No, hell hasn’t frozen over. I’m still missing self-imposed blogging deadlines. I’d intended to kill two birds with one stone and doing something for Speak Out With Your Geek Out. And, what could possibly be more geeky than going to the 25th Dragon*Con? So, rather than consider myself two weeks overdue, I can imagine I’m only two days. 😉
Anyway… William Shatner, Martin Landau, Sylvester McCoy, Mark Sheppard, celebrity run-ins, awesome costumes, and Jefferson Starship–yes, I had an absolute total fucking blast!!
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Shout-outs to my roomies: Conni, Ben, and Dana, without whom there would’ve been any way on God’s green earth that I would’ve gotten there, to say nothing of being able to navigate through the con!
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Shout-outs tot: Regan and Harley! Harley, I’ve met before, but we didn’t get a picture last time, so she had plausible deniability. Not this time!
Thanks especially to Regan, who drove us around like the Jason Statham in The Transporter for some Southern eats! I can’t wait ’til I get to visit Mary Mac’s Tea Room again. And the Breakfast BLT from the Highland Bakery… I still dream about it! Let’s just say that it’s the culinary opposite of my (still beloved) Ithaca Bakery.
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All right, the con itself. I didn’t take a tenth of the pictures I could have taken.
The highlights include…
- Pics and video Captain Kirk, Commander Koenig, and The Doctor (just gotta figure out the best way/place to post the vids)
- My missed opportunity to get a DVD copy of Bloodsucking Freaks (linky is NSFW) signed by Lloyd Kaufman.
- My favorite costumes: Ulquiorra, Black Canary, Orko, and The Ambiguously Gay Duo!
- Some random asshat in a black pirate shirt :s
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Also in that picture set are a couple of shots from the lit-track panel “New and Next Weird” with Lou Anders, Jeff VanderMeer
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So, all that was good, but the highlight of my Dragon*Con was seeing Jefferson-fucking-Starship, not once, but twice!!
They didn’t start until midnight both nights, but it was worth the line (I managed to get myself to be one of the first 20-25 people lined up ahead of time), the lack of sleep, and the temporary deafness to hear what the program described as, “Blade Runner Against the Empire, a science fiction/electronica/rock opera “mosh” of Hugo-nominated album Blows Against the Empire and the Vangelis score for the film Blade Runner” on the first night, and hits on the second night. Just seeing singer Darby Gould in a classic Trek uniform was worth the price of admission. Oh, and schooling an appreciative Goth girl on the individual members of the current Jefferson Starship and stories about why we would not seeing Grace Slick, hearing “We Built This City,” nor seeing Mickey Thomas (yeah, not with Donny Baldwin back in the band, we weren’t) was cool, too.
And on top of all that, I got nice and close to the stage, as you can see by the relatively decent pics taken from the crappy iPod Touch 4G camera.
I’m glad someone got a decent video of “Jane,” ‘cos I was too busy rocking out…
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And, speaking of videos I was in where you’ll just have to take my word that I was actually there, I got to be in the audience as Episode 92 of NSFW was being recorded! I hadn’t laughed so hard in such a long time!
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Other things I learned/saw/remember…
- Gareth David-Lloyd has a delightfully filthy mouth.
- It’s possible to see the same celebrities (Sylvester McCoy, Mark Sheppard, Howard Hesseman) multiple times across all 5 con hotels (not counting panels) more often than you see your own roommates. The same people in the same costumes, too.
- It’s absolutely true what they say about becoming buddies with the people you stand in lines with at Dragon*Con.
- I’m 90% sure I shared an elevator with someone from high school, but I was too stunned to say anything.
- And I will never, ever complain about any line I stand in ever again.
I absolutely know I’m forgetting things, but the fact that I remembered this much two weeks later should show how fucking great of a time I had!