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The Bits I Remember
by
Gabriel Strange
First off I would like to thank all the guests who attended our panels
even if I have forgotten your names. I would also like to thank all
those people who turned up for them.
Day 1 – Arrivals and baby elephants.
We had a relatively uneventful flight to Philadelphia. We headed for the bar,
in good ol' British tradition. The fact that the drinks did not have any
prices listed should have given us enough of a warning. Anyway, oblivious to
the foreboding future, we drank away. When we asked for the cheque we nearly
died of fright. The drinks were $8 (£4) a pint. After this shock we got
on what I can only call a flying number 57 bus.
Arriving in Atlanta we headed to the baggage terminal on foot. This we realised
was a bad move, and so we got on the train. My advice to anyone flying to Atlanta
is to get on the shuttle train as soon as you can. Wendy and Paul met us at the
baggage terminal and shipped us off to the hotel.
After dumping the bags Storm and Jim hit the sack, and Lydia and I headed to
a 24 hour diner near Wendy's. There we ordered food. We aimed to get something
small to eat. We ended up getting a small mountain of food, which is enough to
kill a baby elephant. (Though no bunnies were killed.) After this we headed back
to the hotel and collapsed in bed with a numb feeling of inevitability.
Day 2 – Moving mountains and hitting hay.
We woke up fairly early (for us) to try and get things organised.
We
checked around finding places and people. Anne
Sudworth was put in on the 45th floor
of the Marriott hotel; the lifts go off like rockets that make your ears go
pop. Once up there, the view over the edge to the centre of the hotel is not
for anyone with vertigo. After meeting Anne, we wandered down to the art show
and tried to find out where her space was situated. There I met a chap called
Kim (hi Kim, I think that was his name.) I then headed downstairs to get the
dealers stall info. I found out I need to fill in a form. Once I had the right
form I headed back to the Hyatt, to meet the rest of the crew.
After we had lunch at the diner we visited the night before, we went to find
out where to get our badges from. From this point things started to get hectic.
It seems there was some confusion as to who is staff and who had a badge. It
seems one of the people who I thought was staff wasn't. (Sorry, Lady, my mistake.)
Anyway,
we finally got everything sorted. Back in the room we rang
around to find out who is where and what is happening. We then
headed back over the road to start getting the stall set up,
I handed in the form and got the dealers badge and ribbon.
So I took a look around the stalls and booths on the upper
floor to get my bearing. It was now the flyering campaign started
to kick in. We put a few flyers around table and in key places
and headed back to start moving our mountains of books to the
stall.
After the books were moved and ready we collected up our staff and started
to hand out badges. Olga was strangely missing at this point, so I left a
message for her and started to run around making sure everything was in order
and people knew we had arrived. Once we found Merc and Lady, we headed to
the bar for a drink (what do you expect were British). Bruce and I tried
to track down Merc, Debs and Lady to say hi. Once we found them, we dragged
them back to our room and make arrangements for the night.
After
sometime nattering and searching for Olga we headed to Wendy's
for the party she had planned. We were still fairly lagged
from the flight, so we did not eat or drink much. But we did
meet Neil Robinson his wife and yard apes. We graciously retired
early, and Storm and Jim headed to the room. Bruce and I headed
over to the Marriott to try and find people. On the way in
we met up with Jon, and tucked him under our wings. Once in
there we rang up and found Olga had arrived, so we popped up
to say hi, and give her a staff badge. Once there I realised
I had left the folder with her badge in at Wendy's and
felt a little sheepish. Anyway Olga got a call from Kirsten
and we headed down stairs to meet her. I had met her once before in New
York. Olga and Kirsten headed off to bed… (I'll leave
the rest of the sentence off to for people to imagine things.)
After this we headed back to the room to meet people and have a few drinks,
before Storm and Jim hit the hay. I forgot to mention we met Andy on the
way to the room. It was at this point Andy discovered we had a balcony
and Storm found out how well sound travels. We locked Andy on the balcony
as a "time out." So he started shouting "Hello Atlanta!"
at people going past. A rather tired looking Storm came in to find out
what was going on and we all pointed to Andy.
Day 3 – And Hell was let loose.
After waking up I began to hunt for Olga and the rest of our staff. This
was not an easy task as it seemed Olga had vanished off the face of the
planet.
The
first part of the Friday was spent trying to track down where
everything is located and how to get from A to B quickly. One of the
things that was a priority was to check out our track room
and see if every thing was in order. After this I endeavoured
to find the Con suite in order to grab a few snacks and a much
needed drink. I found the Con suite staff to be a good bunch
of folk who had a very wry sense of humour. You could tell
this by one of the drinks they had on offer, was in fact a
vat of Klingon Bug Juice. It had a rather odd and sweet taste
to it; however, it had qualities that were needed at such a
con. I termed it wake up juice. After I had a drink and a few
sandwiches I headed down to the dealers hall to try and get
the staff and stall in order and open on time so we could sell
the pretty things.
After a while of sat trying to sell books our staff started to filter
down to the stall, now I had the chance to do the vital task of getting
things up and running. I headed over to the Fairlie room and found a
small gathering had begun. After about half an hour Most of our guests
that had arrived for the track had shown up and we had a fair audience
for our opening ceremony.
Welcome to the Journey - The Opening Ceremony
This was quite a sedate affair where we introduced most of our guests
and staff to any poor bugger who was in the room and not asleep. This
went well and as planned we kept it very short so people could get on
and do the stuff they needed before the next panel.
Overflow
was pretty common |
Songs of the Night – Dark Music of the Goth
Before this panel started I had to nip off and close down the stall.
However, I made it back quickly to find that this panel
set the standard for the track. Though I was not part of it I had
to hang around the area to keep an eye on things. With Rogue (Cruxshadows),
William Faith (Faith and he Muse), Bruce Wells and Voltaire on the
panel. This packed the room out and we were about 30 people over
capacity. Every time I walked past the room I stuck my head in to
find I could hardly see the front, and no one could get in through
the door. The
feedback I got from all involved was extremely positive, every panellist
liked it and Voltaire got his chance to plug his new book at the
end.
Ways of the Wyrd – Magic, Myths and the Unseen
This was one of the panels I took part in. I also persuaded Rogue
to hang back and help out. I would hazard a guess that we were over
capacity again by about 20 people. For our second main panel this
was damn good, and proved to be a benchmark for the whole track.
The main topic of conversation was magic and the impact of religion
on magical practices, and related beliefs. At this point Rogue, who
was a little hesitant, got a chance to explain a few things about
the backstory of his band. The panel went very well and we had to
cut a few things short for time's sake. However, we had a good selection
of questions from the audience.
Breaking Taboos – Androgynes, Gender and Sexuality in Fantasy
This was another benchmark panel; again we broke the capacity of
the room by about 30 people. Many of us said if we keep going like
this we will need a bigger room, so I visited tech services to get
them it put another few rows of chairs in the room. I think this
went slightly over time, as it was the last track of the day their
was no problems with this.
This is where I start to lose track of time and the chronology of the
weekend. I know at some point we visited the Days Inn diner, where
we met Rupert and his other half whose name I cannot remember. I
think this event happened before the track started but I cannot be
sure. It may have even happened the next day…
As the day drew to a close we visited a few people around the con and
had a few drinks. I know we bought the drinks the day before from the
store across the street. Then it was off to find adventure around the
hotels and find things. This might have been were we met the friendly
neighbourhood nutter Andy. (As I said my chronology is a little fuzzy.)
I think we had a fairly early night, and the last of the weekend.
Day 4 – Goth, Goth, Goth, God and a bit of a snafu
The next day I had to be up at 9 a.m. in order to get the stall open
and ready. I spent most of my time on the stall or around that area
so I could get the staff organised and find out what Anne was up
to and make sure she could get to the panels. While on the stall
I met the other stallholder on our left, Linda Tran, who is an Asian
glamour model, and helped get a nice flow of punters past our stall.
I think she made more money that day than anyone else. I guess this
shows that sex sells.
I was not able to attend the first two panels of our track but I received
reports that for early panels we had at least 50-75% room capacity.
I was told this is very good for morning panels.
Anyway I grabbed a bite to eat in the con suite and headed down to the
track room to take part in my first panel of the Saturday.
Bringing Stories to Life – The World of Illustration and Comic Books
I was unsure as to how this panel would turn out, as it seemed
this was a bit of an untested idea in a panel situation. Anyway,
with the help of Anne, Bruce, Phil Brucato, some guy whose name
escapes me, and Kevin DiVico, who moderated the panel. We managed
to keep the 75% capacity audience entertained an informed about
how art can help up hold a story and how a single picture can tell
a thousand words. It was in this panel where we first mentioned
'The Face of Ultimate Evil.'
I then pottered off back to the stall to check on things and relive someone
so they could go and have some fun. After my shift I headed back to the
track room to check on things and see how the next panel was going.
Decades of the Dark – Goth from 1980-2004
This had to be our most successful panel and possible one of
the biggest success stories of the convention. I was unable to
get near the room, for most of the panel. However, I did get
to peak in and see that Storm, Rogue, Anne, Bruce and Voltaire
were chattering away to a room rammed full of people. Paul, Kevin
and I waited outside the room to make sure everything was OK.
We watched the audience swell out in to the corridor, nearly
blocking it off. We counted at least 30 people leave because
it was too cramped and another 30 enter to try and get look in.
I think if we had of had a 200 capacity room we would have filled
it and still had people standing at the back.
After the panel was over the room cleared ready for the next panel.
To my surprise Mitchell Graham turned up to this one. For those
of you who don't know, he has just secured a movie deal with
Steven Spielberg, and Dreamworks and he was the first person
to tell him to f*ck off, because he thought the call was a
crank one from one of his friends. We also nick named him Superman,
because he is a full time doctor, a trained lawyer, and a writer
— does this guy ever sleep?
Playing God – World Building for Genre Fiction
This was another one of those rammed panels people were standing
at the back; I would easily say capacity plus 30. Anyway Marshal,
Jacqueline, Myself, Phil and I think someone else, whose name
escapes me were at the table. Of course Kevin was back to keep
a leash on things. This panel went very well as each of us
fielded questions about the specific areas that each of us
covered. Mitchell told us the full story of him and Steven.
One of the things I remember about this panel was bringing
in a small bag of chocolate coins, to hand out. However, like
all things badly planned, this did not happen. We ended up
throwing them at the audience and at each other when we made
mistakes on the panel.
After this we all filtered out and more people arrived to see
Jacqueline talk about her books and field some questions from
her fans. As I was leaving I saw the room start to fill to
a point where no one else could get in; again an over capacity
crowd. I headed over to the stall to close up for the day,
and get ready for the night partying.
Theft of Flattery – The Truth about Fan Fiction
I missed most of this track because of delays and a few minor
issues to clear up about staffing. However, I did come in very
close to the end. Because this panel over ran slightly, and
we only had a few minutes to clear and sort the room for he
next panel. This was one of the panels I had to push to get
it wrapped up (sorry, Wendy and Merc). However, we all felt
it could have gone on for many more hours. So we planned to
make sure this panel was placed at the end of the day next
time, then it can over run if it wants.
The Beautiful and he Dangerous – Vampires in fiction
At the start we thought that this was going to be a cancellation.
However, Pat Elrod turned up a few minutes after things kicked
off. Again I missed most of it as I had to go and get a few
things organised. I came back at the end to catch a few of
Pat's stories. This was quite a good panel but I think it could
have done with more people to talk about things. However Pat
and Wendy managed to fill the room and keep the audience entertained.
Because of a bit of a snafu with timings and other things, we
thought the bands were going to be on this night, so we finished
the track a little early. We headed off to the room to have
drinks and natter. On the way I picked up Jacqueline Carey
and we headed off to the room to find people had already
arrived and a small party was going at full swing. I think
Jacqueline thought we were all a bit mad as many of the people
there were staff or people who had previously run conventions.
So most of the conversation drifted to many of the differences
between what we had done in the past and this year's Dragon*Con.
Many good points were brought up about how things should
be done next year to make operations and the track run better.
We also talked about how things would pan out for Lunacon
2005.
After wandering for a while I met up with Jon, and we found out
where S J Tucker was playing. For those of you who don't know,
she is a rather good solo female musician. (info at http://www.skinnywhitechick.com)
The
hotel room o'fun |
Bruce, Andy, Lydia and me headed off for more adventure. While
wandering between hotels, Lydia and Bruce talked about how
cool it would be if all the Spidermen weaved a web between
the hotels and held a panel up in the air. Also that it would
be a faster way to travel between the hotels. Upon arriving
at the Marriott we headed to the top floor to look at the view.
Whilst there we met up with Spiderman and Spiderwoman making
out on the top floor. I wonder if they will have spider babies.
We had what fun a group of misfits can have on the 48th floor of a hollow
hotel and headed back to wander around and see what's happening. As it
seemed very little was going on we all headed back to the room for some
drinks. Storm and Jim were still missing, so we sat and drank until the
early hours.
Day 5 – Jurassik is gone and The Face of Ultimate Evil is revealed.
Yet another early morning for me, 9 a.m. up at the butt crack
of dawn, to open the stall. The rest of Sunday is a little
fuzzy so I may have many of these things wrong or at least
in the wrong order. I must have been mad for getting up at
that time, but no one else would do it so I guess I had to.
After spending what seemed like several hours on the stall and
trying to keep awake. I remember blinking a few times and the
people in front of me had vanished and been replaced by a different
set. Anyway, staff filtered in and out. I got some food at
one point and came back to the stall to cover it again. Linda
the Asian lady on the stall next to us had been joined by her
friend Rowena Galam, and they were selling photos by the bucket
load. After too long on the stall I managed to get away and
at least catch one hour;s top up sleep to be ready for the
panel at 7 p.m.
I heard the previous panels also stuffed the room full of punters. So
this was a very good sign for us.
Dynamic Drama – The world of Role-Playing
This was one of the main panels for the Game launch. However,
due to stresses and organisational problems with Dragon*Con
over the past few months, no one managed to get their task
done. So no game to launch. Anyway we had a good healthy discussion
about what made role-playing good and the different approaches
both Phil and me took to designing our respective games. As
we had a gap in programming we offer some people extra time
to sit and talk with us about our respective products. I had
a small interview and talk with a chap from one of the local
university magazines. I hope his report is good, as what
we talked about seemed very positive.
(One other very important point was we inflicted the world
with The Face of Ultimate Evil. This scared all the audience
and Lydia tried to kill it on several occasions. At one
point Peter Jurassik (Londo from Babylon 5), walked past
the room and we dragged him in to meet The Face of Ultimate
Evil. He came to sit at the front then we introduced them,
Peter shrieked and ran out of the room never to be seen
again and he did not show on the Monday for the signings.
I will not describe The Face of Ultimate Evil. I will leave
that for the readers to find out next year at Dragon Con
2005.)
Dehara – Exploring Chaos Magic
This was another one of those panels that went down unbelievably
well. We did not quite reach capacity, but we had a
well educated and informative discussion about magic. We had
plenty of audience participation and everyone there had a good
sense of what we were talking about. After this panel Storm
invited everyone back to the room to continue the talk as the
next panel was starting. So we all headed back up the stairs
to our room for drinks and chats.
The chats and talks went on till the early hours of the morning.
We all had to cut things short as many of us had to be up
in a few hours. So we all hit the sack.
I know I lost a few hours of this day, but I have no idea where
the gaps are, as by now things had started blending together.
Day 6 – Dark Satanic Wet Dog
Yet another 9 a.m. start for me, again I only had a few hours
sleep, so I was doing that blinking thing again. It was lucky
I only had one panel to be on in the afternoon, and it was
something I know a fair bit about… Publishing.
After spending some time on the stall and wandering around in a daze
I headed off to the track room.
Immanion Press and the Dark Satanic Mills of Publishing
We did not expect many people to come to this panel as it was
towards the end of the last day. However, we did get a good
half a room of people. The discussion was very good and I think
everything we said helped the audience no end.
Group
pick after the
Immanion Press panel |
After this I tried to find out where we were supposed to hand
in the timesheets. I asked about 3 of the main staff and
it seemed none of them knew where I was supposed to go. So
I headed off to where registration was as this seemed to be
the central location for most things. After getting stuff sorted
I found all of our staff and sent them off to get their tickets
for the Dead Dog Party (for staff).
I headed down to meet people at the stall and get things packed
up. We foisted the remainder of our back catalogue books
on dealers and guests. Storm gave Craig Parker and co. some
books and I had a natter with Space Ghost and gave him a
copy of Digging up Donald. After that I rushed of to Pat
Elrod to give her some of Storms books as a kind of thank
you and we moved the rest to the room, for a few drinks
The Dead Dog Party should have been called the Wet Dog Party
as it stunk. Party was definitely a loose term for this,
as it seemed more like torture. We had a table to ourselves
and we were joined by Rogue and Jessica, and we discussed
our plans for world domination. The places were set for what
looked like 3 courses and coffee. What we got was cold tea
water and a starter. After this we got dessert. It seems
that we missed the middle course by falling through some
form of transfluxial time hole. Either that or there was
no main course. After this we all headed off to our room
for a few drinks.
At the room were we joined by various people who popped in to say bye.
At this point we were joined by Caleb and Daniel, who promised to come
for the whole con next time.
An hour of chat and discussion passed. We were talking about
our plans for next year if we get invited back. And there was
a tap on the door. It was Jon and S.J. So they came on and
we received a mini live concert from S.J. We traded books
and CDs and we continued to natter till the wee hours of the
morning.
Peter Jurrasik was still missing and no one had seen him all day.
Day 7 – The day we planned on going home, but had Chinese instead
After getting up and packing everything in to our cases, we dropped
them off in the lobby and headed over to meet Wendy at her
place. We had a cuppa at her place and headed back to the hotel
to wait for our ride. While there we talked with Rogue and
the band, and discussed their plans because of the weather
(hurricanes!), and said that we hoped everything with our flight
was OK, as we checked in the morning and everything was on
time.
At 2 p.m. we headed to the front of the hotel to wait for our
ride. There we called Ed Kramer and he invited us back to do
Dragon Con 2005 (YAY!). The ride was a little late but we thought
"No worries, we have still got plenty of time to get on the
flight."
Arriving at the airport we found out our flight to Philadelphia
was delayed; this was to be the start of our problems. We were
quickly rushed over to the Delta airlines check -in where a
plane was leaving in an hour. Here were allow to get through
baggage check in quickly and got our boarding passes sorted.
From here we joined the queue for the gates. This filtered
through quickly, which was a relief. When it was our turn
to go through the gates, we found out that our tickets had
'SSSS' on them, which meant we had to go through special
security.
This
was our next hurdle, as special security had a queue which
lasted an hour and half. About half way through we had missed
our flight, and it seems that every passenger in this queue
was move to Delta from US Airways. So much for us getting to
Philadelphia to get our connecting flight! As each and every
one of use was treated like a criminal because our flight had
been changed at the last minute, after a complete detector
search Storm, Jim and Lydia headed to the Delta office to get
things arrange for a new flight, Jon had been shuffled to the
terminal while I waited. After about 10 minutes of waiting,
I asked security if Jon was around the other corner waiting.
They said I can go and look, once round that corner I was not
allowed back to re join my group. So I to head to the terminal
to find Jon and hopefully meet the rest of the group
After about five minutes I found Jon and we waited at the terminal
for the others. While here we asked about our flight and were
issued new boarding passes. We waited a bit longer, and then
had a page put out for the rest of our group. 5 pages later
there was still no response. This could have been because the
internal tanoy was so quiet you could not hear it. After about
2 hours of searching and paging Jon and I were forced to pay
$20 to use a phone booth because the terminals phones won't
allow international calls. In this booth we had to call Storm's
home number in order to get her mobile number. Then we sat
trying to get through to her, while trying to get online to
contact someone. After a while we managed to get through to
Storm and found out we were unable to fly that day and we had
to work our way out of the airport to find the rest of our
group.
Once we were all teamed up we shared stories and found that our luggage
was in Philadelphia and we had to change our flights to the next day
on yet another airline. So we ask about our luggage and we were told
to collect it the next day a few hours before we fly.
We headed back to Wendy's to meet Paul and Bruce and to make
arrangements for the next night in Atlanta. Once everyone had
arrived at Wendy's we all headed off for an all-you-can-eat
Chinese buffet where we all stuffed ourselves stupidly. During
the ritual of the fortune cookie, Wendy offered up the information
that you can append the words "in bed" to the end of every
fortune and they still make sense. I offered up an alternative
of "on the toilet."
After food we headed back to Wendy's and sat and watched Labyrinth.
Most people there tried to sing along, but only one person
had any singing talent. After this and many comments from Storm
about how cheesy the script was, we all headed our separate
directions to grab some sleep. Lydia, Jon and I stayed at Wendy's,
Storm and Jim stayed at Caleb's. As we all started to settle
down to go to sleep, I started to struggle to turn of the lamp
in the bedroom, then Jon called me useless and had a go. We
failed, Lydia then came in and tried while muttering something
about men. And she failed. We had to call Wendy in to turn off
the lamp. About 2 minutes after falling asleep I had a bout
of the hysterics and could not stop laughing over the lamp
situation, I think everyone heard that. Eventually I calmed
down and we went to sleep.
Day 8 – Are we nearly there yet… NO!
After getting up, Storm and Jim arrived for breakfast and we
headed for the airport. Once there we hunted for our luggage,
but it had vanished. It seems it had already been directed
to Newark and it would be waiting for us there. So we got our
boarding passed and jumped on an early flight. Again we had
to go through 'SSSS' special security. This time no queue and
we got through quickly. We managed to get on the plane with
little of no trouble and we were off on the next step of our
flight to Newark.
Upon arriving in Newark, we tried to hunt for our luggage again, and
we found that Storm's, Jim's, Lydia's and mine had already been sent
through to be put on the plane. However no one could track down Jon's.
After another 40 minutes of being bounced around luggage claims we found
out that Jon had to hope it was on the plane to Manchester or he will
have to put a luggage claim in with continental. It was it this point
we noticed an error on one of Lydia's tickets and that Jon had been given
two seats.
Back at the continental check in we got a new boarding pass for Lydia;
however we were told that she could not have the other seat Jon had because
it was already booked to Jon. Go Figure. Anyway we were told we could
arrange the change over in the departure lounge.
So heading through security again we headed for our terminal in the hope
that all is well…
We ate chatted charged the laptop and tried to get the seat changed.
Now this is where it becomes ludicrous. Apparently the new seat
for Lydia was actually for Jon, and the seat Jon had was for
Lydia. The seat which Lydia was previously on was no longer
available, and Continental could not swap the seat. This is
the second time this has happened upon leaving the US this
year. Apparently the seating software cannot swap the seats
of two passengers unless there is a spare seat. For example seat
22E and 47F, just needed the names swapping around, but the
system is not capable of doing it. Go figure.
Anyway we eventually got on the plane and found that Mr Smith was a Mrs
Smith, and she was happy to let us swap seats. Now we thought we were
set and nothing more can go wrong…
Well we taxied out to the runway, and then turned around and
went back to the gate because of a medical emergency. Here
they had to unload that passenger's luggage before we could
fly. Again we taxied out to the runway, about 2 hours late
and we were off. I thought that now we are on the way nothing
can go wrong. Oh, how wrong could I be… it turns out
that the only thing I want to watch on the entertainment system
is not working at my seat. Everyone else has it but me. Grrrrrr.
If only my laptop had a full charge and a DVD player.
We finally arrived home safely.
About the Author:
Gabriel Strange is
a staff member at Immanion Press and the force behind the Wraeththu
RPG. He can be reached at gabby@grebo-heights.wox.org. |
