Posts Tagged DragonCon

Here is my gallery of photos from DragonCon this year. I’ll be putting them behind a break to keep from overwhelming slow web-browsers, but this post is image heavy, so bear with it!

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DragonCon Parade

We started our Saturday out with the parade, as always.  The parade is always a wonderful exhibition of all of the best costumes DragonCon has to offer.  This year, there were huge contingents of superheroes, steampunks, and Ghostbusters. At least two of those groups could easily be explained by the world record attempts scheduled for later in the day. As for myself, I was the steampunker in the audience taking the pictures.  I’ll be putting up a gallery of all of the pictures I took this weekend on a separate page, to keep this post from getting too image heavy.

From there, we went to the James Randi panel, which was absolutely wonderful.  Randi is such a treasure, and I’m glad we got to see him. Since not everyone there would be as familiar with his work, he explained the purpose of the James Randi Educational Foundation and the million dollar prize.  He opened the floor up to questions, most of which were focused on the “woo” that people attempt to scientifically prove, and fail to do so, in pursuit of the prize.  Randi discussed how the people involved fool not just their customers, but also themselves. He used the example of dousing for this, where many of the dousers believe that their ability is real and, even when proven otherwise, will find excuses as to why so that they can continue to believe so. Randi’s main point, throughout the panel, was that each person who is encouraged to think critically is another victory for the skeptical community.

Afterwards, we headed over to the Walk of Fame to see who was over there and to get some dinner at Ray’s in the City, which turned out much better than our meal last night.  We had to eat a bit early, because we were heading to the Browncoats: Redemption premier that evening, and we expected the line to be ridiculous. (We were right, it snaked around three floors of the Westin!)

I had purposely kept my expectations for the movie low, knowing that it was done with an extremely low budget and, for the most part, volunteer work, but other than a few sound issues, the movie was really good. It kept to the spirit of the Verse that Joss Whedon created, without stepping on the story or characters that all Browncoats have come to love.

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The first official day at DragonCon this year was fairly light for us, as far as Con events goes. I’m really glad that we decided to come up on Thursday this year instead of Friday, because we were able to start the Con out fresh and rested and without the hassle of waiting in line for registration, since that was all taken care of yesterday. It was a bit annoying, yesterday, though, to find that pre-registering no longer affords you a quick registration. It was the folks who were not pre-registered that got the short lines. Still, with attendance doubling since we’ve started coming, a few growing pains are to be expected.

As far as yesterday went, we got up here safely, despite almost being run over by a Marta bus, and got our badges after waiting in line for 3.5 hours at the Sheraton (with the Sheraton employees behaving in the same manner we have come to expect – rudely – but with the DragonCon staff themselves being phenomenal).  Since last year we had such a wonderful experience at Nikolai’s Roof, we decided to go eat there again this year, but it turned out to be the sort of disappointment that only a meal you look forward to for a whole year can be, when it turns out to not be as good. The service was poor, particularly in comparison with the animated and fun server we had last year, and while the lighter courses were still extremely good, the main course was over-cooked for both of us.

Today, we started the day off by eating breakfast at the table next to Larry Hagman (!), then we headed off to the Wikileaks panel, which didn’t turn out to be the objective discussion we were expecting. The host of the panel didn’t seem to have researched the matter beyond the bounds of what was necessary for his presentation. The Q&A after the presentation allowed for a more open discussion, however, where a lot of good points were put forth, including discussion of Wikileaks’ own editing of documents to support their cause and the fact that Wikileaks’ publishing their findings on the Great Firewall of China has allowed people in China to better be able to get around the firewall and access information outside, as well as provide uncensored information and news to those outside the borders.

Salvador Dali - image from Wikipedia

Since the High Museum was offering a discount to DragonCon attendees, we decided to go see the Salvador Dali exhibit there, which was absolutely wonderful. It was focused on Dali’s later work, which I knew very little about, being most familiar with his early surrealist art. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the paintings was the sense of dimension he was able to put into them, the way some of the images seemed to jump out of the canvas toward you and how some of the paintings were entirely different pictures depending on how far away you were standing from them.  B was particularly struck by the sheer size of some of the paintings. The exhibit really established Dali as one of the first true pop artists, who embraced his commercial popularity and didn’t understand the critics who would discount his work simply because it was popular to mass audiences.

We ate dinner tonight at Ray’s in the City, which turned out to be a much better experience than last night.  Now, we’re going to relax and watch some DragonCon*TV and get ready for tomorrow, which promises to be our busiest day at the Con. We’ll be attending the parade, so you can expect many, many more pictures (Saturday is always the biggest Picture Taking Day), and we’re heading to the James Randi panel, which is the main panel we’re both excited for.

The crazy is now a little less crazy and I’m feeling a little bit more prepared. I actually have my costumes completed ahead of time this year. I have everything packed except those items I’ll need between now and then.  The pocket program is out (here) and I’m beginning to get an idea of which panels I want to attend and what I want to see.

So far, the big, main panel I definitely want to see is the one with James Randi, probably the one on Saturday at 1:00 PM.

But as for everything else, there’s still a bit of decision making to do. So far, here’s the breakdown of the panels that were of interest to me, and I will likely be attending, time constraints, line-length, and need to sleep and eat allowing:

Friday:

• 10:00 AM: Wikileaks Panel
• 1:00 PM: Kai Owen Torchwood Panel
• 4:00 PM: Quantum Leap Panel or Babylon 5 Panel
• 5:30 PM: The Guild Panel with Vork and Zaboo
• 10:00 PM: Writing and Marketing Same Sex Fiction Workshop
• 11:30 PM: Skepchick Party or “Gay Themes in the Whoniverse” or SLEEP

Saturday:

• 8:30 AM: Breakfast with James Randi
• 10:00 AM: DragonCon Parade!
• 1:00 PM: James Randi Panel
• 4:00 PM: Stan Lee Panel or Firefly Panel or Steampunk World Record Photoshoot
• 5:30 PM: Adam Savage Panel or Chuck Panel
• 7:00 PM: Firefly Redemption Fan Movie Screening
• 10:00 PM: Alternative Sexualities in YA Lit
• 11:30 PM: “We Write the Weird Stuff” Slash Fanfic Writers Party

Sunday:

• 10:00 AM: Robot Battles
• 11:30 AM: An Hour with the Tams Firefly Panel
• 1:00 PM: Kai Owen Torchwood Panel (if we don’t make it to the first one)
• 2:30 PM: Stan Lee (if we don’t make it to the other one) or Cyborg Panel
• 4:00 PM: Adam Savage (if we don’t make it to the other one) or Steampunk Makers Exhibition
• 7:00 PM: Babylon 5 Panel

As I’ve said, I’ll be liveblogging the Con and the panels that I attend, so watch my twitter feed or this blog if you want to Attend Vicariously through any of these.

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Yes, yes, I know I’ve been a bad blogger lately.

Truth is, I’ve just been crazy busy. My days have been pretty much going like this:

• Get up, get dressed, feed cats.
• Go to work. Do work.
• Come home, feed cats, Exercise!
• KNIT! SEW! KNIT! SEW! COSTUMES MUST BE DONE!
• Collapse into bed.
• Repeat.

Somewhere in the middle of this, I also received my first commission. That is, someone asked me to write a story. In return for this story, I will get money.

This terrifies me. This is the exact opposite of how my story writing usually goes. Usually, I write the story first, and then look for a place to sell it,  receiving the requisite handful of rejection letters (or emails) before I find a place for it, if I ever find a place for it.

This is the first time someone’s offered to pay me before the story is even written. What if the story I write isn’t what they were really looking for? What if they don’t think it’s really good enough to merit their payment? Eeeep! There’s that panic!

So the last few weeks pretty much every ounce of spare time that I’m not spending working on my costumes for DragonCon (OMG ALMOST HERE), I’ve spent working hard on that story.

So in the middle of all that writing and sewing and knitting and writing and sewing and knitting….there hasn’t been a lot of room for blogging. Worry not, though, folks! I think I’ll queue up some excerpts from “The Boy Ran” for the next couple of weeks, and I’ll be liveblogging DragonCon again this year!

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