Dragon*Con 2009 Wrap-up day 2:
Yay! My birthday! My birthday AT DRAGON*CON! Excuse me while I squee a little. Okay, a lot. :)
So we slept in (and by slept in, I totally mean we looked at the clock, went "Are we really awake at 9AM? Screw that." And rolled back over) because it was my birthday and because there really wasn't anything we wanted to see until 1PM. capt_amos went with me to the Dark Fairy Tales panel, with Peter S. Beagle, Ted Nafieh, Tiffany Trent, and another YA author I didn't recognize. Now I had heard that Peter S. Beagle was an awesome guy from everyone who has met him at conventions, but that really didn't even begin to do the man justice. He's just this awesome guy with all sorts of stories and snippets of poetry stuffed into his head, and when he starts to share that with you, you can't help but be enthralled. He told this fantastic story about the name Amalthea, and how when he wrote "The Last Unicorn" it hadn't even occurred to him that the original Amalthea had one of her horns broken off by the child Zeus, thus making her the FIRST unicorn. The entire room went silent. It was awesome. Afterwards, we took a trip through one of the dealer rooms, and then headed back up for Abney Park's concourse show, which always includes some sort of Victorian/Steampunk singalong. The Fire Marshall very nearly shut us down (we were sort of taking bets on how long it would take, there were so many people), but in the end we got everybody squeezed in enough to make a path. The Sing-along this year was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (which is terribly appropriate for steampunk: a flying car, the wacky inventor dad and Truly Scrumptious can fix her very own motorbike thank you very much!), which was rocky, but still awesome. I hope they do more singalongs next year. I think that's my favorite part. So they got to the very end of the set, And robert_from_ap says "We're going to do this last song for Emily, since it's her birthday. Where is she?" I might have tried to sink into the floor a bit, then raised my hand, told them I was 26, and they finished the set with "The Ballad of Captain Robert", just for me. :D
*Insert squeeing here*
Afterwards I waited around and druidsfire was kind enough to take pictures of me with the entire band, and then headed out to find Bob an mythfish who were out rehearsing/busking out in one of the hotel walkways. Bob took me out to Benihana for my birthday, which was awesome. I've been to the Shogun here in Louisville, but I've never been to a Benihana before. We were at a table of all congoers, and everybody had a good time. The food was excellent, and I had a yummy apple martini. :) After dinner, they sang to me (complete with makeshift strobe light with the overhead light) and took our picture, and I got ice cream. Yay for birthdays! :)
After a nice nap (hush, it was my birthday, and I was up late!) we headed back out to see Tom Smith's 10 PM show. It was so awesome to have him back at Dragon*Con this year! He played some of my favorites (Including a cover of "Great Idea for a Song"!), and put on a generally awesome show. Yay filkertom! Afterwards, we went back to the Mariott for the Hellblinki Sextet show (they're craaaaazy) and another bigger Voltaire show!
...And then it was 4:30AM, and we all fell over.