Con report - DragonCon 2007

[castalia]

I always put off writing these report things and half the time never get around to doing them at all. Let's see if I can break the habit now while I still remember what I did this past weekend. Thank God for the con schedule booklet.


Thursday: Got up at a relatively decent hour to finish packing. Took a little longer than I wanted, as usual, then headed to Chattanooga to shanola22's house to meet up with her and her mom. Loaded up the car and headed off, hoping the heavily packed tail end wouldn't drag on the asphalt all the way to Atlanta. Got to the Marriott sometime around 4 or 4:30, I think, and got our room. Met up with what is getting to be the usual crowd - shanola22, shanola22's mother, mir280 and her husband, delle, athena4lynn, shrift, nestra, gritkitty and her family, and deborak and hubby. Such a great bunch of people and I wish I saw them all more often.

Everyone got settled then met up for dinner at Thrive, which on first glance looked very posh and too pricey, but it had affordable options and something on the menu for everyone, so I really enjoyed it. I had the grouper sandwich with fried green tomatoes and french fries. The food on our table ranged from sushi to salads to macaroni and cheese. Definitely recommend this restaurant, though it's a bit of a walk from the hotel and the route is laden with panhandlers who really didn't want to take no for an answer.

After dinner we all got our badges. I was the only one who hadn't pre-registered, but despite the staff member handling the line telling me it would be a much longer wait in the on-site reg. line, I got through it before many of our group. Not too bad at all, though the room was stifling and I was fervently wishing more people standing in line had bathed beforehand. Yikes.

Friday: We all slept in a bit on Friday and took our time getting ready, as there were no panels until 1pm. My first panel was the Robin Hood panel on the BritTrack, which was okay but I didn't feel the moderators were all that prepared for it. The discussion wandered from mentions of past versions to the current BBC incarnation, with some interesting talk of how the new one is different from all past versions that kept getting derailed by tangents. Only one of the panel leaders was actually British, and the rest seemed to know less than some of the panel attendees. Still, it wasn't too bad. A nice quiet start.

My next panel at 2:30 was the first Stargate guest mega panel with Alexis Cruz, Corin Nemec, Paul McGillion, John de Lancie, and Vanessa Angel. The usual bad fan questions, and a horrible moderator who really needs to learn not to ask terrible questions and then invite actors to things like slash panels, but the actors were lovely and John de Lancie told about how he had been at Kent State and testified before congress about police brutality. You could have heard a pin drop in that room. Sadly, I didn't have very good seats and my camera sucks at long ranges, so I have no decent pics to share.

At 4 there was a Farscape Q&A with Gigi Edgley, David Franklin, and Lani Tupu. They pretty much ran the panel themselves with no moderator, so everything went very smoothly and it felt a lot smaller and more personable. They told stories about the set, answered mostly decent questions, did impressions of fellow cast members, and just generally entertained us all for an hour. Lovely, lovely people. I came away with a crush on all three of them.

After dinner we all went to the 8pm costume contest, where I saw some truly fabulous costumes. The show was slow to start and not that well organized, but the costumes made up for it. Among my favorites were an amazing Jack Skellington, a a button dress from Moulin Rouge which won the pro category, and a lovely Steampunk dress. Also cute was the Intergalactic Inquisitor from The Venture Brothers but I didn't manage to get a good shot of him.

shanola22, mir280, and delle dressed up to go to the contest, as the Black Cat and two historical ladies respectively. Lovely group shot here. They looked beautiful and were stopped very often for photo ops all evening. We hung out in the lower levels of the Marriott and in the Hyatt to look at costumes at take pictures - very entertaining way to spend an evening.

The costume highlight of the weekend for me personally was this guy - a Wheeler from Return to Oz. He looked awesome and was pleased some people were actually getting the reference. Very, very cool. I only saw him once, though, probably b/c the costume looked like it was a bitch to wear. He was sweating heavily from the physical demands of wheeling around on all fours like that in such a large crowd.

My other favorite candid shot was capturing this moment when Gilligan was chatting up the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Fantastic.

Saturday: Got up early to go see the DragonCon parade, which was awesome and very entertaining. mir280 took all the pictures for that, as she has a fab camera, so I don't have any to post.

delle and I went to Starbucks only to be annoyed by an entitlement bitch in front of us who thought it would be a good idea to scream at the staff over a cup of water. Good times. We dulled the pain by attending the BSG panel with Jamie Bamber, Aaron Douglas, and Richard Hatch. Jamie and Aaron were absolutely adorable, teasing each other and cracking jokes and just generally having a good time and entertaining the audience in between Hatch's serious answers and philosophizing.

Claudia Black had her own panel at 1, which was full despite being moved into a bigger room than planned. Sadly, she was half an hour late due to parking issues and being 8 months pregnant, and her agent wouldn't let her stay past 2 even though she was willing to do it, but that half hour was simply terrific. She was gorgeous and funny and talked at length about both SG1 and Farscape and her memories of both. She also joked about flying when so heavily pregnant, and about her fears of having a Home Depot birth this time instead of a home birth, as she's busy doing home renovations ATM. She thanked everyone for buying autographs, as that helped add a new toilet seat into their budget. :)

At 4 we saw the Crossed Swords, a husband and wife team who choreograph fight scenes and talked about movie swordfighting "fluff" to look for. Very entertaining.

5:30 was the second SG guest mega panel, this time swapping John de Lancie for Louis Gossett Jr. and adding Michael Shanks, Chris Judge, Lexa Doig, and Jason Momoa into the mix. Judge and Momoa teased Paul McGillion all to hell and back, which was adorable. Jason Momoa, btw, is HUGE and towers over everyone even Chris Judge, and lounges around like a very large puppy who doesn't quite know what to do with those arms. So cute. Shanks and Judge did their usual bantering that I've seen in so many videos - that group really is one ginormous family and it was a lot of fun to watch them bounce off one another for an hour. None of the fan questions were terribly brilliant, and no one asked anything about the upcoming SG1 movies, but they managed to answer even the bad cringe-worthy questions in an entertaining way. And there were definitely bad questions. At one point shrift and nestra slid down in their seats next to me in a vain attempt to sink through the floor.

This was when the moderator, who was the SG track director for the con, gave the actors a booklet of fanfic and fanart from some little contest they'd been doing, and if that wasn't enough, invited them all to come to the adults only slash panel later that evening. I'm sure they were thinking "yeah, sure, like we'd come anywhere NEAR that." Oy.

Speaking of that panel, those of us who went left again after only fifteen minutes. I had enough trouble getting into the Hyatt in the first place (fire marshal kept shutting down the entrances), and once I had I kinda wished I hadn't. They started out with a eye-gouging chorus of "why do we like slash?" theories, which was bad enough, but then they had to break out the sex toys. One look at red sparkly penis-shaped things on headbands and we were out the door. All I could think was "these are so not my people". Total waste of a panel, and embarrassing to boot. Plus, half our group had the indignity of being carded at the door. However, it gave us something to mock for the rest of the night. Heh.

Saturday night was Harry Potter night for our group's cosplayers, with the Black Cat, the mom from the Venture Brothers, and a Princess Bride costume thrown in. See how adorable they are? Especially with their mock battles between the Weasleys and Bellatrix? Seriously awesome.

Sunday and Monday and general thoughts in the next post, as this is getting too long.

Comments

[deborak]

Thanks for reporting on your doin's. I watched the $500 smooch auction on youtube. I hope the actor has had his shots.

My convention commentary is here and my costume commentary is here.

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links! With so many journal options these days, it's hard for me to keep track of everyone.

Yeah, the other two girls bidding weren't so bad, but that girl...oy. I don't think I'd put up with crap like that, even for charity.