{"id":145,"date":"2008-09-03T07:00:07","date_gmt":"2008-09-03T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onceuponageek.com\/?p=145"},"modified":"2008-09-03T01:50:49","modified_gmt":"2008-09-03T05:50:49","slug":"i-survived-dragoncon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/onceuponageek.com\/wordpress\/2008\/09\/03\/i-survived-dragoncon\/","title":{"rendered":"I Survived DragonCon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The good news is that I survived DragonCon.\u00a0 The bad news is that I’m having trouble re-acclimatizing to regular life.\u00a0 After being completely immersed in geekdom for four straight days, it’s a little hard to suddenly be transported from the wild to “civilized” society.<\/p>\n

\"Shag<\/p>\n

I had a fantastic time!\u00a0 This was definitely one of the best years I’ve had at this convention!\u00a0 Over the next few days I’ll try to cover my madcap adventures at DragonCon 2008.\u00a0 Of the 500 pictures I took, a little over 400 were worth keeping.\u00a0 I should have them uploaded to my Flickr account soon.\u00a0 I also have a couple videos I plan to upload for your viewing enjoyment.\u00a0 A few of my friends that typically attend DragonCon didn’t come this year.\u00a0 Hopefully these blogs will help fill them in and possibly encourage them to attend next year.<\/p>\n

With the convention over, I gotta say that if I see one more lame Joker\/Joker Nurse costume I’m going to freak out.\u00a0 Apparently dressing like the Joker is the new black.\u00a0 Sheesh.<\/p>\n

FRIDAY<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The flight from Tallahassee to Atlanta went great.\u00a0 I caught up with Serv and we immediately went to Moe’s in the airport.\u00a0 I know, airport Moe’s?\u00a0 Can’t possibly be as good as a regular Moe’s, right?\u00a0 Well, they don’t have Moe’s where Serv lives and he was jonesing for it pretty badly. I’m confident that if he didn’t eat Moe’s within 20 minutes of touching ground in Atlanta he would have suffered some kind of seizure.\u00a0 An alternative may have been to mainline some Chick-Fil-A (which they also don’t have in the great white north), but Moe’s did the trick.<\/p>\n

\"Serv<\/p>\n

After lunch, we caught up with another friend from THE UNIQUE GEEK<\/a>, Jon, then we all rode the MARTA from the airport to Peachtree Center.\u00a0 Next we checked into our hotel, room 2222; we referred to it as “Harvey Dent’s room”.\u00a0 Turns out the Executive Lounge we were counting on for meals was closed starting Saturday for renovations.\u00a0 Major suckage.\u00a0 That just resulted in more Chick-Fil-A for Serv, so I guess it all worked out.\u00a0 After rendezvousing with a long-misplaced friend, Race, we headed to registration to pick up our badges.\u00a0 I was thrilled for my friends as I watched them zip through the line and pick up their badges within mere moments.\u00a0 I, however, was lucky enough to wait 45 minutes to get mine!\u00a0 Yay!\u00a0 For some ridiculous reason, every person whose last name starts with “M” showed up at the same time.\u00a0 The slowness of the “M” line was aided by the DragonCon staff member running the line with a broken arm.\u00a0 My friends were kind enough to wait for me, laugh at me, and take pictures.<\/p>\n

\"Shag<\/p>\n

After a brief visit with Ravenface & his brother Shockwave, I made my way to a comic book related track.\u00a0 This session was an examination of various “don’ts” for comic writers featuring Peter David, Mike Baron, and others.\u00a0 There were some great recommendations as well as anecdotes.\u00a0 Heard a great suggestion to embed Google Image links into your comic scripts to provide the artist with photo reference examples of what you are trying to explain.\u00a0 Neat idea!<\/p>\n

\"Comics<\/p>\n

\n

After the comics panel, I went hunting for photo opportunities and trolled the dealer’s rooms.\u00a0 During the course of the first day, I took about 175 pictures.\u00a0 Michael Bailey, Race, and I wandered the dealer’s room together looking for ways to spend obscene amounts of money.\u00a0 Then from an unknown artist, I commissioned a sketch of Blue Devil battling Doctor Fate.\u00a0 The sketch isn’t complete yet, but I should get it within a week or so.\u00a0 The pencils he showed me looked awesome!\u00a0 I’ll be sure to post an image of that drawing here when I get it.<\/p>\n

I swung by the NeedCoffee.com panel, “They Did WHAT to My Favorite Book\/Fandom?”\u00a0 Fun panel with good crowd interaction.\u00a0 I was lucky enough to win a Darth Vader\/Luke Skywalker action figure “Father’s Day 2-pack”.\u00a0 Too funny! Around this time we connected with Ron & Holly from THE UNIQUE GEEK and their other siblings.<\/p>\n

Finally, after a late-evening run to Chick-Fil-A, we settled in for a night of Chez Geek, booze, and chatting.\u00a0 We don’t get to hang out very often as a group, so we had a fantastic time ripping on each other and enjoying each others company.\u00a0 Sweet, sweet slumber finally overtook us around 3:00am.<\/p>\n

\"Chez<\/p>\n

Great first day!\u00a0 Wonderful to see friends again and have so much fun!\u00a0 I’m sure I’m forgetting things, so there may be addendums throughout the week.\u00a0 More tomorrow…<\/p>\n

Tell the world about ONCE UPON A GEEK:<\/h3>