"I'm going to go back there someday" - Dragon*Con Recap

I have now been to my first Dragon*Con

I had a great time, although I’m not sure how much credit goes to the con.

I arrived on Thursday and met up with chaoticgoodchic at the main hotel (the Hyatt). We put our bags away in the room and went out to get some dinner. At the elevators we ran into Rob partiallyclips Balder^, and Jan (whose LJ I don’t know) who were also heading out to dinner and invited us to join them.

Dragon*Con officially started Friday. The music track had a lot of talent I had heard of but never had a chance to hear live such as: newlyweds, Carla Ulbrich and Joe Giacoio, The Brobdingnagian Bards, The Bedlam Bards, Throwing Toasters, & Emerald Rose. I also got to hear some more familiar talents: Tom Smith, Rob Balder, The Boogie Knights, Matt Leger and Roberta Rogow.

It was fun filking in front of an almost completely new group of people. It meant that practically none of them had heard me sing any of the 3 songs I typically do at circle. I also did 2 spoken word pieces over the weekend; a poem by my brother Mounting the Earth and another by a friend of his Physics for Slam Poets.

There were also some unexpected bonuses at the filk circle. One was Robert Asprin (yes, That Robert Asprin). He is quite entertaining in person, and rarely at a loss for words. voiceofkiki Debuted a new filk mixing Harry Potter with Broadway’s Hairspray. Another young lady gave us Renfair Women (to the tune of Gretchen Wilson’s Redneck Woman).

I also met several other people who (like me) don’t write filks, but enjoy singing & listening to them.

Outside of Filk, Saturday Morning was the costume parade, which is held outside on the street. Our room on the 6th floor had an excellent view of the parade from the balcony.

Saturday night was the Dawn (comicbook) look-alike contest, hosted by Voltair, CGC and I watch some of this. In my opinion it is a beauty pageant that is in danger of turning into a costume competition (go figure).

One of my regrets is that I only got to briefly meet ewin at the Saturday Morning Cartoons event. I can now say that I have met her in person. I was not able to get in much gaming (just a couple of hands of Fluxx) because it was located in a separate hotel, which happened to be undergoing renovations, which made getting to game rooms harder (luckily I have a high survival skill so I was able to find it.)

On Sunday we went to some of the CrookShanks show.

Considering the con as a whole, I had fun. I have been to a few filk cons, some small region cons, many Boskons and Arisias, and 2 Worldcons. I would say that at Dragon*Con the different event tracks tend to be quite isolated, and it is tougher to sample back and fourth between different tracks than at other cons (including Worldcon).

^Fanboy moment: For those who don’t already know Rob Balder, he is writer of the webcomics PartiallyClips & Erfworld, Get Nifty: The Sluggy Freelance Card Game, and the Pegasus Award Nominated filk song (for the second year in a row) Rich Fantasy Lives. He is also a fun person to hang out with.