.
Evening
The evening continued with the 1978 Disco as Glam Rockers and punks strutted their funky thangs to the sounds of the seventies and concluded with dozens of us cramming into the video room for a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Saturday
Morning
Saturday started with Abigail's talk on sticking things in your ear and other places. Madam Purple tried to poison us at the nutrimatic cocktail tasting and all the drinks tasted almost entirely unlike tea. Some people tried to cheat throwing cups at the Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser but without gain. The cocktails actually contained:
Roosta's Revenge: Ginger cordial, Lime cordial & Cola.
Magrathea Sunrise: Strawberry squash, Orange juice and Pineapple Juice.
Crisis Inducer: Sparkling mineral water, Banana juice, Blue food colouring and Jungle Crunch cereal.
Liam caught some Babelfish and lan Sorensen proved what a boring old fart he is by reminiscing about being at Hitchercon in 1980. The Ultra Golf was fun and finally won (narrowly) by Tiger Woods, who would have been mocked mercilessly if he had lost.
Afternoon
At 3pm the Vl'Hurg/Octarine team beat the G'Gugvuntt/ZZ9 team in the Fannish Ashes despite Amyl's remarkable Ignorance concerning Dangermouse which lost them 20 points. Amyl and Jim de L have now represented both ZZ9 and Octarine in different years at the Fannish Ashes. Meanwhile, outside, Anne and Stefan were running a waterpistol squirtfest and, in the video room, Weird Al videos were prevalent.
At 4 we had Vogon crab stamping, an event that was dominated by members of the Irish Contingent. They're just better at shouting, pushing and stamping I suppose. Vogon Poetry Reading included some very bad poetry but fairly poor performances from most of the victims, many of whom seemed to quite enjoy it actually.
Evening
In the evening we had the memorable Worst Dressed Sentient Being in the Universe Disco. A number of things make this a disco never to forget. There were the costumes. Will Blight as a footwarrior, Russ as a bulldozer, Squaddie's Dirk Gently, a swarm of Hooloovoos and a horde of Vogons (two of whom left green body prints all over the hotel) to name but a few of the total.
But the real star of the disco was the DJ. A local hired by Simo, he turned up claiming he thought he was doing a rave and complained that he only liked dance music. We found loads of good stuff in his CD collection and got him to play it. The dance floor was packed with a heaving throng of a multicoloured bodies. And then suddenly he'd put on a HeavyGarageTechnoDance number and the dance floor would empty except for the DJ who would come out and dance on his own, grinning maniacally and staring at us through his heavily dilated pupils.
We'd tell him to get back to the usual assortment of stuff that ZZ9ers tend to like (punk, pop, rock, gimmickSF singles) and everything would be OK for three or four records and then... back to square one. On each occasion his memory would seem to have gone completely and he wouldn't know where he was and would complain that he was a dance DJ.
After Midnight
At 1am Tobes began a programme item in the Second Programme, most people moved from the disco to see it. We were only paying the DJ to work until 1am. He refused to stop and played dance music and danced on his own until 2, when it took several of our people and one of the hotel staff to get him to stop playing and clear out. Even then he rematerialised later in the hotel bar trying to scrounge drinks! 'What sort of a person attends programme items at 1am? - Tobes discusses with himself was attended by more people than any other items except the opening and closing ceremonies. What a strange bunch you are!
Sunday
Morning
The morning began with the hotel throwing lots of us out of breakfast for wearing dressing gowns and continued with David U and Wag talking about towels. The auction ran for two hours and there was still tat high quality merchandise left over. Simo did a remarkable job of selling things and Amyl did a remarkably poor job of coping with a hangover.
Meanwhile, outside, Squaddie was winning an understaffed game of Blerontinian Football. Liam and Nina reviewed The Big Bang Theory, Eccentrica's best seller and Vogon Guard Training took place.
Resistance is useless
The Rev Jim de Liscard proved His non-existence using Oolon Colluphid's best selling Well That About Wraps It Up For God or was it the Bible?
Ultra Cricket, Space Battle, Mike Cule's quiz took us through to 5pm when the Frogstar Robot Wars erupted. Billed as "not as exciting as on TV but similar", it proved to be every bit as exciting, with an inanimate object on four pieces of string taking out all the radiocontrolled and motor-powered robots until a pair of scissors was used on it.
Afternoon
Sunday at 6pm was about the time that Bop Ad was talking about when he first referred to "The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul" so that was when we held The Long Dark Tea Tasting of the Soul. Jim and Meike provided different teas to Judge for quality and guess the type of while Amyl shouted at hotel staff for providing the boiling water late. Flick ran a corset wearing workshop and we discovered that Jim has almost no internal organs at all, Just a spine between his chest and hips.
Evening
Sunday evening saw us enjoy Milliways, billed as "An evening of entertainment and Simo" Highlights included: THE Slartibart FAST SHOW (which was nice), Disaster Area air guitar contest (won by Nina who was entering everything and winning a lot), Simo's Legendary Death Star Sketch and stand up comedy from various people including James Bacon, Assaf, and Douglas Spencer who was the star of the show.
What jokes did they tell?
Well most of the Jokes can be boiled down to: "There were three explorers called Paddy Englishman, Paddy Irishman and Paddy Welshman, umbongo!" But Squaddie did tell one about Pyro, Tigger and a long tongued frog.
Monday
Morning
On Monday we had the Transmat Debate. Most people were too hungover or tired or something on Monday morning to attend but the small number who did got to see Hodgesaargh's brilliant Transmat device and hear Rich Challis's superb sound effects to go with it, while a group of intrepid heroes argued as to who should be the last person left in the Disaster Area stunt ship. Nina as Eccentrica lost and had to stay behind for no reason other than that she was leading the Megapoints table and people wanted to see her collect -5.
At the same time in the second programme was the Beeblebear Chaos Costuming Workshop run, very successfully by Bettina Beer and entered, very successfully by Nina. How did she do it? Are there identical twins?
Dave O'Neill's Technobabble Quiz was popular despite his pallid complexion and the fear that he was about to puke. The answer to every other question seemed to be: "The Dyson's Sphere episode of Star Trek-TNG".
That's a wrap
Lunchtime waterpistolling was cancelled because Anne was asleep (it had been a long and lively weekend) so Amyl and Simo docked her 10 Megapoints. The closing ceremony was supposed to be followed by a couple more items in the second programme but nobody could take any more, one of these items was the gripe session but nobody had any complaints! We all crawled home or back into bed (in the afternoon!).
Monday evening saw the survivors hold The Agrajag Party in a pub down the road. We returned to the hotel at 11pm only to find, in a fit of pique, the duty manager closing the bar and refusing to serve us. So we piled up to John W Cabbage-Rees's room and partied until daybreak on bottles of drink we had brought ourselves, so yah-boo-sucks to the hotel who lost out financially and found their lift full of empty bottles in the morning.
Results
Everyone who attended was assigned into one of two teams, the G'Gugvuntts and the Vl'Hurgs. All the activities throughout the convention awarded Megapoints which counted towards your own personal score and therefore your team.
Guest of Honour, Mike Cule, helped lead the Vl'Hurgs to an easy victory. The G'Gugvuntts inherent inferiority let them down and they were trounced so thouroughly that the Vl'Hurgs didn't even bother noticing that Arthur had actually started it all in the first place and so didn't attack Earth at all!
KIM (Vl'Hurg) was the overall winner on 55 Megapoints (mainly due to large numbers of points gained in the daily Hunt the Wocket games), with Nina the highest scoring G'Gugvuntt on 44 Megapoints. Both received Rorys at the closing ceremony. One supporting member didn't attend but entered all the "in advance" competitions and was still ahead in the points table on Saturday evening with 26 Megapoints! And Rich managed to finished on 42 Megapoints.