In Nooo Yawk City!!!

by Barbara Renaud

Okay, I'm being smarmy, but how else can I get across what a great time we all had? Many of the usual suspects weren't there (Tina, Michele, Kelly: we missed you!!), but there were lots of new folks and once again, a great time was had by all.

Nancy and I had to drive, despite our great airline connections (Nancy:United, Barb: Northwest), since there's only so much we're willing to put on a plane as checked luggage! We had lots of Duran Buy/Sell/Trade merchandise, an entire carload full of DJ equipment (the speakers literally took up my entire back seat, I am not making this up!), and of course our luggage, so we made the 12 hour trek to NYC from DTW (airport code for Detroit). The driving was quite nice actually, we stopped for lunch in this lovely little redneck truck stop in middle Pennsylvania, and we even managed to avoid most of the rush hour traffic (well, of course, it helped that we were going in to the city when everyone else wanted to get out of the city), but thenŠ Tragedy! Nancy's car overheated! Right, and I mean directly, squarely, exactly, in the worst possible spot it could happen: about 50 feet past the Very Last Exit before entering the Lincoln Tunnel. This sucked! But remarkably, it did not deter too much from our plans, and the tow truck driver was very nice, he kept his hands to himself and didn't try to take her for the proverbial financial "ride". Hats off to ya, whoever you are!

(I need to mention that this entire weekend I was near death, thanks to a lovely "sinus infection", according to the physician's assistant I had to go see, since my doctor was on vacation [thanks a lot!], and so the medication, coupled with my "infection", was doing very strange things to me. Of course, it figures that the only time I get sick is when I simply can't postpone the plans I'd made, so I had to grin and bear it, and be illin', and not in the cool, phat, hip-hop sense of the term. And can I just say that the Cloister Café in the East Village has the most bitchin' English Breakfast tea?!)

So Friday, we get up and make a wee jaunt out to LaGuardia Airport to pick up our contest winners. Nancy and I didn't know what they looked like, so we made this feeble sign with their names on it, and attempted to look nonchalant. So as everyone was deplaning, we were trying to guess which ones were ours. There were a couple "maybe"s, then we saw the Winner of the John Taylor Look-a-like contest (circa 1984), if one existed: tall, long red hair in back with short blonde. We threw the sign away. We had our winner!

Traffic was amazing, it took us about 20 minutes to get back into the city (thanks to the rain that plagued us all weekend, no doubt). The valets at the Gramercy are excellent, not a once did they lose my car! Up to theICON Reception Suite (aka Nancy's and my room), and people trickled in continuously all afternoon. It was great to see everyone, both past veterans and new faces alike. Our DJ arrived pretty near to on-time, as close as possible, considering the traffic. A brief technical glitch aside, and we were ready to rock and roll on time! John, you da man!!

The dance party kicked ass, simple as that. Everyone had a great time, people came in off the street to join us, the sparklers were sparklin', the toilet overflowed. Hey, even the police came up to pay us a visit! How awesome is that? And once again the Gramercy proved why we have our conventions there: not only were they incredibly cool about how loud the music was (all the asked was that we try to keep the door shut, to keep the noise level down out in the hall), they let us have an extra hour in the room that night for free, thanks to some fancy quick thinking by our illustruous DJ! Yeah! Rock and roll!

Saturday morning came much too (and I really mean much too) quickly. Nancy was kind enough to let me sleep an extra hour or two, and I made my way down to our Buy/Sell/Trade room just in time to get set up before we opened the doors. There were a lot of people! It was great to see everyone come out, even if not everyone bought something, it was just great to see so many faces supporting us and Duran and John (whoops, can't forget them!). Before we knew it, it was time for our famous (well, in some circles, anyway!) Duran Jeopardy, and my goodness but the competition between the two teams was fierce! We managed to stump them with a couple questions, though, but the scores were extremely close, and I didn't even have to help anyone cheat. Congratulations to all our players, you all are winners in our book! (Okay, I know that sounded kind of cheesy, but it's true! I had a blast playing, hope it's as much fun next time!) I met up with some friends for the dinner break and went to a great little Nuyorican-French bistro/café in the East Village. Had a lovely dinner, even if I had to blow my nose every time I wanted to taste something (told you I was near death's door). Ah, the lovely "sinus infection", such as it was. As it turns out, I lost my voice for a couple days, I didn't know that happened during a "sinus infection". HmmŠ

The video viewing party was already started by the time we got back (yes, I was late, forgive me, it's a Duran thing), and once again I was surprised at the turnout. John Ares, our Friday night DJ, was showing his latest all-Duran TV show (Music Madness, for those of you in the NYC area, check your local cable access listings), consisting of clips and interviews from the October record signing at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square, and also bits from Duran's electronic press kit for Medazzaland. If you are interested in getting a copy of this show, check out our Classified Ads for John's address.

Sunday was a day of recovery and returning home, but not before getting in a totally upper-body workout trying to load the damn speakers in my back seat like my beloved husband did for me! I tried, honey, honest I did, but I just couldn't get them in there like you did. See, I told you that you should have come for the weekend! (No, not just for the manual labor!) Nancy and I didn't get home till late, late, late Sundy night (or I actually should say early, early, early Monday morning). But the weekend was worth every last bit of energy sapped from my sick little body (hey! I heard that!), I had the best time I've had during any convention, and I sincerely hope that everyone had as good a time as I did. To everyone who came: thank you, thank you, thank you for making it the funnest convention we've ever had. To everyone who helped (you know who you are, but we'll give you your props in the Thank Yous!): thank you!!!!! We couldn't have done any of this without you! , and that includes everyone who came! And to those who weren't able to make it: wow, you missed out, dude. Bummer. But hey, there's always next time! And we're looking forward to it!