Dragon*Con 2006, part 1
I started this at the one-week mark, but then I got sucked into a game...so, before I start forgetting shit, time to kick out the jams. The Thursday I left, it was raining here, some distant edge of Ernesto dripping on me. It painted random patterns on the back of my shirt while I was scraping the old trash out of my beat-up Kia--some of it doubtless qualified as antique, and of what I knew the provenance for, disturbingly much went back as far as my running Schmucko up to Asheville at the beginning of the summer. ...and, as I write this, some recent surprises are moving me towards re-establishing diplomatic relations with him...not like it was ever healthy for me to hold grudges in the first place. But he'll have to deal with the nickname anyway. Those things are all in how you say it, right?
So I loaded up with just what I needed for a weekend--two suitcases, a box of booze, and assorted other shit. It's a con, after all. Then I hit the highway a little before 7, blasting the best local excuse for a rock station at 33 to hear it over the noise from the window that shuts wrong. I made it to South Carolina only a little slower than my usual screaming pace, running down I-85 just under the highway number...then I ran head-on into Ernesto, and the elements decided to enforce the speed limit. Fine rain pouring down thick, and blowing in clouds that landed with a splat on the windscreen, making a solid sheet--I lost sight of the lines in the road, and navigated through the wet darkness only by the twinkle of reflectors in my own headlight beams. And here and there the bastards had left them off; I clenched the wheel and sloshed by guess and by God over the dead black road, too damned aware of the latter's sense of humour.
Eventually, the car broke out of the storm, and blew off a cloud of steam as I put the hammer down again. Soon enough, I was in the Atlanta sprawl, and eventually at the right exit. I saw signs of the geek takeover right off the bat. You can usually tell our kind by the eyes; there's a kind of dreamy sharpness, weird to the point of paradox. And there were plenty of us walking around as the directions I'd scribbled down off the Hyatt site led me right up to a goddamn barrier. That part of the Peachpit is hotel city, and we freaks pretty much take up the rooms there are on Labor Day weekend. And, right next to it are some bona fide slums, or near as dammit; my first attempt to find a way around the closed road ended with a rapid turnaround when I hit them. The next led me past CNN Center and all the way around the park Atlanta built for the Olympics--imagine the '39 World's Fair if it had been in Las Vegas, and you'd get an idea of what that monstrosity looks like at night. By this time, the low-fuel light was coming on, and panic was trying to inchworm up my cervical spine as I watched the gas gauge and the more desperate-looking sort of locals just outside the car. Back in the hotel zone, I was still lost. The geek presence was higher, now evidenced by black-canvas Utilikilts and elaborately-framed skin. Dragon isn't pent up inside one building like most other events, it sprawls out into the streets--at that time, in that place, and especially in the middle of the night, we are the eyes who will see, and it's the "mundanes'" turn to get the funny looks. I could even see the top of the hotel somewhere in the cluster of similar towers, but this wasn't helping me find the fucking bottom.
The first time I stopped for directions, it was farther out from the epicentre, in front of a much tonier place than I was going. The well-dressed SUV driver fiddling with his phone was pretty jangled to have some long-haired freak in a fedora and trenchcoat roll down his window and "excuse me, sir" him, and turned out to be from DC anyway. Hell with it, I thought, coming up on the Holiday Inn a couple minutes later. They'd at least know. They did, and they were expecting us; there were Xeroxes of the Google Maps directions from there to the con proper all over the counter--which took me right back to the goddamn barrier again. About this time, scifantasy called to ask where the hell I was. We were rooming together, and the prior plan was that I'd call him down to the lobby once I got in. But the hour was getting late, and this rider didn't even know if he was approaching. The call was short and frustrating, thanks to signal problems and crowd noise--but, somehow, I'd managed to stumble on the motor lobby by the time he called back.
I was staring at a "garage full" sign, of course. I was also, shortly, looking at photognome. The Gnome (which name always strikes me funny, since he's rather fireplug-shaped--I guess "Photodwarf" doesn't have the same ring) is a fixture of Georgia cons, snapping pretty girls and other points of interest, and handing out his "You've been Gnomed" stickers, often directly onto the chest in the former case. Nice work if you can get it...I'd love to adapt the gag, but, while I often see enough skin exposed to pen a whole essay, it wouldn't go over so well. The Gnome asked how I'd been since Frolicon, and told me about parking around the corner. While I was waiting for a break in traffic, Sci called again, and before too long came down to join me.
Somehow, we found a break in the cars and fans going in perpendicular directions (by now, the latter were displaying weapons, and recognisable character costumes), and found that the Gnome spoke truth--there was a lot right there, the usual semi-honour-system kind where you put money in the box by the entrance. One the way, we passed a trailer painted with a gaudy winged shield and the letters "OCP". Of course, I immediately asked, "Is Robocop in there?" "Something better", Sci answered. OCP in this case meant the Orbital Commerce Project--a foundation promoting private spaceflight. The trailer contained a simulator ride of the sort of rocket they're boosting, pun intentional, and they'd be doing several panels over the course of the con, on topics ranging from the state of private space projects, to the progress towards a space elevator. And I'd get to see none of them--they were either set for a time far too securely in the AM, or at times I was off eating.
After a bit of circling, we found a space, and on noting the number, I quoted Clerks at once. "Thirty-Seven?!" This got a "damn you" out of Sci--I'd been just a little quicker. We started shifting my effects, and that's when the first beggar approached us. He started in nervously--"You've got your hands full...but I'm a little guy..." and went on in this vein for a while, trying to make sure we were absolutely sure he wasn't a mugger. Somehow, near Dragon, I wasn't too surprised. I've already mentioned weapons...lots of swords and big knives going around, and even when you aren't talking live (that is, edged) steel, plenty of folks have long heavy props suitable for an attitude adjustment. More than that, though, most people have some form of the idea that crazy is contagious...and they'll be damned if they catch it by excessive contact. And, while we were on the straight-looking end of the spectrum compared to the anime characters, armoured warriors, and other odd bods walking by, it was damned obvious why we were here. So, when I told him--honestly--that my last five was going right into the "don't tow me" box, he fucked off with a minimum of negotiation.
Then, as I was about to put the money in the box--and was already grumbling about tne necessity of coming down to do it again each day--an old man walked up and asked if I really wanted to. People had been smashing windshields in the lot, he said, and I really ought to go to the garage just down the block. Then he asked if I'd pay him for the damn tip. I pulled the "last five" routine again, and also sure as hell didn't think it was a $5 sort of tip he'd given. So, after shooing him off, we moved down the sidewalk with the gear, and Sci handed me some of the cash _he'd_ been carrying to pay ahead for the whole time--no wonder he'd been a little nervous! Luckily, I was the one who'd been doing the talking, and wearing a fancy coat, and at one point during the agonising process of telling the geezer politely that he was out of luck, slinging around a PDA phone. So he left Sci alone while I drove the car around and paid the attendant, who seemed weirdly happy that I was giving him the cash ahead. I rather wondered what his angle was--the funds going straight in his personal pocket, expecting an argument he didn't get, or what--but I don't have an Atlanta parking ticket chasing me, so I can't complain.
So it was around to the front of the hotel then, and on the way another waterhead tried to stop me to beg, never mind I was dragging two suitcases and obviously exhausted. I'm starting to wonder if Atlanta has a _major_ social-services problem, or a lot of scammers. My bet's on both. It is the South, after all.
Even after midnight and before the event officially began, the lobby contained a lot of people, (I'd hear later, "Thursday is the new Friday") and at least one smashed glass fallen from the open gallery on the floors above. After the first day, the management would remove the actual glasses from our room and replace them with paper and plastic--apparently they feared that "getting bombed" would take on a literal meaning otherwise. We passed a woman in a mostly-green superheroic getup with a bandolier of something I couldn't make out...until she was introduced as "Deodorant Dame". The gag was, of course, based on one of the few things about fan cons that reaches the "straight" media on a regular basis--the infamous tendency of some attendees to forgo bathing for the duration, or come in as outright dirtballs already. I guess this coverage has had some effect, because I didn't really smell anything like it at any point during this year's Dragon.
As we got into the elevator, a piper over in the bar was launching into "Scotland the Brave". As little as this essentially has to do with science-fiction fandom, it hit me as an essentionally Dragon*Con moment. The Hielan' Laddie in question likely has a suit-and-tie job somewhere--but here, he's being someone other than himself, at least the "himself" that he's expected to be, and yet more honest for letting those dreams show.
The room was near the farthest point on the floor from the elevators, and Sci's key decided not to work. So we piled the stuff outside, and I went off after my own while he saw if one of the employees could intimidate it into working. I was tired, and feeling lazy anyway, so instead of walking all the way back around to the already-crowded main elevators, I ducked into a lift that was right there...and found myself looking into the face of some very confused foreign kid, and the room-service kitchen behind him, when I got to the lobby level. Yep, service lift. Stuck my head out, looked left, looked right, no obvious lobby door. Went back up one floor and took the stairs, feeling like an idiot.
As usual for a busy con, there were an intimidating number of people at the front desk dickering at length over some issue I couldn't hear to make out, but someone came up pretty fast and I got my key, and switched the room to my card. For some reason, though, hotel clerks can't pronounce my name. I think it's a requirement. Swallowing claustrophobia, I took the regular lift up...and it'd only get worse. Even before the con, I'd heard the meme "elevator party" floating around, and I understood it in the following days. You had enough time for a party, either on the elevator, or waiting for it; you quickly learned to take it when it arrived, whichever way it was going. The next one might be at least fifteen minutes in coming, and was probably full. Especially since every other asshole in the place was doing the same thing. And the actual ride would take just long enough to start talking.
It wasn't that bad yet, but I was damned glad to be back to the room. Sci'd turned up a second, working key, and we got the stuff dragged in. Then, at long last, I tossed my coat on the chair, and we cracked the gin. I'm not sure whether to blame or credit Sci for getting me addicted to martinis. It was opened, so I'd literally bootlegged the vermouth in, in one of the horribly inauthentic moccasin boots I'd brought for rennie-wear. Also, the FEMA convention before us had done a "heckuva job" in running over the expected time, so not only did the elevator crowd contain plenty of confused government types, we'd landed in a non-smoking room despite their prior assurances. Surprisingly, though, there was a door in the middle of the windows--and the bastard opened! Most hotels these days don't seem to trust you with a balcony. This one didn't trust us too far, though; there was a notice that "IT IS A FELONY TO THROW OR DROP OBJECTS FROM THIS BALCONY." And then...while I was out there smoking, I heard a thump-rattle, probably ice, on the lobby roof below. I couldn't help a laugh. "Somebody just broke the law..." Still, I took my butt in and flushed it. I couldn't help thinking about "smoking in the boys' room" cliches, all the more because I never did go to regular high school.
And that was enough of a break, so back out we went. The piper had stopped by now. Fewer costumes repeated the same character than last year--in fact, the only one I noticed right away Thursday night was several Jango Fetts, ranging from handmade metal armour to one involving cardboard and a plastic fork for the dart launcher on his wrist. A turn around the main lobby, then down to the ballroom level where the various shows would be. The Cruxshadows' booth, and ones for a couple other bands, were already (by days) and still (by hours) open and drawing lines--this Dragoncon was happily very heavy on music, as I'll get back to later. I was still goggling at just how busy the place was already, before the event even started...then a familiar face came lurching at me, and a familiar hand waving a tube in my face. Yep, Spc. Boozepack Dingbat, US Army. Or his tour may be up--I'd find out in a minute that he was moving to Atlanta to stay. Still, for right then, I greeted him, waved off the offer to suck engine cleaner (I know nothing can live in it, but I hope he CLEANS that fucking pack!), and told him he was lucky. "Yep, I am," he replied, staring at the nearest girl in a brief costume. "No, that I didn't set you on fire at Frolicon. You jumped away from my lighter and yelled, 'I'd explode!'" It's true. He'd been standing around on the pool terrace back then, jangling the vibe and trying to get someone to suck his tube, and I'd been sitting in just the right place to spark my Zippo and slooowly bring it up towards the bag of fuel on his back. Of course he saw, he was meant to, and he said it with a laugh--but I don't think he intended his voice to go that high.
At Dragon, his presence wasn't nearly the off note it was at Frolicon, anyway. His type, the weird macho geek/fratboy crosses, are actually pretty well-represented. A lot of them play soldier (although not everybody in uniform is one of 'em), whether it's as Imperial Stormtroopers like the "501st Legion" with their radios and drills, Colonial Marines from Aliens, Stargate-related grunts, or various powered-armour troops. More than just the numbers, though, while Dragon*con is still fairly open-feeling compared to "real life", it's still fully public, and you can come in full of thud and blunder, looking only to see, be seen, drink yourself legless, and screw if possible, without turning some sense of distributed intimacy into a collective headache. So when he laughed the recollection off too with an "I'm too quick", I stopped bothering the fucker and let him go up the escalator.
Shortly later, outside the door down there that faced the pool and the stairs that let you across to the Mariott, I'd run into Cammie who'd won the Frolicon costume contest with the sheer audacity of a Fruit Roll-Up bikini, though now more conventionally dressed. "Small world," I said, "I just ran into that idiot with the boozepack." Foot, meet mouth. She's always gotten on with him fine, and they were planning to room together when they both moved to Atlanta. She didn't much care that I didn't, and my arse slowly unclenched. This would be a theme. I'd keep running into people I'd seen somewhere or who I actually knew from another con. One notably indentified herself as "the one at Frolicon who had marks on my ass for two weeks." If you've read about that one, this didn't exactly narrow it down--hell, if certain people had struck there instead of my back, it'd describe me. I've always said that the Internet is the world with the distance squeezed out, and while geekery and the Net don't align as much as once they did, it still feels awfully parallel.
I'd have another "small world" moment just a little later, running into someone I knew from the horror-hosts' mailing list. This was the Reverend Chumley of the Cult of UHF, a fellow in a Utilikilt and a smashing mitre who hosts (though, he said, in pants) "Horror/Kung FU TV", currently on the Internet only. I remembered him, but he didn't remember me...of course, I mostly lurk on the list. We shot shit over old movies, the value of archives, and the sad lack of them for other horror hosts (I still need to check out his) before he returned to talking with another man standing there--and that barely. He still wasn't too blasted to plug his website, "Conheaven", which he described variously as a fannish Myspace and a "virtual room party." And Mr Boozepack was in on it...I expressed my sympathies, and the guy was drunkenly honest enough to nod and laugh. He still described the Conheaven team as "basically the Boozepack posse..." "He has a posse now?", I asked with an expression like a bug had just made a kamikaze attack on my mouth. I guess, though, that it's easy enough to be popular if you walk around offering shots off a sack of liquor; I certainly follow the same principle with clove cigarettes.
Speaking of cigarettes and shills, we'd, on our way out the door, gotten stopped by a guy with dreadlocks who was also giving them away, but for a job--he worked for a marketing firm that had made a deal with Reynolds, and he'd scan your ID to prove your age and that they weren't going right in his other pocket. He wasn't, he said, actualy supposed to be there then, but he knew what was up. Fan events run on cigarettes almost as much as prisons, and, though he didn't have anything I'd smoke, I took some for barter. They might get me a story... For a "fun" event, Dragon features a staggering amount of business...not just the three large rooms of dealers and separate art show, and the various band tables, but it seems more people than not are pushing something, usually themselves in some way. For this wide-flung community, it is market day. I can't really throw stones; "I'm writing this up, and my LJ is jchance" made it into most of my conversations.
Sci had already gone back upstairs for a last drink...I shortly joined him, and we both crashed. All this, and the show hadn't really started.
So I loaded up with just what I needed for a weekend--two suitcases, a box of booze, and assorted other shit. It's a con, after all. Then I hit the highway a little before 7, blasting the best local excuse for a rock station at 33 to hear it over the noise from the window that shuts wrong. I made it to South Carolina only a little slower than my usual screaming pace, running down I-85 just under the highway number...then I ran head-on into Ernesto, and the elements decided to enforce the speed limit. Fine rain pouring down thick, and blowing in clouds that landed with a splat on the windscreen, making a solid sheet--I lost sight of the lines in the road, and navigated through the wet darkness only by the twinkle of reflectors in my own headlight beams. And here and there the bastards had left them off; I clenched the wheel and sloshed by guess and by God over the dead black road, too damned aware of the latter's sense of humour.
Eventually, the car broke out of the storm, and blew off a cloud of steam as I put the hammer down again. Soon enough, I was in the Atlanta sprawl, and eventually at the right exit. I saw signs of the geek takeover right off the bat. You can usually tell our kind by the eyes; there's a kind of dreamy sharpness, weird to the point of paradox. And there were plenty of us walking around as the directions I'd scribbled down off the Hyatt site led me right up to a goddamn barrier. That part of the Peachpit is hotel city, and we freaks pretty much take up the rooms there are on Labor Day weekend. And, right next to it are some bona fide slums, or near as dammit; my first attempt to find a way around the closed road ended with a rapid turnaround when I hit them. The next led me past CNN Center and all the way around the park Atlanta built for the Olympics--imagine the '39 World's Fair if it had been in Las Vegas, and you'd get an idea of what that monstrosity looks like at night. By this time, the low-fuel light was coming on, and panic was trying to inchworm up my cervical spine as I watched the gas gauge and the more desperate-looking sort of locals just outside the car. Back in the hotel zone, I was still lost. The geek presence was higher, now evidenced by black-canvas Utilikilts and elaborately-framed skin. Dragon isn't pent up inside one building like most other events, it sprawls out into the streets--at that time, in that place, and especially in the middle of the night, we are the eyes who will see, and it's the "mundanes'" turn to get the funny looks. I could even see the top of the hotel somewhere in the cluster of similar towers, but this wasn't helping me find the fucking bottom.
The first time I stopped for directions, it was farther out from the epicentre, in front of a much tonier place than I was going. The well-dressed SUV driver fiddling with his phone was pretty jangled to have some long-haired freak in a fedora and trenchcoat roll down his window and "excuse me, sir" him, and turned out to be from DC anyway. Hell with it, I thought, coming up on the Holiday Inn a couple minutes later. They'd at least know. They did, and they were expecting us; there were Xeroxes of the Google Maps directions from there to the con proper all over the counter--which took me right back to the goddamn barrier again. About this time, scifantasy called to ask where the hell I was. We were rooming together, and the prior plan was that I'd call him down to the lobby once I got in. But the hour was getting late, and this rider didn't even know if he was approaching. The call was short and frustrating, thanks to signal problems and crowd noise--but, somehow, I'd managed to stumble on the motor lobby by the time he called back.
I was staring at a "garage full" sign, of course. I was also, shortly, looking at photognome. The Gnome (which name always strikes me funny, since he's rather fireplug-shaped--I guess "Photodwarf" doesn't have the same ring) is a fixture of Georgia cons, snapping pretty girls and other points of interest, and handing out his "You've been Gnomed" stickers, often directly onto the chest in the former case. Nice work if you can get it...I'd love to adapt the gag, but, while I often see enough skin exposed to pen a whole essay, it wouldn't go over so well. The Gnome asked how I'd been since Frolicon, and told me about parking around the corner. While I was waiting for a break in traffic, Sci called again, and before too long came down to join me.
Somehow, we found a break in the cars and fans going in perpendicular directions (by now, the latter were displaying weapons, and recognisable character costumes), and found that the Gnome spoke truth--there was a lot right there, the usual semi-honour-system kind where you put money in the box by the entrance. One the way, we passed a trailer painted with a gaudy winged shield and the letters "OCP". Of course, I immediately asked, "Is Robocop in there?" "Something better", Sci answered. OCP in this case meant the Orbital Commerce Project--a foundation promoting private spaceflight. The trailer contained a simulator ride of the sort of rocket they're boosting, pun intentional, and they'd be doing several panels over the course of the con, on topics ranging from the state of private space projects, to the progress towards a space elevator. And I'd get to see none of them--they were either set for a time far too securely in the AM, or at times I was off eating.
After a bit of circling, we found a space, and on noting the number, I quoted Clerks at once. "Thirty-Seven?!" This got a "damn you" out of Sci--I'd been just a little quicker. We started shifting my effects, and that's when the first beggar approached us. He started in nervously--"You've got your hands full...but I'm a little guy..." and went on in this vein for a while, trying to make sure we were absolutely sure he wasn't a mugger. Somehow, near Dragon, I wasn't too surprised. I've already mentioned weapons...lots of swords and big knives going around, and even when you aren't talking live (that is, edged) steel, plenty of folks have long heavy props suitable for an attitude adjustment. More than that, though, most people have some form of the idea that crazy is contagious...and they'll be damned if they catch it by excessive contact. And, while we were on the straight-looking end of the spectrum compared to the anime characters, armoured warriors, and other odd bods walking by, it was damned obvious why we were here. So, when I told him--honestly--that my last five was going right into the "don't tow me" box, he fucked off with a minimum of negotiation.
Then, as I was about to put the money in the box--and was already grumbling about tne necessity of coming down to do it again each day--an old man walked up and asked if I really wanted to. People had been smashing windshields in the lot, he said, and I really ought to go to the garage just down the block. Then he asked if I'd pay him for the damn tip. I pulled the "last five" routine again, and also sure as hell didn't think it was a $5 sort of tip he'd given. So, after shooing him off, we moved down the sidewalk with the gear, and Sci handed me some of the cash _he'd_ been carrying to pay ahead for the whole time--no wonder he'd been a little nervous! Luckily, I was the one who'd been doing the talking, and wearing a fancy coat, and at one point during the agonising process of telling the geezer politely that he was out of luck, slinging around a PDA phone. So he left Sci alone while I drove the car around and paid the attendant, who seemed weirdly happy that I was giving him the cash ahead. I rather wondered what his angle was--the funds going straight in his personal pocket, expecting an argument he didn't get, or what--but I don't have an Atlanta parking ticket chasing me, so I can't complain.
So it was around to the front of the hotel then, and on the way another waterhead tried to stop me to beg, never mind I was dragging two suitcases and obviously exhausted. I'm starting to wonder if Atlanta has a _major_ social-services problem, or a lot of scammers. My bet's on both. It is the South, after all.
Even after midnight and before the event officially began, the lobby contained a lot of people, (I'd hear later, "Thursday is the new Friday") and at least one smashed glass fallen from the open gallery on the floors above. After the first day, the management would remove the actual glasses from our room and replace them with paper and plastic--apparently they feared that "getting bombed" would take on a literal meaning otherwise. We passed a woman in a mostly-green superheroic getup with a bandolier of something I couldn't make out...until she was introduced as "Deodorant Dame". The gag was, of course, based on one of the few things about fan cons that reaches the "straight" media on a regular basis--the infamous tendency of some attendees to forgo bathing for the duration, or come in as outright dirtballs already. I guess this coverage has had some effect, because I didn't really smell anything like it at any point during this year's Dragon.
As we got into the elevator, a piper over in the bar was launching into "Scotland the Brave". As little as this essentially has to do with science-fiction fandom, it hit me as an essentionally Dragon*Con moment. The Hielan' Laddie in question likely has a suit-and-tie job somewhere--but here, he's being someone other than himself, at least the "himself" that he's expected to be, and yet more honest for letting those dreams show.
The room was near the farthest point on the floor from the elevators, and Sci's key decided not to work. So we piled the stuff outside, and I went off after my own while he saw if one of the employees could intimidate it into working. I was tired, and feeling lazy anyway, so instead of walking all the way back around to the already-crowded main elevators, I ducked into a lift that was right there...and found myself looking into the face of some very confused foreign kid, and the room-service kitchen behind him, when I got to the lobby level. Yep, service lift. Stuck my head out, looked left, looked right, no obvious lobby door. Went back up one floor and took the stairs, feeling like an idiot.
As usual for a busy con, there were an intimidating number of people at the front desk dickering at length over some issue I couldn't hear to make out, but someone came up pretty fast and I got my key, and switched the room to my card. For some reason, though, hotel clerks can't pronounce my name. I think it's a requirement. Swallowing claustrophobia, I took the regular lift up...and it'd only get worse. Even before the con, I'd heard the meme "elevator party" floating around, and I understood it in the following days. You had enough time for a party, either on the elevator, or waiting for it; you quickly learned to take it when it arrived, whichever way it was going. The next one might be at least fifteen minutes in coming, and was probably full. Especially since every other asshole in the place was doing the same thing. And the actual ride would take just long enough to start talking.
It wasn't that bad yet, but I was damned glad to be back to the room. Sci'd turned up a second, working key, and we got the stuff dragged in. Then, at long last, I tossed my coat on the chair, and we cracked the gin. I'm not sure whether to blame or credit Sci for getting me addicted to martinis. It was opened, so I'd literally bootlegged the vermouth in, in one of the horribly inauthentic moccasin boots I'd brought for rennie-wear. Also, the FEMA convention before us had done a "heckuva job" in running over the expected time, so not only did the elevator crowd contain plenty of confused government types, we'd landed in a non-smoking room despite their prior assurances. Surprisingly, though, there was a door in the middle of the windows--and the bastard opened! Most hotels these days don't seem to trust you with a balcony. This one didn't trust us too far, though; there was a notice that "IT IS A FELONY TO THROW OR DROP OBJECTS FROM THIS BALCONY." And then...while I was out there smoking, I heard a thump-rattle, probably ice, on the lobby roof below. I couldn't help a laugh. "Somebody just broke the law..." Still, I took my butt in and flushed it. I couldn't help thinking about "smoking in the boys' room" cliches, all the more because I never did go to regular high school.
And that was enough of a break, so back out we went. The piper had stopped by now. Fewer costumes repeated the same character than last year--in fact, the only one I noticed right away Thursday night was several Jango Fetts, ranging from handmade metal armour to one involving cardboard and a plastic fork for the dart launcher on his wrist. A turn around the main lobby, then down to the ballroom level where the various shows would be. The Cruxshadows' booth, and ones for a couple other bands, were already (by days) and still (by hours) open and drawing lines--this Dragoncon was happily very heavy on music, as I'll get back to later. I was still goggling at just how busy the place was already, before the event even started...then a familiar face came lurching at me, and a familiar hand waving a tube in my face. Yep, Spc. Boozepack Dingbat, US Army. Or his tour may be up--I'd find out in a minute that he was moving to Atlanta to stay. Still, for right then, I greeted him, waved off the offer to suck engine cleaner (I know nothing can live in it, but I hope he CLEANS that fucking pack!), and told him he was lucky. "Yep, I am," he replied, staring at the nearest girl in a brief costume. "No, that I didn't set you on fire at Frolicon. You jumped away from my lighter and yelled, 'I'd explode!'" It's true. He'd been standing around on the pool terrace back then, jangling the vibe and trying to get someone to suck his tube, and I'd been sitting in just the right place to spark my Zippo and slooowly bring it up towards the bag of fuel on his back. Of course he saw, he was meant to, and he said it with a laugh--but I don't think he intended his voice to go that high.
At Dragon, his presence wasn't nearly the off note it was at Frolicon, anyway. His type, the weird macho geek/fratboy crosses, are actually pretty well-represented. A lot of them play soldier (although not everybody in uniform is one of 'em), whether it's as Imperial Stormtroopers like the "501st Legion" with their radios and drills, Colonial Marines from Aliens, Stargate-related grunts, or various powered-armour troops. More than just the numbers, though, while Dragon*con is still fairly open-feeling compared to "real life", it's still fully public, and you can come in full of thud and blunder, looking only to see, be seen, drink yourself legless, and screw if possible, without turning some sense of distributed intimacy into a collective headache. So when he laughed the recollection off too with an "I'm too quick", I stopped bothering the fucker and let him go up the escalator.
Shortly later, outside the door down there that faced the pool and the stairs that let you across to the Mariott, I'd run into Cammie who'd won the Frolicon costume contest with the sheer audacity of a Fruit Roll-Up bikini, though now more conventionally dressed. "Small world," I said, "I just ran into that idiot with the boozepack." Foot, meet mouth. She's always gotten on with him fine, and they were planning to room together when they both moved to Atlanta. She didn't much care that I didn't, and my arse slowly unclenched. This would be a theme. I'd keep running into people I'd seen somewhere or who I actually knew from another con. One notably indentified herself as "the one at Frolicon who had marks on my ass for two weeks." If you've read about that one, this didn't exactly narrow it down--hell, if certain people had struck there instead of my back, it'd describe me. I've always said that the Internet is the world with the distance squeezed out, and while geekery and the Net don't align as much as once they did, it still feels awfully parallel.
I'd have another "small world" moment just a little later, running into someone I knew from the horror-hosts' mailing list. This was the Reverend Chumley of the Cult of UHF, a fellow in a Utilikilt and a smashing mitre who hosts (though, he said, in pants) "Horror/Kung FU TV", currently on the Internet only. I remembered him, but he didn't remember me...of course, I mostly lurk on the list. We shot shit over old movies, the value of archives, and the sad lack of them for other horror hosts (I still need to check out his) before he returned to talking with another man standing there--and that barely. He still wasn't too blasted to plug his website, "Conheaven", which he described variously as a fannish Myspace and a "virtual room party." And Mr Boozepack was in on it...I expressed my sympathies, and the guy was drunkenly honest enough to nod and laugh. He still described the Conheaven team as "basically the Boozepack posse..." "He has a posse now?", I asked with an expression like a bug had just made a kamikaze attack on my mouth. I guess, though, that it's easy enough to be popular if you walk around offering shots off a sack of liquor; I certainly follow the same principle with clove cigarettes.
Speaking of cigarettes and shills, we'd, on our way out the door, gotten stopped by a guy with dreadlocks who was also giving them away, but for a job--he worked for a marketing firm that had made a deal with Reynolds, and he'd scan your ID to prove your age and that they weren't going right in his other pocket. He wasn't, he said, actualy supposed to be there then, but he knew what was up. Fan events run on cigarettes almost as much as prisons, and, though he didn't have anything I'd smoke, I took some for barter. They might get me a story... For a "fun" event, Dragon features a staggering amount of business...not just the three large rooms of dealers and separate art show, and the various band tables, but it seems more people than not are pushing something, usually themselves in some way. For this wide-flung community, it is market day. I can't really throw stones; "I'm writing this up, and my LJ is jchance" made it into most of my conversations.
Sci had already gone back upstairs for a last drink...I shortly joined him, and we both crashed. All this, and the show hadn't really started.