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LOAF gets a special hole in his flight suit for the tail he's about to wear in the Wing Commander parade.
LOAF: Hoo-boy, I wish this were the other way around.
Everyone is tired, but underneath it all we're excited about the upcoming parade. But first, we have to wait for the elevators.
Cobra and other groups getting ready for the parade.
Frosty: Everyone was worried it would rain. I'll let you in on a little secret. It was my positive vibes that saved the day from everyone else's negativity. LOOK AT THAT SUNSHINE.
LOAF: We went forward in time to Dragon*Con 2023 - to our shock, Cobra had
won!
Two costumed dorks duel it out.
LOAF: Yeah, I'm a Dark Jedi Boba Fett... I command a Galaxy-class starship for
the Rebel Alliance.
Because of the terrible elevator situation, Hades and I slipped into an elevator before the main Wing Commander group. We raced down early to make sure our spot was secure. This is the main group finally arriving.
Tye: We got a little lost on the way over there, but eventually we fell in with a bunch of Stormtroopers.
LOAF: I wonder what the tourist guy is pointing to. It can't possibly be more
unusual than a squad of stormtroopers crossing the street.
The squadron arrives to unfurl the CIC's banner.
LOAF: HOW DARE YOU WAVE THE FLAG OF A WING COMMANDER WEBSITE THAT DROPS BOMBS
ON HOSPITALS?
Refreshments were served for parade marchers.
LOAF: They had some sort of a glowing neon lemonade. I'm not sure what was in
it, but my urine glowed for a week.
Everybody get ready for a group picture!
LOAF: Each year we'll get a giant banner of another part of the site.
Eventually we'll put together a giant mylar CIC.
When you hand your camera to someone else, you risk them taking an off-center dorky photo.
LOAF: They probably just thought the Wing Commander Fans and the Large Women
in Long Skirts were part of the same group.
Over 400 people participated in the parade. There was a lot of waiting for everyone to be assigned a slot.
Tye: We actually missed them telling us our slot entirely, but we weren't the only ones.
LOAF: Slot, eh? I'll bet there's some sort of ISA joke here... and I'm just
the guy to make it.
LOAF suits up in a tiger mask and Hobbes' authentic helmet.
Tye: As we wandered about along the route and such, I overheard a number of people recognizing good old Hobbes. It was incredibly cool.
LOAF: I even got the hands right (Wing Commander 2, yo.)
LOAF: Good morning, and welcome to the black sea.
LOAF: Wait, why is Monee wearing goggles, anyway?
Tye dances a jig!
Tye: I think it was actually a halfassed strip-tease. It was hot out there waiting.
LOAF: I was wearing a rubber mask with another rubber mask over it.
In this shot and the next Blonde demonstrates the casual dressed-down flight suit mode.
There were a bunch of Ghost Busters in the parade.
LOAF: If they're the Ghost Busters, where's their huge crime-solving monkey?
Insert Urine Test Joke here.
LOAF: How ironic that someone who likes clear liquids and someone who likes
bright yellow liquids could find love.
Posing with the rolled banner.
ChrisReid: Damn, I love our suits.
LOAF: Hive of scum and villany.
LOAF: It's funny because I'm looking at some girls ass. I hope it's a girl.
Inu Yasha freaks.
Frosty: SIT!
LOAF: Thanks for making portions of Adult Swim unbearable, jerks.
Cobra Command
LOAF: Cobra? The Ghost Busters? Guy with Suspenders? The eighties are stacked
against us, my friends.
The lady in the hat is setting the event up.
Tye: The whole event could have been better handled, but in the end it was a success.
ChrisReid: This lady is super nice, and she's a Wing Commander fan!
These guys were really freaked out about something.
LOAF: Probably the fact that she's wearing her shirt upside down.
LOAF: Death signals us to turn off the camera. Frosty's body was never
recovered.
LOAF dons the Hobbes helmet.
Frosty: And begins to slowly die from a heatstroke/asphyxiation cocktail
LOAF: Gemini 9 has nothing on me.
Frosty: That hearse sounded badass.
LOAF: According to Hodgkin's Law of Planetary Development, Klingons have every
right to ride around on top of cars.
This year there were floats.
Tye: These people are one of the larger sponsors each year. They wander around in some of the most badassed costumes.
LOAF: Don't tell Chris about the floats.
LOAF: Fountains like that are why my people built a space station in orbit of
Atlanta.
Frosty: I wonder who I'm insulting.
LOAF: I think you're just crying.
Frosty: Mighty clever, indeed!
LOAF: There's only one man suav-re enough to come up with a hilarious joke
like that.
LOAF: So... you like Babylon 5?
LOAF: THING RING DO YOUR THING!
Frosty: The Klingons had a Torino warbird or something. It was neat. Other con-goers were better armed than some third-world nations.
Tye: We've finally gotten in line, and are getting ready to march.
LOAF: It's very, very hard to see out of a cat mask in a helmet... so I had to
hold Silas' arm.
The Colonial Marines.
Frosty: These guys were attention whores :(
LOAF: Anybody ever confuse you with a man, Frosty?
ChrisReid: Yeah, it would be cool to have some sort of armor in the costumes.
LOAF: I'll bet these are Harry Potters... or... Lord of the Ringses... or...
something.
LOAF: The Colonial Marines even had an awesome banner? Dammit.
Tye: In an attempt to gain some of the love that the Colonial Marine Attenion Whore Shock Troops behind us were getting, I tried shouting a few things like 'long live the Confederation.' Here's a tip for you. Don't do that in downtown Atlanta.
LOAF: Atlanta's elite corps of police cops rides Segways.
LOAF: ROAWRGH.
Frosty: Level3. I paid a hobo five bucks to tell me that celebrities hang out there sometimes.
LOAF: Famous celebrities?!
LOAF: Artsy 'up the nose' shot.
LOAF: SHOP SMART, SHOP AMERICAS-MART.
LOAF: I like how my Kzinrathi mask is perpetually frozen in 'scream and leap'
mode.
LOAF: This shot reminds me of the opening to Starship Troopers. Unfortunately,
he doesn't get gored.
We're super happy during the parade.
Tye: It wasn't a long walk, but it was hard to go slow. Several of us are long legged, so we got bunched up with the dudes in front of us repeatedly.
LOAF: You can tell Tye and Death are Confed's finest: they're the two who
actually got helmets.
LOAF: I had to take the helmet off because it completely sealed me off from
precious oxygen. Unfortunately, the illusion was ruined by the back of
my neck.
After the parade.
LOAF: Yeah? Well once I was in a parade *this* long!.
Some place was donating water bottles to the marchers.
Tye: The Coffee Shop of Horrors was giving out the free water bottles. Nice of them.
The fine folks from cosplay.com
Frosty: Cosplay.com, where nothing may be centered properly. Ever.
LOAF: I don't think I'll ever look at the Powerpuff girls the same way again,
or at all.
LOAF: That's Chris, baby.
LOAF: Talkin' bout Chris *Reid*
LOAF: Ahhhh! Chris!
LOAF: Death alone remains ready for action.
Decompressing in the ready room.
Tye: We were all pretty thoroughly baked after it all. The humidity can be lethal.
LOAF: Hey, it's like the gypsy said - you will make a beautiful corpse.
Tom Wilson signs our poster!
Tye: Tom was great, he was very clearly happy to have people know he was in anything other than Back to the Future.
LOAF: He was selling Future Biff Hats.
LOAF: These boots were made for tie-ing, and that's just what I'll do.
Lunchtime hoes in the Peachtree Center.
Frosty: The law also applies to Princess Leia. BABY JEDI, WOOO!!
Tye: The plans for the metal bikini should never, ever have made it to the public.
LOAF: Leia? I just met'a! But okay.
Took us a long time to find eachother.
Frosty: Hey, I almost don't hate how I look in this photo. MMM YUM.
Tye: All of a person's apprehension about how odd the people in costume are vanishes entirely the first time you see Klingons eating in the food court.
Frosty: I can't be 100% sure that's not a dude.
Waiting for something.
LOAF: Hello. I am Frosty and this is my convention.
Lady Predator.
LOAF: Lady Predator vs Ladylien would be a far better film.
Frosty: A couple random skanks and some weird hentai-y version of Snow White. If you have boobs and no self-respect then you are on the photo page of every D*C site ever.
LOAF: OBVIOUS JOKE HERE.
The rock fan club's table.
LOAF: I'll bet there's some sort of sinister motive behind selling rocks. Like
that game that took over the Enterprise once.
The hours for the dealer rooms this year.
Frosty: Mmm... sweet, sweet dealer rooms.
Down into the depths of the dealer room.
We were going to put some things on the freebie table, but it was a mess.
Dealer Room 1.
Tye: I bet that one was a helluva lot easier to paint than the little 2 inch tall ones I used to work with.
One of many anime booths.
Frosty: These folks remembered Hades from last year. And one of them got into an argument with me over whether Cowboy Bebop was good. And Hades, who hasn't seen Cowboy Bebop, ganged up on me with them. Hades will die.
LOAF: The cool contest is on. Death vs. Chris.
LOAF: ADVANTAGE REID.
LOAF: The light! It burns!
Retards.
Frosty: Reminds me of Icebreakers or whatever that rad 3DO triangle game was. OH WAIT, NONE OF YOU EVER BOUGHT A 3DO. DIEDIEDIE.
LOAF: None of us? NONE OF US? I've bought more 3DOs than you've ever run away
from, son.
LOAF: So two Klingons walk into a gift shop...
Some tie fighter pilots wait for the elevator.
Frosty: We could take 'em.
LOAF: As we did sales-wise in 1994! Wingnuts represent.
Frosty: Chibi Stormtrooper BAD.
LOAF: You know what anime shouldn't be combined with? Anything. But especially
leaving the house.
The flaming carrot!
LOAF: That's not a nice thing to say about Monee... oh.
This begins the Star Wars Costume Contest.
Tye: Some of the costumes are great, and some of them really, really suck. You just have to expect it at these things.
LOAF: What is that... Wedding Princess Leia? Feh.
LOAF: You fools! I'll bet he was hiding the One Ring in that box!
LOAF: Boba Fett?! Where?! Oh. I don't think I'll ever get tired of that.
LOAF: That's a pretty good drawing of TC, but it's missing the t-shirt slogan
and the elf-shoes.
LOAF: The extra-long helmet protects them from snow! (But not lasers.)
Frosty: DragonCon is such an ego booster.
LOAF: We're so mean.
LOAF: That girl is blond-er than blonde.
Tye: The number of people with the fake Klingon forehead but otherwise awesome costume is tragically high.
LOAF: Eh, I watched a Voyager yesterday where Torres' forhead looked fake for
the whole episode. The inherent fakeness of Klingon foreheads is a
problem that we as a generation must consciously ignore. Like Iraq.
LOAF: Hey, look, it's Bounty Hunter Aura Sing! George Lucas cleverly placed
her briefly in Episode One as a prelude to her tragic importance to the
greater Star Wars universe. Or to sell another action figure.
LOAF: Yeah, I'm a girl Jedi who's covered in metal tubes. I fight crime.
Tye: This version of Maul is covered in carpet samples.
LOAF: That's from the Expanded Universe fiction, Darth Maul Chooses a Rug.
Frosty: BMF, yo, BMF!
LOAF: Hah-hah, purple.
Frosty: Mostly naked = teh win!
LOAF: I'd like to Han her Solo.
Tye: Awww, no pictures of the fat A-Wing pilot? No way they could have fitted that sonuvabitch in an A-Wing.
LOAF: Like the A-Wing even makes sense to begin with. I grew up being taught
by trading cards and RPGs that the A-Wing was built after the first
movie... but then Rebel Assault had them attacking the first death
star. Which is it, Star Wars?
LOAF: Fiendish foes beware!
LOAF: If I were wearing a shoe on one foot and a boot on the other, I would
describe these anime soundtracks as being most like the leg which
doesn't have the shoe.
LOAF: In my experience any corporation that claims to be looney, crazy or zany
very rarely actually is.
LOAF: I... don't... like ROBOTS WITH FEET!
LOAF: Frosty and Hades together.
LOAF: Frosty alone. How ironic that the British guy is secretly Captain
America.
LOAF: OH YEAH? WELL MY MAGMA SQUID ATTACKS YOUR LAVA TANK!
We found a little girl.
Frosty: And ate her.
ChrisReid: Haha, just kidding. We just stuffed her in the box and ran away.
LOAF: Hello, little girl. Want to come learn about Mopoks?
LOAF: The antimatter universe ^Death_ has that dragon. Except his name is
_Life^. Sometimes he goes on IRC as _Somebhody^
Adult comics.
Frosty: Byydo to isle three, paging Byydo...
LOAF: Are we talking adult language, adult themes, what?
The airbrush t-shirt guy.
LOAF: I want another airbrushed shirt, but I have no idea what should be on
it.
LOAF: Spiderman!
X-Men
LOAF: Spiderman!
LOAF: Doing whatever a spider can!
LOAF: Spins a web, any size!
LOAF: Catches thieves, just like flies!
Tye: And sometimes the costumes are actually good!
LOAF: Look out, here comes the Spiderman!
The armor was fairly cool.
LOAF: Who likes armor hot dogs?
LOAF: Are those cat ears or horns? Eh, it doesn't matter.
Out to dinner.
LOAF: We were all awarded purple ribbons for extreme heroism.
LOAF: Am I... eating a plastic bag? If so, why?
LOAF: This restaurant is what the future was like to people in the eighties.
LOAF: Profiles in courage: Hades and LOAF.
LOAF: Your crackers are perilously close to the edge!
LOAF's happy food.
LOAF: I don't consider the parts you take off of a burger to be food.
Frosty: Ketchup always gets so icky.
LOAF: Frosty gets lucky.
LOAF: ... but I don't see any sand people. Oh, wait, duh.
Alternatively: A sand people and a storm trooper together? I wonder what
their tracks look like.
LOAF: And it wouldn't be half as nice if they hadn't let us burn it down a
while back!
There were fireworks for some reason.
LOAF: Thank you...? I think.
A valeted car.
Frosty: Dude left his Ferrari there for a couple days.
At night you go visit everyone dressed up in the lobbies.
Frosty: Best costume all night.
LOAF: I rewned 'Battlestar Galactica'.
Frosty: Yay!
LOAF: It's that big square dog thing that LeHah likes. I think.
LOAF: How long a time did you say?
LOAF: Oh, it catches ghosts? And that's all it does? Mine records video, too.
LOAF: Enemy Mine ate The Punisher.
Frosty: If the majority of your outfit is wax paper and masking tape, Wingnuts will stalk you.
LOAF: Where did ace get an all-black baseball hat?
We stalked this girl and her friend.
LOAF: Stalked is such an ugly word for such a beautiful act.
LOAF: Hey, floor people!
Tye: Uhm... who the hell are these people?
LOAF: Hey, LOAF!
Frosty: I forgot Tom Wilson's name! On video!
LOAF: Tom Wilson's name is 'Biff'.
Frosty: Blonde is preparing to bolt.
Tye: And Frosty is trying to hide a raging erection.
LOAF: I was once kicked out of a science museum for standing like that on an
escalator.
LOAF: You got girls in my sci fi convention!
Tye: Every year there's a costume contest for some redheaded chick named Dawn. And every year there are dozens of Dawns that need a damn thigh-master.
LOAF: I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating double bacon cheeseburgers...
which she would clearly be doing.
Tye: Unfortunately, Harvey didn't have any legal advice for getting EA to make Wing Commander games again.
LOAF: IANAL, but I reccomend fire - and lots of it.
Frosty: Harvey knowed who we was.
A nice view from one level up.
Tye: Now imagine that sort of crowd spanning two hotels and the streets in-between. That's DragonCon.
We really freaked the hell out of this girl.
Frosty: Totally not my fault.
LOAF: Hullo missus. My names is Frosty and I thinks you haves beauuuutiful
hair.
And we finally caught up with her.
And then her boyfriend came to investigate.
Frosty: What a fag0rt.
LOAF: Sorry, Frosty - to please a woman like that you've got to be a giant
silver dick.
And we met up with Alex..
Frosty: Ooops.
LOAF: So, what, did the Empire invent a special kind of storm trooper just for
Endor?
We decided to update with ace.
Frosty: Zooming in on ace's eyeball is ARTISTIC.
LOAF: In Soviet Russia the Micro Dynamics Advance *you*!
LOAF: Oh, no! Don't let people see Newsie!
Tye: Here Frosty is showing ace the live action gay tentacle porn he picked up in the dealer room.
LOAF: So what does AMD stand for, anyway?
LOAF: The closet?! I know a much better place to hang things in hotel rooms.
LOAF: In Japan, a sideways digital photograph of a closet is considered a
hotel room. They call this concept 'kiyushu'.
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