DragonCon 2008 - Action

After-Action Report

We is home.

Got invites from Axl and missed the parties anyway, but had a kick ass, holy shit what was that, dear god my feet hurt, met some new folks, found old friends, see ya again bad ass kilt wearin' steampunk lovin' bondage flirtin' faerie-wing dodgin' mother fucking tesla-coil singin' name takin' pick snappin' good time!

I'm workin' on getting pics up. Ya know, soon. I'll probably use this post as a stub, and add some pics to it, and link from here to other posts and photobuckets and shit full of other goodness as I get it done, but I'd rather not just slap stuff right off the camera onto the web. I've bot about 888 of 'em to go through, and I want to at least give 'em a quick crop n' levels in the GIMP, ya know?

Other DragonCon 2008 Posts:
My Tribe at Dragon Con 2008
The DragonCon 2008 Costume Parade
DragonCon 2008 Costumes: Star Wars
DragonCon 2008 Costumes: SteamPunk
DragonCon 2008 Costumes: Super Heroes
DragonCon 2008 Costumes: Misc, pt. 1
DragonCon 2008 Costumes: Misc, pt. 2
DragonCon 2008 Video Bonus

.... time passes....


OK, lets post some pics! Perhaps with comments! I make no claims, guarantees, or warrantees of any kind as to the quality and accuracy of my memories of the event or their depiction here.

As always, click on the pics for a nice big fat version. If you see yourself in one of them and want a high-rez copy, drop me a line.

Thursday

We got into Atlanta on Thrusday and hooked up with some kin folks. TheLastNubicorn (that would be Mrs. Utini) has a really cool cousin who lives there with his lovely wife and beautiful daughter. He (the cousin) was out of town, but they (his wife and daughter) were all set to check out DragonCon. So was their next door neighbor. We went out to dinner and then did the whole DragonCon Registration thing... which turned out to totally not suck at all. Its always a crap shoot with DragonCon, one year the prereg folks get the short line, and the next year they wrap 'em around the block. This year, TicketMaster seemed to be DragonCon's Chosen People, because we got to skip the whole line-around-the-building action and go right up to the booth. Lucky us. If we try it again next year, we'll be in line for 6 hours.

Technically, these pics were taken Friday, but since I've just introduced them all, here are the ladies I had the pleasure of escorting to the con:





Friday

Get up, get dressed, get down to the hotel and check on in. Our acts now firmly together, TheLastNubicorn and I were ready to hit the con!


This shot is part of a joke. I'm going somewhere with this.

Here's a quick shot of the Marriott lobby, taken at some random time of day, just to give a vauge sense of scale for DragonCon. This is just a small slice.



Here's another. I took this one at roughly 2:30 a.m.



Ya know, I really should have written this first, and then edited all the pictures... I'm gonna have to check a schedule or something to figure out when all this crap happened.... Ah, the hell with it. These shots may or may not actually be posted under the days when they actually happened.

Obligatory DragonCon kilt check:

I'd have played, but I don't wait in line.

Abney Park played Friday night. Link to all SteamPunk costumes.

Drum Circle got going Friday night.

Saturday

Saturday is always when the thing really gets going.

Are you ready for action!?!

Some of us may be more ready for action than others...


TheLastNubicorn and I spent a good bit of time and no small amount of money working over the various retail spaces, and we still didn't get to one of the dealer's areas until the next day. Pleanty of loot to be had.

Random Con Action:


At some point, might as well have been Saturday, I ran into this guy (sorry, I didn't catch a name). He makes many of the costumes worn by costume-wearing folks, and this afternoon he just found himself a couple feet of empty space and started working.


The piece will eventually be a Bat Man suit, but he was just sitting there, sculpting way...


One thing I've always loved about DragonCon is how participatory the whole thing is -- two jackasses with a music grinder and a dancing monkey costume is just as valid as a hand-full of extras from Planet of the Apes. So, take this as a for instance. What you've got here is a few members of Abney Park with a few members of The Ghosts Project (I think...) with some dude out of the crowd on the mic. The boy had flow, too. It did not at all sound like what you'd expect from some dude out of the crowd on the mic.





Cruxshadows played Saturday night, but I skipped it this year. Partly, I just wasn't in the mood at the time, but mostly because the line was absolutely fucking insane. They had people lining up to wait in line, for chrissakes. Forget about it. Again, I don't wait in line. Maybe for 1138 naked Slave Leias I'd wait in line, but not for Rogue.

I did stop by (like you could miss it) their booth to check out some of the ferries this year. Most of these will end up on the Ladies of... post, but since they don't really count as "in costume," (hay, they are on the clock. That's their version of a paper hat.) here's a shot.



Random Con Action:


I think it was very late on Saturday night when I ran into Photo Gnome. Someday, I will unravel the secrets of this man's technique. Anyway, under his direction the following shot was taken. The pose was suggested, the reaction (I must say) is quite genuine... as was the desire of security to throw us the fuck out of the hotel lobby!



Sunday

After a minor incident in the room involving a xenomorph, we were ready to get down to the con and get back to it.





Later that day... (once partying had taken over from commerce)


Mindless Self Indulgence wasted the main room Sunday night. If you're a big MSI fan, you might want to skip this bit, but I thought they sucked. I came up with some catchy name for them, something like CruxDay, 'cause they sounded like they really wanted to be Cruxshadows but sounded too much like Green Day. God, I hate Green Day. Seriously, I'm not saying they shouldn't have played at all. But what I am saying is that they in no way justified use of the main room, especially when much cooler things were being shoe-horned in down the hall... Here are a few obligatory pics of their space-wasting performance:



OK, they weren't as bad as I'm making them out be. I didn't like them, but some of the crew I was with did. It's just in terms of what else could have used that space that they really start to suck.



By the way, if DragonCon wanted to get something in there kinda gothy, kinda punky, kinda heavy, they really should have just called Mankind is Obsolete. Because they kick all kinds of ass, and make a perfect "con band." Also, they don't suck, which puts them a cut or two above MSI.

So, I mentioned something cool down the hall, and bemoaned MSI getting the big room. That's because I think every square inch of availalble space should have been given to The Mad Scientist Ball Featuring the Singing Tesla Coils. These guys are real-life scientists, and they do this whold mad-science-for-world-domination thing to get people interested in science. They also do a dance party music show with friggin' tesla coils! Someone got some of this year's party up on youtube, here. The sound never records right... but this is the shit! Live techno that can kill you dead!



A normal person might be assuming at this point that DragonCon would start winding down by Sunday night. Ha! I took this one about 3:30 a.m., way after the bars had closed:


The party just had a way of spilling out and taking on its own momentum. For instance, some time around 4:00 a.m. I ran into this street party:


All it took was two guys with a boom box blasting Rammstein. But two guys in a horse suit never hurts, either:




Also, Predator likes to spank the ladies.


Oh, god! I thought we'd handled the xenomorph problem!


Further, I would like to add that this chicks shoes kick ass! She had to walk like a high-stepping horse in these things, but it was cool.




This probably happened Sunday night. All I asked for was a random shot... I shoulda asked for digits.


Monday

We were totally still there on Monday. I know this to be true. I can't really separate it in my memory very well, but I know it happened. Mondays at DCon are always nuked, anyway -- everyone is worn out, hung over, broke, and realizing that they may have to return to work soon. One also has the small matter of the hotel to contend with.

So, we wrapped up, checked out, and hit the road.

How does one measure the success of a good con? Pleanty of ways, and that might be a discussion topic for later, but one of the easiest and most concrete is the loot. Here's the goods, and the final damages:



See, I told you there was a joke involved.


Stuff I Missed That I Meant To Do:

I don't give much of a fuck about the whole celebrity meet and greet, but I really did want to meet Cunning Minx. Unfortunately, due to other shit or me being asleep I missed all her panels and never ran into her on the floor. Oh, well.

OK, I'm going to have to go back and fill in a lot of holes in this thing later, but that's all I've got time for now. There will be additional posts, more of less like this, focusing on pics of my Tribe, various mid-con adventures, the costumes, and of course the ladies of DragonCon. So check back. I'll link all this shit together and get it all posted eventually....

More to come!