Dragon*Con 2009 - Day 1 memories
Sep. 12th, 2009 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
orangerfulOkay, wow, let me start typing before all of memories start to fade! I can't believe a week ago today I was in Atlanta, GA...madness.
Let's see, where to begin? Last Wednesday I drove to West Virginia. Now, despite the fact that I live in Maryland and regular old Virginia is a mere hour away, West Virginia turns out to be a LOT further. It was about a 6 hour drive to where![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
faeriesfolly lived, but it was all on backroads so there was no traffic. I listened to an audiobook and then started in on the iPod mixes. Made it there a teensy bit faster than I should have (I blame the hills...you gotta keep up your speed if you want to make it to the top of a mountain!). Anyhoo, I made it there and FINALLY got to meet faeriesfolly aka Morgan in person! And her puppy Izzy, who is just as famous to me. haha. We went into town and had yummy foods at the "Only Cajun Restaraunt in West Virginia" - Gumbo's, and then we went to Swirl, a tiny little ice cream shop. To top it all off, she showed me "Repo: The Genetic Opera", which I knew I needed to see before Dragon*Con.
Thursday we managed to shove all of her stuff into the Mini (I really should have taken a picture of our mess) and had smooth sailing all the way down to Atlanta. Only traffic we hit was right when we got to the city and even that was minimal. We checked into our hotel and then started the Dragon*Con experience off right - by standing in line for our badges for over 2 hours. But it was fun! We had some very nice people around us so we chatted a bit. Standing in line was a nice change from sitting in a car.
Friday morning we donned our Merlotte's (True Blood) waitress outfits because we knew Charlaine Harris was speaking that night. While it isn't a very high-tech costume, it is really comfortable - I mean, black shorts, t-shirt, and tennis shoes? YES! Only annoying thing was navigating around with the random bottle of True Blood. Was not sad to toss that in the hotel room when we want back later in the evening.
ANYWAY we managed to meet up withjellibean and watch a bit of the Shatner/Nimoy panel on DragonCon TV. It was really cool to finally meet her, and her boyfriend Joe. Both of them were on DragonCon gurus, giving us hints and tips on how to get around. They were gearing up for their Lost group meet up, looking very stylish in their jumpsuits.
My first Dragon*Con panel EVAR was the Buffy/Angel Guest Extravaganza!!!! Kristy Swanson, Felicia Day, Charisma Carpenter, and Julie Benz were there to chat about anything the audience asked. Actually, Charisma and Julie were late for some unknown reason, so Kristy and Felicia had to take the first round of questions on their own. I have to admit, some of these questions were pretty painful, but both ladies did a good job of answering them. Felicia told a random story about getting a spider bite on her chin while shooting Season 7 of Buffy and how they called in the on-set medic, who apparently is kept on call for pimples and other skin blemishes! But she said she had a HUGE nasty spider-bite and it freaked her out.
Charisma and Julie eventually arrived. There was some random question that had to do with big changes for their characters or something like that, and Charisma said "I gave birth to a full grown African-American woman, that's gotta count for something!" and Felicia, who clearly hasn't seen Season 4 of Angel, was like "what?!?"
Charisma: "Yeah, I gave birth to Lawrence Fishburne's wife"
Felicia: "Your vagina must be HUGE!"
Charisma: "We call it 'Frankenpussy!"
Felicia talked about her character in s7 of Buffy and how they made her wear a hat for most of the season and she was convinced that there was a demon living under the hat that was going to be the death of her character, but then she was finally given permission not to wear the hat, so she was happy to find out her character was not a demon-headed villian.
Charisma also talked a bit about her leaving Angel and her relationship with Joss right after that and their working relationship now. I don't think all the wounds have healed, but Charisma sounds like she is very respectful of the fans, saying that was the main reason she agreed to come back for "You're Welcome" in season 5. She also mentioned her work on Legend of the Seeker and said she hopes to return for season 2. She also said to keep our eyes on the main girl on that show, saying she is a fantastic actress, then adding that she hopes she doesn't get trapped in the show (though it sounded more like she was talking to her younger self than anyone in the room).
Julie Benz and Charisma Carpenter are clearly BFFs, giggling and laughing together the whole time. It was nice to see a friendship like that. They did lots of jokes about how they would like to work together again.
After the panel finished around 2pm, we wandered back out into the madness. We met up withjellibean again and she took us to the prime spot in the Hyatt for photo ops, so we got to see a lot of the costumers go by in their amazing outfits. Everything from Electra to Mr Tumnus, to Coraline (OMG the Coralines were so adorable, wandering around in their yellow raincoat/galoshes).
Eventually we grabbed some lunch and split up again.faeriesfolly and I wandered a bit, trying to get the lay of the land. We ended up in the vendor area, looking at all the cool stuff we shouldn't spend our money on. This is where I stumbled upon Peter Beagle. I've been wanting to buy a hardcover version of Last Unicorn for awhile now, so when I saw the pile on the table, I knew I had to have it, especially since I could get it autographed. So I put in a request for a copy and the man at the table told me the whole deal - they would get the basic autograph, plus Mr Beagle would write a few pages of his rough draft of a short story about Schmendrick, the magician on the first few blank pages. And then Mr Conlon (the man talking to me) would draw a unicorn on the title page for me. How could I say no?
Because we had been told we could only get photographs with celebrities through Froggy Photos, we went to the booth and booked ourselves a photo session with Felicia Day for Saturday afternoon. Then we kept wandering, killing time until the Merlotte's meet-up at 6pm. We ended up in the Walk of Fame.
I've never collected autographs before. At first, I didn't think I would be interested. But we wandered in and there was Julie Benz and Charisma Carpenter, just sitting there. No line, no nothing. I figured why not get an autograph from these two lovely ladies? I wandered up and chatting with Julie for a bit. I follow her on Twitter so I asked her about that and what people thought of it. She said she is totally addicted to Twitter and contemplated stopping completely but I told her she can't do that because she's too fun to follow! She talked about how she hardly ever looks at the @mentions section because it would be too overwhelming but apparently she experimented with taking questions a day or two earlier.
Charisma was right next to her. Her smile is so amazing, its really hard to think when you have that in your face. I think I just mumbled something about how fun the panel was this morning and how I promised to start watching 'Legend of the Seeker' now haha.
Well, at that point, I had the autograph bug! We still had some time before the meet-up, and I wandered over and saw Mary McDonnell and was surprised by how short her line was. I jumped at the chance to meet her. I know I turned into a babbling fangirl once I finally got face to face with her, especially with that smile. I told her how much AD and I loved the show, how great the acting on the show was, how we both cried when Roslin died, and commented that my favorite scene was her speech rehearsal in season 2.5. She smiled and said it was one of her few comedic moments. She was so sweet listening to me blather on and on. I asked the actors to pick out what photos was their personal favorite in the collection, and she had a really cute one of her sitting on a car, so I chose that one and she autographed it for me.
Thenfaeriesfolly and I went over to the Charlaine Harris panel and managed to find a few more Merlotte's girls. The panel was very interesting, especially since I have only read the first book. Mrs. Harris is really funny and was very diplomatic with her answers regarding the show vs. the books. After the panel finished, all of the Merlotte's girls got together and snapped a few pictures with her.
To finish off the night we went to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling/Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog double feature. I just thought it was going to be a singalong, but instead they had a shadowcast for both shows, acting out the scenes in front of giant screens. We all still sang along, but it made for some funny moments off script (like when the guy dances for Sweet then bursts into flames? They switched out the audio for the Michael Jackson's Thriller LOL!). To top it all off, right before Dr Horrible started, Felicia Day made a quick appearance to say how much fun she was having at Dragon*Con.
After that, we stumbled back to our hotel room, with a quick pit-stop at the Hard Rock Cafe (where I snagged a sweet collectible Dragon*Con Pin set - I gave one half tofaeriesfolly and kept the other for myself so our Dragon*Con Powers can activate only when they are COMBINED!)
For photos and more, check out my Dragon*Con Flickr set here.
Let's see, where to begin? Last Wednesday I drove to West Virginia. Now, despite the fact that I live in Maryland and regular old Virginia is a mere hour away, West Virginia turns out to be a LOT further. It was about a 6 hour drive to where
faeriesfolly lived, but it was all on backroads so there was no traffic. I listened to an audiobook and then started in on the iPod mixes. Made it there a teensy bit faster than I should have (I blame the hills...you gotta keep up your speed if you want to make it to the top of a mountain!). Anyhoo, I made it there and FINALLY got to meet faeriesfolly aka Morgan in person! And her puppy Izzy, who is just as famous to me. haha. We went into town and had yummy foods at the "Only Cajun Restaraunt in West Virginia" - Gumbo's, and then we went to Swirl, a tiny little ice cream shop. To top it all off, she showed me "Repo: The Genetic Opera", which I knew I needed to see before Dragon*Con. Thursday we managed to shove all of her stuff into the Mini (I really should have taken a picture of our mess) and had smooth sailing all the way down to Atlanta. Only traffic we hit was right when we got to the city and even that was minimal. We checked into our hotel and then started the Dragon*Con experience off right - by standing in line for our badges for over 2 hours. But it was fun! We had some very nice people around us so we chatted a bit. Standing in line was a nice change from sitting in a car.
Friday morning we donned our Merlotte's (True Blood) waitress outfits because we knew Charlaine Harris was speaking that night. While it isn't a very high-tech costume, it is really comfortable - I mean, black shorts, t-shirt, and tennis shoes? YES! Only annoying thing was navigating around with the random bottle of True Blood. Was not sad to toss that in the hotel room when we want back later in the evening.
ANYWAY we managed to meet up with
jellibean and watch a bit of the Shatner/Nimoy panel on DragonCon TV. It was really cool to finally meet her, and her boyfriend Joe. Both of them were on DragonCon gurus, giving us hints and tips on how to get around. They were gearing up for their Lost group meet up, looking very stylish in their jumpsuits.My first Dragon*Con panel EVAR was the Buffy/Angel Guest Extravaganza!!!! Kristy Swanson, Felicia Day, Charisma Carpenter, and Julie Benz were there to chat about anything the audience asked. Actually, Charisma and Julie were late for some unknown reason, so Kristy and Felicia had to take the first round of questions on their own. I have to admit, some of these questions were pretty painful, but both ladies did a good job of answering them. Felicia told a random story about getting a spider bite on her chin while shooting Season 7 of Buffy and how they called in the on-set medic, who apparently is kept on call for pimples and other skin blemishes! But she said she had a HUGE nasty spider-bite and it freaked her out.
Charisma and Julie eventually arrived. There was some random question that had to do with big changes for their characters or something like that, and Charisma said "I gave birth to a full grown African-American woman, that's gotta count for something!" and Felicia, who clearly hasn't seen Season 4 of Angel, was like "what?!?"
Charisma: "Yeah, I gave birth to Lawrence Fishburne's wife"
Felicia: "Your vagina must be HUGE!"
Charisma: "We call it 'Frankenpussy!"
Felicia talked about her character in s7 of Buffy and how they made her wear a hat for most of the season and she was convinced that there was a demon living under the hat that was going to be the death of her character, but then she was finally given permission not to wear the hat, so she was happy to find out her character was not a demon-headed villian.
Charisma also talked a bit about her leaving Angel and her relationship with Joss right after that and their working relationship now. I don't think all the wounds have healed, but Charisma sounds like she is very respectful of the fans, saying that was the main reason she agreed to come back for "You're Welcome" in season 5. She also mentioned her work on Legend of the Seeker and said she hopes to return for season 2. She also said to keep our eyes on the main girl on that show, saying she is a fantastic actress, then adding that she hopes she doesn't get trapped in the show (though it sounded more like she was talking to her younger self than anyone in the room).
Julie Benz and Charisma Carpenter are clearly BFFs, giggling and laughing together the whole time. It was nice to see a friendship like that. They did lots of jokes about how they would like to work together again.
After the panel finished around 2pm, we wandered back out into the madness. We met up with
jellibean again and she took us to the prime spot in the Hyatt for photo ops, so we got to see a lot of the costumers go by in their amazing outfits. Everything from Electra to Mr Tumnus, to Coraline (OMG the Coralines were so adorable, wandering around in their yellow raincoat/galoshes). Eventually we grabbed some lunch and split up again.
faeriesfolly and I wandered a bit, trying to get the lay of the land. We ended up in the vendor area, looking at all the cool stuff we shouldn't spend our money on. This is where I stumbled upon Peter Beagle. I've been wanting to buy a hardcover version of Last Unicorn for awhile now, so when I saw the pile on the table, I knew I had to have it, especially since I could get it autographed. So I put in a request for a copy and the man at the table told me the whole deal - they would get the basic autograph, plus Mr Beagle would write a few pages of his rough draft of a short story about Schmendrick, the magician on the first few blank pages. And then Mr Conlon (the man talking to me) would draw a unicorn on the title page for me. How could I say no? Because we had been told we could only get photographs with celebrities through Froggy Photos, we went to the booth and booked ourselves a photo session with Felicia Day for Saturday afternoon. Then we kept wandering, killing time until the Merlotte's meet-up at 6pm. We ended up in the Walk of Fame.
I've never collected autographs before. At first, I didn't think I would be interested. But we wandered in and there was Julie Benz and Charisma Carpenter, just sitting there. No line, no nothing. I figured why not get an autograph from these two lovely ladies? I wandered up and chatting with Julie for a bit. I follow her on Twitter so I asked her about that and what people thought of it. She said she is totally addicted to Twitter and contemplated stopping completely but I told her she can't do that because she's too fun to follow! She talked about how she hardly ever looks at the @mentions section because it would be too overwhelming but apparently she experimented with taking questions a day or two earlier.
Charisma was right next to her. Her smile is so amazing, its really hard to think when you have that in your face. I think I just mumbled something about how fun the panel was this morning and how I promised to start watching 'Legend of the Seeker' now haha.
Well, at that point, I had the autograph bug! We still had some time before the meet-up, and I wandered over and saw Mary McDonnell and was surprised by how short her line was. I jumped at the chance to meet her. I know I turned into a babbling fangirl once I finally got face to face with her, especially with that smile. I told her how much AD and I loved the show, how great the acting on the show was, how we both cried when Roslin died, and commented that my favorite scene was her speech rehearsal in season 2.5. She smiled and said it was one of her few comedic moments. She was so sweet listening to me blather on and on. I asked the actors to pick out what photos was their personal favorite in the collection, and she had a really cute one of her sitting on a car, so I chose that one and she autographed it for me.
Then
faeriesfolly and I went over to the Charlaine Harris panel and managed to find a few more Merlotte's girls. The panel was very interesting, especially since I have only read the first book. Mrs. Harris is really funny and was very diplomatic with her answers regarding the show vs. the books. After the panel finished, all of the Merlotte's girls got together and snapped a few pictures with her. To finish off the night we went to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling/Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog double feature. I just thought it was going to be a singalong, but instead they had a shadowcast for both shows, acting out the scenes in front of giant screens. We all still sang along, but it made for some funny moments off script (like when the guy dances for Sweet then bursts into flames? They switched out the audio for the Michael Jackson's Thriller LOL!). To top it all off, right before Dr Horrible started, Felicia Day made a quick appearance to say how much fun she was having at Dragon*Con.
After that, we stumbled back to our hotel room, with a quick pit-stop at the Hard Rock Cafe (where I snagged a sweet collectible Dragon*Con Pin set - I gave one half to
faeriesfolly and kept the other for myself so our Dragon*Con Powers can activate only when they are COMBINED!)For photos and more, check out my Dragon*Con Flickr set here.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-13 03:44 am (UTC)Oh and, "BY OUR POWAHS COMBINED! WE! ARE! DRAGON*COOOOOOOOOOOON!" errr...something. heh.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-17 01:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-14 08:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-17 01:23 am (UTC)I don't think they can do the OMWF touring show anymore because of rights. I def. recommend just throwing your own with all your friends. I did that a few years ago and it was a BLAST! The guy who used to tour the show can tell you exactly what to buy and what to do.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-14 12:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-17 01:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-17 01:27 am (UTC)LOL you're welcome. Now you need to take what you've learned and apply it to next year's Dragon*Con. ;) Badges are on sale now! *tempt tempt*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-14 03:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-17 01:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-16 06:53 pm (UTC)So did you really want to go to Farpoint then? Cause I am totally up for that if so :D
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-16 10:52 pm (UTC)man, I need to post about the rest of that weekend...I feel like I'm still recovering!