Dragoncon is the geek Mardi Gras. No kidding. These people go nuts. Virgins getting out of their parent's basement for the first time get laid, cosplayers get to feel like rockstars for a day or two, drunk people are rampant, and nudity is the norm.
I'll go ahead and tell you now that you won't get an accurate idea of Dragoncon from reading my experiences, because it's like a choose-your-own-adventure book... you could have your pick of a number of experiences depending on what you choose to participate in, how late you can stay up, how well you learn to navigate the crowded hotels, and how diligent you are about running from one place to another. There's no way to see and do everything there. There's not even a way to see and do most things there. It's a 24 hour party 4 days out of the year, and it's something every person who fancies themselves geeky should experience at least once.
That being said, I'll share what little I can remember from my whirlwind experience...
Friday night: We head down there midday on Friday and make it by 4pm Atlanta time. We walk in and I can already tell it's a madhouse. There are people walking the streets in costume, inside the hotels, hordes (no, not that kind... yet) of people are waiting to pick up badges, get their rooms, go into panels, or just standing around. I go with Keely to get her room and we make it up there in an elevator full of Jokers and Jedis fairly quickly, considering. We relax momentarily while they get situated and call Andrea, my soon to be roommate for the weekend, and snap a few pictures of us fresh faced and fancy...
We head down to meet Andrea and pick up their badges. People are everywhere. I mean everywhere. I immediately am overwhelmed by the costumes! Everything you could possibly imagine, from superheroes, to cartoon characters, real or imaginary, big and small it's all there. I just *had* to grab a pic with the first man in spandex that walked by me...
They finally got all setup and I got into the vendor halls. Miles of geek paraphinallia included comic books, t-shirts, dice, roleplaying books, costumes, art, jewelry, real swords, and even boffer swords!
Of course, there were plenty more sights to behold everywhere you looked. Here are some more costumes I caught on that first day:
I don't even know what she was, but it was freaky...
Lots of people just wore the stuff you can't get away with wearing at the office (me included, after dark of course...)
A Shaun of the Dead with live action cricket bat!
You can't have a geek convention without Star Wars characters running around everywhere, right?
So we continued to get drunk and run around looking at all the crazies... I had bought a horrible drink at the bar at one point and decided to go back to the hotel room to get more of *our* booze...We were so tipsy that I decided I needed to get something to eat to make sure I didn't start acting too drunk (HA!) and so I grabbed a pack of Ritz crackers and took them back to the bar with me. On the way back to the bar, I think I might have offered EVERYONE I saw a cracker. Apparently, Ritz are good icebreakers because it was working. People were taking them and talking to me. In hindsight, it was ridiculous. Utterly and completely ridiculous... but you all are well aware of my kind and generous nature when I start drinking, so I shared what I had in my hands... and it only worked because these people were more drunk than I was.
Eventually we started going down, one by one. Gary was the first to go at 10:30. I heard later that he drank a half bottle of Captain Morgan's before he even got to the bar, so it's understandable. He got a little Captain out in the guy's bathroom before Keely walked him back to the room and Andrea and I waited next to a great Gene Simmions for her to get back.
From there, we went to go see Voltaire. We were a little late, which didn't matter in the least because the crowd full of goth kids were to busy feeling sorry for themselves or SOMETHING and noone was partying up near the front of the stage. We got pretty close and listened to the concert for a while. We danced and sang what we knew and there was a bottle of Jim Beam being spilled all around us. I was a little too energetic in that corset and I was the next to go. Trying to breathe and only getting whiskey fumes was actually getting to me, so I went on back to the room and crashed about 2:30. And when I say crashed I mean it... all my things including an open computer slept on the bed with me. I was exhausted and coming off a great tipsy spell. Andrea didn't even wake me up when she got back in at like 4Am! I was OUT.
I woke up Saturday morning to the sound of children (CHILDREN!) running and screaming in the hallway... oh god someone tell me it's NOT 8AM...
So Saturday and Sunday's story will have to be a different post, I'm out of time for now... check back later for more stories from Geek Paradise!
