77,000 human beings - the final official attendance
number for this year’s Dragon Con. That’s just crazypants. And yet, it didn’t
seem quite as crowded or hectic as it usually does. I discussed this with Mike
Gordon on the last Needless
Things Podcast, and I’ll be taking a look at it here, as well.
But I’m not here just to talk about numbers and
statistics. I never want to talk
about numbers and statistics. I want to talk about fun and hard work and living
the dream of entertaining people at the greatest science fiction, fantasy, and
pop culture convention known to man!
It’s time for my annual recap of what went down at Dragon
Con.
I got as early a start as I ever have Thursday morning
and managed to arrive at the Hilton around 10 AM. I love the Hilton. The staff
there has always been fantastic, the rooms are spacious and nice, and the hotel
itself is pleasant to be in. The elevator situation doesn’t seem quite as bad
as the Marriott or the Hyatt and the floor layout makes sense to me.
Convenience-wise it isn’t exactly in the middle of the convention, but it’s
easy enough to get to the other hotels or the Peachtree Mall food court.
If only they’d build a sky bridge from the Hilton to the
Courtland Parking Garage, all of my dreams could be reality.
I had no problems checking in and getting my suitcase to
the room. I had a ton of other stuff and had resigned myself to making several
trips to the car rather than loading up and struggling with all of my bags and
tubs of props and whatnot.
I suppose I should provide a little backstory here.
While filming promotional stuff for this year’s Dirty Dirty Con Con Game Game Show Show
I threw my back out. BAD. You see, years ago I fell off of the roof of our old
house. I didn’t break anything and wasn’t even seriously injured, but I did have
to use a cane to get around for a couple of weeks and was in considerable pain.
It also left me with a dodgy back that will sometimes seize up due to minor
movements in the wrong direction or even for seemingly no reason at all. It
doesn’t happen often and is much more likely when I’m at my maximum heft, which
I am currently not.
But after jumping around like a nincompoop I was left
with the worst back situation I have had since the roof fall. I literally could
not stand up straight and had a lot of trouble walking around. Being at work in
a chair for twelve hours was even more miserable than usual and wasn’t helping
me to recover. Normally I’m okay after two or three days, but after a week I
still wasn’t back to normal. I went to see the doctor the Monday before Con and
he prescribed a very mild muscle relaxer. I took it as directed for two days,
then doubled up on Thursday morning before heading down to Con with the
intention of that being my final dose.
I’m pleased to report that the Thursday morning dose was,
indeed my final. The worst I experienced all weekend was a little tightness,
and even that wasn’t as bad as I usually get during Con. I tend to wear unusual
shoes that aren’t the best, but this year I put insoles in everything.
Anyway, there’s the backstory.
BACKstory. HA!
Given all of that, I planned to take it easy loading all
of my various costumes and props and whatever into the room. Four trips if
necessary.
It seems that fortune was smiling upon me, though,
because on the way back down from my room the first time I ran into a hotel
employee hauling two of those big luggage cart things. I asked if I could use
one and she handed one over with a smile. It was truly a Dragon Con miracle.
In all the years that I have been staying at Dragon Con,
I have never managed to get one of
those carts. I practically danced down to my car and experienced pure joy with
each item that I loaded onto the cart. Once I was done, I had to share my good
fortune with the world:
Seriously, you guys – I know this might seem ridiculous, but I can’t even tell you how joyous I was over this. Knowing that I was going to be able to get all of that junk up to my room in one easy trip was the best possible start to what promised to be a great and memorable weekend.
Once everything was unloaded I had to endure probably the
most unpleasant event of the whole weekend – securing my room for 2017. The
Hilton has a voucher system that allows you to book a room for next year if you
are a guest for the current year. It’s great and saves a lot of hassle and
stress, but it also sucks because you have to take the voucher and go stand in
a line for anywhere from one to three hours. At the Hyatt, they simply ask if
you want to go ahead and book your room for the next year and do it with the
press of a button when you check in.
When I got back to the lobby the voucher line looked like
one of the three hour variety, so I passed it and headed to the Marriott to
pick up my badge. I doubted it would get too much worse and it was almost
lunchtime, so people might be otherwise occupied soon.
Badge pickup was, as always, easy. Kudos to Dragon Con
for making it as simple as possible for Guests and Pros. I heard the Attendee
badge situation was not so great this year. If you guys had some experience
with that, I’d love to hear about it.
Back at the Hilton the voucher line was considerably
shorter, so I got in and after about an hour I had my 2017 room booked. Nice.
The only event on my schedule was wrestling and I have to
say that I am now ONE HUNDRED PERCENT in
favor of DCW taking place on Thursday night. More on that in a minute.
Once I was all costumed up I headed over to the Hyatt.
There’s a good bit of pre-show prep for DCW, so I wanted to get there as soon
as I could. It’s nice to have plenty of time to talk to the folks that run the
show and as many of the boys as I can. After checking in there I met up with
Rad Ranger and we headed over to the Regency V ballroom to scope out the space
where we would be performing the game show. There were some Tech Ops guys in
there and they were awesome. We talked to them about what we needed and they
explained what kind of equipment they had and what the room would be set up for
on Saturday night. All weekend long those guys were helpful and informative. I
found finally getting to work directly with them to be a great experience.
 |
| Photo courtesy of our pal, Ryan Cadaver! |
Speaking of great experiences, wrestling was going to be different his year. For the first time ever DCW was going to be streaming live on DCTV, complete with commentary from yours truly. With 77,000 attendees, there was the opportunity for 77 times as many people as watch TNA every week to hear my voice.
A few weeks ago when I found out we’d be streaming I
started campaigning for a second announcer. I know most of the boys, but I
don’t know them all. And we get new
talent every year. Fortunately, Lord Michael Gentry was recruited. He has
worked in many promotions in every job imaginable and actually has a database
of wrestlers. It’s impressive.
At 7 PM, Lord Michael and I made our way to the announce
table to call the first-ever live broadcast of Dragon Con Wrestling. I wouldn’t
say I was nervous, but I was certainly excited and very aware of the situation.
So when the mics started dropping out I knew we had to just keep going. We
tried swapping them, sitting in different spots, changing channels and turning
them off and back on (of course). But we couldn’t get out more than a few
sentences without one of them dying.
Eventually someone from Tech Ops showed up and hooked us
up with some better microphones. These sounded better in the room and on the
broadcast and didn’t drop out. Once we got that sorted out I felt like me and
Lord Michael had a pretty solid chemistry, especially for our first night
working together. It’s hard to stay focused when your gear is failing, but
faulty tech has been a factor in almost every live performance I’ve ever been a
part of, so I’m used to it.
The show was very good. I think the pacing and action
were both a step above a standard DCW show. It felt like everything really
clicked this year. We hit ninety-five percent capacity in the ballroom and
retained the audience far better than I can remember from previous years.
I love DCW. I love working it, I love watching the show,
and I love the people involved. I miss doing the recaps the way that I used to
do them, but it’s virtually impossible now for a variety of reasons. One thing
is for sure, though – I’ll be sitting at that announce table every year for as
long as they’ll have me.
After wrestling it was party time. I didn’t have anything
scheduled until 4:30 on Friday. I didn’t want to get too wasted because a hangover eats up your morning, but it was nice
to know that I didn’t have any responsibilities for a while.
Before I could party I had to head back to my room to get
my beer bag. I have an insulated messenger-style bag that has served me well
for years now. I prefer it to a backpack because it’s easier to get into and it
doesn’t screw up the profile of a suit. And I’m usually wearing a suit of some
kind. On the way I found some kind of crazy outdoor rave in front of the
Marriott. There were a few guys with audio and lighting equipment hooked up to
them as part of their costumes and they were playing KMFDM, which I will always
stop for. It was kind of like Wednesday night at The Masquerade from way back
when.
Inside the Marriott I found Beau Brown, Joshua Holden,
Stacey Gordon, and a whole gaggle of puppeteers. Last year I observed the
official start of Dragon Con at midnight with that crew, but this year I
realized I had a crew of my own that I needed to find. I knew Oz and Rad Ranger
were around somewhere, so I set off to find the before the fateful hour.
I didn’t find those guys at that point, but I did run
into the Hooligans. The clock struck midnight, Dragon Con started, and everything
was right with the world.
I did find Rad Ranger and Oz, and even Ryan Cadaver and Nicole and some combination of the
resultant group headed off to look for a rave, concert, or whatever.
Special shout-out to the furry Deadpool girl with the llama. I didn't get up to too many questionable hijinx this year, but when you see furry Deadpool girl with a llama, there's no way around taking an off-color photograph. I wish I had gotten a better picture of her costume, too becasue she actually looked great beyond just having my favorite goofy look of this year's Con. It's magic like this that can push the first night of Con over the top into something truly special.
I believe
I got back to my room around 3 AM after everyone else dropped out. The next morning was... not great. But I'll talk about that next time.
This was a very good night at Dragon Con. I always
enjoyed the Hooligans dinner at Trader Vic’s, but it occurs to me now that I
can go and eat at Trader Vic’s anytime; and with most of those same folks. DCW
only comes once a year. And with it being on Thursday night, Friday ended up
feeling like a whole extra day of Dragon Con. Can you think of anything better
than that? Plus, I had a day in between DCW and the game show for my voice to
recover!
Come back Wednesday for my rundown of the very best stuff
from this month’s Previews comic shop
catalog, and then next week for day two of my Dragon Con recap. In the
meantime, check Needless Things every day for new and original content from
Beth, Jerry, Devlin, Christina, and all of the Needless Things Irregulars!
If you’re here checking out Dragon Con stuff and haven’t visited
Needless Things before, thanks for coming by. Our writers post five times a
week about toys, movies, music, and all manner of pop culture dorkery.
The Needless Things
Podcast posts once a week, usually on
Friday. Come back after Dragon Con for full coverage of what went down, as well
as audio recordings of our panels.
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