I
awakened Sunday morning to Rescue John and Mrs. Troublemaker vacating
the room. We had no child/pet/house sitter for Sunday night, so the
missus had to get back home to take care of business. After they left
I went back to sleep. There wasn’t crap going on Sunday morning.
Well,
that’s not really true at all. There were actually a few panels I
wouldn’t have minded seeing, but again – comfy Hilton bed. Not
only that, but comfy Hilton bed that you can actually lay in and
watch Dragon*Con TV. Which shows
panels.
At
some point I posted this on Twitter:
@Dragon*Con_TV
– I love you so much. But your audio is terrible.
Which
is true. Dragon*Con TV is a big part of what makes Con so great and
quite frankly is another reason you want a room. As far as I’m
concerned if you don’t get to see DC*TV you are not experiencing
Dragon*Con to its fullest. From the sketches to the panels you can’t
make to the weird, halfway depressing short films they show on Sunday
night; it’s an integral part of Con.
But
man was the audio absolute fucking shit this year. And they knew. I
got this response (to the tweet I didn’t actually remember
posting):
@PhantomTrblmkr
I know. It’s our gremlin this year.
For
the most part the shorts were fine, but the bumpers and panels had
drastically differing audio, from utterly inaudible to
ear-blisteringly loud. For the most part I could set the TV’s
volume at 15 and be good. There were a few panels that had no audio
and a few others that could be heard, but only if you cranked the
volume over 50 and even then there was terrible static in the
background. And naturally, if you fell asleep with one of those
panels on you were absolutely going to shit the bed when normal
volume returned with the next segment.
So
the audio was bad. But there was still plenty to love about DC*TV
this year. Most of the classic shorts and videos we all know and love
returned, including pretty much everything on my Best of DC*TV
list. But we also got some great new stuff.
I
am not particularly a fan of Lady Gaga and I think there’s only so
much fandom a 36 year old male should proclaim for Harry Potter. But
I admire what Lady Gaga does and I do love Harry Potter (Sorcerer’s
Stone
is one of the most perfect books ever published). One of the new
videos this year combined these things with jailbait dancing around
in near-scandalous outfits and it was pretty awesome:
Something
about the song itself is a bit soft to me. I’m not sure if it’s
the vocals or what. It’s totally fine and not bad by any means, but
it doesn’t quite jibe with the production on the video which is,
quite frankly, fucking astonishing. I am amazed at how good this
video looks – not only the choreography and actual visual textures
but the effects and scale. This thing could hang with any music video
you might see on television or whatever. Outstanding.
Then
there’s this:
I
first saw this at about 2 AM Friday morning, I think. I had no idea
what I was looking at. I did not want to like it - it was just too
cutesy - but I did. And then all of a sudden that deranged sock
puppet starts eating all of the cookie people. At that point I felt
comfortable fully embracing this weird video. Quite frankly anything with a sock playing an accordion and some sort of beaver or something with a toupee playing xylophone is alright by me.
Of
course, it turns out that puppet is one Lolly Lardpop – the
companion of Leslie Carrara-Rudolph. I didn’t actually find that out until
Sunday night (we’ll get to that), but I wish I had sooner. I would
have hit more puppetry panels.
Oh,
and I think I’ve watched this video about two thousand times now.
The song is definitely an earworm, but one I don’t mind.
Also
new for this year was a short that I got a sneak peek at as a result
of my 13 Questions with Patrick Freeman.
I dug the rough cut he let me peek at back then and the full version
is hilarious:
That’s
just good stuff. I can’t imagine Christian Bale’s absurd Batman
voice ever not being funny. It’s a meme for the ages.
So
all in all Dragon*Con TV was once again an invaluable resource, I
just hope they can get the audio under control for 2013.
That
whole segment started because I watched a panel from bed Sunday
morning and now I can’t remember what it was. I saw a little bit of
a BSG panel at some point and had to turn it off (spoilers – we’re
not done yet). I saw a Eureka panel in its entirety and thoroughly
enjoyed it. I caught a bit of one of Richard Dean Anderson’s panels
and really want to see more. He was either a complete dick or
absolutely hilarious or both. Somebody asked him something about one
of MacGyver’s ridiculous contraptions – making a radio out of
tweezers and a matchbook or something - and he rather scathingly
responded, pointing out the absurdity of the question. I’m pretty
sure he was being funny, but it was so dry it could have gone either
way.
Which
brings me to a point about panels – I do not like Q&A sessions.
The general public is not intellectually equipped to provide
questions or entertainment. That’s why they are not guests at
conventions. I hate having to spend an hour cringing at the thought
of the next mouth breather stepping up to the mic and asking some
utterly moronic question. And the guests are typically so darn nice.
Rather than saying, “What kind of dipshit fucking question is
that?” when somebody asks what color socks their character wears,
they have the grace and courtesy to go into detail about said socks
and possibly even throw in some sort of sock-related anecdote from
the set so that the rest of us in the audience don’t hang ourselves
with our shoelaces out of sheer boredom.
Some
audience member at the Eureka panel asked if the actors would want to
go into space like the characters on the show did. Colin Ferguson –
who I learned this year is a human Muppet; just watch his physicality
during a panel if you can catch one – said he would love to.
Felicia Day… well, she did something that probably haunted her for
the next two days. She said she would totally go to outer space
because she wanted to have sex with a Klingon. Really. Do you have
any idea how many Klingons there are at Dragon*Con? I would imagine
the rest of her weekend was filled with huge, leather-clad guys in
facial prosthetics barking unintelligible things at her in a
seductive manner. Brave – or foolish – lady.
To
his credit, Aaron Ashmore said he’d like to dress up as a Klingon.
Speaking
of panels, I received a text from Monkey asking if I was going to the
Venture Bros. panel at 2:30. I figured after I had talked to Doc
Hammer the previous day
I kind of had to (because he’d totally be looking for me, right?).
And then it occurred to me that this was an anniversary of sorts. You
see, the first time I hung out with Monkey was four years ago at the
Venture Bros. panel. In what I see as an absolutely inexplicable
situation, we are the only ones of our friends that watch Venture
Bros. I
absolutely cannot grasp that. Well, Mrs. Troublemaker loves the show,
but she’s never been down there for one of the panels.
So
anyway, that year after I ran into Evil and Darth Pete and the rest,
me and Monkey headed off for the panel and bonded after a discussion
of toys and the fact that we had both recently become fathers. So I
definitely wanted to celebrate our Monkeyversary.
I
showered, got dressed, and headed to the Marriot.
The
Marriot has a little convenience store on the Lobby level (though I
think it’s called something else) that has sodas and sandwiches and
various snacks. They also have Marriot hotel memorabilia, but
seriously? Who buys that stuff? I ended up buying sandwiches there
twice during Dragon*Con and I have to say – if you’re going to
spend nine bucks on a turkey sandwich, this is the place to do it.
You can get in and out quickly and the sandwiches are good. Maybe
even better than the Sheraton’s.
I
actually managed to find a bench to sit on and after a minute this
guy with a fancy DSLR camera came and asked if he could sit with me.
No problem.
What’s
the deal with everybody having DSLR cameras? Those things are fucking
expensive, man. I mean, to me. Four hundred bucks is a lot to spend
on a camera. Granted, if I added up the cost of the cameras that Mrs.
Troublemaker has dropped and broken we could have one, but then we
would have one really nice, broken camera rather than two cheap,
broken cameras. Another problem with the whole expensive camera thing
is the only times I would need an expensive camera would be when it
was the worst idea to be lugging around an expensive camera – cons
and wrestling events. On top of that there’s the fact that I don’t
even know how to use all the functions on our point-and-shoot
cameras. I have no idea what an “ISO” is. Or how to set the
camera for indoor, poorly-lit conditions (as you know if you have
ever looked at my wrestling pictures).
Honestly,
I just wish somebody would show me how to use a camera. The User’s
Manuals are no good whatsoever.
Anyway,
I was sitting with DSLR guy, who showed me a bunch of amazing
pictures – which is no big deal when you have a camera that
programs itself and takes 37,000 pictures a second – and told me he
was a photographer. Pretty much everybody I spoke to with one of
those fancy pants cameras told me they were a photographer. But he
was nice and did have some neat pictures. He also held my seat for me
while I ran off to get a picture of a guy dressed as Axe Cop:
After
that I got to explain – or attempt to explain – the concept of
Axe Cop
to the photographer. That was an interesting task. But I think I did
a good enough job that he might have gone and checked it out. I hope
so, anyway.
Okay,
I kind of have to mention something, but I kind of have to do it in a
delicate way because I don’t want to upset anybody but this is
really, really
funny.
Another
one of the photographers I met was somebody I already knew. I had the
mask on so he didn’t recognize me, but I knew who he was in about a
second. He was hanging out with some friends and as soon as he spoke
I thought to myself, “Oh, no! Is it him?” and I discretely looked
to see if The Worst Tattoo Ever was there. It was. This guy used to
come into a store I worked in and I don’t like to talk badly about
other people’s tattoos because everybody with a tattoo has one that
is embarrassing. If you have a bunch, there is definitely one that
was a mistake. If you only have one, then that one is
the mistake. But this one is The Worst Tattoo Ever and I can’t even
tell you what it is because this guy is really nice and our friends
are really nice. But it was just funny to run into this guy out of
nowhere and immediately remember The Worst Tattoo Ever as his
defining characteristic after not even thinking about him for almost
a decade and a half.
In
the interest of fairness I have two tattoos that are varying degrees
of embarrassing. One is on my chest and is just a piece of shit. It
was designed by me and applied originally by a guy who had been
tattooing humans for approximately three minutes. Mr. Richard Davis
did his very best to fix it, but it remains one fairly unpolished
turd. The other is a Mighty Mighty Bosstones tattoo. I actually still
like the Bosstones, but this thing was the first tattoo I got back
when I turned eighteen and probably not anything I would get now. Or
even a couple of years later. And it takes up a lot of valuable real
estate thanks to the plaid flames I had installed behind it.
Okay,
so back to Sunday. By the time I finished my sandwich Monkey was
already in line for the panel. I found him outside of the Marriot.
And then a completely insane person walked up:
He
said he was doing a documentary about Dragon*Con and how much it had
changed over the years and how he was there the first year when it
was a real comic convention and there were only sixteen people there
and blah, blah, blah. I couldn’t help but notice he only seemed to
be “interviewing” hot young ladies in costumes.
Another
dude was also recording some video. He was making a sort of thank-you
video to send directly to Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer. It was
going to feature all of the people waiting in line for the panel
saying, “Thank you”. Of course, the jackass didn’t mention that
until he passed me and Monkey, so if the Venture guys ever do see
said video I will not be saying, “Thank you”, I will simply be
glaring into the camera because I was not notified of what was going
on. I just saw some random guy recording video without telling me
what he was doing. So there will be five hundred or whatever people
smiling into the camera and saying, “Thanks,” or whatever and
right in the middle of them will be me just looking pissed. Like the
girl that hated The Miz. Thanks, dickweed.
Eventually
the panel opened up and we got in. Our seats weren’t bad, but I
still managed to get some pretty shitty pictures. As you will see.
This
year’s theme was Let’s
All Smoking!
And it was pretty darn funny. The panel featured James Urbaniak,
Jackson Publick, and Doc Hammer all drinking Fresca and smoking those
electronic vapor cigarettes that put out what was, quite frankly, an
astonishing amount of smoke. The format was initially that of a
seventies talk show with Publick and Hammer playing the parts of the
hosts who were clueless about what their guest – Urbaniak – was
there to promote. The confusion about what exactly Venture
Bros.
is was hilarious. All three of these guys were extremely
entertaining.
They
followed the talk show segment with a Q&A featuring Publick and
Hammer taking turns running through the audience to theme music, as
they did two years ago. I wanted to ask my own inane question –
“Batman:
The Animated Series
or Batman:
Brave and the Bold?”
but they never picked me. I think the mask put them off. It didn’t
matter because the rest of the audience was more than capable of
coming up with their own inane questions, most of which involved
asking about future plot points of Venture
Bros.
this infuriated Doc Hammer to no end and was easily the most amusing
part of the panel. That guy came up with ten different ways of
saying, “We are not fucking spoiling anything, you dumb asshole!”
It was hilarious. He explained at one point that the whole point of
watching the show was to find those things out and if they just told
everybody everything that was going to happen why
would anybody watch the show?
He asked one moron if they read books. When they said they did, he
asked if they got a third of the way through and then flipped to the
last page. By the time the fifth question was asked about future
events on the show I was feeling Hammer’s frustration. Seriously –
how could these people not pick up on what was going on? But it was
still hilarious.
All
in all a great panel. I’d give it a 5 out of 5 if the Q&A Qs
hadn’t been so dumb for the most part. I hate Q&As.
I
wanted to drop by Calabrese’s booth after that to buy some stuff
and talk to them about possibly doing some sort of post for my 31
Days of Halloween. I had been too drunk to communicate the previous
night and also they had been kind of busy with all of the people
after the show. Jimmy and Bobby were both there and not only did I
arrange for some Halloween stuff (I think), they also offered to
recommend some other appropriately spooky bands for me to cover.
Nice. I bought a couple of shirts and headed over to Artists’ Alley
to see how Third Half Studios was doing. They were busy:
So
I wandered around for a while.
Later
on I met up with the Monkeys, K-Dawg and Soozi, and Lori Muffinface
for dinner at Hsu’s Chinese Cuisine. I was prepared for another
diabolical dining disaster, but that place was pretty great. When I
got there the bartender told me to just walk in and look for my
people. I did, but didn’t see anybody. I just stood there like a
doorknob in the middle of the dining room for a second, then heard
sort of a peep from behind me. Tiny little Lady Monkey was sitting at
the far end of this huge table, concealed behind an equally huge
piece of glass something-or-other. She had a silly fruity drink and I
decided I wanted one, too. It was the last day, after all. I told the
waiter to bring me the silliest fruity drink they had – one with
umbrellas and slices of kiwi or whatever stuck in the top.
This
is something I do from time to time. Nothing wrong with a girl drink
drunk to kick off an evening. Or a day. But either the waiter or the
bartender didn’t get what I was saying because they brought me
this:
Now,
it wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t fun, either. Nothing with little
pieces of green plant floating in it is fun. This thing looks like a
damn vegetable drink and that is definitely not fun. But I did finish
it.
Side
Note: a bit of research has informed that this was a Mojito. I won’t
order one again. Lots of Mai Tais in my future, though.
Lori
Muffinface asked if I wanted to split some food and I really should
have because the portions were absurd. Of course, my dumb ass asked
the waiter about the portions and believed him when he told me they
were good for one person. Three could have eaten off of my plate. I
actually didn’t finish it. I did, however, finish the Mai Tai I
ordered after the slight disappointment of the previous drink. I’m
pretty sure everybody ended up with Mai Tais. It was a good dinner
and I definitely give Hsu’s Chinese Cuisine a thumbs up. Just don’t
expect the waiter to fulfill your silly drink expectations on his
own.
Next
we went to a panel – Puppetry in the Buffyverse.
My
first thought upon seeing that was to wonder if they were just going
to do a whole panel based off of “Smile Time” and the one with
the ventriloquist dummy. But then I thought about it and realized
there was actually a huge amount of puppetry on Buffy.
Think about all of the practical creatures in the first several
seasons of that show. Those are all some form of puppet. So I was
pretty stoked about the panel.
It
was hosted by Hannah Miller and Leslie Carara-Rudolph according to
the Dragon*Con app, but there was another girl there as well (update: April Tennyson). The
presentation was very professional, as the presenters had actually
gone to the effort of putting together visual presentations to
accompany things. Rather than just explaining the various monsters,
scenes, and episodes or relying on the audiences knowledge of said
things; we actually had video and images from the show to reference.
It was very impressive.
(I don't have a single good picture of this panel)
Ms.
Carara-Rudolph also had her trusty companion, Lolly Lardpop, to help
with the proceedings. It was a very entertaining and fascinating
panel and it made me wish I had gotten to more puppetry panels during
the weekend. I will correct that error next year. The only issue was
that when they opened things up for questions the audience – as
usual – did their best to ruin things. Not one question (other than
mine) was actually about Buffy-related things. The hosts did their
best to keep things on track and answer the questions at the same
time.
Oh
– my question was about what exactly was it that led to “Smile
Time”. I wanted to know if it was the puppeteers’ influence on
the show. One of the hosts said that Joss Whedon is famously a huge
fan of the Muppets (I did not know this) and just really wanted to do
a puppet episode.
They
wrapped things up with a little trivia and some prizes, which was
another step above and beyond, in my opinion. This was a great panel
and one that I could really see the amount of effort that had been
put into it.
Afterwards
I had to dash upstairs to the Marriot Atrium because it was time for
yet another ESO Network gathering – a podcast LIVE at Dragon*Con!
I
was stoked about this one because it was going to be an opportunity
to sit live with almost all of the ESO Network and also because I was
pretty drunk. But it was exciting to be recording in that situation.
I would almost always prefer to be live – whether with an audience
or with co-hosts (or both) – because I like to be able to gauge
reactions to my performance. There’s just something about having
flesh-and-blood humans around that makes performing so much more
exciting for me.
The
Atrium area turned out to be far too loud for recording, so we headed
downstairs and hijacked a vacant room. It was dank and musty and
absolutely perfect. I had met most of the folks there, but there were
a couple of new faces, as well. In attendance were Dr. Scott Vigue
and his wife Debbie, Director Faber with Judy and Son William, Mike
Gordon, Bobby Nash, Darren Nowell, Mary Lou Who, Award-Winning Mark
Maddox, Jason and Rita De La Torre, Peter Cutler, and two other folks
whose names I don’t remember at the moment but who I fully intend
on adding to the list before I post.
Side
Note: I am working a lot this week and am very tired. It is entirely
possible that I will not only forget to add those two names but will
also forget to correct the inevitably misspelled or even entirely
incorrect names above. I love you all, ESO Network, but I will not
remember any of your names in such a fashion for… a while.
(Photo by Judy Faber)
It
was a blast. Everybody in the room had a very good chemistry and we
managed to produce an entertaining podcast that didn’t sound like a
jumbled mess of dorks falling all over each other. Go listen here.
I
had to cut out a little early because I had a date with a puppet.
But
first I had to figure out my situation. See, the Puppet Slam is
extremely popular. I recommended getting in line at 10 PM for the
midnight show. Unfortunately, due to the podcast, I could not follow
my own advice. I had asked the Hooligans to try and save me a seat,
but if I didn’t make it to the line fast enough it wouldn’t
matter anyway because they would stop letting people in.
But
I got lucky. Super lucky. The Monkeys decided three days of
Dragon*Con were enough for them and went home. Monkey had VIP passes
for the Puppet Slam and told me I could have them, which was about
the most awesome thing that happened all weekend. Mikall was bringing
them to me, making him also very awesome. I met him in the Marriot at
our normal spot and sped off to catch some puppets.But not before pausing for a picture with a couple of the boys from PCW - Chip Motherfucking Day and Sylar Cross!:
I
wish I had caught the name of the D*C volunteer that was working the
Puppet Slam line, because he was incredibly nice and helpful when I
asked him where I needed to take my VIP passes. Most importantly, he
was correct. I got to the door, showed my passes, and went in.
Come
back tomorrow for my (possibly) final entry about Dragon*Con 2012:
2012
Late Night Puppet Slam
-Phantom
Happy Monkeyversary! I guess next year's gift is wood?
ReplyDeleteYou bet it is.
DeleteWhat character is that redhead you're standing with? She looks familiar but I don't know her name or anything.
ReplyDeleteOh, and...damn.
Dawn - a favorite costume of ladies with the right proportions and no aversion to near-nudity. And ladies with the wrong proportions sometimes. Unfortunately.
DeleteBut yeah - damn.