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[larryc]

So. I was recently at the awards banquet at one of my bigger disciplinary conferences with a friend. We came in right at the start of the program and grabbed the last two seats at a table. Introductions all around--the rest of the table, except for one couple, was filled with faculty from Brigham Young. Two bottles of wine on lay on the table in front of us. Score!

The couple took the white and we took the red. It was quite nice for banquet wine. The awards were made, blah blah, and the award for best footnoting by scholar of transportation history goes to... We each poured some wine into the tiny thimble glasses and settled in.

Next to us was a table of silver backs--past presidents and directors of the organization. I have actually spent time with several of them when we brought them to my old college via a grant, they were nice. But at the conference such folks are unapproachable, wrapped up in their intricate public displays of dominance and power, grooming one another's pelt and eating each other's lice.

Anyway, just as the current president was introducing the evening speaker, one of the silver backs toddled over to our table. She said something like "Ooopsie, we are out of wine!" and picked up our bottle and took it back to her table. And they drank it.

I bailed on the speaker, who looked like a bore. Later I met my friend at the hotel bar.  "We had it too good", he reflected mournfully as we paid for out ten dollar thimble glasses of wine.

[infopri]

All I can say, Larry, is that your conferences seem to be far different from mine--both in the wine and in the manners of the silverbacks.  You win on the wine (if only you'd had the chance to drink it!), we win on the manners--and not just the table manners.  (Our silverbacks are quite approachable, regardless of the setting.)

In any case, you have my sympathies.

[barred_owl]

Larry, your story just flashed me back to a conference in which the keynote speaker (who was from BYU, no less) was a bore, but whose Powerpoint presentation included a slide of someone in a gorilla suit standing amidst a bunch of other people.  I think the point was, "Don't overlook the 400-lb. gorilla" or something like that.  I don't remember, because the bottle of wine on my table was mine and mine alone...


As Infopri stated, you have my sympathies, too.

[oldfullprof]

My favorite was a sociobiology silverback that showed up as noted speaker for a philosophy meeting at Snow Lake State.  The guy was super drunk on his ass the whole time.  He practically keeled over at the table at the dinner after.  His talk had absolutely nothing of substance, but was just a geneology of how one crummy journal had grown in circulation.

Then there was another greying philosophy speaker there who showed up, talked, and left, taking away the very pretty, evil young woman who wasn't going to be reappointed, and who'd been wrecking the philosophy department.  I didn't see that one.

[sugaree]

Huh, I saw the thread title and the name who started it and I thought, Larry you sure find some interesting camping spots, what with the free-roaming (and apparently alcoholic) gorillas all about. Oh well.

I was just at a banquet the other night where the others at my table "elected" me to go find the wine servers who weren't getting to our back-of-the-room table quick enough. I fear my reputation proceeds me. However, they kept us filled throughout all the award talks, even when other tables were not so lucky (or, too timid to speak up). But we weren't stealing the wine, at least!

[sinenomine]

I love the term "Silver Back"!

[bud04]

Larry, I think you should have gone over to that table and stole the wine back!

[tuxedo_cat]

I laughing too hard to say anything witty right now.

[southerntransplant]

While a grad student, I went to a conference in Italy, where the closing banquet had, oddly enough, relatively little wine. Afterward my friends and I walked out into the night, disappointed in our relatively-sober state and making plans to hit a bar, when someone on my PhD committee wandered up and asked what we were doing. When we mentioned our annoyance at the lack of wine, he opened his coat and displayed three bottles of red, adding "You just didn't know where to look" with a huge grin.

[larryc]

Thanks friends. It actually worked out pretty well, because at the bar for the next two nights I shared the story with anyone who would listen, and they all laughed and not a few bought me a drink. I'll be telling this story for years.

[qrypt]

What wouldn't I give to have a newspaper story on this incident that named names -- so that I could add it to the Wikipedia pages of the various malefactors.  I do hope you haven't been holding back the names in your telling of it to friends/colleagues. 

[mended_drum]

At one the conferences I attend, we would have then strolled over to a table with grad students and taken their wine. 

[aandsdean]

At one the conferences I attend, we would have then strolled over to a table with grad students and taken their wine. 

Or the Silver Backs would have just strolled over to the table of grad students, found the most attractive one of either sex, slit his/her throat, and swilled directly from there.

Yes, I HAVE been to the MLA.  Why do you ask?

[chaosbydesign]

At one the conferences I attend, we would have then strolled over to a table with grad students and taken their wine. 

You think you'd be able to steal wine from grad students? We are very protective of our alcohol, and some of us have sharp nails. Just sayin'.

[mended_drum]

At one the conferences I attend, we would have then strolled over to a table with grad students and taken their wine. 

You think you'd be able to steal wine from grad students? We are very protective of our alcohol, and some of us have sharp nails. Just sayin'.

But medievalists sometimes carry swords.  Especially at a drama conference.