Dragon*Con, part three
Sep. 6th, 2004 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dslartooPart Three of my annual Dragon*Con excursion, now with New Improved Cut-Tag Action to spare your poor wittle eyes.
Sunday:
-- Arrived just in time for the 4th Annual "Iron Artist" competition. Yes, it's what you think: taking the theme of the "Iron Chef" TV series and applying it to an artistic competition. The Iron Artist (champion from the previous year) defends his artistic title against a challenger. Both contestants have one hour to produce a work of art using the secret ingredient. This year's secret ingredient was Leonardo da Vinci; the artists had to produce something using Leonardo's style or referencing his work. The Iron Artist, Bill Stout, produced a "Mona Lizard" kind of thing, combining the Mona Lisa with his well-popularized love of dragons and dinosaurs, while challenger Dan Brereton came up with a portrait of Gandalf using a color palette and style similar to Leonardo's self-portrait. The hosts this year were Tracy Hickman (playing the role of Chairman Kaga), Margaret Weis, and Star Wars novelist/game designer Michael Stackpole, and all three kept the banter flowing and the audience laughing the whole time. At the end, the artworks were auctioned off to the highest bidder and the proceeds went to charity; Bill Stout was judged the winner although I liked Dan's much better. Wish I'd had the spare cash; Dan's painting went for a paltry $180 and was probably worth ten times that and I would have happily outbid $180. I also caught Michael Stackpole afterwards and spoke to him briefly about the Star Wars universe and his Star Wars novels in particular (two of which I happened to have with me, and which he happily signed).
-- Emerald Rose in concert on the Hyatt Concourse. The band loves the con as much as the con loves them, and they're regulars here. They always put on a high-energy, fan-friendly show and this one followed the trend. They even had singer/guitarist Susan Hickey sit in on a few songs, and took a quick break to let her do a solo rendition of the Shore/Lennox song "Into the West" from the ROTK soundtrack (a damn well-done rendition, I might add). Surreality was provided by a host of LOTR-themed costumed folk off to stage right, dancing to the music and totally breaking the band up in the midst of ER's rendition of the drinking song from the FOTR extended edition, when Gollum bounded up in front of the stage and began spinning and jumping to the music. The band just totally lost it and so did the crowd. Funniest thing I'd seen in a while.
-- Time for another Hour With Warren Ellis, our own![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mistersleepless. Warren had been put in a smaller room for this particular panel, and repeated a bit of the info from his panel the day before, but was just as engaging, friendly, and generally all-around-damn-cool as the evening before. The quote of the day comes from when he was talking about his work on a computer game. He'd written the script and narration, and they had gotten Tom Baker (ex-Dr. Who) to do the narration voiceovers. Well, Warren being who he is, the script had lots of, um, salty language in it, so Baker's handlers had apparently responded, "We're not sure Thomas will want to do this. Thomas doesn't like bad words." But apparently he was convinced to do it anyway; fast forward a bit to recording day, when Warren had just arrived at the studio, a little after the studio gofers had been going around asking if there was anything they could get or anything they could do for the various people involved. Warren says, "So here I am, walking into the studio, and the first thing I hear when I open the door is Doctor Who saying, 'Lord fuck a duck, are you PROPOSITIONING ME, you little bastard???' "
-- Attempted to get into the Craig Parker (Haldir) panel, but the rabid squealing fangirls had arrived in such hordes that it was impossible. So I went to see Paul Mercer (violinist for The Changelings and a great player in his own right) perform on the concourse instead. That was a nice soothing interlude.
-- Time for another Warren Ellis event, this one a signing. I nearly caused an altercation in the waiting area when the two fuckwits in front of me began unpacking a massive pile of single comic book issues, finally winding up with about forty books each. I inquired, "Do you two really plan on asking Warren to sign all of those?" and of course they got defensive about the whole thing. Didn't stop them from shoving the whole piles at Warren anyway, I noticed, though. Me, I'd just brought a couple of Transmetropolitan collections, the ones which had my particular favorite stories, and I spent a couple minutes talking with Warren about why those stories were my favorites. Also thanked him for coming over from England to visit us despite an intense dislike of conventions. I finished by telling him who I was on Livejournal (he'd been wanting to meet as many Livejournal people as possible) and telling him I'd buy him a drink if he would come by the Hyatt bar that evening. He grinned and said "Done".
-- "A Warm and Fluffy Non-Insulting Charming and Uplifting Sunshiny Interlude with Harlan Ellison". This was a huuuuge draw and quite...interesting. Apparently Harlan's wife had made him promise to do at least one panel where he would be nice to people and wouldn't spend the whole time being angry and ranting and shouting and being confrontational. Didn't seem to last very long, though; even before the panel he was yelling at the con staff to turn off the DragonCon TV video stuff that was playing on the ballroom video screens, and the talk itself...well, let's just say he raised his voice quite a bit while telling stories, although I did agree with many of his points. The man is undeniably a phenomenal intellect and very well-spoken and erudite....but even I, one of the most high-strung people on earth, think he needs to mellow out just a touch. :)
-- After the Harlan presentation, it was time to get some dinner. I ran into two ARTC compatriots and we grabbed a quick sandwich from the food court in the Peachtree Center. (Fucking Truett Cathy and his religious convictions. I'd really wanted some Chick-Fil-A for dinner but had forgotten they are closed on Sundays). It was also during this little interlude thatkellinator found me with the bad news that my car had been booted for some unknown reason (about which more later).
-- Then it was time to start preparing for the ARTC show. Equipment moving, setup, new scripts given to me and Joyce as the evening's host and hostess, last-minute changes and additions, last-minute rehearsals with guest star Jewel Staite and her husband Matt Anderson, difficult-to-resolve sound problems...these were not good omens. But my fears were groundless. The performance went off fantastically well. We performed a new episode of Ron N. Butler's "Rory Rammer, Space Marshal", a longtime Dragon*Con favorite; then Joyce and I presented the Thomas E. Fuller Memorial award to our musicians Brad Weage and Alton Leonard. Then it was time for our feature performance, our rendition of Robert A. Heinlein's "The Menace From Earth", which went really well. The "official" star may have been Jewel Staite from "Firefly", but I'm here to tell you that the REAL star was ARTC's own Sarah Taylor, who turned in a magnificent performance as Henlein's heroine Holly Jones. ARTC got a huge hand from the very appreciative crowd.
-- After breakdown,ashtreza, vill and I and three of our ARTC compatriots had some dinner at the all-night diner. Terrible service (twenty minutes before we got a waitress, another thirty before we got food), but the food itself was good and the companionship was of course great. The evening wound up with most of them keeping me company in the parking lot where my car had been booted while I used ashtreza's cell phone to bitch out the company and tell them to bloody get out here right fucking now to remove the fucking boot because I had goddamned well paid the parking fee that morning when I arrived. They did show up after about forty minutes and removed it, with some feeble excuses about a "questionable situation" about which box I'd actually dropped the money into. Yeah, right. At least it turned out well eventually.
Final day's report will follow shortly.
Currently playing: Rammstein -- Herzeleid. They were playing some Rammstein during Robot Battles this morning. I had to listen to some when I finally got home.
Sunday:
-- Arrived just in time for the 4th Annual "Iron Artist" competition. Yes, it's what you think: taking the theme of the "Iron Chef" TV series and applying it to an artistic competition. The Iron Artist (champion from the previous year) defends his artistic title against a challenger. Both contestants have one hour to produce a work of art using the secret ingredient. This year's secret ingredient was Leonardo da Vinci; the artists had to produce something using Leonardo's style or referencing his work. The Iron Artist, Bill Stout, produced a "Mona Lizard" kind of thing, combining the Mona Lisa with his well-popularized love of dragons and dinosaurs, while challenger Dan Brereton came up with a portrait of Gandalf using a color palette and style similar to Leonardo's self-portrait. The hosts this year were Tracy Hickman (playing the role of Chairman Kaga), Margaret Weis, and Star Wars novelist/game designer Michael Stackpole, and all three kept the banter flowing and the audience laughing the whole time. At the end, the artworks were auctioned off to the highest bidder and the proceeds went to charity; Bill Stout was judged the winner although I liked Dan's much better. Wish I'd had the spare cash; Dan's painting went for a paltry $180 and was probably worth ten times that and I would have happily outbid $180. I also caught Michael Stackpole afterwards and spoke to him briefly about the Star Wars universe and his Star Wars novels in particular (two of which I happened to have with me, and which he happily signed).
-- Emerald Rose in concert on the Hyatt Concourse. The band loves the con as much as the con loves them, and they're regulars here. They always put on a high-energy, fan-friendly show and this one followed the trend. They even had singer/guitarist Susan Hickey sit in on a few songs, and took a quick break to let her do a solo rendition of the Shore/Lennox song "Into the West" from the ROTK soundtrack (a damn well-done rendition, I might add). Surreality was provided by a host of LOTR-themed costumed folk off to stage right, dancing to the music and totally breaking the band up in the midst of ER's rendition of the drinking song from the FOTR extended edition, when Gollum bounded up in front of the stage and began spinning and jumping to the music. The band just totally lost it and so did the crowd. Funniest thing I'd seen in a while.
-- Time for another Hour With Warren Ellis, our own
mistersleepless. Warren had been put in a smaller room for this particular panel, and repeated a bit of the info from his panel the day before, but was just as engaging, friendly, and generally all-around-damn-cool as the evening before. The quote of the day comes from when he was talking about his work on a computer game. He'd written the script and narration, and they had gotten Tom Baker (ex-Dr. Who) to do the narration voiceovers. Well, Warren being who he is, the script had lots of, um, salty language in it, so Baker's handlers had apparently responded, "We're not sure Thomas will want to do this. Thomas doesn't like bad words." But apparently he was convinced to do it anyway; fast forward a bit to recording day, when Warren had just arrived at the studio, a little after the studio gofers had been going around asking if there was anything they could get or anything they could do for the various people involved. Warren says, "So here I am, walking into the studio, and the first thing I hear when I open the door is Doctor Who saying, 'Lord fuck a duck, are you PROPOSITIONING ME, you little bastard???' "-- Attempted to get into the Craig Parker (Haldir) panel, but the rabid squealing fangirls had arrived in such hordes that it was impossible. So I went to see Paul Mercer (violinist for The Changelings and a great player in his own right) perform on the concourse instead. That was a nice soothing interlude.
-- Time for another Warren Ellis event, this one a signing. I nearly caused an altercation in the waiting area when the two fuckwits in front of me began unpacking a massive pile of single comic book issues, finally winding up with about forty books each. I inquired, "Do you two really plan on asking Warren to sign all of those?" and of course they got defensive about the whole thing. Didn't stop them from shoving the whole piles at Warren anyway, I noticed, though. Me, I'd just brought a couple of Transmetropolitan collections, the ones which had my particular favorite stories, and I spent a couple minutes talking with Warren about why those stories were my favorites. Also thanked him for coming over from England to visit us despite an intense dislike of conventions. I finished by telling him who I was on Livejournal (he'd been wanting to meet as many Livejournal people as possible) and telling him I'd buy him a drink if he would come by the Hyatt bar that evening. He grinned and said "Done".
-- "A Warm and Fluffy Non-Insulting Charming and Uplifting Sunshiny Interlude with Harlan Ellison". This was a huuuuge draw and quite...interesting. Apparently Harlan's wife had made him promise to do at least one panel where he would be nice to people and wouldn't spend the whole time being angry and ranting and shouting and being confrontational. Didn't seem to last very long, though; even before the panel he was yelling at the con staff to turn off the DragonCon TV video stuff that was playing on the ballroom video screens, and the talk itself...well, let's just say he raised his voice quite a bit while telling stories, although I did agree with many of his points. The man is undeniably a phenomenal intellect and very well-spoken and erudite....but even I, one of the most high-strung people on earth, think he needs to mellow out just a touch. :)
-- After the Harlan presentation, it was time to get some dinner. I ran into two ARTC compatriots and we grabbed a quick sandwich from the food court in the Peachtree Center. (Fucking Truett Cathy and his religious convictions. I'd really wanted some Chick-Fil-A for dinner but had forgotten they are closed on Sundays). It was also during this little interlude that
kellinator found me with the bad news that my car had been booted for some unknown reason (about which more later). -- Then it was time to start preparing for the ARTC show. Equipment moving, setup, new scripts given to me and Joyce as the evening's host and hostess, last-minute changes and additions, last-minute rehearsals with guest star Jewel Staite and her husband Matt Anderson, difficult-to-resolve sound problems...these were not good omens. But my fears were groundless. The performance went off fantastically well. We performed a new episode of Ron N. Butler's "Rory Rammer, Space Marshal", a longtime Dragon*Con favorite; then Joyce and I presented the Thomas E. Fuller Memorial award to our musicians Brad Weage and Alton Leonard. Then it was time for our feature performance, our rendition of Robert A. Heinlein's "The Menace From Earth", which went really well. The "official" star may have been Jewel Staite from "Firefly", but I'm here to tell you that the REAL star was ARTC's own Sarah Taylor, who turned in a magnificent performance as Henlein's heroine Holly Jones. ARTC got a huge hand from the very appreciative crowd.
-- After breakdown,
ashtreza, vill and I and three of our ARTC compatriots had some dinner at the all-night diner. Terrible service (twenty minutes before we got a waitress, another thirty before we got food), but the food itself was good and the companionship was of course great. The evening wound up with most of them keeping me company in the parking lot where my car had been booted while I used ashtreza's cell phone to bitch out the company and tell them to bloody get out here right fucking now to remove the fucking boot because I had goddamned well paid the parking fee that morning when I arrived. They did show up after about forty minutes and removed it, with some feeble excuses about a "questionable situation" about which box I'd actually dropped the money into. Yeah, right. At least it turned out well eventually. Final day's report will follow shortly.
Currently playing: Rammstein -- Herzeleid. They were playing some Rammstein during Robot Battles this morning. I had to listen to some when I finally got home.