Atlanta: The Annual Pilgrimage

We have completed our annual pilgrimage. We have circumambulated the Marriott Marquis lobby the proscribed seven times, and have run the circuit from the depths of the Hyatt gorge to the Hilton Grand Ballroom seven times in a single day. We have climbed the pillar of the glass elevators and stood in contemplation. We have broken our fast on General Tsao's chicken and declared it to be manna from heaven. We have witnessed the multitudes entering Nerd-vana and survived to share our tale.

After seemingly endless preparations and threatened derailing sidetracks, we embarked last Thursday around noon. Our first good omen came in Tampa, where a young TSA officer recognized Karen's DragonCon polo and asked if that's where we were going. She said she would be up on Sunday as she waved us through the checkpoint. We had encountered our first of the 30,000 faithful.

This year, travel was the smoothest it's ever been. We compressed everything into carry-on only both ways. There were no lines at check-in. On the flight up, the captain announced the controllers were hurrying him to Atlanta. Once there, we rolled straight to the gate, first time in history we haven't waited half an hour for ground traffic on the tarmac. In and out, we waited no more than a few minutes for a MARTA train. Coming home, we walked out of the terminal to find a shuttle to the economy lot rolling up, only one other individual waiting. No real traffic in Tampa coming or going. I don't thing we've had such consistent luck with travel on any other trip.

The hotel, on the other hand, was another matter entirely. We stayed in the Sheraton this year, the first it was an official host hotel for the convention, as it was the only room we could find. All the others had oversold their convention rate rooms, by a lot. It seems many people chose this as their weekend to stimulate the economy courtesy of George W's tax rebate. While the official attendance was pegged at 30k, as it has been for several years (for political reasons), the real peak number was probably closer to 50k. The room we had was adequate, if a little small. It had a fridge, a coffee maker and Dragon Con TV, three convention essentials. The neighbors were the problem. The walls were thin and the halls loud. Believe it or not, the convention goers weren't the problem, a family reunion was. The first three nights, the room next to ours was up late in loud conversation (for after midnight), just below the level of understanding but loud enough to be heard easily through the wall. One not it was a 1 a.m. conversation on a speaker phone. It was like being in a college dorm again. Saturday, we enacted our own 2 a.m. revenge, William H. Macy style from "The Cooler." That quieted them down just in time to leave the next day. The final night someone across the hall had a small, yappy dog. The hotel knew about it (even though they have a "no pet" policy) as I heard Housekeeping tell them a couple times there had been complaints. I think they were friends of the employees. I don't think we'll stay there again.

That was probably the low of our experience this year. Two in the morning concerts followed by 10 a.m. panels with time wind down, wake up, shower and eat begins to take it's toll on the best of days if you want to be able to think and follow what someone is trying to tell you. Papa Moogie gets cranky when he doesn't get his sleep. He forgot to take his blue pill. Or was it his red one?

The panels we attended were consistently better than they have been in previous years, though not quite so engaging and inspiring as last year. There were still a few disappointments, but I think I had better luck than Karen did. She hit a couple that frustrated her while I was in a long writing panel. We decided that the problem with art panels is they're run by artists, not the most organized of people on a sedate day. Over-stimulate them and they wander away form the panels they are supposed to be running to go see the parade, well, just because. Artists!

Twenty-two panels, six concerts and five days later, here are our 2008 DragonCon highlights and standouts.

In the Art track, we sat in on a couple good talks on photography, one on Photoshop techniques, another on the Myth of Photographic truth. The latter was the more inspiring as the speaker had an artist's view of the world, which was rich with perspective from well outside the box. One of the important social functions of artists, unconventional thinking. We sat in on a figure drawing demo by a professional illustrator with charcoals and pastels using a live model. He did four sketches, two five minute ones with charcoal, a fifteen minute on with more detail and final thirty-five sketch detailed in color. It was fascinating to watch him layer the colors one at a time, where initially you didn't know what he was after but in the end he had captured the model's skin tones and the radiant color to her hair. More so when we learned the was self-taught. Karen got to play around with some oil pastels. Despite her frustration with the flightiness of the instructor, she came away with a nice sketch. She got a picture of it in case it didn't complete the journey home intact, which it did. She also learned about binding her own books.

We attended three good talks in the Science track, two by the same speaker, a PhD in physical anthropology who teaches at Ohio State. The first considered the question of whether humans are still evolving, which we are though not perhaps in the ways we might expect. He discussed our evolving immune systems and alcohol processing capabilities, as well as the factors which drive them, both gene and allele changes over time as well as environmental and technological influences. His second talk discussed his research in Neanderthals. A very engaging speaker. The final science panel we attended was given by a physics PhD discussing the current state of research in quantum computers. Worthwhile if only for the reference to an article in Science this year, and the implications once their developed for any cryptographic encryption, oh, say, like our current electronic banking system. Cracking codes becomes so much easier when you solve for all possibilities simultaneously. No wonder the DoD is so interested in the field.

I ended up at a couple worthwhile writing panels. The first one was a double session seminar by a former small business consultant turned writer on goal, motivation and conflict adapted from a book she'd written. A clear, well-constructed discussion of technique with solid examples from well-known films. Another tool for my toolbox. Worth it if only because her new publishing company is looking for novel submissions right now. The second panel, the last we attended, was on developing secondary characters, which had some useful tips on dialogue, too.

In gaming, we got to talk to the current driving force behind Aftermath!, a survival simulation we've played since college, on of our staple games. He was demo-ing a new Survivor's Guide with all sorts of useful information in crisis scenarios similar to the ones used by the government for national security training. Fun to get his take on the rules and the direction in which he sees the game going.

Between times, we got to watch talks by actors from movies and series we'd watched being broadcast by the convention wither lived or tape delayed. Some were panels with lines of hundreds of people circling the interior of the Marriott waiting to get in. We got to listen to Avery Brooks (Sisko from Star Trek DS-9), Edward James Olmos (Admiral Adama from Battlestar Galactica) and Sean Astin (Sam in Lord of the Rings) in different panels. All are interesting, thoughtful individuals who were willing to share insights not only into their craft, but their backgrounds, cultures and the societal impacts they see from the fiction they portray.

Finally, the concerts. Here was a bit more disappointment. The drum circle had lost some of it's shine from previous years. We saw none of the more professional level dancers who had hung out there before after last year's disruptions. Thursday was the best day, as there were only a few dozen people there, all for the music not just a place to hang out and drink. They had some good rhythms going. It was fun to watch one of the more experienced drummers teaching a kid, maybe 10, there with his mom and sister, on a big, blue plastic bucket. We did repeats from previous years on the other bands, Abney Park (plugged in and acoustic), The Cruxshadows and Ego Likeness. The vocals was crushed in the concerts in the Hyatt, poor mixing I think. We know the rooms aren't designed with music in mind, but we have heard better in previous years. That didn't seem to matter on Saturday as we heard they shut the doors on the Cruxshadows concert after we got in. When we first saw them 5 years ago, the hall was less than half full. This year, the seats were ninety percent occupied plus the standing room press in front of the stage. There was a line (that we didn't stand in) snaking around the outside of the building as we approached. Maybe 2000 people. Abney Park's acoustic set in the concourse was great, with a couple hundred people packed in. Unfortunately, their music has taken a new turn in direction that neither of us is as fond of. Their new stuff has gone Steam Punk now, which has a kind of Victorian carousel feel to it. But they played enough old stuff to make it worth it. Ego Likeness performed in the Marriott, which had much better mixing though they were accompanied by creepy Extreme Asian independent films for visuals. Definitely a better show even for the smaller crowd and the slap-back echo from the far wall. Worth the late night.

For the first time, we didn't come home with much largess. The Dealer's room and Exhibition halls have stratified into either selling high end collectors merchandise and lower end trinkets or baubles. Part of that is driven by the price the convention charges merchants. We overheard one of the booksellers saying they had only just paid for the booth rental on Sunday morning, over halfway through. That didn't account for wages, transport, etc. We only came home with one new CD single each from the Cruxshadows and Ego Likeness, and two books, one a children's book written by the guitar player of Ego Likeness involving the moon and a coelacanth. Karen picked up some jewelry at the art show. Even there, there were some interesting individual pieces, but no artists that captivated us like last year.

But we did lay out the business cards Karen designed to point people to my writing, and the majority disappeared. We'll see if we note any increased traffic. And as an added bonus, I started and completed the first draft of a story on the trip from Tampa to Atlanta, one I hope to get out later in the week. Karen brought her old camera and took a number of pictures that I'm sure she'll post at least some of. So not a total wash.

All in all, a much needed getaway. Relaxing in that totally frenetic kind of way. Next year, we'll try to make our reservations early to get a prime spot. We start calling in October.

Until then, I leave you with the out of context snippets of conversations Karen wrote down as we wandered from hotel to hotel between panels.

"You seriously need to find some breasts." (a guy to one of the women in costume he was at the convention with. And who says geeks have no social skills)

"Why are all the pirate women dumpy and fat?" (in the concourse between hotels)

"Was that a guy or a lady?" "A lady." "...it could have been a guy...she was really tall." (Marriott lobby, about one of the two 6 foot 5 Amazon women BEFORE you account for their heels)

"If I see a Kzin I'm going to squeal." (on the steps outside after the Cruxshadows concert)

"Was that a mini-skirt or a mini-mini-skirt?" (in the Marriott lobby about a woman wearing an 8 inch ribbon of pink plaid around her hips with black stockings)

"Some women wear their tops so low. And people are on the level above them. Don't they know people can see all the way down?" (To Karen in one of the Art panels by a woman about her age at her first Dragon Con. And, yes, yes they do know!)

"The hallucinations haven't started but I waiting for them." (coming out of a science panel on 2 hours sleep over 4 days)

"I actually woke up in London." (waiting for a science panel to start)

"When I get back, I'm going to tear this (corset) off, rip off my jeans and crawl into the shower to wash off the sweat and dirt and blood." (a woman walking back from the Ego Likeness concert Sunday night to her hotel on the street at 3 a.m. )

© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III