So I Went to Dragon*Con
Well, the Mister & I went to DragonCon, too, and while we disagree about some particular points, we both pretty much had a good time. And yes, it is very crowded - but since they spread things out over 4 hotels, there wasn't anything TOO crowded, and nothing we were kept out of, so it all turned out OK.
In particular:
The Mister & I are diehard Trekkers, so we attended the TrekTrack events primarily. The first panel was on the music of Star Trek, which turned out rather short as they had technical difficulties - let me stop there. The TrekTrack had been moved entirely to the new hotel and I think that's the reason each panel started late. Technical difficulties prevented a timely execution of each event (but they fixed it all by Monday). So the music panel was good but short. We watched the interviews with George Takei, and then with Avery Brooks & Michael Dorn. The Mister didn't like the guy in charge of the TrekTrack, who did the interviews & introduced all the guests/tracks (Eric Lane), but I thought he was all right. The Mister will tell you he was full of himself, but I think the guy was just really really confident of where he stood in the Trek fandom and that was OK.
So Takei was as expected. We'd seen him years before so there wasn't anything really new. Avery Brooks, however, is my guy. He's impressive and thoughtful and sexy and intelligent and even with Michael Dorn sitting there, I had a hard time taking my eyes off him. Purrrrr. (And later we passed each other in the elevator! Squee!!) There was a moment of pure drama when Eric asked them about the Obama candidacy and the audience got restless & shouted out for Eric to "get off politics!" and then Eric spanked the audience and then Brooks kind of defended Eric and kind of spanked him back for the line of questioning. You can't script that sort of drama (and yes, since Eric asked Takei about the gay marriage amendment in California but NOT about Obama, and asked Brooks/Dorn about Obama but NOT about the gay marriage amendment, Eric was all kinds of wrong). So that was fun. And did I mention that Avery Brooks is awesome?
Later, TrekTrack-wise, we watched the crowning of Miss Klingon Empire - which ROCKED like a hard rocking thing. We were in a huge ballroom and it was standing room only for this event. SO worth it. Four contestants and the winner promised that, if crowned, she would invade the Miss Romulus pageant next, make her way to the Miss Betazed, skip Miss Ferengi, destroy Miss Vulcan and then take over Miss Universe "because the human women have won for far too long". Yeah - she totally deserved to win.
And on Monday, we thoroughly enjoyed Robert Picardo. The man far exceeded my expectations. He discussed Stargate & Star Trek, sang, hawked merchandise for charity, showed a comedy clip that parodied his willingness to do anything a fan might ask him, praised Joe Flanigan & David Hewlett (which was enough to make me love him if I didn't already), was self-deprecating and honest and altogether wonderful. It was a much too short hour.
We also hit the Skeptic Track (SkepTrack) for the "Skeptics vs Believers Debate". V.V. worth it even if all you're going for is to watch audience members geek out over debate. I kid you not - the two people next to me were literally on the edges of their seats, pumping their fists and squeeing every time one of the Skeptics made a statement, and yelled (albeit a bit muffled) at everything the Believers said.
Best exchange: Father Someone-or-Other says the only difference between religious textbooks and science textbooks is science texts cost more. Skeptic #4 says: at least we update ours. FTW!
The only panel we attended for the X-Track was the Supernatural panel, but that sucked. The moderater wouldn't speak into the microphone and, when prompted to speak up (by JensenRick, me, RentGirls2, the Mister - everyone in the back), said something to the effect of: if you knew me, you'd know I speak loud enough. Or something like that - I couldn't really hear her. Which, in all fairness, worked for me & the Mister because we've only seen seasons 1 & 2 and I think they were only discussing season 3. I'm not sure. I couldn't hear. We left after 20 minutes when the "Supernatural is a Misogynist Show" debate started. I mean, honestly! Sure, Joss Whedon "proved" not every female character in a horror show has to be an idiot, but that doesn't mean every horror show has to be about strong young women. Supernatural is about two brothers who -
Whoops! Sorry about that.
Rick & I had our own Supernatural panel later that night around 1:30 overlooking the Marriott atrium. We were sidetracked an hour later when we witnessed Nathan Fillion almost get mobbed by fans with cell phone cameras before he made his escape and rode up the glass elevator all the way to the very tippy top of the atrium, his face pressed against the glass looking down at all the little people and one strange woman who shouted "Fly to heaven, Joey Buchanan!" Oh, wait, that was me.
The costumes were AMAZING. Some sucked, of course, and some were way too subtle (like my own "Stargate can kiss my ass if I'm not the target demographic") to be noticed, but some were AMAZING. Yes, there was much flesh on display and only some of it should ever have been. The painted lady (wearing nothing but a black g-string) wasn't bad, but other women wearing more clothing actually made me wonder when the pap smear was going to take place. If you know what I mean. Not all the Spartan warriors were hot, but the painted-on abs gave it a good try. The troop of Iron Men were fabulous, but the Iron Man in the costume contest nearly killed me. I hope someone has a picture of him/her. It was a huge, oldfashioned flat iron complete with handle and the glowing 'heart/power source' in his/her chest.
The Smallville panel with James Marsters and Michael Rosenbaum ROCKED. They were terrific. Funny, self-deprecating, thoughtful - surprisingly thoughtful about acting and the whole theater thing - and incredibly fun to watch. Gosh, when Rosenbaum insulted that girl with cancer, I thought I would die.
We got into the Cruxshadows concert almost by accident - we hadn't intended to go. The Mister will tell you they're a decent band but that he did NOT like the lead singer's voice. We think he can hit about 5 notes with varying degrees of success. He also has a truly raspy quality to his voice that may have inflated that number. Their lyrics were pretty deep, man. "The rain falls all day/ the ran falls all night/ the rain falls down on me." Or at least, that's what I thought I heard. We stayed about 45 minutes. The dancing fairies were... yeah. Dancing fairies. I was strongly reminded of liturgical dance.
And then there's the Stargate Track. It almost uniformly sucked. The military panel was above average, except the questions were kind of lame. But that's not the panelists' fault. The megapanel with Beau Bridges (who ordered milk with his breakfast and didn't drink it), Torri Higginson, Rainbow Sun Francks, the guy who played Ba'al and the chick who used to be Inara on Serenity SUCKED. But that's not the panelists' fault, either. The host SUCKED. She ran the Stargate Track and she SUCKED the LIFE out of EVERYTHING. She wouldn't let the panelists talk to each other. As soon as they started getting interesting, she cut them off. She allowed (I think) only 3 questions from the floor and her "let's start the panel off" question was "how was your flight" and, for the 2nd day, "what'd you have for lunch?" And the slash panel? Was hosted by 5 girls who thought they were hosting Slash 101, who hated McKay and hated McShep - it was very odd. Sure, Stargate SG1 has 2x as much to draw from as SGA, but SGA's what's on now - how can you ignore it for a whole hour? And the one SGA person is a McBeckett person? And the entire panel agrees that John/Rodney don't have any chemistry until season 5? And then allowed the panel to get hijacked into a discussion that suggested that the only reason they saw slash in SG was because of the lack of viable female characters?
Because, honestly, the slash happens even with strong female characters, or haven't you ever heard of Spike/Xander? Or Angel/Wesley? Or Giles/Wesley/Spike/Angel/Ethan Rayne? Grr.
And when the skeevy Russian guy suggested that we slashers are actually secretly wishing it was Jack/Daniel/Us, that we actually just want a threesome with our slash pair of choice, instead of just saying "No" and moving on, they allowed the guy to ask the question three times more AND berate another audience member who spoke up to defend against the assumption.
So at the break, I left.
There was supposed to be a squee-party for Stargate, too, but they only showed some guy's lame-ass "home movie" about his trip to the set. I think it was supposed to be funny, but it came off as lame and sad and kinda creepy and it was an hour long and did I mention it insulted fans and not in a funny way? And was way too male fantasy for a mostly female audience? It was. But I'm sure some people liked that - like the Mister. He didn't see anything wrong with the female porn star segment of the presentation.
Other than that, there were no problems with the hotel (we were in the Hilton), the weather (fabulous), the food (normal con-type problems/quality), the dealer rooms (sometimes overcrowded, sometimes not, pretty constantly stinky, but that's par), the art show (some stuff spectacular, some stuff ridiculous).
So - would we go again? We probably will, but we might not make it an annual jaunt. I'd definitely still do the Klingon beauty contest and the debate, and those costumes are still the best I've ever seen, at least. We'll see.
In particular:
The Mister & I are diehard Trekkers, so we attended the TrekTrack events primarily. The first panel was on the music of Star Trek, which turned out rather short as they had technical difficulties - let me stop there. The TrekTrack had been moved entirely to the new hotel and I think that's the reason each panel started late. Technical difficulties prevented a timely execution of each event (but they fixed it all by Monday). So the music panel was good but short. We watched the interviews with George Takei, and then with Avery Brooks & Michael Dorn. The Mister didn't like the guy in charge of the TrekTrack, who did the interviews & introduced all the guests/tracks (Eric Lane), but I thought he was all right. The Mister will tell you he was full of himself, but I think the guy was just really really confident of where he stood in the Trek fandom and that was OK.
So Takei was as expected. We'd seen him years before so there wasn't anything really new. Avery Brooks, however, is my guy. He's impressive and thoughtful and sexy and intelligent and even with Michael Dorn sitting there, I had a hard time taking my eyes off him. Purrrrr. (And later we passed each other in the elevator! Squee!!) There was a moment of pure drama when Eric asked them about the Obama candidacy and the audience got restless & shouted out for Eric to "get off politics!" and then Eric spanked the audience and then Brooks kind of defended Eric and kind of spanked him back for the line of questioning. You can't script that sort of drama (and yes, since Eric asked Takei about the gay marriage amendment in California but NOT about Obama, and asked Brooks/Dorn about Obama but NOT about the gay marriage amendment, Eric was all kinds of wrong). So that was fun. And did I mention that Avery Brooks is awesome?
Later, TrekTrack-wise, we watched the crowning of Miss Klingon Empire - which ROCKED like a hard rocking thing. We were in a huge ballroom and it was standing room only for this event. SO worth it. Four contestants and the winner promised that, if crowned, she would invade the Miss Romulus pageant next, make her way to the Miss Betazed, skip Miss Ferengi, destroy Miss Vulcan and then take over Miss Universe "because the human women have won for far too long". Yeah - she totally deserved to win.
And on Monday, we thoroughly enjoyed Robert Picardo. The man far exceeded my expectations. He discussed Stargate & Star Trek, sang, hawked merchandise for charity, showed a comedy clip that parodied his willingness to do anything a fan might ask him, praised Joe Flanigan & David Hewlett (which was enough to make me love him if I didn't already), was self-deprecating and honest and altogether wonderful. It was a much too short hour.
We also hit the Skeptic Track (SkepTrack) for the "Skeptics vs Believers Debate". V.V. worth it even if all you're going for is to watch audience members geek out over debate. I kid you not - the two people next to me were literally on the edges of their seats, pumping their fists and squeeing every time one of the Skeptics made a statement, and yelled (albeit a bit muffled) at everything the Believers said.
Best exchange: Father Someone-or-Other says the only difference between religious textbooks and science textbooks is science texts cost more. Skeptic #4 says: at least we update ours. FTW!
The only panel we attended for the X-Track was the Supernatural panel, but that sucked. The moderater wouldn't speak into the microphone and, when prompted to speak up (by JensenRick, me, RentGirls2, the Mister - everyone in the back), said something to the effect of: if you knew me, you'd know I speak loud enough. Or something like that - I couldn't really hear her. Which, in all fairness, worked for me & the Mister because we've only seen seasons 1 & 2 and I think they were only discussing season 3. I'm not sure. I couldn't hear. We left after 20 minutes when the "Supernatural is a Misogynist Show" debate started. I mean, honestly! Sure, Joss Whedon "proved" not every female character in a horror show has to be an idiot, but that doesn't mean every horror show has to be about strong young women. Supernatural is about two brothers who -
Whoops! Sorry about that.
Rick & I had our own Supernatural panel later that night around 1:30 overlooking the Marriott atrium. We were sidetracked an hour later when we witnessed Nathan Fillion almost get mobbed by fans with cell phone cameras before he made his escape and rode up the glass elevator all the way to the very tippy top of the atrium, his face pressed against the glass looking down at all the little people and one strange woman who shouted "Fly to heaven, Joey Buchanan!" Oh, wait, that was me.
The costumes were AMAZING. Some sucked, of course, and some were way too subtle (like my own "Stargate can kiss my ass if I'm not the target demographic") to be noticed, but some were AMAZING. Yes, there was much flesh on display and only some of it should ever have been. The painted lady (wearing nothing but a black g-string) wasn't bad, but other women wearing more clothing actually made me wonder when the pap smear was going to take place. If you know what I mean. Not all the Spartan warriors were hot, but the painted-on abs gave it a good try. The troop of Iron Men were fabulous, but the Iron Man in the costume contest nearly killed me. I hope someone has a picture of him/her. It was a huge, oldfashioned flat iron complete with handle and the glowing 'heart/power source' in his/her chest.
The Smallville panel with James Marsters and Michael Rosenbaum ROCKED. They were terrific. Funny, self-deprecating, thoughtful - surprisingly thoughtful about acting and the whole theater thing - and incredibly fun to watch. Gosh, when Rosenbaum insulted that girl with cancer, I thought I would die.
We got into the Cruxshadows concert almost by accident - we hadn't intended to go. The Mister will tell you they're a decent band but that he did NOT like the lead singer's voice. We think he can hit about 5 notes with varying degrees of success. He also has a truly raspy quality to his voice that may have inflated that number. Their lyrics were pretty deep, man. "The rain falls all day/ the ran falls all night/ the rain falls down on me." Or at least, that's what I thought I heard. We stayed about 45 minutes. The dancing fairies were... yeah. Dancing fairies. I was strongly reminded of liturgical dance.
And then there's the Stargate Track. It almost uniformly sucked. The military panel was above average, except the questions were kind of lame. But that's not the panelists' fault. The megapanel with Beau Bridges (who ordered milk with his breakfast and didn't drink it), Torri Higginson, Rainbow Sun Francks, the guy who played Ba'al and the chick who used to be Inara on Serenity SUCKED. But that's not the panelists' fault, either. The host SUCKED. She ran the Stargate Track and she SUCKED the LIFE out of EVERYTHING. She wouldn't let the panelists talk to each other. As soon as they started getting interesting, she cut them off. She allowed (I think) only 3 questions from the floor and her "let's start the panel off" question was "how was your flight" and, for the 2nd day, "what'd you have for lunch?" And the slash panel? Was hosted by 5 girls who thought they were hosting Slash 101, who hated McKay and hated McShep - it was very odd. Sure, Stargate SG1 has 2x as much to draw from as SGA, but SGA's what's on now - how can you ignore it for a whole hour? And the one SGA person is a McBeckett person? And the entire panel agrees that John/Rodney don't have any chemistry until season 5? And then allowed the panel to get hijacked into a discussion that suggested that the only reason they saw slash in SG was because of the lack of viable female characters?
Because, honestly, the slash happens even with strong female characters, or haven't you ever heard of Spike/Xander? Or Angel/Wesley? Or Giles/Wesley/Spike/Angel/Ethan Rayne? Grr.
And when the skeevy Russian guy suggested that we slashers are actually secretly wishing it was Jack/Daniel/Us, that we actually just want a threesome with our slash pair of choice, instead of just saying "No" and moving on, they allowed the guy to ask the question three times more AND berate another audience member who spoke up to defend against the assumption.
So at the break, I left.
There was supposed to be a squee-party for Stargate, too, but they only showed some guy's lame-ass "home movie" about his trip to the set. I think it was supposed to be funny, but it came off as lame and sad and kinda creepy and it was an hour long and did I mention it insulted fans and not in a funny way? And was way too male fantasy for a mostly female audience? It was. But I'm sure some people liked that - like the Mister. He didn't see anything wrong with the female porn star segment of the presentation.
Other than that, there were no problems with the hotel (we were in the Hilton), the weather (fabulous), the food (normal con-type problems/quality), the dealer rooms (sometimes overcrowded, sometimes not, pretty constantly stinky, but that's par), the art show (some stuff spectacular, some stuff ridiculous).
So - would we go again? We probably will, but we might not make it an annual jaunt. I'd definitely still do the Klingon beauty contest and the debate, and those costumes are still the best I've ever seen, at least. We'll see.