DragonCon 2007 Trip Report
Thursday, August 30th
11:00 PM – DragonCon doesn’t officially start until tomorrow, but many AOME members are going up tonight to get settled in the hotel. Melissa has gone ahead with Maddy this afternoon to the Marriott Marquis. All day, she’s been getting messages from People: Erin saying "I’m at the hotel! It’s 2PM on Thursday. Where the hell IS everybody?" Nadine and Berg saying they just hit the Atlanta city limits.And then Foe called with a question for me: "Look, when do you need your pirate costume? Because it might not be ready yet." (He had made it for me, and he was "weathering" it at his house.)
Me: Well, when can you have it for me?
Foe: Are you going to march with the pirates in the Parade?
Me: No, I have to take pictures.
Foe: Great, then it’ll be ready by the Pirate Party (Sunday)
Me: That’s fine with me, I’m just happy to have my own costume this year. (I borrowed Shawn’s costume for DCon 2006.) Out of curiosity, what’s the problem?
Foe: Well, we’re trying to age it, give it some weathering, we soaked it in…
[I could have sworn that he said PEE.]
Me: Excuse me?
Foe: Yeah, we soaked it in [Pee]. You might laugh, but it gives the shirt a real yellowish aged look.
Me: I’m… sure it would, I suppose. (I’d be truly authentic as a pirate who’s literally Piss Drunk.)
At this point, the cellular connection cleared up enough so that I heard him say that he was using TEA. Yeah, big difference. With that all cleared up, I headed off to the store to get my annual bottle of Rum and some mixers.
Mel is up there tonight, and I’ve taken Friday off, so Shawn and I are driving down soon after I send Matthew off on the school bus. Luckily, I was packed from the night before. While Melissa was making her checklists, I actually got all my packing done. Feeling prepared, looking forward to hanging out with everyone.
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OVERHEARD by Hepcat8:
On Thursday, in the Hyatt lobby, I overhead a young teenage girl loudly saying (in a whiny, jealous tone) that she wanted to be "hot" and wear a skanky outfit to the convention. The funny part being that she was telling this to her dad.
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Mel’s Story of the Thursday AOME Dinner at Metro Café:
"We’re all meeting at the restaurant, Rachel (Rosie732) is running late, and she comes in looking all tired and haggard. She sits down and the waiter asks her what she wants to drink, and she blurts out "CHEESEBURGER!" Apparently she thought we’d already ordered our meals, and she was in a panic to get her dinner. Friday, August 31st
10:45 AM – Parked Shawn’s White "AARP Special" Crown Victoria in the SunTrust lot a block down, checked into the hotel, and headed up to Berg & Nadine’s room, where Melissa and Maddy stayed last night. I knocked on the door and was greeted by a woman in a red ensign’s uniform from classic Star Trek, with her hair up in a towel."Chris?" asked Ensign TowelHair.
"Yyyyyyyes?" I answered, hesitantly.
"Ah. They’ve already taken your stuff over to your room," she said. "329, across the way."
I thanked her and rolled the suitcase convoy across the airy access-ways of the Marriott. They always reminded me of the air shafts of Cloud City at the end of Empire Strikes Back, so nothing could feel more natural to me than to have a Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention here.
10:56 AM – Ran into Nadine & Berg downstairs, dressed in their Padme & Anakin Costumes. Nadine’s modified hers with some hoops in the skirt, and was none too happy when I asked her if she was "Plantation Padme." Berg appreciated the joke and tried the phrase "Frankly, Amidala, I just don’t give a damn."
11:04 AM – Ran into Joseph Harrison, the guy I met last year and couldn’t remember his name. He sang with me in Glee Club and with Melissa in Concert Choir back at UGA. Mel and he swap contact info in their cell phones.
12:10 PM – We head to the Food Court across the way, and as I’m relaying to Mel that I ran into Foe, Hillary, Wade and Shelton in the Marriott Smoking Section (outside the main entrance), there they all are at the ATM in front of us.
Most of us take off to get lunch as Mel holds our table. Some people ask about the empty seats, and she tells them we’re getting food. A minute later the guy returns with an attitude and asks WHEN we’ll get back. Melissa informed them "My husband and our friends will be returning SHORTLY and they WILL be sitting in these seats." Her eyes narrowed as she added: "You have a problem with that?"
The people at the next table applauded loudly as the jerks retreated to the other side.
12:20 PM – Eating lunch w/ Foe, Hillary, Shelton, Mel, Shawn and Lydia when Wade and Becky come by, and I inspect Wade’s new pirate costume. "You know that it’s early in the Con," I say to Foe. "Note that his rum flask is still visibly full."
Friday is one of the best parts of the weekend, because regular people are still working. They’re taking their lunch from their businesses and they suddenly see a food court inexplicably full of Pirates, Aliens and people brandishing impossibly large swords.
12:46 PM – After lunch, I meet Maddy and Erin (both dressed as Jedi) in the bottom floor. After many pictures of her being taken, she gives me this priceless poseMaddy: "Isn’t it funny when you see people dressed as police, and you forget that they’re actually police, and not just costumers?"
From here you can see the huge cordoned-off construction area in the Marriott, taking up roughly 1/3 of the lobby and convention levels. There’s constant jack-hammering noises above. So what we have is a convention, in the middle of what sounds like a visit to the Dentist to get some painful work done.
12:58 PM – A bunch of Spartans from the movie "300" just went by. The shout went up from their leader: "This…is…the MEZZANINE!! No wait, that can’t be right…"
1:26 PM – Fitting for our super-secret costuming project with Joni and Troy. She’s made the uniforms for the entire Chudley Cannons Quidditch team (Ron Weasley’s favorites). Mel is a chaser and I’m the PR Agent/Coach. Kind of like our Chicago Cubs (same initials… maybe a parallel?), the coach has a particular, forgiving slant towards the team’s perfect losing streak.
Joni breaks a needle on the sewing machine and grumbles "Bugger, bugger!" under her breath. To test her Discworld aptitude, I say "Buggrit, Buggrit, Buggrit!", to which she effortlessly responds "Millennium Hand and Shrimp!" Test passed with flying colors.
1:35 PM – Back in the room, changing clothes for the photo shoot. I hope no one is in the Marriott trying to sleep during the day so they can party all night, because the jack-hammering is reverberating through the steel girders in the room, and there’s concrete cutters going full-bore outside the window.
1:46 PM – Maddy arrives in our room, she’s back from being her turquoise-skinned Jedi, and needs some help getting out of that costume and into her Quidditch costume. I ask, "Are there any women here who can go down and help Maddy come un-blued?"
2:48 PM – Mel says that there’s not going to be a skit this year for the Yule Ball (Harry Potter Party), but people are asking about my Dark Mark prop that I made last year. "Tell them the truth: The Dark Mark is up on blocks in our garage."3:12 PM – Shelton in Quidditch costume, practicing looking mean: "Do I have the Krum look down?"
Foe : "Yeah. VERY Krummy."
3:54 PM – I just sent the Chudley Cannons Quidditch Team, all dressed up in their shiny, satin orange-and-blackness, down the lobby escalators, where they were promptly assaulted by people with cameras. Most of them were in costume themselves, mostly Green Lanterns and Marvel superheroes.
4:53 PM – Uh oh. I met up with a rival Quidditch team in the lobby dressed in green and white (Kenmare Kestrels?). They might meet up with the Cannons and have some sort of West Side Story dance/fight thing. Except with Bludger Bats. And a Snitch. Maybe I’ve just spent too much time in high school building theater sets.
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Rosie_Cotton’s Story:
While waiting at the Marriott for the elevators, I ran into a man with a T-shirt which said (with illustrations) "Push Button. Receive bacon". We spent the next 3 minutes talking of the wonderfulness of bacon, bacon-scented Band-Aids, and wouldn't it be great if the elevators were comprised of bacon? Bacon: The world's most perfect food.He also told me that late one night, one lone person in a cape was alone in an elevator going all the way up. The person inside made a "Superman taking off" pose...both arms in the air, cape flowing out behind him...and rode the elevator all the way up that way.
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5:01 PM – Coming back from the last run to the car for baggage, I’m waiting for an elevator with a couple dressed as the Wonder Twins. The guy says "The Monkey, yeah, he’s in a cage back in the room. Me, you won’t see me transforming into the shape of a bucket of water anytime soon. Someone would just spill me, and I’d be all over the carpet, and I’d be saying ‘OW! Get off me!’ "
5:17 PM – Packing into a crowded elevator, the man two inches from my face squints at me and starts up a conversation: Guy: You’ve got this Obi-Wan Kenobi thing going on.
Me: Excuse me?
Guy: With the beard, and that haircut. You look like Ewan MacGregor doing Ben Kenobi.
[Attached is an artist's rendering of what this would look like]
5:45 PM – Idea for next year: DragonCon Costume Character Bingo cards. Rules are that you have to get a picture of the costume for it to count. I would have had at least four in a row by now, after seeing Greedo, DuffMan and Kuzco from "Emperor’s New Groove".
5:57 PM – After his panel called "What do you MEAN it’s not Literature?" Shawn and I are at odds regarding the definition of "Literature" versus "Commercial Works." He asserts (and this is not ENTIRELY his opinion, but the collective opinion of book critics and professors) that books with the standard "Hero’s Journey" protagonist stories with accessible, good characters, produced for a wide audience, are very unlikely to be considered true capital-L Literature. I don’t agree that those can’t be literature. To me, that argument sounds like the rationale of Indie Rock fanatics that praise relatively unknown bands, and then call them commercial trash as soon as they get an audience or a record deal. Discussion ensues over curried chicken in the food court.
After dinner with Adam, Shawn’s former English student, currently half-time writer and half-time Ghost Tour guide, we pass "Fuzzy Flash" in line at the ATM.
7:11 PM – Passing a group of Spartans on the escalator, the leader cautions "Hey! Watch your capes, don’t get ‘em caught in the end like I just did."
8:00 PM – I’m not going to be at the Evening in Bree gathering this year for the first time. My friend Phil wrote up a screenplay for a Jack Ketchum novel called "The Girl Next Door" (Not the one with the teenage kid and the pornstar chick), and it’s being premiered at the Georgia State theater, coincidentally at the same time as Bree. Shawn and I are presently trying to find the Shuttle bus that should take us there, I ran into Dustin from AOME and Trevor, a Dorm-mate from my days at UGA. I had to make quick explanations and get on my way from both of them, which sucks, since I haven’t seen either of them for a long time. But the film starts in 30 minutes and I need to be there to take pictures of the event for Phil’s web site.
And the bus just left without us about five minutes ago. There might or might not be another one in time to get us there by opening. Lovely. I guess I’ll have to take all the pics in the After-party at Trader Vic’s.
8:07 PM – Costume Character Bingo call: The bad guy from Time Bandits, just a bit too short for the part, followed by his plastic poncho… coated… henchmen.8:31 PM – Apparently, our bus driver got LOST, and the previous driver came back to get us. A City Bus driver, got himself lost on his two-point route between GA State and the Marriott Marquis.
8:40 PM – Arrived at the theater, the bus issue is delaying enough people to hold the movie, so Shawn and I talk, and word gets around to university newspapers. Shawn informs me that Ralph Reed (Christian Coalition executive leader and also-ran for Lt. Governor of Georgia) used to work for the UGA Student Paper (The Red and Black) until he was unceremoniously dumped from their staff for Plagiarism. Apparently his review of the 1983 Ghandi movie, entitled "Ghandi : Ninny of the 20th Century" was lifted almost entirely from another reviewer, and he was fired from the staff.
Five minutes later, I return from the concession stand. Try as I may, I still can’t watch a movie without a bag of Twizzlers. Talk about early patterning.
10:52 PM – The movie is over, and there’s a brief Q&A session with Phil and the Author of the book, Jack Ketchum. The movie was rough. Not a horror movie per se. Kind of like Stephen King’s MISERY, except it’s a teenage girl being tortured by her aunt, and it’s based on a true story. ROUGH. For the first time in history, I couldn’t finish my Twizzlers.
11:15 PM – Back at the Marriott. Perhaps the 24/7 costuming trend at DragonCon has gone too far and people are running out of ideas. Take for example this woman dressed as the Morton Salt girl. (Yellow rain slicker, galoshes, umbrella, large container of salt.)
11:27 PM – Melissa calls. She’s at the Dairy Queen in the food court, and apparently she’s met up with the cutest Harry Potter look-alike, and she’s talked him into marching with the parade tomorrow. Is she having some sort of mid-life crisis and taking up a boy toy? (A.K.A. "Tim")
11:40 PM – Both Melissa and I ended up missing Evening in Bree this year. I heard that someone had a heart attack a few songs into Emerald Rose’s set, and thank Zeus, didn’t die.
Mel and the rest of the Chudley Cannons were at the Costume Fabrication contest (the one without the skits, and they took BEST IN SHOW!), so they arrived late to Bree. She didn’t have time to change into her "Hobbit Lite" costume, and she had PotterBoy Tim in tow, so she got some looks. "Why is she dressed in Harry Potter? Wait a minute, did she actually BRING Harry Potter??"
12:10 AM – [I head out to the movie after-party, and was under the mistaken impression that Trader Vic’s was the bar in the Hyatt lobby.] What the hell? The Hyatt is completely shut down on the Marriott side of the hotel to all but Staff or Disabled. Anyone else wanting to go in, even if they have valid hotel keys, needs to walk all the way around the building to the other side. The side which leads directly into the most crowded part of the lobby, so I’m not sure this was detour was well thought-out.
12:21 AM – The Hyatt is more mobbed than the "Free Viagra Samples" booth at Frolicon. Just wall-to-wall unwashed heathens in bright-colored fabric. And by "unwashed", I’m not talking about biblical sinners, I mean people who should be doing Tai Chi under running water with a bar of Dial in their hands. As in not-in-the-good-way FUNKY. Way earlier than usual, way drunker than usual. Can’t find Anya and Phil. Going back to the sane hotel.
12:50 AM – There’s some sort of Star Trek fan film on the TV featuring some Orion Slave Girl lap dance scene, and it’s making my brain hurt. Signing off for the night.
Saturday, August 1st
7:40 AM – I’m first in the shower, the others scrambling after me to get ready for the Parade. Mel & Maddy are marching with the Hobbits. PotterBoy Tim shows up at our door, Melissa convinced him to march in the parade. She loans him her Gryffindor scarf and a spare parade ribbon to get him in. I do my best "suspicious/jealous husband" act, ("So THIS is the guy you ditched me for last night, eh?") but even I laugh at how ridiculous it sounds.Merry calls, and we tell her that the group is meeting at the TORn (TheOneRing.net) table at the Hyatt. Shawn is skipping the Parade altogether this year and going to the "F.A.B. world of Gerry Anderson" panel instead. He’s OLD School Sci-Fi. As in he can’t stop talking about Uhura from the original Star Trek being here.
8:47 AM – The 50/50 forecast of rain the entire weekend looks to have swung in our favor, because the overcast skies have opened up to sparse streaks of cirrus cloud. Nadine is applying PotterBoy’s scar, saying that if it actually DID rain, the pirate group would all just shout "MAELSTROM!!!!" and it would all work out in the end. (Worked for the 3rd movie, didn’t it?)Potter looks at Shawn’s shoes for the Snape costume and says they look like Doc Martens. "No, no, no dear boy," Shawn sneers, "They’re far more refined than that. More like PROFESSOR Martens."
8:55 AM – Elevator Person: "He looks like Harry Potter, but he really needs to work on his ANGST."
PotterBoy: "My What?"
Person: "Angst! Oh come on, you’re Harry and you don’t know the word ANGST?"
Four minutes later in the lobby, we are delayed as PotterBoyToy is captured by Marriott staff and brought over to meet two blushing twenty-something receptionists.
9:37 AM – Walking to the Parade gathering site with the Arms of Middle Earth group, a fratboy passer-by spots a hobbit and proclaims "Man! Looks just like Gandalf!" Three of his friends quickly whisper to him and he says "I...I mean Frodo," apologetically.
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WhiteLadyEowyn’s Story:
Yesterday, JP puts his socks and boots on to be Gandalf the Gray. When we get back last night, he feels this lump in his shoe and finds one of his prosthetic latex noses attached to his sock. Been walking around on it all day. He peels it off and says "I’ve heard of my feet smelling, but this is ridiculous."
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10:05 AM – The parade has started. We hear the subtle strains of the bagpiper walking out in front, followed by the flashing lights of the… aww what the hell, it’s starting and I have to take pictures. Olotie is next to me taking video of the whole thing, and she’s going to follow me as I run and try to catch the group at other points in the route.
---GandalfTheWhite’s Story:
During the parade someone near the end yelled out..."SANTA!" to which I replied, "At least that's better than the Moses I sometimes get".
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10:17 AM – Our hobbits just can’t stay out of trouble in the Parade. Last year, we had the Browncoats in front of us and it ended with River Tam karate-kicking Gollum for messing with her. This year, we’ve got a legion of Spartans from "300" in front, and our Merry is toying with them by fake-stepping on the last guy’s cape and pretending to join them, brandishing a borrowed Sting sword. The crowds are cheering at it, and the 300 boys are none the wiser until the end.
Due to construction, the parade route ends in front of the Marriott instead of behind it. It causes a bit of a traffic jam, but the new feature this year is every parade participant gets to grab a free water bottle on their way back into the hotel.
11:01 AM – On the way to the 10th floor for our traditional post-parade pizza party. Will Turner to Jack Sparrow: "You have to go down to go up. You know…the whole ‘Down Is Up’ thing, remember?"
11:20 AM – I’m not quite sure why, but there’s a line around the Hyatt that goes all the way around the block. Someone PLEASE tell me this isn’t the line for registration. [Ends up it WAS the line for registration.]
11:27 AM – Shawn and Maddy helped me carry the 17 pizzas to the 10th floor for our luncheon. Now Mel and I are delivering a few of them to the Track staff who are hosting panels now. Just passed a Vader costume with a cowboy hat and guitar across his back. Wait for it… He’s DARTH Brooks.
12:10 PM – Melissa and I are finally able to sit down and have lunch ourselves, having squared away the rest of the crowd. Well-earned, I think. We’ve got loads of drinks and Mommagorn brought homemade brownies!
Maddy, the queen of confusing opening lines, asks Mommagorn "How’s Bob Marley on your wall?" She later explained that there was a picture of Jesus on Mommagorn’s wall that had a striking resemblance to the late Mr. Marley.
I complement Mommagorn on her Dolores Umbridge costume. She looked aghast and said "Umbridge?!? I’m Mrs. Weasley!"
Me: "Oh, sorry, I saw the pink shawl thing…you had going there…and just thought. Just sorry."
Her eyebrow shot up. "I’m Mrs. Weasley, but perhaps you’d like to do some LINES as punishment, Mr. Pony?"
1:07 PM – Some pizzas still remain, even after so many people came to eat. (The Jesus reference earlier brings to mind the loaves and the fish miracle, but I don’t think Fandom would be the J-Man’s bag.) Panel staff is fed, one goes up to Joni (Costumer of the Cannons) and one to Wade (Jack Sparrow), who was up until 5 AM last night and passed out after the parade. I’m Heading downstairs to donate remaining two pizzas to random hungry people in the lobby.
1:15 PM – In the lobby, I call out "Free Pizza! Free… lukewarm, uneaten pizza to a good home."
Dude: "Serious?"
Me: "Here. Knock yourself out."
Dude: (To his friends) "Hey, screw you guys, I’ve got a pizza!"
The remaining pizza was given to a Photographer who came from Australia to get the autograph of some villain from Farscape.
Aussie: "So where did you come from?"
Me: "I live here in Atlanta."
Aussie: "Shoot. Everyone I meet here is from here. I flew 18 hours!"
1:33 PM – Back in the hotel room. Somehow there’s this weird Star Trek / Babylon V crossover fan film that might possibly be Icelandic or Russian in origin. It’s subtitled in English, but there was a reference to "See you in Reykjavik." It is giving Erin and I much confusions.
Melissa is changing into her Harry Potter costume for Berg’s "At Con’s End" Fan film where the Harry Potter characters face off against the Pirates. She leaves a voicemail for Nadine: "Hi Guys, Yeah, Nadine said she’d come over and scar me?"
2:09 PM – Maddy is conked out on the bed. I swear she hasn’t had a sip of rum this time.
Me: "Wake Up Maddy!"
Maddy: "Where we going?"
2:20 PM – The Harry Potter group and the Pirates group are gathering for Berg's "At Con's End" fan film, where the Black Pearl crew makes a hasty exit from the Con, but has to first get past the Potters. Across the way, about 30 people dressed as variations of Boba Fett have gathered. Or as I like to call them, the "Fett Setters". One of our Tia Dalma’s arrived late because she was stuck in an elevator with Data, Riker and Dr. Crusher from Next Generation. (And yes, I DO know their real names, I’m just trying to be brief here.)
Overheard before the filming:
Bonnie: "I’m going to change purses while I’m waiting on my ears to dry."
2:41 PM – I loan Maddy (asleep on the tabletop) two bucks to get herself an energy drink from the machine outside the fitness center. She can’t crash so early!
And Berg’s Film? Easiest script ever. "I just gave them two lines and turned the camera on and just let them have at it. Do whatever they wanted." A fourth Jack Sparrow shows up and Foe suggests "I think they should have a fight to see who’s the best Jack, you know? Call it a Jack-Off…"
Meanwhile, a McGonogall just put the sorting hat on a Jack Sparrow and declared "Slytherin!!"
2:54 PM – Maddy doesn’t like her Full Throttle energy drink.
Maddy: "It makes my throat kinda… burn-y."
Me: "Bernie?"
Maddy: "Yeah. (pause) Kinda odd, that’s my Dad’s name…"
Best moment during the filming: Maddy shouting "Quiet on the Set!" to the entire 10th floor mezzanine, which prompted some odd looks from the D&D Gamers that were in the next section.
3:09 PM – Yvette says: "Yeah, I’m not going to change out of my Snape. Snape is the love of my costuming life. So I’m going to come to the Pirate Party as Snape. Because he needs all the love he can get. All the love, and all the Dittany." (20 points to your house if you get that.)
3:27 PM – Overheard : "Oh look, that guy’s dressed as Eddie from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Except without the head gash. No wait, that’s just how they dress. Nevermind."
3:41 PM – Downstairs at the Hilton, Mel and I run into Kelly, a co-worker of mine and her husband, Frank.
Kelly: "You disappoint me Chris. I was on assignment from our boss to snap a picture of you in a weird costume."
Me: "Shame you won’t be here tomorrow then."
3:58 PM – Mel checks in with the YA Lit track (the OTHER track she’s officially "Not" working for) and finds out that the Daily Dragon, the DCon publication that lists scheduling changes and such, mistakenly listed a popular panel to here in the Hilton, when it was another panel entirely. They have the unenviable job of re-directing people all the way back to the Hyatt, which is by all accounts, not letting people in at ALL now. This kinda defeats the purpose of taking people’s money and promising them a convention. Yeah. BIG infrastructure problems that need to be addressed next year.
4:11 PM – We are meeting up with Craig and Vanessa, some local friends of ours, in an attempt to just hang out with regular Con-going people and not Con-WORKING people. Wish us Luck!
5:33 PM – Halfway through the Exhibition Hall, we run into Maddy, who offers us Pocky. A passing 5’1" Batman shouts "POCKY!!" and Maddy gives her one. The Bat"man" then realizes she’s in a whole-head mask without an opening for her mouth, and has to totally remove it to eat. Batman can’t eat by Osmosis.
5:46 PM – Melissa, dressed as Harry, is stopped by a tattooed fraternity-looking guy in a sideways baseball cap and toting an open can of Coors, who proceeds to debate her about Draco Malfoy’s role in the last couple of Harry Potter books. He then takes her wand and tries to say the "Sectum-sempra" from book 6, but gives up after seven tries. In parting he just calls "GriffinDOOOOOOooooor" and throws her "the Shocker" sign.
6:54 PM – We sat down to eat at the City Café Diner (at the old Mick’s location) and the portents were not good. They seated us at the end of a long corridor of tables that apparently had only one server working them. The waitress finally showed up, served two tables their food and apologized for the delay, then the table behind us asked to talk to the manager.
Needless to say, 15 Minutes later, we were at Mama Nimfa’s, our NEW restaurant across the way. Melissa looks at the entryway and softly says "Is that my ex-boyfriend? Yes, I believe it is." It just wouldn’t be DragonCon if you didn’t run into your Ex-es. Usually the Ex was associated with some fandom or gaming group that you had to leave behind as part of the break-up. I think it’s a kind of unspoken Pre-Nuptial thing for geeks.
7:25 PM – Just passed Bonnie in her Jedi outfit with her "Lightsaber of Earendil". The thing has an Elvish inscription on it. Pretty cool!7:58 PM – After the obligatory call to the In-Laws to see how our little man is doing (and having to stop them after 5 minutes of play-by-play commentary), Mel is of to moderate the Peter Beagle "Last Unicorn" viewing/Author’s Commentary panel. I told my friend Craig that DragonCon is like the Mafia: Just when you think you’re out, they PULL you back in. (That’s regarding working for the con, not attending.) Because this is the year that Melissa is not officially working for the Con, but in doing so, she’s doing a little bit for the YA Lit track, a little bit for the Tolkien Track, and ended up doing just as much as she usually did while actually volunteering.
But we do this all for love. As you get more and more into the Convention lifestyle, the more responsibilities you take on in order to keep the conventions going. As of now, I’ve only been to one panel. Isn’t that the way it always works? For all the detailed plans and grid highlighting I’ve done in preparation for this weekend, I’ve only been to one actual panel! I’m hoping to at least… double that number before the end of the Con.
This is Saturday, the night of no planned shindigs, so I should have a relatively free evening. Well, there’s the actual… SHINDIG Shindig with the Firefly people, but that filled up in the first 10 minutes last year, so I’m going to skip it. Anyways, I think that’s in the Hyatt, which I believe is still considered a "No-Fly Zone".
8:50 PM – I decided to attend the AMV (Anime Music Video) 101 panel, and I shouldn’t have been surprised to see half of the Anime Weekend Atlanta people that run the Video Art Track with me there. Twenty minutes into the panel, they are still having audio problems. Carl, who is considered "Geekimus Prime" to the rest of the AMV crew (A complement of course) was answering a question I had, when suddenly, a guy sitting 10 feet away snapped his picture with a flash.
Carl: "Hey, why did you do that?"
Guy: "I figured I’d get a shot of you, since you are apparently presenting this panel as well."
Carl: "Dude, You fail at sarcasm."
8:58 – Best advice yet for aspiring AMV makers: "Dragonball Z plus Linkin Park leads to FAIL"
10:05 PM – I think a film crew from The Colbert Report just passed by. They were going out to the smoking lounge outside the Hyatt doors to capture some footage, but then the guy with the microphone came back in and said "Nope. Too noisy. Let’s try setting up by the mini-Bar’s trash can, see if they will let us capture from there."
10:32 PM – I reach the Last Unicorn panel at the end of the film. As the Unicorn returns to her forest, Peter Beagle’s voice comes over the mic: "In her absence, the Dodo birds had staged a coup… which was brutally put down by the chipmunks."
11:30 PM – Melissa (still dressed as a convincing Harry Potter) is abducted into a group costumed as HP Faculty for some photo-ops. They claim to have "Misplaced" their regular Harry. And apparently some Furries ambushed the X-Men and stole their clothes, because a couple of them insisted (in their furry sign language) to pose with the Harry Potter group for some pics. There’s a story there: What could you possibly use to stick up Wolverine?
And at this point of the Con I think I can make the judgment call, and declare the most popular NEW costume this year is the "D*ck in a Box". Fairly simple to make, they are dressed normally, just with a medium-sized gift-wrapped box hanging around the groin area. Simple, but quite effective. If you don’t get the joke, check out the Saturday Night Live videos in the iTunes store. There’s been a few great segments courtesy of the "Lonely Island" group, and this one was their best so far.
11:51 PM – Drunken Fratboy from lobby balcony, shouts down: "Hey GOKU!!" The person in question, wearing an impossibly large, impossibly yellow foam "hair piece" turns around on the escalator and stumbles a bit.
Fratboy to no one in particular: "Ha ha! He played right into my trap! I call out their names and they fall DOWN the STAIRS!!"
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I’d like to take a moment here for a personal observation: There seemed to be an outbreak of roving packs of college guys at this year’s DragonCon. I don’t want to get into an "Us and Them" argument, but I saw dozens of 4- to 5-man groups of them roaming the Con all weekend; half of them in Abercrombie & Fitch shirts, most of them holding open cans of beer, and none of them wearing badges. Melissa noticed this as well, and pointed out that this WAS a 3-day weekend, and with Georgia Tech and Georgia State University campuses just a few miles away, and many students probably didn’t go home and were bored. It’s possible that this crew might account for the huge discrepancy in attendance numbers between the official tally and the reality that we all witnessed.
DragonCon states the official tally around 30,000 attendees for the whole weekend. I call Shenanigans on that. There were probably that many just in the Hyatt at night. I’m not the world’s foremost quantity surveyor, but I think we all know there were far more people than that wandering around. So I think this batch of College Con-Cruisers might be the reason the hotels were packed to the gills and the Fire Marshall had that twitch in his eye.
Until the Hyatt reached Critical Mass, they really weren’t checking badges to let people into the hotels, so the Fratboys could roam around, getting a free eye-full of the scantily-costumed women that THE REST OF US HAD TO PAY FOR, DAMMIT! I mean it, Just like people pay the admission to ChattaCon mostly to get access to the Free Beer in the Consuite, the intrinsic value of DragonCon has increasingly become the ability to walk around and see hundreds upon hundreds of creative, well-made costumes. Many people I talked to this year admitted to only attending 3 or 4 actual panels the whole weekend, maybe buying one autograph and the odd comic from the Dealer’s Room. People at DCon appear to be spending less time on planned panels and events and more time just walking around and taking in all the costumes.
So if this is true, why should we allow freeloaders to crowd our Con Hotels and keep us from getting in when we paid for this access? I say DragonCon puts the attendance cap on the back burner and see if implementing Badge/Hotel Key checkpoints at Con Hotel entrances solves some of the overcrowding issues. Thoughts?
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11:58 PM – We find Mir in the Garden Level "Sail" lounge, and Melissa & I save the seats for two friends of hers. The lady dressed as "Bootstrap Bill" offers her seat to me, and moves past saying "Sorry, Have to scrape by you, I’m rather sharp."
"That’s all right," I reply, "I’m rather dull, actually."
12:40 AM – Back at the room, Maddy has her first Ramune soda ever, and I teach her how to open it. There’s a party next door to us with a flashing red light in its open door, a large man passed out on the floor, and a Heineken Mini-Keg balanced precariously on the balcony grate overlooking the lobby. But thanks to some magical sound-insulating material between the walls, we don’t hear a single crappy note of their thrice-chewed-over music. Thanks be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
