Dragon Con 2008 The Report
I forgot to add this to the quick post last night. But UCLA beat Tennessee last night. WHOOOHOOO.....GO BRUINS!!!!!!! Way to make me proud to be an alum. I actually caught most of the game on the flight back to Los Angeles, but missed the most exciting parts since our plane had landed. Luckily I called my father who was watching the game and he kept me updated while I was waiting for my luggage.
Also, I knew posting that James slobbered on my shoulder would gain comments. mwhahahahahahaha. Seriously, there's not much to that. But if you are absolutely dying to find out why, skip ahead to Monday.
So here it is the con report in my normal short to the point writing style. I have to say now it was wonderful sharing the hotel room with mad_brilliant seapea jaesha and ghostgirl13. Also I loved getting to hang out and talk with old and new LJ friends, lightdependent jameslovin1 vampgaia and thefangirl. Plus all the other fans from different boards and different events. It's always fun getting reacquainted with everyone at these things. Till next time.
So on to the report.
Wednesday Night:
I arrived at the airport way too early, so much for the hell of a freeway called the 405. After entertaining myself with Lego Star Wars for a long time my roomies mad_brilliant and seapea showed up and we just had to wait a little bit before boarding the red eye flight to Atlanta. I didn’t sleep on the flight per usual. But I did close my eyes and rest for a bit. We arrived in Atlanta around 7am tired but excited to start the weekend. After finding jaesha in the lobby of the Marriott we checked in and collapsed on the beds in the room, and just relaxed for a while.
Thursday:
Well mad_brilliant wanted to line up early for the party/concert tickets since she heard that some people were planning on getting in line right off the plane on Thursday. jaesha and I tried to talk her out of staying there if no one else had lined up yet, but she was determined to get a ticket. Once she and seapea left for the Hilton, jaesha and I talked for a bit and rested some more. When lunchtime came around we decided to head over to the Hilton to do a food run for them. We talked a bit, found out that it was just them two and got orders for food. When we returned there were two other people in line. We sat down and ate lunch together and just talked and laughed as we normally do at these cons. We were just in a hallway rather than the hotel room. We took turns going to registration and so forth. By dinnertime, 7-8pm, the line was getting longer. After spending 7-8 hours in the line without being in the line, jaesha and I finally went I guess it’s time to actually join up officially. My only thing was that I refused to sleep on the floor in that hallway. That’s why I hadn’t lined up officially yet. But since mad_brilliant did such a great job making numbers for everyone and organizing the line I figured all would be well if I left the line for enough time to take a nap. After a red eye flight I needed to sleep in a bed even if it was only a few hours. So around 9ish, jaesha and I left to go to sleep.
We returned around 2am to see Froggy had joined the line and was giving out drinks and chit chatting with us all. That was interesting and something I wasn’t expecting. Speaking of Froggy I have to say that the quality of his photos has improved greatly. Some photos have color issues due to the red/pink background, or seemed overexposed, but they were in focus this time. The other issues can be easily corrected. So I am very happy with the work Froggy did. After we came back from the nap, almost thirty people were already in line. Come 5am or so, we were in the over 30 mark. Around 5am was also the time that they got fresh Krispy Kreme donuts at the café in the lobby. So jaesha and I went down to wait for the fresh donuts. Being sleep deprived and wanting sugar, we did a happy dance that was later called the donut dance while the guy loaded the fresh pastries into the display. We ended up doing the donut dance throughout the weekend at various times. We’re just weird like that. Funny thing is that I caught successive photos of Michael and James doing their own version of the donut dance. I’ll be making icons of those when I have the time. Back to the line, around 7am people were starting to freak out over things and wondering if they had a chance for a ticket. Things got a little crazy but no one line jumped, mainly because they couldn’t when everyone had a number proving their place in line. Thanks again mad_brilliant.
Friday:
By ticket sale time, the line was way over 30 people. I imagine many people were turned away. We didn’t stay after buying our tickets cause there was the Q&A to get into. I also didn’t do photo ops that day since they were right before the Q&A. I managed to get a second row seat for the panel, which was neat. My thanks to ghostgirl13for grabbing those seats. Once James came on stage I was very thankful for not getting a photo op since he was wearing a red soccer jersey.seapea mentioned it said Munich on it and T-Mobil was the team sponsor just in case anyone cares to figure out which team the jersey was for. Truthfully if it’s not the English Premiere League I don’t care about the team. The Q&A was good, no embarrass me questions, no sex life questions which have been getting old. There were a few repeats, like the kissing John Barrowman, Spike movie stuff. But the rest were thoughtful questions that made for a good hour.
After that Q&A I had to run over to my cartoon screening. lightdependent joined me since she had no other plans. The rest of them ran off to the Firefly and Smallville panels. My screening went pretty well. It got a decent response especially since the DC audience wasn’t really the ideal audience for my cartoon. It’s a bit more of a young children’s cartoon. But it got laughs and no groans, so I say a good response. And it’s always a learning experience to hear people’s reactions to your film. It helps to sense that some scenes are just dragging too long or moved to fast etc. It was a good time. I plan to enter my second film next year since it tends to be a little more fitting for the DC audience. My stuff tends to lean on the cute side but my second film is not quite as directed towards young children as my first.
After the screening, I went back to the room to grab some stuff for autos. We headed over to the Hilton to buy photo ops and then went to the Walk of Fame to get autos. Nathan and Alan’s line was too long so I skipped it and Morena and Jewel weren’t around. So I just got James. I had made a large montage of photos from the Grand Slam convention. I was looking through those photos and just noticed I had a lot of photos with him making very broad funny poses and motions. He was very animated. So I put them all on a large photo. I figured it would be something different. He laughed and said, “I’m such a dork.” I said no you’re just very animated and entertaining when on stage. After I said that he mentioned that he heard Michael Rosenbaum was extremely entertaining in his panel. I went yeah I heard that too, but had to miss his panel. But I was going to catch his tomorrow and couldn’t wait for the panel with the two of them on Sunday. He got a surprised look on his face and went “We’re in a panel together. Really?” I went yes really, Sunday is just the two of you on stage. He seemed quite pleased with that information. After I left the table my only thought was, man it would drive me crazy if I was doing an event and did not know exactly what I was doing there. But I guess he’s happy to not know what’s up and just be led from event to event. To each his own. Once we got autos, most of us had a photo op with Michael Rosenbaum. He’s dreamy and very cool. He has a very strong handshake. When I told him it was a pleasure to meet him he said, “The pleasure was all mine.” :) After the photo op, we pigged out on pizza and slept from 9:30pm on. We were tired.
Saturday:
I didn’t get up too early for the Torchwood panel because I wasn’t all that interested in it. I wanted to see it, but I was happy to sleep in a bit and get a bad seat. I took pics, but they are from far away, so who knows how they turned out. It was a good panel. They did a moderated portion for the first half and then questions for the second. Much like Comic Con panels. It was good thing they did that since it was James, Gareth and Anthony Lewis. During the Q&A portion all the questions were this is for James, this is for Gareth etc, etc. Poor Anthony didn’t get much action in the second half of the panel. After the panel, we got in line for the Michael Rosenbaum panel. We got a great seat for that. Third row aisle. Michael is just absolutely awesome and so funny. I couldn’t take a whole bunch of photos because he had me laughing so hard I couldn’t hold the camera still. I am so thrilled he came to Dragon Con. I may have not watched the show, but I am such a fan of his now. He’s apparently working on some independent comedy projects. I can’t wait to see whatever he’s working on. During the panel, he was so annoyed with not being able to see the people asking questions due to the bright lights on him, he jumped off the stage and walked around chairs answering questions. Very cool guy. After his panel, we had to run over to the Hilton for the James photo ops. Nothing special about the photo op. Just the usual Hi and pose and thank you stuff. I had found vampgaia in line and waited for her to finish so I could take her over to our hotel room to give her the stuff she had me buy her at Comic Con. After that I ran back over to the Hilton with my auto stuff. I wanted to catch Michael and was hoping to catch the Firefly peeps before they left for their panel. I got Michael, and told him I thoroughly enjoyed his panel. He thanked me. The Nathan/Alan line was closed and the girls were already gone. And James was gone for the day as well.
Party/Concert:
We headed back to the hotel room and lounged about a bit before getting ready for the party. We had pretty much decided on most of the ten people for our table and wanted to make sure we got to the party early enough to get a table for all of us. When we got there we went upstairs. The restaurant staff said the party was not upstairs but downstairs in the patio but we should wait up here by the bar. seapea and I stayed upstairs to watch the football game and the rest waited downstairs. As time passed a lot of people ended up upstairs. The staff pretty much told us to wait upstairs and they would call us when they were ready for us in the patio. We finally made it to the patio and things were quite cramped in there. Luckily we got a table and everyone we wanted sat with us. Because of a lack of seats we ended up with a few extra people too. I noticed they had a mic and amp set up in the corner right next to the table next to us. Their wasn’t much room and I wondered how in the world James could perform there. When most of the people were settled Steve explained that this was not the room he booked and he apologized for the mix up and that they would try to make this work as much as possible. James popped in for a little bit to also apologize for the mix up but he hoped we would enjoy ourselves and he’d see us soon.
We then had a little time to eat. I waited until the line died down before going over. Of course they were out of potatoes at that point. So a few of us were waiting for the potatoes when James and Gareth came in. At that point Froggy was doing the table photo ops and the potatoes arrived. So I spent a few moments going potatoes James potatoes James before choosing the potatoes. Luckily I was able to get the potatoes and sit down in time for the photo op. So I got my potatoes and James. * grins * After they did the photos it was time for the concert. I heard James talking to Steve. He wanted to do the concert in front of the buffet because he thought it would be the best place acoustically. And truthfully it would have been since that area was in the middle of the space. The mic/amp were set up in a corner at one end of the space. It worked for us since our table was right there, but I wonder if the people in the back could even hear him. Especially since they had trouble hearing Steve making announcements. But I guess the plug was in that corner, so that’s where James played. * shrugs *
The concert was fun. It truly was acoustic since the guitar wasn’t miked and it was hard to hear the guitar. James kept joking that he had spent the afternoon practicing the songs he would play only to have it be that we couldn’t hear the guitar. He then joked, “Well take my word for it, I’m a genius on the guitar.” Insert James giggle after that. There were many little giggles that night and all weekend. He seemed very relaxed and content during the con. It was nice to see. I think I got eye contact and eyebrow wiggles during Katie. I say think because I can never tell if it’s at me or a person around me. But he kept going yes you with his head and eyebrows until I smiled back at him. So I will take it as my eye contact. He was supposed to do something with Gareth but his 5th string kind of broke so he couldn’t play. So they jumped right into the talk portion of the evening. I know mad_brilliant took a lot of notes so I’ll leave the transcript to her. But I will say James mentioned that after returning from shooting MoonShot he was at home, said I’m glad to be back home to his niece and that he’d see her in the morning, but he really had to go sleep. And apparently he didn’t wake up until four days later. Now that’s exhaustion. jaesha and I had fun all evening we did the donut dance a few times and got a weird stare from Lisa at one point after doing the dance. No we weren’t drunk just silly. I couldn’t understand much of what Gareth said because he was very soft spoken, but he seemed good.
Then the evening was over and we ended back at the hotel to go to the sports bar there. We ended up stalking Steve on the way back, man he walks fast; he lost us even though we were going back to the same hotel. We saw him again in the lobby while waiting to get into the sports bar. Apparently he and Gareth and the gang were up in the Pulse Loft bar having a good time. And Michael Rosenbaum was at the Pulse bar living it up. We also saw Phil Morris leave the sports bar and James Callis walked by. It seemed like everyone was out and about that Saturday night. Some of us ate and drank a bit at the bar before calling it a night. I think we ended up in bed around 2am that night. And we had an early morning the next day, since we wanted good seats for the Michael and James panel.
Sunday:
We got up around 7am and immediately got in line for the panel. We took turns showering and getting ready. It took forever for them to let us into the panel but when they finally did we almost got the seats we wanted. I wanted third row aisle like I had for Michael’s solo panel but ended up with fourth row aisle. Which was still a great seat. The panel was the best. Michael and James were great on stage together. Both were very funny, although most of the pics I took show James cracking up over something Michael said. I so hope that the two of them will be at an event together in the future. It was just that much fun. After the panel, we got into the line for the Firefly panel. That line was huge. And they took so long filling the room that the panel started late and jaesha and I had to leave a little early to walk over to the photo ops for James. It was a good panel, although it seemed like they were a bit tired after the long weekend.
For the photo ops, I had bought two since Froggy’s quality had improved. The first photo was the standard pose and I asked James how he was doing. He said he was glad that Obama hadn’t been shot yet, and that everyday that goes by without someone trying to kill him is a good day. I just kind of went okay that’s great because it was so out of the blue. Then Froggy said I had two shots so James went great what pose do you want. We can do the Spike and Dru, the Avengers, etc. It took me a bit but I managed to ask him if we could do the pose where I hug him from behind. He went sure and went in front of me. I told him tell me where to put my hands because I didn’t want to just grab him in a tight hug. He answered, “Anywhere you want baby.” So I hugged him and Froggy took the photo. I thanked him per usual and that was it. I then went to the Walk of Fame to try for Alan and the girls again. Only I learned that Morena and Jewel were charging $30 an auto and I didn’t have the money for that. I budgeted for $20. And the Nathan/Alan line was closed again. So jaesha and I went back to the photo ops after we saw James walk by, so she could get a reprint of her Gareth photo.
After that we headed back to the autos so I could get another James auto. I had a photo I had taken across the street during the PSILY premiere. I figured it was something different. Steve seemed quite impressed with it. Which was strange since he rarely ever comments on anything to me. The first time he said anything was to compliment me on my Spike and Dru drawing from last year. As he was staring at the photo I told Steve that it was quite a challenge to take photos from across the street with traffic. He said it was a very nice photo and I replied I too was surprised of the quality given the distance. But he wasn’t referring to the quality of the photo but the composition. He liked how it had a hint of the movie poster and then James’ profile in front of the poster. And I had caught Harry Connick Jr. He pointed out James’ publicist in the photo and tried to see if he could find himself. He pointed to a blurry blob and said that it could be him. When he passed it on to James he actually described the photo to James, saying this was taken while you were on the red carpet. And James went wow. I repeated that it was fun trying to get a picture with the cars driving by and the MTA buses stopping in front of you. He then said that the PSILY cast was one of the best casts he worked with. He also said that we (the fans there that night) made him look good in front of the director. Apparently when we shouted out James after the movie got out to get James’ attention the director must have been nearby and saw that he had fans screaming for him. So to those of you that were there that night, we made him look good to the industry peeps.
After autos it was back to the hotel. ghostgirl13 and I wanted to go up to the top of the hotel just for the hell of it to see how tiny everything would look. For those of you not familiar with the Marriott in Atlanta, it has an open center, so you can look down all the way to the bottom level from the different floors. The 47th floor is the top floor. After we ate some dinner, and picked up our James photos, we took the express elevator up. I’m slightly afraid of heights so I stared at the elevators doors as we went up. When we got to the top floor there was a security guard there saying that if we weren’t staying on this floor we had to go down. So we took a quick peek down the length of the hotel and went down to the 46th floor. I noticed that the guard wasn’t being so uptight to some other people that came up after us. Since ghostgirl13 and mad_brilliant had taken their cameras to take photos of the height, I wonder if he freaked out thinking they were trying to take photos of the actors? * shrugs * Who knows, it was still very high from the 46th floor. While I was watching the tiny people that looked like ants, I noticed that one person seemed to be carrying a green object around. From that height it reminded me of an ant moving amongst the other ants carrying a leaf. When we returned down to the ground floor I saw that one of the attendees was in a costume that had a giant green leaf over his head. So the ant person carrying the leaf was really carrying a leaf. Who knew? LOL. We had one more drink from that bar that night since both jaesha and ghostgirl13 would be gone the next day. Then it was off to bed.
Monday:
We slept in a bit since all that was happening was autos/photos. At ten,mad_brilliant seapea and myself went over to the Walk of Fame. James was supposed to sign autos from 10-11:30am. But once inside we saw a sign saying he’d only be doing autos from 11-11:30am. So we all had to wait for an hour. We were kind of disappointed thinking the autos would be rushed, but no one was rushed and I was actually able to say some things to James. I had a photo from the San Diego Indie Fest and I told him that I really enjoyed the concert there. And hoped there would be future concerts like it in venues where people would not be familiar with his work but would get the chance to listen and enjoy it like they did in San Diego. He agreed and said that San Diego was a test for him. He thought that the audience would be very thin if there weren’t many Buffy/Angel fans there, but he was happy to see the crowd grow as he played. I told him well your music is good. And thanked him.
Then we sat around a bit in some comfy chairs waiting to see James walk by to signal the start of the photo ops. vampgaia was saying she wanted to do a fun pose and might ask him to let her bite him. That got me thinking. I was wearing a Monty Python Spamalot shirt in honor of Alan although he was gone, that said “I’m not dead yet” on the front. H at the auto table laughed at the shirt. I told her, yep I managed to survive the weekend. She also asked how my screening went which I thought was nice of her. I told her it went well and thanked her. Since I was wearing that shirt I though hey wouldn’t it be funny to have James either bite me or somehow pretend to kill me while I had that shirt on. So this was a weekend of firsts for me. I managed to say a few sentences to James in the auto line and I for once managed to ask him for a pose in the photo ops. When it was my turn I said, “Feel free to say no. But I thought that with this shirt (pointed to writing on shirt) it would be funny if you bit me or strangled me or just tried to kill me.” He jumped on the bite pose and we did it. I haven’t seen it yet so I have no clue if he blocked the writing on the shirt or not. And I think I may have had a weird smile. But after the photo was taken he apologized saying he slobbered on me. I laughed it off I think. But I did make sure to thank him for the weekend. I told him I had a great time and I hoped he enjoyed the weekend as well. He nodded that yes he did. I bid him farewell and that was the end of the James con. We then went through the dealers room and saw the Smallville panel before eating some late lunch. We managed to lose mad_brilliant at the food court somehow but met up again at the Marriott. Then it was time to go to the airport and head home. The end of a con is always so sad.
So that's it. I miss it already. I hope everyone made it home safely. I hope you all had as much fun as me. It was a great weekend. Thanks for reading.
Also, I knew posting that James slobbered on my shoulder would gain comments. mwhahahahahahaha. Seriously, there's not much to that. But if you are absolutely dying to find out why, skip ahead to Monday.
So here it is the con report in my normal short to the point writing style. I have to say now it was wonderful sharing the hotel room with mad_brilliant seapea jaesha and ghostgirl13. Also I loved getting to hang out and talk with old and new LJ friends, lightdependent jameslovin1 vampgaia and thefangirl. Plus all the other fans from different boards and different events. It's always fun getting reacquainted with everyone at these things. Till next time.
So on to the report.
Wednesday Night:
I arrived at the airport way too early, so much for the hell of a freeway called the 405. After entertaining myself with Lego Star Wars for a long time my roomies mad_brilliant and seapea showed up and we just had to wait a little bit before boarding the red eye flight to Atlanta. I didn’t sleep on the flight per usual. But I did close my eyes and rest for a bit. We arrived in Atlanta around 7am tired but excited to start the weekend. After finding jaesha in the lobby of the Marriott we checked in and collapsed on the beds in the room, and just relaxed for a while.
Thursday:
Well mad_brilliant wanted to line up early for the party/concert tickets since she heard that some people were planning on getting in line right off the plane on Thursday. jaesha and I tried to talk her out of staying there if no one else had lined up yet, but she was determined to get a ticket. Once she and seapea left for the Hilton, jaesha and I talked for a bit and rested some more. When lunchtime came around we decided to head over to the Hilton to do a food run for them. We talked a bit, found out that it was just them two and got orders for food. When we returned there were two other people in line. We sat down and ate lunch together and just talked and laughed as we normally do at these cons. We were just in a hallway rather than the hotel room. We took turns going to registration and so forth. By dinnertime, 7-8pm, the line was getting longer. After spending 7-8 hours in the line without being in the line, jaesha and I finally went I guess it’s time to actually join up officially. My only thing was that I refused to sleep on the floor in that hallway. That’s why I hadn’t lined up officially yet. But since mad_brilliant did such a great job making numbers for everyone and organizing the line I figured all would be well if I left the line for enough time to take a nap. After a red eye flight I needed to sleep in a bed even if it was only a few hours. So around 9ish, jaesha and I left to go to sleep.
We returned around 2am to see Froggy had joined the line and was giving out drinks and chit chatting with us all. That was interesting and something I wasn’t expecting. Speaking of Froggy I have to say that the quality of his photos has improved greatly. Some photos have color issues due to the red/pink background, or seemed overexposed, but they were in focus this time. The other issues can be easily corrected. So I am very happy with the work Froggy did. After we came back from the nap, almost thirty people were already in line. Come 5am or so, we were in the over 30 mark. Around 5am was also the time that they got fresh Krispy Kreme donuts at the café in the lobby. So jaesha and I went down to wait for the fresh donuts. Being sleep deprived and wanting sugar, we did a happy dance that was later called the donut dance while the guy loaded the fresh pastries into the display. We ended up doing the donut dance throughout the weekend at various times. We’re just weird like that. Funny thing is that I caught successive photos of Michael and James doing their own version of the donut dance. I’ll be making icons of those when I have the time. Back to the line, around 7am people were starting to freak out over things and wondering if they had a chance for a ticket. Things got a little crazy but no one line jumped, mainly because they couldn’t when everyone had a number proving their place in line. Thanks again mad_brilliant.
Friday:
By ticket sale time, the line was way over 30 people. I imagine many people were turned away. We didn’t stay after buying our tickets cause there was the Q&A to get into. I also didn’t do photo ops that day since they were right before the Q&A. I managed to get a second row seat for the panel, which was neat. My thanks to ghostgirl13for grabbing those seats. Once James came on stage I was very thankful for not getting a photo op since he was wearing a red soccer jersey.seapea mentioned it said Munich on it and T-Mobil was the team sponsor just in case anyone cares to figure out which team the jersey was for. Truthfully if it’s not the English Premiere League I don’t care about the team. The Q&A was good, no embarrass me questions, no sex life questions which have been getting old. There were a few repeats, like the kissing John Barrowman, Spike movie stuff. But the rest were thoughtful questions that made for a good hour.
After that Q&A I had to run over to my cartoon screening. lightdependent joined me since she had no other plans. The rest of them ran off to the Firefly and Smallville panels. My screening went pretty well. It got a decent response especially since the DC audience wasn’t really the ideal audience for my cartoon. It’s a bit more of a young children’s cartoon. But it got laughs and no groans, so I say a good response. And it’s always a learning experience to hear people’s reactions to your film. It helps to sense that some scenes are just dragging too long or moved to fast etc. It was a good time. I plan to enter my second film next year since it tends to be a little more fitting for the DC audience. My stuff tends to lean on the cute side but my second film is not quite as directed towards young children as my first.
After the screening, I went back to the room to grab some stuff for autos. We headed over to the Hilton to buy photo ops and then went to the Walk of Fame to get autos. Nathan and Alan’s line was too long so I skipped it and Morena and Jewel weren’t around. So I just got James. I had made a large montage of photos from the Grand Slam convention. I was looking through those photos and just noticed I had a lot of photos with him making very broad funny poses and motions. He was very animated. So I put them all on a large photo. I figured it would be something different. He laughed and said, “I’m such a dork.” I said no you’re just very animated and entertaining when on stage. After I said that he mentioned that he heard Michael Rosenbaum was extremely entertaining in his panel. I went yeah I heard that too, but had to miss his panel. But I was going to catch his tomorrow and couldn’t wait for the panel with the two of them on Sunday. He got a surprised look on his face and went “We’re in a panel together. Really?” I went yes really, Sunday is just the two of you on stage. He seemed quite pleased with that information. After I left the table my only thought was, man it would drive me crazy if I was doing an event and did not know exactly what I was doing there. But I guess he’s happy to not know what’s up and just be led from event to event. To each his own. Once we got autos, most of us had a photo op with Michael Rosenbaum. He’s dreamy and very cool. He has a very strong handshake. When I told him it was a pleasure to meet him he said, “The pleasure was all mine.” :) After the photo op, we pigged out on pizza and slept from 9:30pm on. We were tired.
Saturday:
I didn’t get up too early for the Torchwood panel because I wasn’t all that interested in it. I wanted to see it, but I was happy to sleep in a bit and get a bad seat. I took pics, but they are from far away, so who knows how they turned out. It was a good panel. They did a moderated portion for the first half and then questions for the second. Much like Comic Con panels. It was good thing they did that since it was James, Gareth and Anthony Lewis. During the Q&A portion all the questions were this is for James, this is for Gareth etc, etc. Poor Anthony didn’t get much action in the second half of the panel. After the panel, we got in line for the Michael Rosenbaum panel. We got a great seat for that. Third row aisle. Michael is just absolutely awesome and so funny. I couldn’t take a whole bunch of photos because he had me laughing so hard I couldn’t hold the camera still. I am so thrilled he came to Dragon Con. I may have not watched the show, but I am such a fan of his now. He’s apparently working on some independent comedy projects. I can’t wait to see whatever he’s working on. During the panel, he was so annoyed with not being able to see the people asking questions due to the bright lights on him, he jumped off the stage and walked around chairs answering questions. Very cool guy. After his panel, we had to run over to the Hilton for the James photo ops. Nothing special about the photo op. Just the usual Hi and pose and thank you stuff. I had found vampgaia in line and waited for her to finish so I could take her over to our hotel room to give her the stuff she had me buy her at Comic Con. After that I ran back over to the Hilton with my auto stuff. I wanted to catch Michael and was hoping to catch the Firefly peeps before they left for their panel. I got Michael, and told him I thoroughly enjoyed his panel. He thanked me. The Nathan/Alan line was closed and the girls were already gone. And James was gone for the day as well.
Party/Concert:
We headed back to the hotel room and lounged about a bit before getting ready for the party. We had pretty much decided on most of the ten people for our table and wanted to make sure we got to the party early enough to get a table for all of us. When we got there we went upstairs. The restaurant staff said the party was not upstairs but downstairs in the patio but we should wait up here by the bar. seapea and I stayed upstairs to watch the football game and the rest waited downstairs. As time passed a lot of people ended up upstairs. The staff pretty much told us to wait upstairs and they would call us when they were ready for us in the patio. We finally made it to the patio and things were quite cramped in there. Luckily we got a table and everyone we wanted sat with us. Because of a lack of seats we ended up with a few extra people too. I noticed they had a mic and amp set up in the corner right next to the table next to us. Their wasn’t much room and I wondered how in the world James could perform there. When most of the people were settled Steve explained that this was not the room he booked and he apologized for the mix up and that they would try to make this work as much as possible. James popped in for a little bit to also apologize for the mix up but he hoped we would enjoy ourselves and he’d see us soon.
We then had a little time to eat. I waited until the line died down before going over. Of course they were out of potatoes at that point. So a few of us were waiting for the potatoes when James and Gareth came in. At that point Froggy was doing the table photo ops and the potatoes arrived. So I spent a few moments going potatoes James potatoes James before choosing the potatoes. Luckily I was able to get the potatoes and sit down in time for the photo op. So I got my potatoes and James. * grins * After they did the photos it was time for the concert. I heard James talking to Steve. He wanted to do the concert in front of the buffet because he thought it would be the best place acoustically. And truthfully it would have been since that area was in the middle of the space. The mic/amp were set up in a corner at one end of the space. It worked for us since our table was right there, but I wonder if the people in the back could even hear him. Especially since they had trouble hearing Steve making announcements. But I guess the plug was in that corner, so that’s where James played. * shrugs *
The concert was fun. It truly was acoustic since the guitar wasn’t miked and it was hard to hear the guitar. James kept joking that he had spent the afternoon practicing the songs he would play only to have it be that we couldn’t hear the guitar. He then joked, “Well take my word for it, I’m a genius on the guitar.” Insert James giggle after that. There were many little giggles that night and all weekend. He seemed very relaxed and content during the con. It was nice to see. I think I got eye contact and eyebrow wiggles during Katie. I say think because I can never tell if it’s at me or a person around me. But he kept going yes you with his head and eyebrows until I smiled back at him. So I will take it as my eye contact. He was supposed to do something with Gareth but his 5th string kind of broke so he couldn’t play. So they jumped right into the talk portion of the evening. I know mad_brilliant took a lot of notes so I’ll leave the transcript to her. But I will say James mentioned that after returning from shooting MoonShot he was at home, said I’m glad to be back home to his niece and that he’d see her in the morning, but he really had to go sleep. And apparently he didn’t wake up until four days later. Now that’s exhaustion. jaesha and I had fun all evening we did the donut dance a few times and got a weird stare from Lisa at one point after doing the dance. No we weren’t drunk just silly. I couldn’t understand much of what Gareth said because he was very soft spoken, but he seemed good.
Then the evening was over and we ended back at the hotel to go to the sports bar there. We ended up stalking Steve on the way back, man he walks fast; he lost us even though we were going back to the same hotel. We saw him again in the lobby while waiting to get into the sports bar. Apparently he and Gareth and the gang were up in the Pulse Loft bar having a good time. And Michael Rosenbaum was at the Pulse bar living it up. We also saw Phil Morris leave the sports bar and James Callis walked by. It seemed like everyone was out and about that Saturday night. Some of us ate and drank a bit at the bar before calling it a night. I think we ended up in bed around 2am that night. And we had an early morning the next day, since we wanted good seats for the Michael and James panel.
Sunday:
We got up around 7am and immediately got in line for the panel. We took turns showering and getting ready. It took forever for them to let us into the panel but when they finally did we almost got the seats we wanted. I wanted third row aisle like I had for Michael’s solo panel but ended up with fourth row aisle. Which was still a great seat. The panel was the best. Michael and James were great on stage together. Both were very funny, although most of the pics I took show James cracking up over something Michael said. I so hope that the two of them will be at an event together in the future. It was just that much fun. After the panel, we got into the line for the Firefly panel. That line was huge. And they took so long filling the room that the panel started late and jaesha and I had to leave a little early to walk over to the photo ops for James. It was a good panel, although it seemed like they were a bit tired after the long weekend.
For the photo ops, I had bought two since Froggy’s quality had improved. The first photo was the standard pose and I asked James how he was doing. He said he was glad that Obama hadn’t been shot yet, and that everyday that goes by without someone trying to kill him is a good day. I just kind of went okay that’s great because it was so out of the blue. Then Froggy said I had two shots so James went great what pose do you want. We can do the Spike and Dru, the Avengers, etc. It took me a bit but I managed to ask him if we could do the pose where I hug him from behind. He went sure and went in front of me. I told him tell me where to put my hands because I didn’t want to just grab him in a tight hug. He answered, “Anywhere you want baby.” So I hugged him and Froggy took the photo. I thanked him per usual and that was it. I then went to the Walk of Fame to try for Alan and the girls again. Only I learned that Morena and Jewel were charging $30 an auto and I didn’t have the money for that. I budgeted for $20. And the Nathan/Alan line was closed again. So jaesha and I went back to the photo ops after we saw James walk by, so she could get a reprint of her Gareth photo.
After that we headed back to the autos so I could get another James auto. I had a photo I had taken across the street during the PSILY premiere. I figured it was something different. Steve seemed quite impressed with it. Which was strange since he rarely ever comments on anything to me. The first time he said anything was to compliment me on my Spike and Dru drawing from last year. As he was staring at the photo I told Steve that it was quite a challenge to take photos from across the street with traffic. He said it was a very nice photo and I replied I too was surprised of the quality given the distance. But he wasn’t referring to the quality of the photo but the composition. He liked how it had a hint of the movie poster and then James’ profile in front of the poster. And I had caught Harry Connick Jr. He pointed out James’ publicist in the photo and tried to see if he could find himself. He pointed to a blurry blob and said that it could be him. When he passed it on to James he actually described the photo to James, saying this was taken while you were on the red carpet. And James went wow. I repeated that it was fun trying to get a picture with the cars driving by and the MTA buses stopping in front of you. He then said that the PSILY cast was one of the best casts he worked with. He also said that we (the fans there that night) made him look good in front of the director. Apparently when we shouted out James after the movie got out to get James’ attention the director must have been nearby and saw that he had fans screaming for him. So to those of you that were there that night, we made him look good to the industry peeps.
After autos it was back to the hotel. ghostgirl13 and I wanted to go up to the top of the hotel just for the hell of it to see how tiny everything would look. For those of you not familiar with the Marriott in Atlanta, it has an open center, so you can look down all the way to the bottom level from the different floors. The 47th floor is the top floor. After we ate some dinner, and picked up our James photos, we took the express elevator up. I’m slightly afraid of heights so I stared at the elevators doors as we went up. When we got to the top floor there was a security guard there saying that if we weren’t staying on this floor we had to go down. So we took a quick peek down the length of the hotel and went down to the 46th floor. I noticed that the guard wasn’t being so uptight to some other people that came up after us. Since ghostgirl13 and mad_brilliant had taken their cameras to take photos of the height, I wonder if he freaked out thinking they were trying to take photos of the actors? * shrugs * Who knows, it was still very high from the 46th floor. While I was watching the tiny people that looked like ants, I noticed that one person seemed to be carrying a green object around. From that height it reminded me of an ant moving amongst the other ants carrying a leaf. When we returned down to the ground floor I saw that one of the attendees was in a costume that had a giant green leaf over his head. So the ant person carrying the leaf was really carrying a leaf. Who knew? LOL. We had one more drink from that bar that night since both jaesha and ghostgirl13 would be gone the next day. Then it was off to bed.
Monday:
We slept in a bit since all that was happening was autos/photos. At ten,mad_brilliant seapea and myself went over to the Walk of Fame. James was supposed to sign autos from 10-11:30am. But once inside we saw a sign saying he’d only be doing autos from 11-11:30am. So we all had to wait for an hour. We were kind of disappointed thinking the autos would be rushed, but no one was rushed and I was actually able to say some things to James. I had a photo from the San Diego Indie Fest and I told him that I really enjoyed the concert there. And hoped there would be future concerts like it in venues where people would not be familiar with his work but would get the chance to listen and enjoy it like they did in San Diego. He agreed and said that San Diego was a test for him. He thought that the audience would be very thin if there weren’t many Buffy/Angel fans there, but he was happy to see the crowd grow as he played. I told him well your music is good. And thanked him.
Then we sat around a bit in some comfy chairs waiting to see James walk by to signal the start of the photo ops. vampgaia was saying she wanted to do a fun pose and might ask him to let her bite him. That got me thinking. I was wearing a Monty Python Spamalot shirt in honor of Alan although he was gone, that said “I’m not dead yet” on the front. H at the auto table laughed at the shirt. I told her, yep I managed to survive the weekend. She also asked how my screening went which I thought was nice of her. I told her it went well and thanked her. Since I was wearing that shirt I though hey wouldn’t it be funny to have James either bite me or somehow pretend to kill me while I had that shirt on. So this was a weekend of firsts for me. I managed to say a few sentences to James in the auto line and I for once managed to ask him for a pose in the photo ops. When it was my turn I said, “Feel free to say no. But I thought that with this shirt (pointed to writing on shirt) it would be funny if you bit me or strangled me or just tried to kill me.” He jumped on the bite pose and we did it. I haven’t seen it yet so I have no clue if he blocked the writing on the shirt or not. And I think I may have had a weird smile. But after the photo was taken he apologized saying he slobbered on me. I laughed it off I think. But I did make sure to thank him for the weekend. I told him I had a great time and I hoped he enjoyed the weekend as well. He nodded that yes he did. I bid him farewell and that was the end of the James con. We then went through the dealers room and saw the Smallville panel before eating some late lunch. We managed to lose mad_brilliant at the food court somehow but met up again at the Marriott. Then it was time to go to the airport and head home. The end of a con is always so sad.
So that's it. I miss it already. I hope everyone made it home safely. I hope you all had as much fun as me. It was a great weekend. Thanks for reading.