The D*Con Report

Ok! I'm all rested and fed and I finally caught up on Zebra Girl. It has cool werewolves in it so I love it even more. And of course, now that I'm hooked, it goes on hiatus. But I am patient. I can wait.

In the meantime, I will now give a happy list of all the stuff I did at Dragon*con. It was such fun. I even enjoyed hanging out in the hotel watching TV since I haven't had any of that since I moved... But the whole adventure began on

THURSDAY:

lithrael flew in and we headed on down to Atlanta. It was fun! We yakked and ate and drank a whole lot of Dr. Pepper and listened to strange and wonderful music. When we got there, we registered and got our pretty con-badges. (Last year's was prettier, but Nazgul are always cool)
Then, we hung out and watched the Discovery channel until Liz and James showed up. They got stuck in hurricane evacuation traffic and it took them forever to get there. But they made it!

FRIDAY:

First day of the con. There was much milling around looking at people's costumes. Then, lithrael and I went to the panel on goth comics and ogled Ted Naifeh for awhile. He was very nice and we later trapped him at his table and made him sign Courtney Crumrin books for us. I wanted to get the Butterworm glass, but couldn't afford it. Dragon*con is a terrible place to be broke!

Lessee, we also went to the Ghost Hunting panel. It was fun, but most of the same stuff from last year. Then it was to see Dr Demento with the whole gang and that was great, except that it was REALLY loud and deafened all of us. Our whole section of audience had fingers in their ears and lithrael went to ask the sound guys to rein it in a tad, but they just sort of shrugged her off. The jerks.

SATURDAY:

We slept through the parade and the viewing of classic cartoons, but we did get up in time to see the Sceptics on Parade panel. I wanted to go see the Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow panel, but lunch comes first. Had to eat.

It was about here that the Weather Channel started to get us worried. Most of my Floridian friends were in the room with me, but I tried to call the ones that were still there and couldn't reach em. Still haven't in fact. I hope they're ok and still have places to live. I guess I won't know that until I hear from them.

But, while we pondered the fates of absent friends, it soon became clear that there was going to be no anime music videos shown this year. Imagine my despair.

So we went to a random-fun-film marathon thing instead. Lots of funny stuff. They had the very first episode of Sesame Street which was neat to see just because a lot of it wasn't fully realized yet. Big Bird had hardly any head behind his eyes and Osar the Grouch was orange! But then, as Sesame Street often does, it went into sort of a kiddy film on where milk comes from. And the crowd. Freaked. Out.

What they were seeing was, to my view, a fairly standard bit of film on a farmer milking a cow. It showed some cows grazing in a field, the farmer milking by hand, some machines milking some other cows, a calf nursing from its mother, and some kids drinking milk from big, tall glasses. In the background there played a pleasant (if a bit strange) little song about where milk comes from. Basic Sesame Street fare, right?

Well, this room full of people were apparently horrified. They screamed and groaned and hid their eyes. Shouts of "I'll never drink milk the same way again!" rose above the other sounds of horror. Footage of Nazis stomping on kittens and little peeping chicks wouldn't have gotten such an appalled outcry. lithrael and I just looked at each other in bafflement. All I can figure is that these people were truly innocent of what milk was and where it comes from. I guess if you really didn't know you were drinking a barn animal's udder juice, you would be kind of shocked. I'm just grateful it wasn't on where sausage comes from.


Then came SUNDAY:

The Cryptozoology panel was neat. I found out all kinds of fun things about escaped orangutans and detritus worms and the breeding population of leopards loose on the moors somewhere in the UK. (There's one of lion in the US midwest, too. Cool! I said.)

I spent the afternoon running around looking at stuff I'd missed in my first adventures through the Dealers Room, Art Show, and Exhibit Hall. I kept trying to get in touch with the Floridians left behind, but no power and no phone make it difficult. Then we went to the costume masquerade which I didn't think was nearly as cool as last year. There were some neat costumes and a performance by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, which is always great fun. If we could've gotten the announcer lady to keep quiet, it would've been much better.

Then, we went back to the Hyatt to watch Cruxshadows, but first we had to sit through Faith and the Muse. blackvelvetclad likes em, but me? Not so much. Fortunately, there was a pair of young men sitting in front of me who put on a much more entertaining show. It didn't sound like a make-out song to me, but what do I know?

When that was finally over, and we were all waiting on Cruxshadows again, they trot Voltaire up the stage and he starts to sing about sex on Star Trek and dragons protecting their young. At least, I think so. He wasn't very intelligible from where I was sitting at that point. We gave up the wait at 2 am and went to bed so we'd be bright and chipper for the drive back the next day.

MONDAY:

We packed up and checked out and went our separate ways. Liz and James had to head back into Hurricane country. lithrael and I headed north. We had some nasty rain and wind in spots, but nothing worth the traffic it caused. We also stopped at a neat little truckstop diner and had the best burger and pie ever. We were so late getting back that we had to go straight to the airport. lithrael went away home and I went home too.

There's still some folks I haven't heard from yet, but hopefully it's just cuz their power is out and they aren't dead or homeless or anything like that. Let me know, peoples!