Adventures in Atlanta
Posted by: Bill Cable 09.13.06 12:01am
Hello fans! As you know, I went to Dragon*con a couple weeks ago. It was a fantastic time, and I took tons of photos. I'm trying to figure out an interesting way to present the photos along with a little wrap-up of what happened. I guess I'll try to stay with the funny and interesting stuff, and skip the minutiae.

Andy picked me up at around 8am (30 minutes later than scheduled, which had me panicking) at my house in his green and yellow Cobra (from G.I. Joe) full-sized van. The van was packed with display racks and tables in the back from his most recent toy show, had well over 100,000 miles, and it didn't wear its wear well. But we made it to the airport on time, where we were treated to a booth by our gate where a woman was trying to sign people up for Air Tran credit cards by giving away one-way flights.

Oh wait... I was supposed to skip the minutiae, wasn't I?

So we got to Atlanta. After a little while, I got a call from one Tom Derby, who had three tickets to that night's final preseason Atlanta Falcons game. He wanted to know if I could hold them for Oscar. I was game, so he drove all the way down and back to drop them off. Very nice of him. Oscar called and invited me to join him at the game. (I know... I know... minutiae... but I'm getting to the funny part). So I'm like "Sure!" The game was in a couple hours, so I hung out. Half an hour before the game, they hadn't arrive. Kick-off, they hadn't arrived. I kept receiving text messages like "40 miles to Atlanta" and "Almost there." At half-time they got to the hotel, and we took off. Thankfully it was a short subway ride to the stadium, so we got there early in the third quarter. Then we had to find our seats. That... was a chore. See, the signs pointing to seats were ridiculous. We were in the 200 level, and the first 200 level sign I saw pointed in the direction of an elevator. So we took it up. But it didn't stop at the 200 level... it went to the 300 level. The girl running the elevator said we'd have to turn right outside the elevator and walk down a flight of stairs. Those stairs took us back down to the 100 level. Long story short, we walked the entire way around the stadium, and up and down three different sets of ramps, before we got to our seats. It was the last minute of the third quarter. So we were able to watch one good quarter of the 5th-string back-ups playing football.

It was fun, though.

I should mention that I felt terrible. I don't know if it was jet lag or some bug or stress, but I was light-headed and had no energy. Every time I stood still it felt like I was going to fall over. I felt really bad... Tom took a bunch of Vintage guys to Hard Rock the next day for lunch, and I could barely finish half my burger. I was lucky to keep it down, too. The only time I felt better was with a couple beers in me... something I luckily had a lot of opportunities for.

After lunch we decided to stop by a couple of the dealer rooms, which lead to my first photo opportunities. In the lobby of Marriott there were some people dressed and posing.

I went to lay down for a while and check the schedule. Then Chris G called me about going to see Anthony Daniels. As bad as I felt, I figured I should probably do it sooner rather than later just in case he wasn't around. When I got to the autograph area, Mr. Daniels had a visitor...

While I was waiting in line for my chance at an autograph, across the aisle there was a little brouhaha. These two guys were in each other's faces, inches apart, screaming. It was crazy stuff. You'd think for $20 an autograph the guys could stay well-behaved...

Then came the fateful moment I described last week. I had Mr. Daniels sign an unused Episode I C-3PO figure cardback. I thought it'd be something interesting he hadn't seen before. The thing is, I wanted him to sign in the big, white area where the figure wasn't. I was sort of caught up talking to him, and didn't notice until too late that he started signing it up in the corner, where you'd sign a regular carded figure. I had this nice, big area for a nice big autograph, and he signed a tiny little signature in the corner. Ah well... other than that the experience was absolutely perfect. So I probably shouldn't nitpick.

I felt surprisingly good for a long time after meeting 3PO. I didn't feel like crap for most of the rest of the evening. So I was up for a jaunt through the exhibitors room. We found some Vintage carded stuff, which was cool. But the real find of the weekend was made by Baldy. Yes, Baldy of our staff. Apparently he's had his eye on this doll for a while now, and he finally decided to pull the trigger.

I'm not certain, but I think the figure came with a Village People CD.

Walked around some more, and took some more costume photos...

Funny story about Mayor McCheese. That was a fully restored vintage costume. Very nice stuff. But I had a bad encounter with the burger. Mayor McCheese felt me up. See, after I took my photo, I started walking. And he started walking. And we bumped into each other. And he grabbed a handful... of me. Hundreds of women in skin-tight corsets, and I end up bumping into a 7-foot-tall beefcake. It was the only action I got all weekend.

At night, the more interesting costumes started to come out. I didn't take many photos the second night because I was still not feeling great, and was mostly doing what I could to feel better. 12 ounces at a time. But here's a few good ones.

And here's a few more from the next morning...

The first big event Saturday was the Slave Leia photo shoot. They had this big model Jabba in one hallway, and had all the girls stand around it. There were so many that you can't even see the model!

I missed the best shot of that event. After they were posing, one of the most attractive Slave Leias wanted to thank one female photographer who took a bunch of shots for them. So they both sat on the floor about 10 feet in front of me and tongue kissed for about 3 minutes. Roaming hands. Man, it was hot. And the photographer was really hot, too. I was just too stunned to pull out my camera. But there were lots of other guys shooting photos. Hopefully they'll show up on Leia's Metal Bikini shortly.

We sat there for like an hour ogling Slave Leias. I took the opportunity to snap a few other people who walked by.

The next event was the Star Wars costume show. That was good fun. Not good for photography, so I took the one good shot I could in the dark...

The costumes were real nice, but here's a tip for next year: If you want to win, DON'T dress as Padme. There were like 30 girls dressed as Padme, so they were all lumped in the same category. Meanwhile there was one girl dressed in an Original Trilogy costume, so she won. So if you want to win, enter one of the odd-ball categories.

After all the costumes were were treated to the musical talents of one Luke Ski. I use the term "musical talents" loosely. The first song he did was moderately entertaining... he stood there with a bunch of pieces of paper that he dropped in sequence with some music. It was funny. But each successive tune was more and more grating. YODA sung to the tune of YMCA. A girl singing "Vader Boy" to Sk8er Boi. Part of the time it was lip synching, part of the time he was really singing. And he kept asking the judges "Do you want me to do another?" They weren't done, so he went ahead and did another. He did the Episode V song. He did the Episode II song. He asked the judges one more time, at which point Shane from our group yelled out "JUDGE FASTER!!!" And the entire auditorium laughed. The only thing more grating than Luke Ski was the one fan he had in the audience... a guy who held up a video camera and sung along to every song as he filmed. Creepy. Though he looked to be an older guy, so maybe he was Ski's dad. I hope he was his dad...

Next was the "Mr. Star Wars" contest. That was a lot of fun. Again, I didn't think to take photos. Except this one:

A guy named "Hothie" won, and deservedly so. He was very witty. I had the chance to play the role of C-3PO in one of the little "Who's line is it anyway" style competitions they had. I was honored. If you see photos of me lying on the floor, that was me as C-3PO, shot on Bespin. And a couple pieces of advice to the guys who enter next year's contest: Don't call one of the female judges the Death Star. Even a drop-dead gorgeous Marine is going to take it as an insult about her weight. And don't make jokes about making Jedi cry like molested schoolgirls. Pedophilia... not something you really want to joke about in a pageant.

After dinner we had our first Vintage room sale of the weekend. For some reason Will Grief decided to bring all his stuff into my room. You may know Will as the guy selling his POTF coins for ridiculous profits. He brought like two dozen ESB MOC Leia Bespins and a couple boxes of Japanese stuff. Among the Japanese stuff was a really cool inflatable beach ball. It featured the funniest drawing of C-3PO I've seen in a while...

From meeting C-3PO to being C-3PO to discovering a new side of C-3PO... yeah, I think that's a good spot to wrap up for now. It's not like anybody has read this far down the page anyway. So tune in next week for the rest of my Dragon*con write up!