Dragon Con 2003 (1 Viewer)

[DonRoeber]

I've got some friends playing in the Lord of the Rings tournament there, so while I'll be rooting for them, I won't be a DragonCon.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Okay, one thing not to ever do again at Dragon Con:

Go downtown early to pick up your badge. The line was 2-3 times longer tonight that it usually is on the first day of the con. A friend of mine got his Guest of Dragon Con badge in quick fashion while I was condemned to wait in line with the rest of the herd. He picked up another guest pass (rather surreptiously) that I could use on Friday, so I left the line and headed for dinner with my friend. I'll pick up my real badge sometime tomorrow.

BTW, for the Buffy fans, James Marsters is up early on the schedule Friday at 1 p.m. at the Centennial room (IIRC).

 

[Patrick Sun]

Oh man, the dealer's room and walk of fame areas in the bottom of the Marriott were basically saunas. The ventilation in the area was awful. Boo!

Today I checked out panels by James Marsters (fun and insightful), George Takei (globally aware, and mindful of history's lesson, especially concerning the Japanese internment camps in WWII), and Walter Koenig (mostly Q&A, but he had some funny stories involving William Shatner's big ego during the original Star Trek days).

 

[Josh Lowe]

I'm going tonight to see some techno/goth/industrial band at midnight at the prompting of some friends. I'm scared, mommy.

 

[Patrick Sun]

It wasn't midnight because James Marsters' band, Ghost of the Robot, was just getting started around midnight, and I'm guessing that band was going to play for an hour and then with some more setup time, the Cruxshadows wasn't going to get started until 1:30 a.m. I wasn't all that impressed by Ghost of the Robot (the songs, or their sound).

I did check out the Star Wars Masquerade event (quite a number of cool outfits). And also checked out some of the DC Comics panel of upcoming comics/projects.

I also attended the Dawn Look-a-like contest, and due to the non-friendly photo restrictions, I got no good photos of the event itself, and then afterwards, in the "runway" parade of the contestants, it was poor done, and I got very little in terms of decent photos of them, so my Dawn contest photos (of good quality) is very limited. Oh well. They need to have the contestants walk along the back wall, and have the photogs cordoned off by an alley against the wall so that everyone can get good photos.

 

[Josh Lowe]

It was Cruxshadows. My friend is college buddies w/ their singer, Rogue.

We went and hung out and watched people for a couple of hours. There were some very, very freaky looking girls there. Unfortunately they were almost all with guys. So we stuck around and then went and chilled and drank some beers and ate greasy food at the Majestic diner at 4AM. Good times.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Oh yeah, me got pix of lots of costume wearers (and maybe those weren't costumes for some of them ...)

 

[Patrick Sun]

Here's one interesting incident from James Marsters' panel today at Dragon Con.

I also managed to check out a panel with a few stars from the James Bond films (George Lazenby, Richard Kiel, Tanya Roberts, and a blonde French actress who was in a Bond films decades ago). I also caught the tailend of Anne McCaffrey's panel where her fans brought her dragon eggs that were nicely and ornately decorated and designed for her to judge was to which one was her favorite, and these eggs were on display at the Art show exhibit.

I also attended the Miss Klingon Empire Beauty Pageant (pretty nutty stuff, but I love the commitment of the Klingons on display who are proud of it). Then I braved the wait for the Masquerade which was at the Civic Center insteads of the usual ball rooms in the Hyatt. The Masquerade of the Costume contest for Dragon Con, and there were some really neat ones, and some that were rather okay, but all were brave people willing to go up on stage with the chance of being ridiculed or booed off the stage if their segment ran too long (and were escorted offstage by a pair of Stormtroopers).

And then the nutty picture taking commenced after the Masquerade with a poorly sectioned off area for the contestants and the photographers, so many shots were way too close given the attention to detail of the costumes on display. Then in the Hyatt, tons of people in costumes were all over the place, and plenty of photo-taking opportunites were available, and I partook in such activities for a good long while.

 

[Josh Lowe]

I went back tonight to the Hyatt, my friend wanted his girlfriend to witness the whole scene because she didn't believe us when we described how far out there some of the attendees were. Now she knows. I might go back next year for the weekend.

edit - patrick, your "incident" link is broken.. it points to the HTF profile edit page.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Oops, it's late and I'm tired, the link above is now fixed...

 

[Patrick Sun]

Dragon Con is finally over. Whew! I'm really really tired...

Today was basically panel day for me.

The first panel was the Babylon 5 panel which was a small disappointment because it only had 3 actors from the show and 2 of them weren't even regulars: Brad Dourif (1 show I think), Peter Woodward (Technomage in the last B5 movie and on Crusade) and Stephen Furst (Vir for the entire run of the show sporadically). But they were entertaining. Woodward had some fun with the translator who was signing for the deaf, and he would make the translator sign words like "testicles" just to get her off her game, but she was pretty good about it all. What could have been: Bruce Boxleitner didn't make the convention, and Mira Furlan had to leave early due to personal reason (death of a close friend). I guess since Julie Caitlin Brown, Bill Mumy, and Stephen Austin did the B5 panel on Sunday, they didn't show up for the traditional Monday morning B5 panel. Oh well, perhaps this signifies a downturn in B5 presence at Dragon Con (in terms of the past stars of the show).

The 2nd panel was for the young stars of "Tribe" and New Zealand show that is its 5th season, and is shown on WAM-TV (check your local cable guides, I guess). I've never seen or heard about the show, but they described as being a post-apocalyptic scenario where all the people over puberity (or teenage age) die and the children are left to fend for themselves and they split themselves off into different little tribes and then the whole socio-political-economic ramifications are detailed on the shown (totally a youth-oriented one). Don't know if I'll check it out if possible, but it might be interesting to others. The main reason to attend this panel was to get a good seat for the next panel.

The 3rd panel was the Buffy panel, and it featured James Marsters, Iyari Limon, Danny Strong, James Leary and Andy Hallett. That was a hoot of a panel, and I enjoyed it very much. They had to lay down a new rule among the over rules, so besides no Flash photography by the audience members, there would be no Flashing either! This was in reference to the young lady who did just that to Marsters on stage yesterday (but at his behest, to be fair).

The 4th panel was the Peter David panel at the Trek Track room, and he read a story he wrote about the Kobiashi Maru simulation which was enjoyed by those in attendance, and then did a good 40 minutes of Q&A. He's very entertaining.

The last panel was the Chase Masterson panel, also at the Trek Track room, and she did about 50 minutes of Q&A and anecdotes about her experiences while working on DS9. The last 10 minutes consisted of Chase telling us about some creep in Germany signing her up on matchmaker.com (a horrific case of identity theft) and giving out all sorts of personal data (home address, email, etc) and filling out bogus sexual-related questions on that website's listing application. The website was very slow in removing the offensive and bogus application when it was brought to their attention. She got threatening emails and phone calls, had to stay (with her son) at friend's places during the initial onslaught. She didn't feel safe at her home at that time. It was terrible to hear about. She's lost her lawsuit against the website (never made it past the prelim stages), and then she just lost her appeal recently, but she wants to fight this fight because of the impact on the invasion of privacy and identity theft concerns. The judges ruling were not sympathetic to her plight due to her occupation as a public person via an actress. Anyhow, she's looking for more ways to fight this and to prevent it from happening to others because anyone which an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend could do the same to you.

 

[Josh Lowe]

Brad Dourif (1 show I think),

Man, would love to meet him for so many reasons besides B5.. LOTR, X-Files, Dune, the list goes on. He's a fantastic actor.

 

[Patrick Sun]

At the B5 panel, Brad Dourif said that if you offered him a part (in a show, film, etc), showed him the script, and put money in his bank account, he'd be amenable to the acting gig because, well, he's a whore!

Brad's got this way of totally understating things to the point that he defuses opportunites for audience applause. It's really bizarre to sit through as he talks quickly about his involvement in big films, and you can hear a pin drop after he's done. Very weird. He definitely isn't one of those "pump up the audience" personality types, but he does seem very introspective and precise, though in somewhat of a meandering way if that makes any sense.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Folks,

Here's my Dragon Con 2003 webpage. Enjoy.