Beth’s Dragon Con Recap – Part 2

If you’re late to the party you should check out part 1 of my recap.

With the main panel I wanted to see out of my reach I instead took advantage of my room, and lounged around getting ready to face the day. As well as prepared to face the public. On to my first panel of the day: Geek Year 1989 on the American Sci-Fi Classics track. It was a Needless Things presents panel so Dave, Nicole, Rebeccah Wood, and I were on with special guests Jon Carr and Gary Mitchell. Dave records everything so I’m sure you’ll get some audio on both of our panels from Friday. You can also hear Nicole and I get publicly shamed for not following through with the costumes Dave requested we bring for a “bit” he wanted to do. Dave just loves his bits. This one was tough for me since I had just done the 1989 podcast a few months ago. Two of my top picks were Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and UHF. Not only could I not reuse my podcast picks, but I was doing individual panels on both of them for the Classic track later in the weekend. So I had come up with all new things. It was a real head scratcher, and a good way to start off my panel filled con though.

After that Gnoll and I were planning on getting into our Team Rocket costumes and heading for the Nintendo photo shoot. I’ve really gotten a lot of use from that old Halloween costume. We got asked for a lot more picture this year than last year, and we also ran into lots of other Pokemon people. Thanks Detective Pikachu. Being my first photo shoot I had no idea that you could just show up at those things. If I’d known earlier I would have looked on the Facebook photo shoots group page to see if I could get in on the one for Harry Potter too. I also bought a batch of Pokemon stickers from Wish to hand out to people while we wandered. That was kind of fun in itself. A gave a giant handful to a little guy who said “Hi Team Wocket” because it was freaking adorable, and even I am not made of stone. After three hours in boots that were decidedly not made for walking I need a change of footwear, and was once again so happy to have a hotel room in which to rest my tired feets. I figured while I was at it I could catch a small nap before hunting down dinner and going to my 10pm panel at the Westin. Once again I had trouble sleeping as laying down for almost two hours only got me about half an hour of actual sleep. Sigh…

So yeah, food and then off the The Blair Witch Legacy on the Horror track. Another Needless Things Presents deal, but this time with Dave, both Cadavers, me, and special guest Thomas Mariani. What you won’t see in the audio Dave posts is – well, I guess you won’t see anything in the audio so never mind. What we did that the audio doesn’t convey is the fun “bit” we did to kick the panel off. The rest of the gang did the whole flashlight “I’m so sorry” thing Heather does in the original Blair Witch Project. While they did that I went and stood in the corner so that they’d freak out when the lights came back up. We thought it was hilarious, and maybe the audience got a chuckle out of it too. I hope they did anyway. It’d be a shame to have worn flannel and a knit hat in August for nothing. During this panel poor Oz is messaging us furiously about where we are, and why we’re not responding to him. Maybe if he’d just come to the panel he’d have known where we were, but what are you gonna do? He hiked his behind up to the Westin to meet us after our panel, and then Sharron and I were able to give the host hotel elitists the tour of a calm and quiet hotel. After changing clothes and filling up flasks it was time to find some fun again. Whenever you don’t know what to do at Dragon Con after-hours you find Ryan Schweck. He has some kind of 6th sense that always leads to a dance party. This time he found us the Zombie Prom. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting as I saw no zombies, and the music was more rave than prom. We hung out for a little bit, but it was loud and not our kind of dance party so Sharron and I decided a late night breakfast at the Metro Diner followed by a quick stop at the arcade was all that we had left in us.

After another fun night of not being able to sleep I got up on Saturday in a very salty mood indeed. Since the parade traffic was still going strong these two things were all the excuse I needed to stick around the hotel for the early part of the day. My first panel wasn’t until 4pm, so at least I could try to nap. Napping wasn’t to be though so finally I got up for coffee and food. I was also starting to wonder why I hadn’t brought any xanax at all, and just how many millions of dollars some melatonin would cost at CVS. I knew I wouldn’t survive until Sunday night without some kind of sleep. There was also a lot of late-night action on Saturday that I really didn’t want to miss. Cybertronic Spree wasn’t set to go on until 1:30am, and I wasn’t going to last that long without help. Giving up on getting anymore sleep for the time being, I got up and decided to head out for some hot food before the Bill and Ted panel. I enjoyed my peanut butter sandwiches and snacks over the weekend, but sometimes you need a hamburger from the Hyatt to keep you going. The only bad thing about the Bill and Ted panel was that it was at the exact same time as the Brandon Sanderson panel. I saw him a few years ago, and he puts on an entertaining time. Plus I love his books and was very excited to hear what was coming up next in The Stormlight Archives. Sharron went instead, and made me super jealous when she told me that he’d read a chapter from the new book at the panel. The Bill and Ted panel was a lot of fun though. It was a packed house with probably 5 sets of Bill and Ted cosplayers. I didn’t know any of the people on the panel besides Gary Mitchell, but it was clear that everyone involved (including the audience) loved the movies so that always makes for a good time. Once that was done I had planned on meeting Dave, Oz, and the Cadavers for dinner. I was just in really rough shape from lack of sleep by that point, and the need for a nap won out over food. I got another little half hour snooze, and was seriously questioning my ability to make it through the long night ahead.

How did Dave’s movie premiere turn out? Did I survive the night? Will I ever stop talking about how cool the arcade was? The answer to these questions and many others that you haven’t asked are coming up next week. I’m really trying to keep these posts from being 3000 words long. If you all go blind from reading I guess the podcast numbers would pick up, but probably not anything else that we post.