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The Collector Times descended upon Atlanta, Georgia again this Labor Day weekend and was let into Dragon*Con 2007, the 21st since they started this all purpose fantasy convention. Yes, many jokes about it being old enough to drink were made by all.
Fortunately, this year's plane travel was a lot smoother than last year's, and there were no delays at all, and I arrived at the hotel exactly when I planned, without any encounters with wacky train people this time around. Which while this left out some amusement for myself, it also left me less creeped out at the same time.
The beauty of Dragon*Con, for me, is that with so much to do - too much to do, really - a person can craft a different experience every year. While this time around there were less celebrities and panels that interested me, there were still plenty of those, and it freed me up to have more time meet all the fun people hanging around the convention hotels, and doing just the same thing as I was.
Thursday night was mostly uneventful on all fronts, aside from spending quite some time in long lines to get my badge, although the wait time was nothing compared to the folks who were doing walk in registration on the later days. Much like last year, the lines for tickets on Saturday and Sunday stretched around buildings. My own wait wasn't too horrible, although maybe having more than two Ticketmaster booths open may have made that just a bit speedier, which highlights another theme of this year; many things seemed to be in periods of transition, with new people and things being attempted. Some worked, others didn't. These things happen, every so often, and I certainly don't hold it against them for having an off year.
Once I had my own badge, and swung over and got my press ribbon, I found my roommates and redid the whole standing in line thing to keep them company, while grabbing a few photos along the way, although most people were in regular clothes, since the festivities had yet to truly begin. Most of the rest of the night was spent settling in and checking the place out, just grabbing random pictures as those few in costume did catch my eye, and wandering around the few booths that had people at them for the few people doing the whole wandering thing.
The real fun kicked off on Friday, with the official beginning of the convention, and I made my way to my first panel, in the fledgling Science programming track. The panel I went to featured a look at cold reading, and how the trick can be performed in a crowd. Featured on the panel were Dr. Michael Shermer, Jeff Wagg of the James Randi Educational Foundation, and Benjamin Radford. The highlight of the panel was one of them actually trying some cold reading on a roomful of skeptics, and hip to the fact that it's all a trick and not actually any sort of supernatural power of communicating with the dead. It's very humorous to watch all these non believers try to play along for the sake of a demonstration. It got the point across, despite the waves of snickering, if not outright bursts of laughter, floating through the room.
The Science track is just getting its feet wet this year (And maybe a little last year), and is a great addition, hopefully growing in coming years to more panels, and larger rooms. The panel I attended and the one just before it that I could see, were packed tight in the small room, to the point of standing room only and spilling out into the halls. Mixing in actual science and critical thinking with the fantasy and fiction is a very natural fit, and clearly of interest to many people who come to the convention, and I definitely look forward to seeing more of them in coming years.
After that, I went into wandering mode, and tracking down friends, because I had heard about a gathering of people getting made up to recreate the very popular Marvel Zombies characters. I found my friends, and a few zombies, and as my friends went off to get their makeup done, I made my way over to catch as much as I could of the Big Honkin' Funny Music Show. I love comedy music, being a big fan of Weird Al and the Doctor Demento Show, so I make it a point to say hello and see the shows to any of the musicians I can squeeze in, and seeing a bunch of them put on one big concert is always a treat. Sadly, I'd made plans to see more zombies in the middle of the show, and could only catch a few acts before I had to make my way out.
Once I found the huge group of zombies, I ended up spending most of the evening with them, opting to take on duties as the unofficial zombie photographer, rather than go to the opening ceremonies. Many excellent pictures were taken, and can be seen in the photos section of this site. The combinations of various characters definitely made it a night to remember, with the Marvel Zombies attacking such people as Shaun from Shaun of the Dead, Evil Dead's Ash, and a not-quite 300 spartans, and many more. I ended up losing track of the time I was having so much fun with them, while avoiding cameras myself, I missed the costuming contest later that night.
That was when one of those transitional things reared its head for the first time of many that weekend. While the zombies were vamping it up for the cameras, the fire marshal closed the hotel and had people moved around to try and clear space. The fire marshal this year was new, and he laid down some strict guidelines for appropriate numbers of people and traffic through the hotels. While I certainly don't begrudge the man for keeping us all safe, it was a bit of a bummer to be shifted around unexpectedly, and have things being closed and rerouted all weekend long. With people, there's always a bit of bad feelings when the authority figures come along to 'ruin' the fun, but I'll take the inconvenience for safety, though.
One of the other factors that surely contributed to this was the long-running renovations taking place in the Marriott closing off a very large section of it, and seriously limiting convention space. They're doing these renovations to create even more space, and to keep up with the jumps in growth Dragon*Con has seen in recent years, and hopefully with the plans to be fully open next year, any crowding problems will be considerably lessened with the new space available to people. I expect there will still be a few kinks next year, as the people behind the con scramble around and get used to the new areas, but even with those issues, things should be quite a bit more open.
So, with people being shuffled every which way to get out of the area, I said good bye to my zombie friends, and made my way back to my room to unwind, dig through photos, and eventually pass out for the even busier Saturday.
Saturday was an early start, getting ready and running off to find a good spot for the annual parade, and that was even bigger this year than last year. I'm glad I purchased a new card for my camera before jumping on the plane, as I almost filled up a completely blank one just taking photos of the parade.
Once the procession of costumes finished, my roommates and I hooked back up and got in line for the Mythbusters build team panel. Once again, chaos ensued, as there were two big panels scheduled at the same time. Mythbusters, and Battlestar Galactica. Once the people in charge started to see the crowd forming for Mythbusters, they opted to swap rooms, and the cry went out from somewhere that this was happening, and the two separate lines broke, moving from opposite sides of the Hyatt lobby and meeting in the middle like two crashing waves.
Oops.
Things slowly and eventually got sorted out and everyone got where they were going, and I got some pretty good seats, and photos were snapped that were much improved over last year's. A year of having a camera makes a world of difference. It was almost like I knew what I was doing with it. Anyways, once again Kari Byron, Grant Imahara, and Tory Belleci told some great stories, showed a hilarious bloopers clip, and answered many fan questions, and even signed a girl's backpack so she could sell it in a charity auction to help raise money and awareness. They were more than eager to help out. They also teased upcoming Mythbusters episodes, including their 100th episode, and Grant gave clues that they had myths in the future about a certain spy who loves gadgets, cars, and martinis that are shaken and not stirred. The crowd seemed very thrilled at the idea.
Once that let out, I found lunch, and went hunting for another photo group I knew was gathering, the Marvel vs. DC group. A chance to take photos of a large group of people dressed up as my favourite characters, as well as meeting online friends I knew who would be there, was too good to pass up. They were a bit hard to find, but I eventually did, and got more great pics, met new people, and caught back up with a few of my zombie pals from the day before. I actually ended up spending most of the afternoon with those friends, once the group started to scatter, and led them over to the dealer's room. While they posed for pictures with fans of the characters they were dressed up as, I waited to chat with Marvel Zombies cover artist Arthur Suydam, and picked up his sketchbook, as well as getting a sketch of zombie Jean Grey.
Most of my Saturday was spent hanging out with people much cooler than I, and thereby making me slightly cooler by association. It was great hanging around and making new friends, and wandering around with people dressed as Rogue, the Black Cat, and Captain Morgan. It was a truly surreal event.
With everyone having their own things to deal with, we eventually went our separate ways, and I ended up at a concert in the concourse of the Hyatt lobby, enjoying several of the Great Luke Ski's newest songs. Luke's not the best live performer, but the songs are always entertaining, and make me laugh. I'd also missed him at the concert the day before, so wanted a chance to see him.
I decide to do the expected and go watch the parade of redheads be shown before the large crowd at the 10th Annual Dawn Look Alike Competition. This was the largest show to date, with 68 entries, and many of them were great. Again, I managed to get a decent seat, and had learned enough of my camera to get non-crappy photos. The host, Voltaire, was a great choice of host. He's got a bit of a dirty mind, and when you're bringing out what is essentially a string of girls in lingerie, he made with the jokes and kept things interesting.
With the Dawn contest over, Saturday pretty much drew to a close, and led into Sunday after some sleep.
It was another early morning, but this time it was just for another concourse performance, this time by musician Tom Smith, who did a few old songs of his, and a few new. One of them was very new, as he completely made up a song to keep people entertained as the techies tried to get the microphones working. He kept it going for quite a few minutes, showing off his ability to improvise and filk at the drop of a hat.
Aside from that, I had nothing planned at all for the day, and spent most of it hunting down people and hanging out. I swung over to the walk of fame, where you can meet the stars, looking for the Build Team from Mythbusters, but they were on their way to lunch. Saying hi to a few people from Star Trek, I followed their cue and fed myself.
Afterwards, one of my goals for the weekend was met. I'm a fan of someone who's a bit of an icon among the geek community, and costumers, Ruby Rocket. Turns out I'd actually seen her in the zombies Friday night and not realised it, as well as her winning the Dawn contest. That I knew, but was hard to say hi when she's on stage! I was wandering around the Hyatt, just killing time and taking photos, and I spy a redhead out of the corner of my eye, take a closer look, grab a few photos while she finishes talking to some other people, and nervously ask if she's Ruby Rocket. Out of all the times to finally meet her, she's out of costume. Meeting her was a real treat, she is one of the nicest people I've met for a few minutes of time, and despite having a sore throat, she spent a good few minutes talking to me. Of course, I'm an introverted comic geek, who likes redheads, so my brain was buzzing and I was trying not to shake. I'm surprised I formed coherent English while talking to her, but I managed an actual conversation, and hopefully didn't make too much of a fool out of myself. Out of all the people I met that would be considered famous, she made me the most nervous.
With a little more wandering and waiting to kill time, I finally got some time in to talk with the Mythbusters, and my yearly photo with them, and helped some other people get photos with them as well.
I spent some more time just wandering and meeting people, and ironically bumped into Ruby two more times over the next few hours. Days of searching, and then I couldn't get away from her. I also met Adam Hughes, David Mack, and the people who create the Misfile webcomic. The Misfile people are friends of my friends who do the Wotch comic, and inserted me into it, so I introduced myself as the inspiration for the character, and got to turn the tables on the people with the fame, having my own brief moment of fame over the weekend.
That was a nice wrap up to my Sunday, and I retired early to my room, where we all gathered to watch the masquerade on the convention TV channel, where we could laugh at the often intentionally hilarious skits people performed, and have a good time without disturbing others. I also figured hiding and hoping to not run into Ruby any more was a good plan after unintentionally shadowing her that afternoon.
Aside from a little more wandering on Monday morning and saying my goodbyes to people, that was the end of Dragon*Con 2007. Another excellent weekend with friends and more, a truly chaotic weekend, but in the good way. I'm already gearing up to return next year, and can't wait to see what sort of different experience I craft for myself then.
You can see Jason's Dragon*Con photos here.
Jason M. Bourgeois
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