Saturday, September 13, 2014

Dragon Con 2014: Saturday.

[Click here for Friday's post.]

Saturday kicks off with the legendary Dragon Con Parade.

...Which we skipped.

DC attendees along with countless locals crowd the streets for hours waiting for the parade to start.  While I'd love to see the parade sometime, so far it just hasn't seemed worth the stress of dealing with so many people.  Plus, there was a panel on the Whedon track right after the parade, and I wanted to be among the first in line!  So we got downtown well before the parade started, and Casey split off to go to a nanotech panel while I headed for the Westin (where the Whedon track is primarily held).

By the way, I just realized that I forgot to include this creepy guy in the MARTA station on our way home Friday night:

This is why you should avoid subways late at night...

Not sure who he's dressed as, but creepy as all heck when you're in a hot, underground subway station that already feels like the bowels of hell....

[Edit: Apparently, it's the Penguin, a villain from the Batman franchise....I've only seen the Christian Bale movies!  Don't hate me....]

Anyway...

Back to Saturday!

Casey took the camera with him to his nanotechnology panel, and passed this great pair on the way:

Carl and Russel from Up.

Our three-year-old loves Up, and Casey said these guys had every detail perfect, right down to every single badge on Russell's uniform!

Casey ended up loving the science and space tracks.  Dragon Con really has something for every type of geek and nerd!

Really smart guys.

They showed the world's smallest movie, which Casey took a photo of:

The World's Smallest Movie.

Yeah, apparently those are atoms in the shape of a boy who jumps up and down.  Crazy!  They explained a lot of the process of how they filmed it in the panel.

Meanwhile, I was seated in line (with only about twenty people ahead of me!) for the Whedonverse panel.  Sometimes, you can get bored waiting in line by yourself (especially when the people around you are obsessing over their smart phones); other times, you can find yourself with some amazingly cool people.  This was one of the latter times.  I find I make friends more easily in the Whedon lines than anywhere else, which I think indicates the sorts of people Joss Whedon attracts.  He really does have the best fans. :-)

Since Casey still had the camera, I didn't get any pictures of the panel, but it was phenomenal.  Emma Caulfield (Anya on "Buffy"), J. August Richards (Charles Gunn on "Angel"), and Ron Glass (Shepherd Book on "Firefly") were the guest panelists.  Emma and J. in particular got very personal and vulnerable about the struggle--universally and in Hollywood--with feeling like you aren't enough, learning that your worth is independent of anything material, and deciding not to "dim your light" and make yourself less for someone else's sake.  You can watch the whole dialogue here, from 32:00 to 38:30ish (everyone was crying by about 37:45) and picking up again from 40:20 to 43:05 (it was sparked by a question along the lines of "What line from your character resonated most with you?", to give you a little context).  The two of them made this my second favorite panel of the entire weekend.  (Emma also had some great things to say toward the end of the panel on the issues women in the industry deal with, and her own personal frustrations, that can be found here (sorry, first video ends early, and this one cuts stuff from in the middle) from about 40:00 to 46:00.)

While I was in the Whedonverse panel, Casey was in line with these fine folks:

Steampunk Michonne ("Walking Dead")!  And friend...

Seriously, you do meet some great people in line.  He really enjoyed chatting with this couple while they waited for the "Star Trek: TNG" panel.

Garrett Wang (Harry Kim, "Voyager"), Sir Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "TNG"), and Gates McFadden (Beverly Crusher, "TNG").

I was a little sad to miss the TNG panel, but I haven't even finished watching all of TNG yet (we've been working our way through it on Netflix).  Plus, while Casey was in this panel, I was doing something way more awesome....

I met Adam Baldwin and got his autograph!

I MET ADAM BALDWIN!  I headed from the Whedonverse panel to the Walk of Fame, where all the celebrity guests spend their down time signing autographs all weekend.  Last year, I just buzzed through and marked a list of all the people I could say I'd been in the same room as; this year, I really wanted to meet the man behind Jayne Cobb.  Turns out, he is awesome.  I was incredibly impressed with how intentional he is in how he engages with every single fan that comes to his table--he spent the first couple minutes of each and every encounter asking questions and maintaining complete eye contact before he ever even touched a pen to sign anything.  He seemed to really care about making it a memorable moment for each person, and he was particularly gracious and kind to me.  I'll give you the whole story later--it really deserves its own post!

Casey and I met after his TNG panel and my Adam Baldwin encounter for one last panel of the day.

Kaywinnit Lee Frye, shindig-style ("Firefly").

We passed this adorable Kaylee in the Mariott on our way, and snapped a quick picture.

Spaceballs!

And Casey loves Spaceballs, so he was quite happy to find this trio.

Our final panel was with Cary Elwes.

Cary Elwes!

Unfortunately, not a single picture came out well, but I promise that really is him! :-P  He was actually really enjoyable, and had some good interaction with the fans asking questions.

That wraps up Saturday!  Meeting Adam Baldwin was definitely the pinnacle of my weekend, but I had a few more highlights over the next two days (coming up next!).  Stay tuned for the rest!

4 comments:

  1. Wait, seriously, you don't know who that creepy guy is dressed as??!!! HOW did we manage to stand right next to him for 20 minutes, then the ride home, and the entire rest of the con, without me realizing you didn't know who that was?! Please, just do me a favor and Google "The penguin" right now.

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    1. Sorry, Christian Bale wasn't in that one. :-P

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  2. Hey! I know it's a year late but we just came across this! We're Steampunk michonne and the guy with crooked glasses! Hope you guys are back this year! We'll be comic book michonne and a wild west gunslinger :). Maybe we'll run into you guys in another line :)

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    1. Awesome!! We will definitely be back this year--and cosplaying for the first time ourselves! I'm going as steampunk Princess Leia on Saturday and we're going as the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler on Sunday--we will keep an eye out for you guys! Hope to run into you! :-)

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