sabinelagrande: (fma - target: rock on!)
[personal profile] sabinelagrande
So. Dragon*Con 2010.

Oh my god, this report is over 3800 words long. This is why I don't write con reports. But anyway, here we go.

Thursday

God, Thursday. We didn't leave Nashville until after 7 PM, because I had fucking seminar until then (entirely in Spanish, about some shit I already knew). With the time change, we didn't get into Atlanta until midnight, then there was a whole mess with getting the bags up to the room. But that is boring, so let us move on.

Friday

So the plan was to pick up our badges and go to the Squidbillies panel, because we really regretted not having gone last year.

Little did we know that in order to do that, we'd have had to line up at maybe six in the morning.

The prereg line was a fucking nightmare. It took about four hours, most of which was in the sun, all of which involved that weird "I am stuck with the same twenty jerks that I don't know" situation, which was, of course, very awkward. And the end of the line was done alphabetically- they called people up with names starting with odd letters, so they could move on while the rest of us waited.

And by the rest of us, I mean the people with last names beginning with S.

I am not exaggerating when I say that we had a queue of just S that was thirty people deep. And of course, everybody in the fucking thing was bitching about how they would obviously have done a better job of organizing it. Bitch, this is not Comic-Con, we do not have a whole floor of a building to run this shit in.

Did I mention that Lizzy and I did this all in corsets? And that my corset takes seven inches off my waist? I feel like it's important.

ETA: Oh dude! I totally forgot! We went to sign up for the parade; for some reason, the TAPS booth and the parade signups were right next to each other. So we're filling out the form and everything, and I look over... and it's Steve and Tango, just, like, sitting around. WTF.

So finally we got done with that, and we had lunch (which was hilarious, given that we were at a buffet, and I was still wearing the corset). My memory is fuzzy on what was next, but we ended up back in the room, drinking, and at some point, we vetoed going out and decided to watch Dragon*Con TV. And then we kept drinking, and somehow Dragon*Con TV got replaced with Titanic. Don't ask me why. We were mostly yelling at Billy Zane for being a dick. Then [livejournal.com profile] dreadnot turned up and [livejournal.com profile] leiascully and [personal profile] coffeesuperhero came back, and we all ended up eating Chinese food at like two in the morning. IDEK.

Saturday

So Saturday, we, like, actually got up and did things. Like, a lot of things.

First off was the parade. I had never marched in it- or even watched it, for that matter- and it was quite the experience. Lizzy, Mary, Erin, and I went as an Atlantis gate team, and I have to say that Stargate made a pretty poor showing this year. There were maybe six SGA crew, two Wraith, maybe fifteen assorted SGC members, and one lonely dude (the hot guy from Sci-Fi Hero) rocking an SGU uniform. To make matters worse, we were directly in front of the BSG people, and there were like sixty of them, and they kept yelling "So say we all" the whole time (in fairness, we were yelling it with them) and generally looking like badasses. I did holler "Hallowed are the Ori" at one point, which was totally worth it to see the reactions from all the SGC people. But the whole parade was a cool experience, cause how many times do you get to feel like a nerd rock star?

We went to the Venture Bros panel after that, wherein Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick, instead of sitting at the table talking, decided to hold their own talk show, where they ran out in the audience to talk to people. And by "ran", I mean "pranced." Doc Hammer kept demanding his Donahue music, and they were both handing out flowers for the ladies (and one dude, who was dressed as Brock and holding a Stranger head).

That panel had some of the best cosplayers I have ever seen. Like, nobody over there was phoning it in. The very best was the sexy girl Stranger, but there were a whole stack of Monarchs and Dr. Mrs. The Monarchs and Sargent Hatreds, and all of them looked good.

And of course, the clip reel from the second half of Season Four was amazing and often inexplicable and tantalizing. But I don't know who doesn't want to be spoiled for what, so I won't say anymore.

The day before was when they had the fan panel, which was run by Mark, who runs Venture Bros Blog. Well, apparently, after that panel, rumors started going around- weird stuff, like, Stephen Colbert had demanded $50,000 an episode before he'd come back, and him and Jackson got into a fight or something like this. So at the end of the panel, they called Mark up onto the stage and started interviewing him. Mark was in his AstroBase Go suit, and they were both like, "How come yours is better looking than ours?!"

So eventually, the panel came to an end. And I'm not entirely sure what happened, because we were filing out as it happened, but Jackson definitely went ass over tea kettle on the stage. I think he critfailed at sitting in a chair.

So after that panel, we went down and hit up Artist's Alley. I talked to Jennie Breeden of The Devil's Panties and replaced my playing cards that got ruined in Guatemala. I also bought some prints at the art show, because they were ADORABLE. And by adorable, I mean that one of them was a photograph of a skeleton, and there was a tiny little black kitty climbing up its rib cage and peering at its face. So cute. The other one isn't cute, but it is a really cool shot, so I am pleased.

And oh my god, cutest small child cosplay I've ever seen: there were two little boys as Green Hornet and Kato, and their costumes were perfect. I really hate children, but when they're dressed up and well behaved, I find them fucking adorable.

After that, we went back up to the room for a while to regroup and figure out our game plan. And we were joined by [personal profile] telesilla! Who is, of course, totally awesome, and we completely hit it off, which is great, because she's so much cooler than me, and it would have been a damn shame if we didn't get along, because we kind of share the same brainspace.

(BTW, who is it around here who thinks I've been running around on the anon meme? Because that's definitely not me. I haven't been over there at all since, like, the day after it opened.)

So the three of us went down and lined up for Adam Savage's panel. He is, of course, just so great, and he got really great questions, and talked about really great things. He is, as a public speaker, as you would expect him to be; his brain clearly works really fast, and he'd start answering a question, get like a paragraph into his explanation, and then totally branch off into something unrelated, never to come back to the original answer.

So, some stuff he talked about:

-Under the heading of new stuff:
--They're revisiting Underwater Car! They're investigating what to do if the car turns turtle and you end up trapped upside down. Adam said it was the scariest thing he's ever done.
--Seth Rogen is going to be in one of the upcoming episodes; Mythbusters was invited to go through all the special effects from Green Hornet, so they tested scenes from the movie. Apparently there is a sweet ass new explosion in it.
-They have been signed for two more years! \o/ I think he said they're potentially getting three more (for a total of five), but it's not finalized.

-It's hard to get Jamie into costumes for the show, but when they put him in motorcycle leathers, he didn't want to take them off.

Just sayin'.

-Someone asked him what myths they really wanted to do and couldn't, for whatever reason. First he said that they had about two seasons worth of the Playboy version of Mythbusters, where they would be teaming up with Vivid Entertainment (yeah, Adam Savage name-dropped Vivid). Then he said that one he really wanted to do and couldn't was this myth about liquid oxygen. So this tanker truck crashes carrying a whole container of liquid oxygen, and it spills out and saturates the whole roadbed, so when the ambulance shows up, just the pressure of the tires on the road is enough to turn the entire road into a bomb. They did some preliminary tests, and basically decided that liquid oxygen was the scariest shit in the world and they wanted no part of it.

-For Adam, marriage boils down to finding somebody you just want to hang out with all the time, which is no small feat when most people piss you off. It was terribly sweet.

-Another question was what was the biggest surprise he'd ever gotten. Apparently, "are elephants afraid of mice" was supposed to be a joke; they were in Africa doing shark stuff, but the weather conditions were bad enough that they just couldn't film. So, they went inland to pick up maybe five minutes of material for filler... and it turned out to be totally true.

But the best part of the story was that afterwards, he was talking somewhere, and this little girl comes up to the mic, just trembling she was so nervous, and was like, "hi... i really like your show... i just wanted to ask you... Why did you use white mice instead of brown mice? Because white mice aren't that common in the wild, and you might have gotten different results."

So yeah, that panel was awesome.

So afterwards, we went to dinner and met up with [personal profile] darkrose, who is, of course, also awesome, and we went and lined up for Nuts on the Road, which was this sort of comedy improv show, featuring Adam Savage, Doc Hammer, Jackson Publick, pretty much everybody from MST3K, Misty Lee, and Dana Snyder.

Yeah.

So we're in line, right? And this dude comes walking up in BSG duty blues. And I'm like, "Damn, that's a good costume." And he goes by me and I look him dead in the face, and it is EDWARD JAMES FUCKING OLMOS.

If it was not him, it was the best and most dedicated cosplayer in the history of all time, because you would have to get plastic surgery to look that much like Edward James Olmos. And he was walking around with a dude who looked like a handler. So I guess Eddie just decided to be among his people. According to [livejournal.com profile] leiascully and [personal profile] coffeesuperhero, who got kisses from him, he is very sweet.

So, we get in to Nuts on the Road, which went on for like three and a half hours. It was so fucking epic that I cannot possibly begin to recap all of it, so I will present you with some highlights which will go towards explaining how epic it was.

An explanation, to start with: it's set up like a quiz show. There were two games, plus a championship. Each game was made up of a couple rounds: Truth or Lie, where the contestants got an envelope containing something that was either true or false about them and had to convince the other team that it was true; a song game that I can't remember the name of, where they had to start singing along with a song, which was randomly cut off in the middle somewhere, and to win you had to be synced with the music when it came back on; Arguments, where players were assigned to argue for or against something before being told what it was; and Either/Or, where they had to choose between two (often bizarre and unrelated) things and justify their answer.

The first round was Doc Hammer, Jackson Publick, and Joel Hodgson versus Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, and Mary Jo Pehl; the second round was Adam Savage, Dana Snyder, and Misty Lee versus Frank Conniff, Trace Beaulieu, and Josh Elvis Weinstein. Yeah, you heard that right.

Okay, so, here are some of the epic things that happened.

-Jackson Publick's envelope for Truth or Lie read "I have masturbated while driving a car." It was, of course, true; he defended himself by saying that it was after he had been driving for twelve hours and only for the sake of staying awake.

Our collective memory has gone fuzzy on what happened next, but we think somebody asked something like, "What would you do if you were tired and Doc was in the car?"

But what Doc definitely said in response was, "Then it wouldn't be masturbation. I'd just be keeping him awake."

-Jackson led the room in a sing-along of Yellow Submarine. We fucked him up and made him lose the game, though I swear it was not intentional.

-In the first round of Arguments, Doc had to argue against and Kevin had to argue for. The topic? David Bowie is a genius. Doc made an admirable showing, though his argument was somewhat lessened by the fact that it ended with, "Fuck you for making me do this! David Bowie is a fucking genius!"

-The first thing Dana Snyder did upon reaching the stage was spill beer onto himself. So one of the organizer guys came over to help him. And by help him, I mean pour an entire bottle of water onto his crotch.

-They were all drinking, but Adam was kinda fucked up. At one point he called for more wine, and Kevin came out with a napkin over his arm and served him, taking care to taste- and gargle with- the wine before pouring it out for him. This will become important later.

-ETA: OH DUDE I FORGOT. Somebody said something about Adam needing to take himself to bed... and Adam started ostentatiously massaging his wrist.

-Frank sang In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. The drum part. And nailed it.

-True Blood came up at some point, and Doc yelled, "SUCKAY!" from offstage. And nailed it.

-Misty got up and sang Feliz Navidad, complete with ass shaking (as that song so desperately needs). And then somehow she got into a "Whose ass is better" contest with Frank, where upon Frank's ass became a running joke.

And then later, for some reason, Frank and Dana started yelling obscenities at each other, and it ended with Dana shouting, "I will fuck you in your sweet ass!"

-Adam's song was Rocket Man, which, of course, he sang... as William Shatner.

It is a testament to how epic this panel was that I almost forgot about this entirely.

-In the second Arguments round, Adam had to argue for and Josh against. The topic was, of course, psychics are real. So when it was announced, Kevin came out, took Adam's wine glass away, and left him the bottle. Which Adam proceeded to chug from periodically.

(There was some debate between us on whether Adam actually drank the whole bottle of wine or if he was faking it (there was definitely some wine in the bottle), but I fully believe that Adam drank a whole bottle of wine, whether or not chugging was involved.)

Adam gave a shifty answer, so of course the topic was changed to psychic powers are real, and once again Adam gave a shifty answer. Josh's defence was, however, so bad, that one of the guys from the skeptic track came up and made his own argument, to which Adam had to concede.

-So the final round was Doc Hammer's team versus Trace Beaulieu's team (Trace did accuse the moderators of trying to make the more famous people win). Joel had to go to bed; he was supposed to be replaced by Dana, but Dana had fucked off. So Paul fucking Dini was just sitting around in the audience, so they called him up and made him play.

Doc clearly did not want to be there anymore; he spent the entire panel bitching about wanting the bathroom and a cigarette. And for his song, he was assigned Candle on the Water from Pete's Dragon, which he claimed to have never heard before. So he just ad libbed his own lyrics, turning it into a cautionary drug tale (as all things related to Pete's Dragon should be).

Despite their best efforts, Doc's team won, and they were presented with talking James T. Kirk bobbleheads which had been painted gold: the Golden Shat. And of course Adam came back up and loudly demanded one of his own. He wasn't allowed to have a gold one, though.

And that's just what I can remember.

So after that amazing experience, [personal profile] telesilla and [personal profile] darkrose went off to bed, and [personal profile] arymabeth, [personal profile] coffeesuperhero, [personal profile] dreadnot, and I stayed up for a little while, in which time we all got a little hammered and did not fall off our balcony.

So that was one long ass day.

Sunday

Sunday didn't start out great for me. We were gonna go to the Squidbillies fan panel, which was at 11 AM, but we slept in instead. We finally rolled out of bed around noon, and I fought with my fucking hair and makeup for my Abby costume at least forty-five minutes. Surprisingly enough, [personal profile] arymabeth's BSG fatigues came out better than expected; by that I mean that at no point did they fall into pieces on the ground. And I just want to point out that I went to all that trouble, and all the comments I got? Were about my shirt. I am still getting them. I mean, it is a great shirt. But damn.

So we got some lunch and went down to the dealers' room(s). It wasn't a great experience; the two we went to were really crowded, some guy grabbed me (just on the arm, but still, dude, not on), there wasn't really anything we wanted, and we both started getting really claustrophobic. So we ditched and sat around to people watch with [livejournal.com profile] dreadnot and [livejournal.com profile] noblesseoblige. Saw some really interesting costumes; the inexplicably plaid Superman was probably my favorite.

Sidebar: The funniest thing about con to me is watching people in costumes doing really normal things. I saw many old favorites this year, like stormtroopers talking on cell phones, but my favorite was Dick Tracy drinking a Full Throttle, for some reason. It doesn't top the previous best, which was the Monarch fixing his wings with yellow duct tape, but you can't win them all.

We went back up to the room, eventually, to regroup and decide what the hell was going on. Around seven, [personal profile] arymabeth went off to the David Bowie panel that Doc Hammer was on. It bears mentioning, at this point, that I left my cell phone charger in Nashville, so for most of the week, I was using [personal profile] arymabeth's phone to get a hold of people. Of course, she took her phone, and I promised to tweet at her when and if I woke up.

Dear readers, I passed slap out. I'm talking, like, dead to the world, drooling into the pillow sleep. I don't know what was wrong with me, other than running on pure adrenaline and having more liquor than food, but I was just fucking gone.

I woke up at eleven o'clock, still tired out of my brain, and checked the twitter on my computer. Allow me to show you what transpired:

arymabeth @sabinelagrande I'm on a smoking break with Doc Hammer. Where the hell are you?
about 22 hours ago via txt

arymabeth @sabinelagrande please wake up?
about 21 hours ago via txt

sabinelagrande: @arymabeth HOLY SHIT I JUST WOKE UP WHAT'S GOING ON
about 21 hours ago via web in reply to arymabeth

sabinelagrande: @arymabeth YOU DID NOT SMOKE CIGARETTES WITH DOC HAMMER PLEASE SAY YOU ARE SHITTING ME DID YOU GET HIS PICTURE
about 21 hours ago via web in reply to arymabeth

arymabeth @sabinelagrande I AM STILL STANDING HERE WITH HIM. GET DOWN HERE. WE'RE RIGHT OUTSIDE THE HYATT
about 21 hours ago via txt

sabinelagrande: @arymabeth GIVE ME FIVE MINUTES AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T LET HIM LEAVE
about 21 hours ago via web in reply to arymabeth


So I went tearassing around the room, pulling on the scattered bits on my costume. I didn't even grab my room key (it turned up, thankfully, to have been in my pocket all along); I almost didn't even put on a bra. I hauled ass down to the ground floor, went out the front, and there's [personal profile] arymabeth, sitting next to Doc fucking Hammer. There were maybe five or six other people just hanging out, talking about music and art and tattoos and shit. So we just, like, sat around with him for an hour and a half. And at like midnight-thirty, he was like, "I gotta go, but I'll be in the bar at the Hilton in like an hour, so come find me."

This was how tired I was: I didn't want to go.

I did go, eventually, because I felt really bad for having more or less kept [personal profile] arymabeth back the whole weekend. So we sat around and waited with a bunch of other people, and eventually he turned up, and we were all talking to each other about, y'know, everything. We were talking about our best and worst jobs- he thought it was cool that I was a Park Ranger, which made me happy in my soul.

I don't really want to go into great detail, especially not in a public entry, because it wasn't really a public forum, and I'm not 'bout fixin' to put Doc Hammer's business all over the livejournal, but it was a really good time.

Sidebar: This is why [personal profile] arymabeth is my best friend in the world. We stand up, because Doc has declared a smoke break. All my shit is in my lab coat, and when I stand up, it all falls out- money, wallet, all the random swag from my pockets, everything. So she's helping me pick stuff up, and there's my totem on the floor, and she's just about to reach for it, and she goes, "I can't pick that up."

She's the best.

So, yeah. We headed back to the room at three-thirty-ish and went to sleep.

Monday

Little to report on Monday. We were very sad to leave, but we got out relatively early and had an uneventful drive back. I was supposed to be in class at 3, but I checked my email, and it turned out that the professor was sick; he wanted we the grad students to show a video, and m'colleague had already agreed to run it, so I stayed my ass home, found the video on youtube, and wrote this post.

Here endeth the con report.

TL;DR

Dragon*Con 2010: The Year We Accidentally Stalked Doc Hammer.

This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/255607.html. comment count unavailable comments over there.

Date: 2010-09-11 11:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] paper-anchor.livejournal.com
Probably saw you sunday night at the hilton bar with Doc. We were sitting by the bar behind him. :D

Date: 2010-09-11 11:11 pm (UTC)
sabinetzin: (vb - slash friends)
From: [personal profile] sabinetzin
We were, like, across from Doc- I was the one in the lab coat and the Carbon-14 t-shirt.

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