The main reason I come to Dragon*Con is actually to attend the panels. Meeting authors, actors and other people in various industries, listening to them speak and speaking with them is cool. But, I can’t deny the lure of the Dealer’s room and the Exhibitor’s hall. The Exhibitor’s are there to sell stuff or just show off recent or upcoming stuff. Neverwinter Nights 2 is down there (and it looks cool), so is Age of Conan (and Funcom is also still peddling Anarchy Online too), as are many craftsmen and gaming companies. The Dealer’s room is less refined… comic books, t-shirts, bootleg TV shows on DVD, old movie posters, etc. Porn stars are usually in the Dealer’s room, except ones like Traci Lords, because she’s a legitimate actress (at least in the eyes of Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans).
The only issue with the draw of the stuff for show and sale is that it takes half a day or more to see it, so you basically miss most of a day of panels. Today was that day. But not at first…
I have never gotten anything autographed on purpose at Dragon*Con. I think I got a poster signed once by someone who I didn’t know on a poster I wasn’t planning on keeping. The wife, however, really wanted to get something signed by MaryJanice Davidson, who happened to be doing signings at 10 AM. So, rather than go to the parade, we went to the signing. We were supposed to have friends in the parade, but it turns out they didn’t go so thankfully we didn’t waste our time. It was interesting to watch the wife get so excited talking to Mrs. Davidson, about the books and introducing friends to books and other books. A real treat.
Then we went to the Art Show. There are alot of really talented artists out there. There are some that suck too, but that’s to be expected. And of course, talent is in the taste of the beholder, or something like that. One piece really stood out, and sadly I can’t share photos of it with you because they don’t let you take any, was a huge diorama of the front of a castle, mote and gate, being sieged by the undead. It was just very damn cool.
After that we hit the Exhibitor halls and the Dealers’ room, and saw a great many things that would be great to own. But alas, most of those things are simply not in the budget.
It was about 5 PM by then. So the day was pretty shot for alot of the panels.
We hung out and watched the costumes go by a little while and then went to Star Wars trivia. I don’t know nearly as much as I thought I would. We heckled instead. And then went back to hanging out and costume watching.
At 9:30 PM we made the decision to go see some short films… that started at 10, and the line was huge. We wandered around again, but returned at 11:30 for another round of shorts. We got in. I really wish we hadn’t. It was billed as comedy, and two of the four items were… one was weird but oddly humorous… the last was… well, it was neither comedy nor short. Forty minutes of some crap about a Jedi and some other Jedi and a group of Jedi and an army of Sith and a tree with black bark and roots and a snake and some of the stiffest melodrama ever filmed. It was… gut wrenching. It just droned on and on, and it wasn’t even bad enough to be made fun of. It just sucked.
More hanging out and watching costumes intermixed with stepping into various rooms to find out that I don’t like hentai, or filking, or watching TV shows in a room full of smelly people, or the drum circle, or DJs spinning techno, or Cruxshadows. Bed is nice. Its 4 AM and sleep is good.
Tomorrow, panels.