Dragon*Con: The Recap (Part II)

Let's reminisce! Gonna take it in the same way Schneider would, one day at a time. And the order of events might be a little off, please forgive me, we were up till about 4 a.m.

Friday (Day One)
Lynn, Kalika and I arrived in Atlanta in the evening (reminder: next year leave on Thursday night or super-early on Friday), and by the time we checked in to the hotel, ate dinner, got our badges and changed into our eveningwear, most of the events were done for the day (including, I am sad to say, a Cinematic Titanic presentation of The Wasp Woman featuring Joel Hodgson, Frank Conniff and Trace Beaulieu, which I really wanted to see). But that was OK, as there was still plenty of partying to do.

I wore my Ghostbusters uniform, since I didn't really have any idea what the convention would be like, and thought this was a safe choice. I even got a few compliments, my favorite one was a guy just hissing, "Venkman... Venkman!" in a pretty good Ray Stantz impression as we passed each other on the stairs.

Most of that night was spent walking around and looking at other people's costumes, which, as I've said before is one of my favorite things. A random search on flickr should give you a good idea of what was there, and I took a bunch of pictures which will hopefully be uploaded to my own account by the end of the week.

And lest you think we're a bunch of wallflowers, of course we took some time out to dance in one of the dance rooms. The cool thing about Dragon*Con is that every night there are one or two dance parties going on, and they're usually themed. This one was called "XTrack Party," and its theme seemed to just be "rave" or "generic dance party."

But it was still pretty good, and was probably the most fun I had dancing that weekend - mostly because I was still fresh. I have but one regret, and that is not dancing with Ms. Marvel, or at least telling her that her costume was amazing. It really was.

There was also some obligatory visiting of the Drum Circle room, which I believe is a tradition of Lynn's and Ainsley's, though it's not my cup of tea, and then we caught the end of a concert by The Protomen.

This is where things got bad. During their final number, one of the band members jumped from the stage. I think he was intending to crowd dive, but he jumped where there was no one standing, right over the heads of Ainsley and Bob, and he landed badly. Very badly, like, he didn't get up.

At first, I thought he might be doing it on purpose and faking, since who would intentionally land head first on the ground? But a few seconds passed, Ainsley knelt down by him to check on him, and pretty soon she was getting a security guard.

It was disturbing as heck, I honestly thought he could be dead, his body was just limp and splayed out, but Ainsley said he was at least responding to her saying, "Don't get up, don't move, help is on the way." And before that, he was trying to get up, so that makes me believe he didn't injure his neck or spine too badly.

We didn't see the EMTs take him away (though we did see them wheel in a stretcher), and I can't find any news on the Internet, but I hope he's OK. If anyone knows of anything, please let me know.

It's strange, going from having a good time to being awed and silenced by the fragility of human life, but that was basically how I ended my first night at the con.