Okay, some good takeaway:
I have never been to a convention quite like this before. A very friendly vibe all around, lots of banners and posters with sayings like "Sending love to all our brothers", "See you in the Paradise", "Ecuador sends greetings", and "jehovahs-witness.net" (okay, I lied on that last one...)
Lots of delegates in "native" dress, and lots of cowboy attire! (this WAS taking place in Texas, after all!) No one was brave enough to dress in Native American tribal attire, but I guess all the Comanches are mostly dead. And it wasn't just "regular" publishers. Attendants wearing cowboy hats, a sister monitoring the contribution box, wearing a denim skirt, vest, braids, and a straw hat. A hispanic brother wearing a sombrero. South Americans dressed as "gauchos". Hindi sisters wearing saris. Definitely a monotony breaker.
And gift tokens! Someone with a bowl of candy standing in the hall at the end of the session, for anyone to take a piece. Sisters exchanging little business cards with hand made doo-dads attached to them, representing their congregations. Some of them even had little State Flags of Texas on them! (I am NOT making this up!)
BIG display on the "Jerry-tron" as no matter where you where, you had a direct, eye to eye view of the speaker. Gerrit Loesch, 50 feet high, and looking right at you! (okay, maybe not so good...). The emcee (or whatever you call the guy who introduces the speakers and reads the announcements. Compere? Announcement Guy?) never could get the hang of the camera, and still kept looking at the audience members in the stands, which made his delivery on camera akin to a guy following an insect with his eyes as it buzzes around his head (or is that just the DT's?).
At one awkward point, at the beginning of the afternoon sesssion, after he announced that the musical interlude was to begin, the camera stayed on him for the entire interlude, so we all got to be entertained by watching him on the big screen sitting there, fidgeting, at one point, patting all his pockets in an obvious panic as he tries to find some important item (he must have found it). Somewhat amusing entertainment.
We actually got to the convention very very late. Parking was amazingly full (so much for all those pronouncements of "this religion is dying, no one goes to these things" blah blah), so full, that they kicked into "overflow parking" which was two miles away at University of Texas at Arlington. This required boarding a bus to get to the site. Nice air conditioned ride to the assembly, yes? Except...you had to get a ride back to your car at the end of the day, and here is where it all went into a shambles (and not the KJV "meat market" kind of shambles). Apparently, they only could get 2 buses available for this service. And it took forever to get them in operation (oh lord, were there all sorts of buses, but none of them were the ones that could get me to my car!). So, the session ends at 3:50. I figure, okay, let's give them some time to get this sorted out. I can be patient! So, 3:50 becomes 5:00, becomes 6:00, becomes 7:00! And the service never improves! And what with the numerous wheel chair inhabitants, etc, the boarding process is INCREDIBLY slow! By 7:00, I am really getting concerned, because I still have a four hour drive to get home, and all I have been doing is waiting! Fortunately, a cab driver happened to show up, and after picking up one load, he figured out that he could come back and make some serious coin! There was a real scrum when he came back, as my wife and I, and another couple, and a family of 4 all crammed into a car that seated 7 and finally got our air conditioned car! All for 30 bucks for the group. Best 10 bucks I ever spent. If this is the level of "organization" to be expected in the "new system", everyone is going starve in a week....
The venue of Arlington stadium was ENORMOUS! To you friends in Britain and Oz, you just could not imagine until you got there. The place is built to the specifications and ego of Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and to say it is "Texas Sized" is understatement, in the same that saying Katy Perry dresses a tad loud, or that Lady Gaga tends to a slighly higher level of self promotion than other entertainers do. There were 50,000 people there on Sunday, and most of those seats were full. I think all the ones who avoided Detroit like the plague must have decided to come to a city that has an amusement park and a water park within visual distance of the convention site, as well as hundreds of hotels and many more restaurants.
Oh, and the drama! Huge jumbo tron, and the subject is the book of Joshua! Gotta be exciting, yes? Um, no.... The story was done EXACTLY like a typical convention drama, complete with abstract sets, painted backdrops, and the same dubbed voices over bearded "actors". (But I did think that the woman playing Rahab was kinda hot. She reminded me of Diana Scarwid or Denise Crosby in the eyes, but with the "ancient Jeri curl look" that they always portray non Israelite women with.) One thing that made me almost burst out laughing was, whenever "Jehovah" speaks to Joshua, or the pair of Joshua and Caleb, it went something like this: Joshua [looking at camera and you, the viewer] "and Jehovah then said to me:[Joshua pauses, looks up. Camera angle changes to elevated view, looking straight down at Joshua.] Jehovah [V.O.] "and you will tell the people, obey all my commands (blah blah blah)." [Jehovah finishes, Joshua now looks at camera and speaks again]. It took me awhile to figure out what this reminded me of, and it just dawned on me today:
http://youtu.be/P4NT1UUCZV4?t=50s
If the video doesn't embed right, the reactions of the characters at 50 seconds in (which was always the same in the Muppet Show segment of "Veterinary Hospital") is exactly what I was flashing to.
As far as the talks, I kinda dozed through the first one (darn that heavy sandwich), but I was able to keep fairly concetrated on Loesch's closing comments. A summary of the Big Talk that others have already posted on here. But, for all the text that has been ranted over Loesch in the past, what really struck me was that he is really a very boring speaker. Knda like listening to the summing up at an accountants meeting.
Anyway, my wife was happy to make at least one day, my mother in law probably thinks there is still hope for me yet, and I got to experience some of the fuss. And the hotel we stayed at was an Aloft! I highly recommend staying at one.
Later days....