The city streets are empty now. (The lights don't shine no more.) And so the songs are way down ...

Ribbon story part 26, continuing where I left off last year.

Last summer I put in 9 orders of various ribbons, ranging from 1000 to 2300 ribbons per order. (If you want to skip ahead to my Ribbon Gallery page, last year's "Worldcon orders" were orders #32 through #40.) Overall, I shepherded just over 13,000 ribbons. They were a mix of official and unofficial ribbons (and some quasi-official or semi-official ones), and there were some plain, some fancy, and many mixed -- plain plus the rocket/starburst slug.

Here are some of the fancy ribbons from last summer's season of ribbon madness. Each uses a single typeface to help get its message across.

• I'm just pretending to be underage.
• flexible
• Karaoke Addict
• HAN SHOT FIRST
• the Cult: over 50 years of secrecy!
• the Cult: Colloquium of Weird

As I mentioned in passing back in August I had I'm just pretending to be underage printed up before laconiv and I passed them around at AODSF. The idea had originally been for someone who wanted a "Cosplay Jailbait" ribbon, for when they're dressed as an underage character. This uses my choice for standard ribbons, the Clarendon typeface family (Clarendon Condensed here). It gives it a matter-of-fact feel.

The "Flexible" ribbons were handed out by nolly at L.A.con IV. I gave her a pack of the old plain all-caps "FLEXIBLE" as well as these new ones with flexible written in lower case Blado. This is the italic typeface I use for emphasis, and for saucy or suggestive titles. Of course, Menolly is into yoga, so she's very flexible. She used them to reward people who helped her in some way, i.e. had flexible attitudes. (I mentioned these ribbons, in particular there being two different versions, in footnote 6 in the Unofficial Ribbons at L.A.con IV post last October.)

Karaoke Addict is another ribbon I mentioned back in August. Like "I'm just pretending to be underage," I had this one printed up as a fancy right out of the gate -- I didn't have plain ones made as a trial run. (I may have already explained that I've worn out the little old ribbon ladies with too many hand-set ribbon styles.) For "Karaoke Addict" I used the typeface "Marigold" which is what I use for phrases with Japanese words in them. It has a vaguely Asian feel to it, without being hard to read.

cfmiller, who drives around town with a California THX 1138 license plate on his car, wanted HAN SHOT FIRST. The typeface, Star Jedi, was an obvious choice. Historical footnote: By the time he got to the convention, Lucasfilm had started using the same phrase to promote their "All the different versions" box set of the original Star Wars film, which included the original theatrical release from the Laserdisc edition.

the Cult: over 50 years of secrecy! and the Cult: Colloquium of Weird were requested by Gregg Trend, who I presume is a member of the apa The Cult. Some people are completists, and desire a complete set of whatever item they're collecting; members of the apa have been known to deliberately tweak each others' completist tendencies, by including for example a slice of bologna in their issues. This means that the true completist has to keep that disty in the freezer to keep it from rotting (and stinking up their filing cabinet).

In this case, the typeface ("Edda") was specifically requested, and I agree that it definitely sets them apart. A decorative typeface like this would not look right in an ALL CAPS phrase, nor would it work well for a long piece of text. Fortunately these titles are just the right length.

Today's song is from Roger Klug, his cover of "Turn to Stone." I wanted a song about someone leaving, but not one that was too weepy. This was the best I could find in a ten-minute search.