Dragon*Con 2012
I went to Dragon*Con this past weekend. It was my first time and I had a blast. For those who don't know, this is a huge professionally-run fandom convention, focused primarily on science fiction and fantasy, with a reputation for lots of cosplay. It's spread across five hotels in downtown Atlanta and this year I think an estimated 50,000+ people attended.
I've been to Escapade and ConneXions (now CON.TXT) but never a big con like this one. Overall I was extremely impressed by how efficient and organized everything was, from registration to panels to the wonderful iPhone/iPad/Android app we used to plan the whole weekend (also frequently used to revise our plans on the spot). And people's costumes were just FANTASTIC. Kudos also to the city of Atlanta and all of the hotels and employees involved for handling what must have been a real strain on infrastructure and resources.
I'm not sure if we'll do it again next year, but this is more because we had such a great time that we're kind of like, how could it ever be improved upon?
Here follows my really long con report:
THURSDAY
Husband and I arrived in Atlanta on Thursday evening, rode the very easy MARTA train into downtown from the airport, and went straight to registration at the Sheraton to get our badges (we packed extremely light: one backpack and one small day bag each). Registration was a breeze -- it was moderately crowded, but the line moved fast. The system of mailing postcards with a barcode to people who pre-register means you just hand over your postcard at one of the many booths, they print out a label with your name on it, stick it to your badge, and you're done!
We had dinner at Alma Cocina, a "modern" Mexican place on Peachtree Street, which was yummy but had rather small portions given it's, you know, a restaurant in the South.
Then we checked in at the Fairfield Inn & Suites, one of the overflow hotels about a 10-min walk/one MARTA stop away. We got a 2-room 1-bath suite for $129 a night at the special D*C rate, with free wi-fi and breakfast included. Well worth it in my opinion, but by the end of the weekend my husband had decided that if we do go back next year, he really wants to stay at the Marriott (one of the host hotels).
FRIDAY
We got to the Hyatt (another of the host hotels) reasonably early, thinking we'd try getting into the Lord of the Rings panel with Billy Boyd (Pippin), John Rhys-Davies (Gimli) and Craig Parker (Haldir). The "official" D*C policy regarding lining up for panels states that they'll only allow lines to form one hour in advance and will disband any line-shaped thing which forms before that.
So of course by the time we got there the line was already wrapped around three sides of the building (which, by the way, is massive and takes up an entire city block).
There wasn't anything else at the Hyatt we were interested in for that time slot, so we wandered over to the Marriott. I was a bit annoyed, because it was late morning of the first day and I wanted to get into at least one panel before noon!
Luckily, the Battlestar Galactica panel was in a huge ballroom at the Marriott with plenty of room for us to find seats. The panelists were Katee Sackhoff (Kara Thrace/Starbuck), Jamie Bamber (Lee Adama/Apollo), Michael Trucco (Sam Anders), Richard Hatch (original Apollo and Tom Zarek), and science advisor Kevin R. Grazier.
Bamber had big floppy blond hair and Sackhoff sadly seemed to have lost most of the awesome muscle mass she had as Starbuck (later confirmed closer up in the autograph hall). All of the actors loved the ending of the show and the way their character arcs wrapped up, and were passionate (and somewhat rambling) in defense. Hatch thinks Tom Zarek is the best role he's ever had. Sackhoff said that the photo of her and Dirk Benedict (original Starbuck) sitting in a Starbucks was taken before shooting on the reboot began, and it was only after that photo that he said derogatory things in public about the new Starbuck being a woman. She hasn't spoken to him since.
Then we went to a panel called Whitewashing of YA, billed as a chance to discuss the portrayal of minorities in young adult literature. The panelists included two white female authors (one published and one not), one female author who self-identified as Hispanic, one half-Asian male author, and an Asian female senior editor of children's literature at Tor named Susan Chang.
Nothing was said at this panel which I haven't already seen other people saying on the Internet. Discussion ranged from racial and ethnic minorities to sexual minorities to physical and mental disability. There was talk about how sci-fi and fantasy in particular can be used to explore issues and identities in a metaphorical way, and counter-talk about how this nevertheless can erase real world issues and identities. There was talk about how jarring some readers find it when a minority character is explicitly described in the text or cast as such in the movie -- or is not cast as such (e.g. The Hunger Games and The Last Airbender), and counter-talk about how most readers tend to think the default is white so these descriptions are important.
I should probably have taken notes as lots of people on the panel and in the audience had recommendations for non-faily books, but I didn't. Cindy Pon and Malindo Lo were definitely mentioned, however.
We wandered around two absolutely massive dealer rooms next, looking at all kinds of fannish merchandise like costumes, T-shirts, weapons, jewelry, books, comics and graphic novels, magazines, posters, buttons, fridge magnets, games, etc.
Then we somehow lucked into a very good spot for the Stan Lee panel, I suspect because we kind of accidentally cheated and entered the "ruly line-shaped mob" (thank you, random fellow con attendee) at a spot and time when no one was looking. We sat in the center of the fourth or fifth row and it was amaaaaazing. I am not at all a comics reader although I've watched most of the comics movies which have come out, but I'm now a fan of Stan Lee the person. He was hilarious and witty, he gave no fucks about being nice or sugarcoating his answers, and although he can't hear very well anymore he's still way sharper and quicker than I am. I can't believe he's 89! Hope he sticks around for a while.
Then we were tired and hungry, so we went to our favorite BBQ place in Atlanta: Fat Matt's Rib Shack for dinner and called it a day.
SATURDAY
Saturday morning we lined up for the costume parade. The parade itself was awesome, a whole hour featuring some really beautiful, professional caliber work. I think I'll finally make use of my Tumblr and dump some pictures there (and video if possible).
But I always dislike pushing and shoving in a crowd of spectators, and unfortunately we were standing next to a bunch of camera dicks -- you know, those people with really big expensive cameras who think their line of sight is so much more important than yours....
Then we headed to the Batman panel with Adam West (Batman) and Burt Ward (Robin). A huge amount of time at the start of the panel was taken up by an Atlanta city councilman who read out two really long proclamations which named the day "Adam West and Burt Ward Day" in Atlanta. Adam West's voice, which a new generation now probably knows best from Family Guy, was kind of unreal. Burt Ward looks like your average aging white dude. But these guys were clearly very used to the convention circuit and knew how to entertain the audience with jokes and innuendo. The cutest audience question came from a little kid who asked them what their favorite Batman device was, and professed a personal preference for the African Death Bee Antidote Pill.
Then we checked out the line for the second Lord of the Rings panel in case it was better than the day before, and alas no, it was not.
So we went to a panel with Captain William Shepherd, first commander of the International Space Station. This was kind of brilliant. He first showed a video of the training process and time spent on the ISS, with lots of footage that I imagine only gets shown in certain circles. Then there was a really long Q&A session where he talked very frankly about the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the Russian and US space programs (short version: Russian engineers will physically build things and test them to destruction so they know exactly when it will break; American engineers rely a lot more on sophisticated simulations; Captain Shepherd admitted he would rather strap his ass to a Russian-engineered rocket), and what it was like to both be up in space for months at a time and to return home, and a whole host of other things I wish I could remember now. The audience loved it and gave him a standing ovation.
This was a particularly poignant panel in hindsight because on the plane ride home, someone had left a Men's Journal which had a long article on the current state of NASA, and how astronauts are leaving in droves because there is now no sign or promise of a manned spaceflight program in the US in the near future.
After that we wandered around the two absolutely massive art rooms. I'm curious how much art actually got sold at D*C -- a lot of the auction slips attached to pieces were still empty by that afternoon. Most things were available cheaper as prints, although I am not the type of person to put fannish art on my walls at home (we did however buy Bizarro and Wonder Woman fridge magnets). We also chatted a little bit with Mike S. Miller, who does comic art and recently, illustrations for Game of Thrones, and he seemed like a stand-up guy.
Then it was time to line up for the Star Trek: The Next Generation panel, with Jonathan Frakes (William Riker), Michael Dorn (Worf), LeVar Burton (Geordi LaForge), and Garrett Wang (Harry Kim). Wang served as moderator, as he also runs the Trek Track for D*C (meaning he's responsible for all Trek-related programming at the con).
This was SO AWESOME. Like, I could tell that just like Adam West and Bruce Ward, these guys have been to countless cons and they rarely get asked anything new or interesting. But they know the easy ways to make the crowd happy, with jokes and stories and all of that. Apparently it was Dorn's first Dragon*Con and he delighted everyone with an impromptu recitation from As You Like It, which he'd recently starred in a production of, but generally when it came to the geeky stuff he was all, nah, I am NHFT (the first audience question was "Why did the Klingon forehead change between TOS and TNG" and it predictably got a huge groan from the whole room). Frakes told a funny story about a pink dressing gown he used to wear to the makeup trailer, but when a woman asked him for a kiss and tried to take a photo of it, he blocked her camera with his hand and just gave her a quick peck on the cheek.
LeVar Burton got the biggest round of applause when he was introduced, RIGHTLY SO (see Reading Rainbow panel below), and was generally no-nonsense and badass in his response to questions. One audience question about acting experience and acting advice was, appallingly, directed only at Dorn and Burton, and when the questioner (an aspiring actor) confessed to not knowing who Steve McQueen was, Burton just said, incredulously, "And you want to be an actor?"
My husband did not recognize Garrett Wang because his hair is now shoulder-length. I laughed at him later.
Next panel was 10 Rules for Dealing with Police Encounters. It mostly consisted of a video put together by the very good Flex Your Rights organization, but we already knew the two most important phrases when dealing with police officers in the US from other similar videos (phrase 1: "I do not consent to any searches"; phrase 2: "Are you detaining me, officer, or am I free to go?"). Then a guy on the panel started telling his personal story about being arrested, but I'm sorry to say that despite being a few years younger than Stan Lee he was not nearly as coherent or interesting, so we left early.
We headed over to the Marriott to hang out with
nestra and
shrift and some of their lovely friends (including two women in absolutely gorgeous steampunk superhero costumes -- corseted Superman and Iron Man, YES!), who are all D*C longtimers. I saw
shrift in London last year but hadn't seen
nestra since a fangirl trip to Italy six years ago. And here we all were in Atlanta, drinking margaritas and eating chocolate. I love fandom. :)
SUNDAY
Sunday morning we lined up for The Vampire Diaries panel. Michael Trevino (Tyler) had already canceled, but Paul Wesley (Stefan) and Kat Graham (Bonnie) were still listed on the updated schedule that morning. But apparently they also canceled last minute, so instead we got Ian Somerhalder (Damon), Joseph Morgan (Klaus), Nathaniel Buzolic (Kol), and Sebastian Roche (Michael).
If I had known about Wesley and Graham canceling, we wouldn't have attended. This was probably one of the grosser experiences of the con. Buzolic loudly announced he was single and happy to date fans, which made the room squeal. Roche was a mess, making sexual joke after sexual joke -- every celebrity panel did this but he went to a level beyond, such that Morgan suggested it become a drinking game -- and running into the audience to literally jump on people. Most audience questions went to Somerhalder, of course, and no one asked anything substantive about the characters or the show or the season to come. I was actually cool with Morgan, though. I think his character has become a drain on the show, but in interviews he's always very enthusiastic and appreciative of the show itself, and on the panel he was the least gross by far.
The audience, though.... People asked the actors what women they'd like to compel, and who they'd turn into a vampire to be their true love. Sebastian Roche cheerfully answered Jennifer Lopez. The other three actors, if I recall correctly, managed to duck the questions. *facepalm* *facepalm* *facepalm*
That said, the good thing about seeing these guys while TVD is in the process of filming is that they all had good haircuts and had shaved recently. We had seats reasonably close to the front so at least I could appreciate that.
I'd been thinking about trying for one of Gillian Anderson's two panels, but I didn't expect much from her: her ambivalence about her role on The X-Files is well-known, and without anyone else to play off of I doubted she'd be very funny or entertaining. A woman at breakfast in our hotel had been to the first panel the day before and confirmed my suspicions, so we skipped and did some shopping in the dealer rooms.
Then we lined up for the Reading Rainbow panel with LeVar Burton. Ugh, I just love this man. I mean, I lined up for TWO panels with him, and for this second one we stood in the hot Georgia sun for nearly an hour (although we had fun chatting with another con-goer in Regency dress, and I spotted a cosplayer dressed as Sherlock Holmes in his bedsheet in Buckingham Palace).
The audience loved Burton as well: nearly everyone who came up for questions spent some time thanking him for the show and talking about how much it meant to them. He now owns all the rights to the Reading Rainbow brand, so although it got canceled by PBS he's revived it with the Reading Rainbow app for iPad and promised an app will be out for Android soon. He talked a lot of politics and policy (he's your basic pinko liberal), including a great rant about No Child Left Behind. In response to a question about the top three children's books he'd recommend, he said: Amazing Grace, Enemy Pie, and anything by Shel Silverstein.
Next we headed over to the Walk of Fame, which is a huge ballroom where all the celebrity guests sit at tables underneath banners and sign autographs for a fee. That is, all the celebrity guests except the mega-popular ones like Gillian Anderson, Richard Dean Anderson and the Vampire Diaries guys, who sat in separate areas.
I found this a surprisingly awkward, secondhand embarrassing experience and could barely make eye contact with any of the guests. Paying money for autographs is not something that interests me -- we really just went out of curiosity, to see who we could see. But when we got there I realized I would hate to be a celebrity sitting at my table with no one in my line, watching people walk past and give my banner and my face a cursory glance and decide they either don't recognize me, or don't think I'm worth the autograph fee. Case in point: Jonathan Frakes had quite a long line, whereas Michael Dorn right next to him had no line and just sat there messing around on his phone. I mean, just, ouch.
That said, here's a list of who we saw (or who I can remember we saw), for anyone interested: Anthony Michael Hall, Lou Ferrigno, Jamie Bamber, Richard Hatch, James Callis, Katee Sackhoff, Adam Baldwin, Sean Maher, Aaron Ashmore, Saul Rubinek, Gigi Edgley, Joe Flanigan, John Barrowman, James Marsters, Juliet Landau, Nelsan Ellis, Sam Trammell, Joe Manganiello, Carrie Preston, Robert Picardo, Tim Russ, Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn.
Next panel we attended was on the Apocalypse track, with author Michael Z. Williamson and a local law enforcement/emergency response officer whose name I can't remember. This panel was a lot of fun. The panelists went through the basic needs: air, water, food, shelter and how to go about making sure you've got enough of those pre-apocalypse or acquiring them ASAP post-apocalypse. They definitely knew their stuff, took a ton of questions from the audience and were happy to tailor responses based on whatever apocalyptic scenario a questioner came up with. Probably the funniest thing about the panel for me, however, was how much a lot of the audience already knew. The guy sitting behind us, for instance, would mutter knowledgeable things under his breath which the panelists would say independently just a second or two later, like the best caliber of gun to get and the danger of dehydration from alcohol. Then he'd raise his hand and ask questions about zombies. Heh.
After that, we watched the Masquerade on overflow video. This is a costume contest with both a child and adult division and is generally one of the biggest events of the con. The MC was the delightful Grant Imahara from Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. I love that guy and his hilarious reaction expressions, and he was definitely having fun with a lot of the costumes. Memorable ones included a kid dressed as an adipose (fat) cell, a baby Dalek, a massive to-scale Totoro and Satsuki, two dinosaur skeletons, and a couple of folks with mechanical wings. One costume which got zero applause was some woman who thought it would be a great idea to dress up as Amy Winehouse and stumble around drunkenly. Ugh.
MONDAY
For our last day, we thought we'd kick things off with an Avatar: The Last Airbender panel, but we arrived too late to get in -- it was packed, even though it was just a "hey, we're all fans so let's get together and talk" kind of panel. (We did see some great Legend of Korra cosplayers outside, though.)
So instead we slipped into the back of a Doctor Who panel with Sylvestor McCoy and Patricia Quinn doing live commentary on two episodes of the "Dragonfire" serial. The episodes played on big screens overhead, and the actors held microphones and rambled hilariously about anything that came to mind.
Next was a Hobbit panel run by some people from theonering.net focused on talking through everything that's public knowledge about the movies so far, and speculation based on that. One of the panelists had spent a few weeks in New Zealand visiting the set, and showed some pictures he took. Nobody seemed to think negatively of the three-movie decision, but possibly that had already been argued at length and the dead horse already beaten. Personally, I got back none of the excitement I'd felt before the decision was announced, but I guess we'll see in December.
And finally, we went to a panel on the American Sci-Fi track called "How Soon Is Now," focusing on the various futures and technology from old sci-fi TV and movies which we still don't have now. This was a great panel to end on -- two of the four guys run a podcast called Doctor Geek's Laboratory (I can't recall the names of the other two guys and they're not on the panel description). All were smart, articulate, passionate, and funny.
The main thesis of the discussion ended up being, basically, that we do live in the future and the tech stuff we have now is amazing and should be appreciated even if we don't yet have flying cars or transporters or holodecks. See, e.g. everything you can now do with a smartphone. A lot of the discussion kept circling back to Jack Andraka, who at 15 years old won a prize for coming up with a faster, cheaper way to screen for early-stage pancreatic cancer. The point was, we need to incentivize and inspire more kids (and give them the access and resources) to go into science and math and engineering so they can do more things like this. Probably when most of them are a bit older than 15, granted, but still....
Whew! If I had to do it over again I would have taken a small notebook to jot things down so I wouldn't forget, but imagine how much longer this would have been if I had. Anyway, that was my con report in text. Now off to add visuals to Tumblr.
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I've been to Escapade and ConneXions (now CON.TXT) but never a big con like this one. Overall I was extremely impressed by how efficient and organized everything was, from registration to panels to the wonderful iPhone/iPad/Android app we used to plan the whole weekend (also frequently used to revise our plans on the spot). And people's costumes were just FANTASTIC. Kudos also to the city of Atlanta and all of the hotels and employees involved for handling what must have been a real strain on infrastructure and resources.
I'm not sure if we'll do it again next year, but this is more because we had such a great time that we're kind of like, how could it ever be improved upon?
Here follows my really long con report:
THURSDAY
Husband and I arrived in Atlanta on Thursday evening, rode the very easy MARTA train into downtown from the airport, and went straight to registration at the Sheraton to get our badges (we packed extremely light: one backpack and one small day bag each). Registration was a breeze -- it was moderately crowded, but the line moved fast. The system of mailing postcards with a barcode to people who pre-register means you just hand over your postcard at one of the many booths, they print out a label with your name on it, stick it to your badge, and you're done!
We had dinner at Alma Cocina, a "modern" Mexican place on Peachtree Street, which was yummy but had rather small portions given it's, you know, a restaurant in the South.
Then we checked in at the Fairfield Inn & Suites, one of the overflow hotels about a 10-min walk/one MARTA stop away. We got a 2-room 1-bath suite for $129 a night at the special D*C rate, with free wi-fi and breakfast included. Well worth it in my opinion, but by the end of the weekend my husband had decided that if we do go back next year, he really wants to stay at the Marriott (one of the host hotels).
FRIDAY
We got to the Hyatt (another of the host hotels) reasonably early, thinking we'd try getting into the Lord of the Rings panel with Billy Boyd (Pippin), John Rhys-Davies (Gimli) and Craig Parker (Haldir). The "official" D*C policy regarding lining up for panels states that they'll only allow lines to form one hour in advance and will disband any line-shaped thing which forms before that.
So of course by the time we got there the line was already wrapped around three sides of the building (which, by the way, is massive and takes up an entire city block).
There wasn't anything else at the Hyatt we were interested in for that time slot, so we wandered over to the Marriott. I was a bit annoyed, because it was late morning of the first day and I wanted to get into at least one panel before noon!
Luckily, the Battlestar Galactica panel was in a huge ballroom at the Marriott with plenty of room for us to find seats. The panelists were Katee Sackhoff (Kara Thrace/Starbuck), Jamie Bamber (Lee Adama/Apollo), Michael Trucco (Sam Anders), Richard Hatch (original Apollo and Tom Zarek), and science advisor Kevin R. Grazier.
Bamber had big floppy blond hair and Sackhoff sadly seemed to have lost most of the awesome muscle mass she had as Starbuck (later confirmed closer up in the autograph hall). All of the actors loved the ending of the show and the way their character arcs wrapped up, and were passionate (and somewhat rambling) in defense. Hatch thinks Tom Zarek is the best role he's ever had. Sackhoff said that the photo of her and Dirk Benedict (original Starbuck) sitting in a Starbucks was taken before shooting on the reboot began, and it was only after that photo that he said derogatory things in public about the new Starbuck being a woman. She hasn't spoken to him since.
Then we went to a panel called Whitewashing of YA, billed as a chance to discuss the portrayal of minorities in young adult literature. The panelists included two white female authors (one published and one not), one female author who self-identified as Hispanic, one half-Asian male author, and an Asian female senior editor of children's literature at Tor named Susan Chang.
Nothing was said at this panel which I haven't already seen other people saying on the Internet. Discussion ranged from racial and ethnic minorities to sexual minorities to physical and mental disability. There was talk about how sci-fi and fantasy in particular can be used to explore issues and identities in a metaphorical way, and counter-talk about how this nevertheless can erase real world issues and identities. There was talk about how jarring some readers find it when a minority character is explicitly described in the text or cast as such in the movie -- or is not cast as such (e.g. The Hunger Games and The Last Airbender), and counter-talk about how most readers tend to think the default is white so these descriptions are important.
I should probably have taken notes as lots of people on the panel and in the audience had recommendations for non-faily books, but I didn't. Cindy Pon and Malindo Lo were definitely mentioned, however.
We wandered around two absolutely massive dealer rooms next, looking at all kinds of fannish merchandise like costumes, T-shirts, weapons, jewelry, books, comics and graphic novels, magazines, posters, buttons, fridge magnets, games, etc.
Then we somehow lucked into a very good spot for the Stan Lee panel, I suspect because we kind of accidentally cheated and entered the "ruly line-shaped mob" (thank you, random fellow con attendee) at a spot and time when no one was looking. We sat in the center of the fourth or fifth row and it was amaaaaazing. I am not at all a comics reader although I've watched most of the comics movies which have come out, but I'm now a fan of Stan Lee the person. He was hilarious and witty, he gave no fucks about being nice or sugarcoating his answers, and although he can't hear very well anymore he's still way sharper and quicker than I am. I can't believe he's 89! Hope he sticks around for a while.
Then we were tired and hungry, so we went to our favorite BBQ place in Atlanta: Fat Matt's Rib Shack for dinner and called it a day.
SATURDAY
Saturday morning we lined up for the costume parade. The parade itself was awesome, a whole hour featuring some really beautiful, professional caliber work. I think I'll finally make use of my Tumblr and dump some pictures there (and video if possible).
But I always dislike pushing and shoving in a crowd of spectators, and unfortunately we were standing next to a bunch of camera dicks -- you know, those people with really big expensive cameras who think their line of sight is so much more important than yours....
Then we headed to the Batman panel with Adam West (Batman) and Burt Ward (Robin). A huge amount of time at the start of the panel was taken up by an Atlanta city councilman who read out two really long proclamations which named the day "Adam West and Burt Ward Day" in Atlanta. Adam West's voice, which a new generation now probably knows best from Family Guy, was kind of unreal. Burt Ward looks like your average aging white dude. But these guys were clearly very used to the convention circuit and knew how to entertain the audience with jokes and innuendo. The cutest audience question came from a little kid who asked them what their favorite Batman device was, and professed a personal preference for the African Death Bee Antidote Pill.
Then we checked out the line for the second Lord of the Rings panel in case it was better than the day before, and alas no, it was not.
So we went to a panel with Captain William Shepherd, first commander of the International Space Station. This was kind of brilliant. He first showed a video of the training process and time spent on the ISS, with lots of footage that I imagine only gets shown in certain circles. Then there was a really long Q&A session where he talked very frankly about the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the Russian and US space programs (short version: Russian engineers will physically build things and test them to destruction so they know exactly when it will break; American engineers rely a lot more on sophisticated simulations; Captain Shepherd admitted he would rather strap his ass to a Russian-engineered rocket), and what it was like to both be up in space for months at a time and to return home, and a whole host of other things I wish I could remember now. The audience loved it and gave him a standing ovation.
This was a particularly poignant panel in hindsight because on the plane ride home, someone had left a Men's Journal which had a long article on the current state of NASA, and how astronauts are leaving in droves because there is now no sign or promise of a manned spaceflight program in the US in the near future.
After that we wandered around the two absolutely massive art rooms. I'm curious how much art actually got sold at D*C -- a lot of the auction slips attached to pieces were still empty by that afternoon. Most things were available cheaper as prints, although I am not the type of person to put fannish art on my walls at home (we did however buy Bizarro and Wonder Woman fridge magnets). We also chatted a little bit with Mike S. Miller, who does comic art and recently, illustrations for Game of Thrones, and he seemed like a stand-up guy.
Then it was time to line up for the Star Trek: The Next Generation panel, with Jonathan Frakes (William Riker), Michael Dorn (Worf), LeVar Burton (Geordi LaForge), and Garrett Wang (Harry Kim). Wang served as moderator, as he also runs the Trek Track for D*C (meaning he's responsible for all Trek-related programming at the con).
This was SO AWESOME. Like, I could tell that just like Adam West and Bruce Ward, these guys have been to countless cons and they rarely get asked anything new or interesting. But they know the easy ways to make the crowd happy, with jokes and stories and all of that. Apparently it was Dorn's first Dragon*Con and he delighted everyone with an impromptu recitation from As You Like It, which he'd recently starred in a production of, but generally when it came to the geeky stuff he was all, nah, I am NHFT (the first audience question was "Why did the Klingon forehead change between TOS and TNG" and it predictably got a huge groan from the whole room). Frakes told a funny story about a pink dressing gown he used to wear to the makeup trailer, but when a woman asked him for a kiss and tried to take a photo of it, he blocked her camera with his hand and just gave her a quick peck on the cheek.
LeVar Burton got the biggest round of applause when he was introduced, RIGHTLY SO (see Reading Rainbow panel below), and was generally no-nonsense and badass in his response to questions. One audience question about acting experience and acting advice was, appallingly, directed only at Dorn and Burton, and when the questioner (an aspiring actor) confessed to not knowing who Steve McQueen was, Burton just said, incredulously, "And you want to be an actor?"
My husband did not recognize Garrett Wang because his hair is now shoulder-length. I laughed at him later.
Next panel was 10 Rules for Dealing with Police Encounters. It mostly consisted of a video put together by the very good Flex Your Rights organization, but we already knew the two most important phrases when dealing with police officers in the US from other similar videos (phrase 1: "I do not consent to any searches"; phrase 2: "Are you detaining me, officer, or am I free to go?"). Then a guy on the panel started telling his personal story about being arrested, but I'm sorry to say that despite being a few years younger than Stan Lee he was not nearly as coherent or interesting, so we left early.
We headed over to the Marriott to hang out with
nestra and
shrift and some of their lovely friends (including two women in absolutely gorgeous steampunk superhero costumes -- corseted Superman and Iron Man, YES!), who are all D*C longtimers. I saw
shrift in London last year but hadn't seen
nestra since a fangirl trip to Italy six years ago. And here we all were in Atlanta, drinking margaritas and eating chocolate. I love fandom. :)
SUNDAY
Sunday morning we lined up for The Vampire Diaries panel. Michael Trevino (Tyler) had already canceled, but Paul Wesley (Stefan) and Kat Graham (Bonnie) were still listed on the updated schedule that morning. But apparently they also canceled last minute, so instead we got Ian Somerhalder (Damon), Joseph Morgan (Klaus), Nathaniel Buzolic (Kol), and Sebastian Roche (Michael).
If I had known about Wesley and Graham canceling, we wouldn't have attended. This was probably one of the grosser experiences of the con. Buzolic loudly announced he was single and happy to date fans, which made the room squeal. Roche was a mess, making sexual joke after sexual joke -- every celebrity panel did this but he went to a level beyond, such that Morgan suggested it become a drinking game -- and running into the audience to literally jump on people. Most audience questions went to Somerhalder, of course, and no one asked anything substantive about the characters or the show or the season to come. I was actually cool with Morgan, though. I think his character has become a drain on the show, but in interviews he's always very enthusiastic and appreciative of the show itself, and on the panel he was the least gross by far.
The audience, though.... People asked the actors what women they'd like to compel, and who they'd turn into a vampire to be their true love. Sebastian Roche cheerfully answered Jennifer Lopez. The other three actors, if I recall correctly, managed to duck the questions. *facepalm* *facepalm* *facepalm*
That said, the good thing about seeing these guys while TVD is in the process of filming is that they all had good haircuts and had shaved recently. We had seats reasonably close to the front so at least I could appreciate that.
I'd been thinking about trying for one of Gillian Anderson's two panels, but I didn't expect much from her: her ambivalence about her role on The X-Files is well-known, and without anyone else to play off of I doubted she'd be very funny or entertaining. A woman at breakfast in our hotel had been to the first panel the day before and confirmed my suspicions, so we skipped and did some shopping in the dealer rooms.
Then we lined up for the Reading Rainbow panel with LeVar Burton. Ugh, I just love this man. I mean, I lined up for TWO panels with him, and for this second one we stood in the hot Georgia sun for nearly an hour (although we had fun chatting with another con-goer in Regency dress, and I spotted a cosplayer dressed as Sherlock Holmes in his bedsheet in Buckingham Palace).
The audience loved Burton as well: nearly everyone who came up for questions spent some time thanking him for the show and talking about how much it meant to them. He now owns all the rights to the Reading Rainbow brand, so although it got canceled by PBS he's revived it with the Reading Rainbow app for iPad and promised an app will be out for Android soon. He talked a lot of politics and policy (he's your basic pinko liberal), including a great rant about No Child Left Behind. In response to a question about the top three children's books he'd recommend, he said: Amazing Grace, Enemy Pie, and anything by Shel Silverstein.
Next we headed over to the Walk of Fame, which is a huge ballroom where all the celebrity guests sit at tables underneath banners and sign autographs for a fee. That is, all the celebrity guests except the mega-popular ones like Gillian Anderson, Richard Dean Anderson and the Vampire Diaries guys, who sat in separate areas.
I found this a surprisingly awkward, secondhand embarrassing experience and could barely make eye contact with any of the guests. Paying money for autographs is not something that interests me -- we really just went out of curiosity, to see who we could see. But when we got there I realized I would hate to be a celebrity sitting at my table with no one in my line, watching people walk past and give my banner and my face a cursory glance and decide they either don't recognize me, or don't think I'm worth the autograph fee. Case in point: Jonathan Frakes had quite a long line, whereas Michael Dorn right next to him had no line and just sat there messing around on his phone. I mean, just, ouch.
That said, here's a list of who we saw (or who I can remember we saw), for anyone interested: Anthony Michael Hall, Lou Ferrigno, Jamie Bamber, Richard Hatch, James Callis, Katee Sackhoff, Adam Baldwin, Sean Maher, Aaron Ashmore, Saul Rubinek, Gigi Edgley, Joe Flanigan, John Barrowman, James Marsters, Juliet Landau, Nelsan Ellis, Sam Trammell, Joe Manganiello, Carrie Preston, Robert Picardo, Tim Russ, Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn.
Next panel we attended was on the Apocalypse track, with author Michael Z. Williamson and a local law enforcement/emergency response officer whose name I can't remember. This panel was a lot of fun. The panelists went through the basic needs: air, water, food, shelter and how to go about making sure you've got enough of those pre-apocalypse or acquiring them ASAP post-apocalypse. They definitely knew their stuff, took a ton of questions from the audience and were happy to tailor responses based on whatever apocalyptic scenario a questioner came up with. Probably the funniest thing about the panel for me, however, was how much a lot of the audience already knew. The guy sitting behind us, for instance, would mutter knowledgeable things under his breath which the panelists would say independently just a second or two later, like the best caliber of gun to get and the danger of dehydration from alcohol. Then he'd raise his hand and ask questions about zombies. Heh.
After that, we watched the Masquerade on overflow video. This is a costume contest with both a child and adult division and is generally one of the biggest events of the con. The MC was the delightful Grant Imahara from Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. I love that guy and his hilarious reaction expressions, and he was definitely having fun with a lot of the costumes. Memorable ones included a kid dressed as an adipose (fat) cell, a baby Dalek, a massive to-scale Totoro and Satsuki, two dinosaur skeletons, and a couple of folks with mechanical wings. One costume which got zero applause was some woman who thought it would be a great idea to dress up as Amy Winehouse and stumble around drunkenly. Ugh.
MONDAY
For our last day, we thought we'd kick things off with an Avatar: The Last Airbender panel, but we arrived too late to get in -- it was packed, even though it was just a "hey, we're all fans so let's get together and talk" kind of panel. (We did see some great Legend of Korra cosplayers outside, though.)
So instead we slipped into the back of a Doctor Who panel with Sylvestor McCoy and Patricia Quinn doing live commentary on two episodes of the "Dragonfire" serial. The episodes played on big screens overhead, and the actors held microphones and rambled hilariously about anything that came to mind.
Next was a Hobbit panel run by some people from theonering.net focused on talking through everything that's public knowledge about the movies so far, and speculation based on that. One of the panelists had spent a few weeks in New Zealand visiting the set, and showed some pictures he took. Nobody seemed to think negatively of the three-movie decision, but possibly that had already been argued at length and the dead horse already beaten. Personally, I got back none of the excitement I'd felt before the decision was announced, but I guess we'll see in December.
And finally, we went to a panel on the American Sci-Fi track called "How Soon Is Now," focusing on the various futures and technology from old sci-fi TV and movies which we still don't have now. This was a great panel to end on -- two of the four guys run a podcast called Doctor Geek's Laboratory (I can't recall the names of the other two guys and they're not on the panel description). All were smart, articulate, passionate, and funny.
The main thesis of the discussion ended up being, basically, that we do live in the future and the tech stuff we have now is amazing and should be appreciated even if we don't yet have flying cars or transporters or holodecks. See, e.g. everything you can now do with a smartphone. A lot of the discussion kept circling back to Jack Andraka, who at 15 years old won a prize for coming up with a faster, cheaper way to screen for early-stage pancreatic cancer. The point was, we need to incentivize and inspire more kids (and give them the access and resources) to go into science and math and engineering so they can do more things like this. Probably when most of them are a bit older than 15, granted, but still....
Whew! If I had to do it over again I would have taken a small notebook to jot things down so I wouldn't forget, but imagine how much longer this would have been if I had. Anyway, that was my con report in text. Now off to add visuals to Tumblr.
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