Steam 03 party report
I was supposed to meet thti at 11.45 on a parking place near my home. I was some minutes late and when I had waited for 10 minutes I started to get worried. MegaMies sent me an SMS and that made my cellphone decide its battery was too low and shut down, so I couldn't even call him. I kindly asked an old woman if she could borrow hers, but she got angry and called me a beggar. I made a nasty remark about old people having no manners and not surprisingly she got even more pissed off.
Fortunately thti arrived and we started the trip to northern Helsinki, where we picked up MegaMies and dairos. There was a big delay and the car got all hot because it was 20+ outside, we consider that really hot in Finland. In the way we missed one junction and thought we missed one so we had to drive back, but we didn't get really lost like in our way to Simulaatio. Pirkkala is a smallish town near Tampere, it even has an airport but the place looks like countryside. The school was easy to find. We thought we'd be almost first, but jobe, rjv and stonda arrived at the same time. I got my ticket and sat on my reserved place 71, thti sat on 70. Didn't take long to set up the network and after that I started doodling the background of my compo picture.
Unssi arrived and wanted to show me his entry, he sat on 74. They started showing demos on the bigscreen with massive volume, it was not possible to carry on conversation. The selection was good, including Amiga hits and PC classics such as Fake electric lightshow and Transgression. Fizzie and iood arrived at 5, I got to borrow fizzie's camera again. Some time later geel and hulu appeared, I first mistook them for girls for some reason. At 6 I saw viznut, britelite and some others arrive.
At 7 I, fizzie and iood went to meet TseiTsei and Sukkero, two nonscener ircers from Tampere. We went grocery shopping, visited a nearby children's park which had an excellent carousel thing and headed back to party place. There we met jaffa, osq and some other people. They proposed that we go to the beach, where the scene had gathered. It was still quite warm. No one went swimming, though we tried to fool unssi into that. He was drunk and very annoying, perhaps even more annoying than usually. He kept yelling "Anal Bloobers!" and grabbing grass and throwing it at people.
Sauli tried to pimp me and jobe. He also compared his stomach hair with jobe's. Jobe wrestled with stonda. TseiTsei took over a hundred pictures with his shiny 5.3Mpix cam. People were grilling corn cobs, sausages and stuff like that. There was a soccer ball that was kicked about, it almost flew into the lake. A group of local teen girls (aged perhaps 13-16) appeared out of nowhere. I asked them if they had come to hit on sceners and said that I could introduce them to a nice guy called Jori who reads Kurt Vonnegut, but they didn't seem particularly enthusiastic.
I went inside to get water, more clothes and to dump the first batch of photos, they turned out good. Herman Prime started his dj gig, accompanied by Samantha Fox megademo that ran on the screen continuously for hours. Some people had come to see it, but soon we returned to the beach. There was a bunch of local girls who had wristbands, but they hadn't paid the entrance fee. One asked if there would be dancing on Saturday.
On the beach we had perhaps 1/3 of girls. Most of the numerous gestures of affection were homosexual, though. Dr. Dick tried to hit on me and make me drink beer, jaffa wanted me to drink bC! kilju but I refused both. Fizzie claimed the kilju didn't taste bad at all. WoltaGe was in quite bad condition and passed out on the grass. I was joined to wAMMA and Spice Girls. Joija and someone else climbed in the three with very thin trunk, it almost broke down. We talked with Ananasmurska guys and they agreed to participate in our intro. I took a whole lot of pictures, but I missed scoopr's fire juggling. Osq kept blaming fizzie for un-bC! like spirit and repeatedly complained about not being able to code a demo because the net was broken and thus he was unable to download a compiler - though fizzie was holding a cd with a C compiler in his hands.
While I was inside, someone said on IRC that there's a nutcase in one toilet and a naked man in another. I parsed the nutcase to be unssi, but it turned out unssi was the nude dude, he had passed out naked in his own vomit. MegaMies captured the event with the video feature of his Creative camera. The orgs made an announcement on the bigscreen asking him to kindly clean the mess after him.
Iood started fooling around with Dance E-jay he got from a chocolate cereal package we bought. It was supposed to be a music compo entry, but he never finished it. A bit before 3 we went back outside. There was now a good fire burning which gave nice warmth. Delffu and aropupu were swimming in the lake. Astu lay passed out by the fire. I talked about Nethack with some people. Not long after we saw a police car appear, I guess it didn't surprise anyone. I managed to photograph the car.
The policemen looked grumpy when they realized we weren't actually doing anything illegal. Boozing is against regulations in many Finnish places, but I guess not in Pirkkala. They wanted us to extinguish the fire because we hadn't got a permit for it and told us to "go home", hehe. They even offered a free ride, don't know if they would have driven astu back to Helsinki - or Leia to Denmark. They also complained about the waste of tax money spent on cleaning up after us. We killed the fire, picked up most of the trashes and returned to the partyplace. We watched Second Reality on the bigscreen (argh!) and people clapped their hands together. The demoshow continued with such classics as Dope, Crystal Dream and Verses.
In the early morning I wanted to brush my teeth. The first toilet I found was occupied. The second was full of vomit and the third one was the infamous unssi wc. Fourth one was locked, I was told someone had passed out inside. So I went outside with my toothbrush, collecting weird looks from the people who sat there on the grass talking. Fizzie and iood were focused on coding our prod. I slept a little while and could hear them talking about mandelbrot zoomers. We just sat there and talked, it was tired talk, brainstorming about our prod and dissing unssi. He still hadn't cleaned up his mess but neither had other people, all the toilets had vomit in the sink or on the floor.
At noon we went grocery shopping with fizzie, thti and iood and also encountered kanttu in the store. On the way back I heard paavi yell "drink kilju from baby leg". I thought to myself "this must be the sickest mishearing in a while". When we walked closer I realized he did have a baby leg he was sipping kilju from, it was a doll leg they had found in a dumpster when searching for food. There also was a package of frozen "cow stomach for animals", it didn't seem like it originated from dumpster since it was still partially frozen. It looked really gross even unopened. Astu and paavi found big sharp knives in the MFX suitcase, but fortunately they weren't used for hurting anybody.
We had to return to the partyhall because the demo deadline at 6 pm was slowly catching up on us. Fortunately the Ananasmurska guys helped us. Bigscreen was showing C64 demos. I thought I'd drop by outside, but it had suddenly got very windy and raining a bit so I didn't. We finished our demo just before tinymusic started. The first song was quite ordinary, but the second one, When it all becomes dark, was a wild mess of something that resembled industrial. The song that doesn't begin sounded sweet but was ruined by the PA. Yam dislodj'd was quite interesting at first, but at least for me it grew boring. Reed's tune was played fifth and invoked comments about sexual arousal. Low tek sound kicked ass and sounded good on the audio equipment.
Music compo started with Mitä vittuu sä selität! (what the fuck are you talking about). Helsinki-Tampere was noiseish travel odyssey. Hörförståelseprov (listening comprehension exam) was a technoy song, but Ode to Jobe was simply kickass, a certain winner candidate. Rainy woods was a mellow, ambient-like track, not chillout or elevator music or anything. Final and Hazel Grouse didn't really hit me, though they might have at home. Nenänkorkkausrock was "interesting." Christ rejecters was mostly based on some speech samples. Second impact started as fairly uninteresting but then grew to be d'n'b. Entry #13 was Desolation in outlands, quite fast and nice scenetune. It was by followed by a funny tune, Min pappa var fiskare (My dad was a fisherman), with Swedish vocals. After the compo we watched The popular demo followed by Saulidemo.
Gfx compo was supposed to start at 10pm, but was delayed. I spent some time resting on someone's portable bed, because I was so cold I needed a sleeping bag. Blueflame came back from outside, telling the police had paid a visit again, annoyed that they couldn't do anything. Gfx compo was delayed by half an hour. It started with two jokeprods, Stream and Lammas. Nosfe's photomanip was next, followed by my Seireeni (siren). Chernobyl was a nice photomanip by Geel. There was a photo naisenpaeae and Hevea was another naisenpaeae by Delilah, better than her last one. Sir Isaac Newton was nicely drawn by Asasel. Boriksen mallihuone was very well drawn and it had a chick and a dragon. Joil had also drawn a girl.
Ion performed us a short "instrumental" vocal show. Zelex tapped on my shoulder, saying they had arrived just recently, work had kept them busy. It was slowly starting to rain outside, but the crowd had gathered under a small shelter. It was incredibly messy, there was a real barbeque, a smaller barbeque, dozens of bottles - not only alcohol but also mustard and stuff like that. Sivu made blue pancakes and I got to taste them. They tasted like pancakes. We were told wild compo was beginning and we went inside. They announced on the screen that one of nosfe's wilds didn't work. Paavi made an announcement that he had lost a bottle of apple wine and the finder would get two cigs. Someone found it and Paavi asked for his feelings.
Accession and Damones had a farting contest, but neither of the participaters could fart. Kakka compensated it by showing his genitals. Jobe and rjv sang an interesting song in the microphone. Jobe also did an English performance where he listed prime numbers. Hirmu performed a song "Salaiset kansiot". Byterapers intoned Pikku Kakkosen posti beautifully.
ISO's wild featured Finland's ex prime minister Anneli Jäätteenmäki. Second prod was "Unssia väsyttää" (Unssi's tired) by Jumalauta. Audience started chanting "Unssi, unssi!" when it saw his amazing passing out performance. Third video was Naemok's photo slideshow that also had a message to unssi. After that was ISOn perheidylli (ISO family idyll) by FAG. Kerran (Once) by Kooma was an interesting, beautiful video shot. Sixth was a live performance by Ion. He was really really good at imitating electronic music. ISO vs wAMMA featured the cow stomach and had "Kakkonen on ykkönen" as the soundtrack. Unique showed a tv interview from Finnish tv. It was very long and boring, but at least it had chicks in bikinis.
PWp started the intro compo. Yobi/Wamma showed us two small intros and the crowd started to sing "vittu minä en oo leimeri, osaan tehdä plasmaefektin" (I'm no fucking lamer, I can code a plasma effect). Moonhazard's prod was a surprise even though I had seen a screenshot of it. Dekadence had a C64 prod, it was a disappointment to me.
Back outside, sivu was still making blue pancakes and I ate another one. I also got to try jope's lovely cow hat, which excellently matched my red hangbag with a cow picture. Pallo and Mikron talked with us and Mikron grasped Pallo's head in his armpit. As a result, Pallo bit him to get free and Mikron bit Pallo on his bald head. Ouch. They called a taxi to leave for the bars of Tampere. Nosfe wanted me to taste some kilju that was served in a halved pineapple and when I refused, he almost forced me to, but I fled. We watched Aphex Twin videos and some weird cartoons on the bigscreen.
Our demo was shown first. Too bad something covered the projector/screen and the texts weren't fully readable. ISO was next with "Lepakko ulos helvetistä" (Bat out of hell). Dr. Fungi goes Africa was trippy, wobbly, colorful and very cool. MFX had a really good demo, it went straight to the limbic system of my brain. WAMMA's prod was very repetitive, but not hypnotic. Gluterol took repetition with techno route too. Rv1991 surprised me with their cute demo. Instant Ejakulation's contribution had a lame joke about cellshading, nothing else. Kosmoplovci utilized their usual style, but the prod wasn't too long. GLitch by Kewlers was the last demo, it was a slight disappointment to me. I liked the MFX prod the best.
At five I blatantly stole the bed again and slept for some hours. During that, people did all kinds of unssi related activities such as changing his picture in place of jope's in a rotozoomer demo on the screen. When I woke up at 7.30, the IRC backscroll was full of very interesting things to read. Jobbana played Nethack on the screen. We heard the police appeared again, this time with two cars. Someone came in and asked who was the person responsible for organizing. Uh-oh. Fortunately they didn't want us to leave, just to clean up the huge mess we made in front of the school.
Thti, iood, fizzie and I went to the town. The stores hadn't opened yet, but we visited two kiosks, in the first one we encountered deadmeat and Zelex and in the second one Leia wished us good morning. The first one sold kebab and stuff, also cinnamon buns with huge flies flying in them. On the way back we walked on the lakeside and found a big group of mallards, including some cute baby mallards and took a bunch of pictures (in Finnish slang sourcecode = sorsa = mallard). When we went back, we saw Matt Current cleaning crew (PinZa, jobe, annie, Ion and rjv) happily taking care of the mess we had produced and some other mess too, like dried leaves. They also told us the newest meme, told by Lennu/Accession. "Out of my ass, you name it!"
The prize ceremony took place quite early, at 12. It wasn't much of a ceremony, winners were announced and told to give their bank account numbers for the prize money. Most didn't even go to the stage and the only one who wanted to deliver a speech was unssi, but the audience was strongly against it. Some results were expected, some surprised me a lot. Tiny music was won by "the" musicians: Little Bitchard and jean9 shared the second place and reed won by a margin of four points. Jean9 also placed third in the ordinary music compo, Second impact placed second and Skrebbel won. Later it turned out Min pappa var fiskare had got most points, but it was disqualified because one of the organizers had considered it released, because he had heard it before. Later that decision was taken back.
Reko won the graphics compo like unssi had predicted weeks in advance. Asasel's Sir Isaac Newton was second and Joil placed third. Wild compo results offered us some surprises, but nice ones. For once Nosfe's prods didn't rank too well, one even placed last. Ion's live performance won and Kooma placed second. Unssia väsyttää ranked third. ISO, wAMMA and FAG were all left without prices. Surprisingly the Unique wild got a whole lot of votes.
Moonhazard won the intro compo, like they did at Icecube, leaving behind FLO and pWp. GLitch by Kewlers was the demo compo winner, with almost 40 points more than Molotov. Dr. Fungi placed third, nice for the Mac scene. I was also surprised that Kosmoplovci ranked as high as fourth and that ISO got only 19 votes, even our demo got twice as much. Some people called it "reverse namevoting".
After the prize ceremony we packed up our stuff and left. I was quite sleepy and can't remember much about the way home, just that we got lost once and spotted a sign reading "FAG" near the highway. Stream was a nice party, quite chaotic but very entertaining and the prods were good too. Hopefully there will be a sequel despite the angry principal.