PinkuBentoBox

So DragonCon happened almost two weeks ago, and yes, I’m only now getting around to reporting on it. I have no excuses, but I do have fat Klingon cosplay as promised. Okay, maybe not fat, but I did the best I could with what I had to work with. For being a general nerdshit convention, there wasn’t that much Star Trek cosplay going on. An awful lot of shitty anime cosplay, though. Almost exclusively Bleach, too.

Okay, so Marmot and I ended up getting there pretty early on Friday. We checked in to the hotel we were staying at, and immediately something was amiss. Come to find out, the person we were rooming with had booked our room on the 67th floor of the Weston.

SIXTY-SEVENTH FUCKING FLOOR.

Now Marmot and I are both pretty big acrophobes, so this wasn’t exactly the most pleasant thing in the world. Worse, the only way up to the room was to take an express elevator perpetually full of loud, rowdy, obnoxious people. And I’ve heard more than my share of horror stories involving elevators breaking. Every trip on that thing was a harrowing, white-knuckle experience.

Of course, nothing was as harrowing as the line we had to wait in to get into DragonCon. There were three lines, based on how you registered: the exceedingly quick and well-maintained online registration line, the long yet fast-moving walk-in registration line, and the fucking slow, fucking long, fucking sorely neglected Ticketmaster line. Guess which one we were in.

No, it wasn’t that one. It wrapped around that one. That line is the one for walk-ins, which despite being five times bigger than the Ticketmaster line, also happened to go five times faster, as well. After more than an hour of standing in place, shuffling forward a couple paces, repeating this grueling process, and occasionally pointing and laughing at shitty cosplayers (including a morbidly obese, bronzed-skinned version of Death Note’s Right-O), Marmot and I eventually got our badges and decided to part ways. It was about 2:00, and I had a panel to get to while she wanted to hit up the dealer’s room well before they closed.

So off I went. My destination was the only Transformers panel in all of DragonCon (which I found rather odd, seeing as there were hundreds of panels taking place that weekend), which also happened to be taking place at the center of the fucking Earth. Seriously, this room was at the bottom of the hotel, stuffed into the farthest, most remote possible section of space they could’ve gotten zoning for, and it took fucking forever to find.

By the time I got there and took my seat it was about 2:10, and the panel wouldn’t start for another twenty minutes. While I was chillin’ out waiting for it to start, myself and a bunch of other Transformers fans all got together and started shooting the shit to fill the time, recalling fond memories of the cartoon, discussing the live-action movie, and throwing out things we wanted to see in the sequel (including my own idea that Autobot mad scientist Wheeljack ought to be a DeLorean). This whole roundtable chat was incredibly fun. Unfortunately, the panel itself was not. The panel ended up being some jackass with his Powerpoint presentation spitting out movie factoids and stifling any questions, saying he’d take them at the end of the panel. Fine, except his little Powerpoint presentation took up the entire panel, and this was supposed to be a discussion among the audience and the hosts. There was also some little kid in the front row shouting out shit and generally being annoying. Panel kinda sucked, but the discussion beforehand made up for it easily.

After that, Marmot and I met back up and had lunch, then went back down to the dealer’s room to roam around for a bit until the next panel. It was there that we met the awesome fucking fish guy.

After wandering around for a bit, we both went back to the center of the fucking Earth for a Ghost in the Shell panel that took place in the same faraway room as the Transformers panel. However, this ended up being everything the Transformers panel wasn’t. It was a highly enlightening, fun, and engaging hour-long discussion on everything from minor plot points in Stand Alone Complex to the thematic importance of Oshii’s Basset Hound in Innocence. At one point, we were even visited by a pair of extremely good cosplays of Major Kusanagi and Togusa, though they only stuck around for a couple minutes. After the panel, we went out to dinner. Since it was right around the corner, we decided to hit up the Hard Rock Cafe, which woulda been more pleasant had the waiters not been a bunch of fuckheads who’d rather dance the YMCA than serve us our fucking burgers. On the plus side, I got to see Neil Young’s guitar.

After dinner, we headed back to the con to attend…well, we didn’t know yet. There were two panels going on at the same time, one about “popular hoaxes” (Bigfoot, mermaids, Nessie, etc.) and one for space-related hoaxes (faked moon landings and flat Earth faggotry), and we weren’t sure which one we wanted to attend. We figured we’d sit in on one, and if it sucked, we’d move on to the next, and come to find out that’s exactly what happened. We first went to the popular hoaxes panel, which was packed with sweaty, stinking, creepy individuals (the only available seats were next to some furfag with a bunch of furporn in his lap), and the hosts were the sort of meek fucks that reminded me of Milton from Office Space. After about thirty seconds of that shit, we bolted for the space hoax panel, and things immediately improved. Aside from one guy that smelled like cheese, the space panel’s attendees were much cleaner, much less creepy, and the hosts actually had half a shred of those funny little things called charisma and a sense of humor. The panel didn’t exactly stay on the topic of hoaxes, but for an hour and a half discussion of all things space, it was a lot of fun.

Once the space panel ended, Marmot and I wandered around a bit and took some pictures. Highlights include…

…Solid Snake cornering a zombie and the fucking awesome fish guy…

…and a really nice cosplay of Robin from Witch Hunter Robin. Like Marmot with Seras, for me to find a decent Robin is an extreme rarity, so this was a nice surprise.

To cap off the night, we planned to attend one of the many concerts that DragonCon had going on. Specifically, we went to see a band called Voltaire, which Marmot had only heard about through a friend of hers, and which I had only heard about through Marmot. Now the only song I’d heard of theirs (or rather, his) was an acoustic piece called “God Thinks.” As a result, I was expecting this to be a rather subdued little acoustic set where a guy played some pretty funny songs ragging on religious assholes, Bush, and that sort of thing.

What I got instead was this:

And this:

There was also a trumpeter dressed as a rabbi, and an hour’s worth of some pretty hard rock about brains, zombies, and firebombing New Jersey. Short of the drunk guy that tried to feel up Marmot and damn near elbowed me in the throat, it was a fucking solid concert, and a great way to cap off Friday at DragonCon. I am now a Voltaire fan.

Saturday then rolled around, and we were so worn out from Friday that we ended up sleeping until like 1:30 in the afternoon, promptly missing a Mythbusters panel that we’d kinda planned to attend until we learned Jamie and Adam wouldn’t be there (it’d just be the build team…blegh). While Marmot got in an extra bit of sleep, I got up and made my way to the convention to attend a pair of Godzilla panels. Those that know me know I’m a complete Godzilla nut, and these two panels were pure bliss. They were a pair of roundtable discussions between the hosts and the attendees, first about Godzilla’s greatest enemies and allies, and then about our own personal memories of the Big Guy. I absolutely loved every minute of it, and if they have these panels again next year, I’m going to be there, no question about it

After these panels, Marmot and I met up and again got lunch. We planned to go to this panel called the Skeptics Showdown, which promised to be this awesome debate between skeptics and believers (on what wasn’t specified, but I for one had my big, heavy pro-evolution boxing gloves on and ready to go). Unfortunately, like the popular hoaxes panel, it was a packed room of smelly, grumpy twats listening to some meek hosts droning on and on about ghosts and shit. To say the least, the whole thing was a complete disappointment, and we decided to duck out and go wandering about the hotels, checking out cosplayers and such.

I should point out that as Marmot and I were heading to the Skeptics Showdown panel, we happened upon a furry near the entrance to the hotel it was in. Being an asshole, I took a page from PeTA and shouted “FUR IS MURDER!” as we passed him. We snuck away as he was looking for the person who said it, and about pissed ourselves laughing all the way to the panel. Good times.

Anyway, we ended up stumbling upon two rooms that were designated as “galleries.” We figured they were artist tables where people sold their hand-crafted wares, and decided to go in and have a look. Come to find out, it was more like a second dealer’s room. A better dealer’s room, too, as it actually had stuff we gave a shit about. And even though I told myself I wouldn’t buy anything at DragonCon, I ended up fishing the entire series of Paranoia Agent out of some DVD vendor’s bargain bin for half the price of the box set. Woohoo.

After wandering this newfound dealer’s room some more, we went out for dinner. Not wanting to go back to Hard Rock, we wound up stumbling upon this bar and grill in the neighboring mall.

It’s an Irish pub.

Very Irish.

And it goes down…

…and down…

…into a really pleasant little pub with really good food. I had an absolutely delicious bowl of chili.

After dinner, Marmot and I went back to the convention and did some more wandering around. We had planned to go to this odd Rainbow Party thing for gay sci-fi fans just to see what sort of weirdness and fat yaoi fangirls it would invite, but after doing all of our wandering around, decided we were too tired to bother. Some of the highlights of our Saturday evening wanderings include:

The Flying Spaghetti Monster! And oh, how we basked in his glory…and his noodley appendages.

A Dark Saber, who was surprised we recognized her, and then got all jealous of Marmot because I was with her. :V

Three really nicely done Homunculi from Fullmetal Alchemist. It’s damn near impossible to find a half-decent Lust, and nobody ever does Gluttony, so this trio was a really great find. No idea who the kid is; some scumbag was having his daughter stand next to all the hot women so he could get guilt-free pictures. Disgusting.

Gandalf, chillin’ in the corner…where any photographs of him are guaranteed to come out looking like shit. Cool costume, though.

Of the 1,001 Jack Sparrows wandering around the con, this was the best-looking one.

These guys were just great. We couldn’t NOT get pictures of them.

As everybody knows, Futurama is the greatest FOX animated sitcom ever, rivaling the Simpsons at its peak and even the almighty genius that is The Critic. So yeah, I had to get this picture.

Okay, so most of these guys suck and only the Integra’s really any good. Still, it’s Hellsing, and most of these characters are seldom cosplayed.

Proof that about $20 can go a long way in making an absolutely genius costume.

These guys are the pinnacle of group cosplay. I mean they had the coconuts and everything.

They even had the huge…tracts of land.

It was about this point that a blood elf approached us with a quest to go to the Rainbow Ball and bring back the heads of 10 fat yaoi fangirls. Unfortunately, the quest yielded little XP and the reward was only a handful of silver, so we declined.

And of course, the best cosplay of them all: mothafuckin’ Master Shake. Aqua Teen Hunger Force in the hizoooouse!

…okay, it’s my Coke from Gibney’s, fuck you.

In the end, our feets were tired, so we decided to call it a night and head back to our room.

On the way back to the hotel, we happened upon the same furry from earlier, taking a nap in the hotel lobby. I couldn’t resist, and as we were heading for the door I shouted “YIFF IN HELL, FURFAG.” He popped up, we bolted, we again nearly pissed ourselves laughing. More good times.

Then along came Sunday. Now DragonCon actually runs all the way through Monday, but we decided it’d be best to save Monday to rest and recover (a very wise decision in hindsight), so Sunday was going to be our last day there. I got up early and headed on down to a panel hosted by my college’s career advisor about the status of the gaming industry in Atlanta. I had originally planned on whoring myself and passing out resumés and demo reels to all who would take them…

…I had a whole sackful.

However, the panel ended up rendering that an impossibility. Still, it was very enlightening, and I came away with a lot of great advice on how to further my job hunt, so it wasn’t a total loss.

The very last event of the convention for us was a Star Trek panel. Specifically, it was a cast reunion, hosted by Brent Spiner (Data), Gates McFadden (Dr. Crusher), and Jonathan Frakes (Commander Riker) of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame. Now, I’m not exactly the biggest Star Trek fan in the world, but luckily The Next Generation happens to be my favorite part of the franchise by a considerable margin (with Deep Space Nine and most of the movies taking up the runner-up positions), so I was pretty excited about this panel. And as predicted, the panel was a lot of fun, for the most part. McFadden was really sweet and good-natured, Frakes was a fucking riot he was so funny (at one point, he ducked out and snuck into the audience so he could ask Spiner and McFadden what it was like to work with Patrick Stewart), and the fans did not disappoint with the hilariously lame “in episode #, [nitpicknitpicknitpick]” type questions. The only downside was Spiner, who got in a few really nice burns on the crowd and interacted well with the other two hosts, but for the most part was a tremendous asshole, talking down to fans maybe a little more than he really should’ve. Still, it was all good, and served as a nice way to cap off our DragonCon experiences.

Unfortunately, my camera sucks at taking pictures at long distances, so this was the best I could do.

So that was it. All in all, it was an incredibly enjoyable experience, on par with the very best AWAs I’ve attended. A couple of the panels sucked (Transformers), the staff could have been friendlier, and the hotels could’ve been easier to navigate, but those are ultimately minor complaints, the whole event was so fun. We definitely intend to go back next year.

Before I wrap things up, as promised, a Klingon.

‘Til next time!

—Nagi