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| Convention Gallery - Friday, September 1, 2006 |
ChrisReid: Rob & Gary showed up early Friday morning. We were all up kind of late, so they hung out somewhere until we woke up to unpack. Gary has a Stargate costume.
LOAF: Shades is really changing the way we think about ICIS manuals.
ChrisReid: They were showing Wing Commander on TV!
LOAF: What a continuity error -- that Pilgrim map of the solar system has nine planets!
ChrisReid: And off we were to lunch. The convention doesn't really get going until a few hours into Friday to allow for all the morning arrivals.
LOAF: Why is there a strange circular light directly over Frosty's head? (Look closely)
ChrisReid: We went to visit Wing Commander fan and famous artist Gneech, but he wasn't quite set up yet.
LOAF: I always mean to go see The Gneech at D*C... and I always forget. The one time I remembered, it was too early.
ChrisReid: The dealer rooms opened around 11 AM. Or 1 PM. Something with 1 in it. This year they had three areas for dealers, so things weren't quite so crowded.
LOAF: And yet we bought less autographs from former Naomi Wildmen than ever.
ChrisReid: I'd never seen Exo Squad toys before. The cartoon these were based on was made by some of the same people who made Wing Commander Academy.
LOAF: Playmates actually considered doing Wing Commander Academy toys - they would have, if it had gone on for a second season. Notice how toyetic the ships were -- each side had one main 'small' ship and one main 'large' one (Scimitar/Dralthi and Broadsword/Grikath respectively). The more you know...
ChrisReid: Someone had a neat science fiction miniatures setup for pre-order. It looks like a scene from Starship Troopers, but it might have been unofficial.
LOAF: Nope, those are real. There's a very elaborate SST miniatures game -- you can get all kinds of cool things, like Skinnies and Neodogs.
ChrisReid: Frosty paid the 50 cents to see the strange thing in the booth. He said it was very strange, but he couldn't describe it to me.
LOAF: It was a mirror! BIZOW!
ChrisReid: I'm not sure who this is, but a billion Firefly fans were in line to see her.
LOAF: She played "Firefly" in the Serenity movie.
ChrisReid: I met George Takei! He was about the nicest person I ever got an autograph from.
LOAF: I met George Takei once, at the United States Department of Agriculture official Sulu meet-and-greet. It's amazing that I'm not making that up.
ChrisReid: LOAF bought some Star Trek ships.
LOAF: No, I didn't. While it was originally implied that I would buy those ships, Generations destroyed the Enterprise and made everyone sure the utopian dead-Troi future with a three-nacelled Enterprise was just a crazyed Q fantasy.
ChrisReid: Here's the stuff we all got autographed.
LOAF: Kevin J Anderson wrote "Happy Hunting" in both copies of Hunters of Dune. I wonder what he'll write next year for Sandworms of Dune ("I HOPE YOU DON'T GET WORMS - KJA", "BEST WISHES - SAND THEN SOME! - KJA").
ChrisReid: The ice in the cooler from Wednesday was starting to melt, so ace went to get more.
LOAF: The Coke corporation has to constantly invent new products to put in the lower left slot of that machine.
ChrisReid: I usually don't like mirror pictures, but this one shows how we unsogged the food in the cooler. Some of it got fairly soaked by the melting ice.
LOAF: You should have just reversed the image and pretended it was taken by the mirror universe Chris (who was busy re-sogging some food that got too dry in his bathroom -- don't ask how).
ChrisReid: In preparation for dinner, we went on an expedition to the lobby cafe for supplies.
LOAF: I'm surprised you didn't go-nuts for Krispy Kreme dough-nuts.
ChrisReid: Back up the turbo shaft with our loot.
LOAF: At treeloot.com, everyone's a winner*! * = bannana winner, restrictions apply.
ChrisReid: ace made the prototype sandwich that everyone copied.
LOAF: Stop talking about the Dash 80.
ChrisReid: I caught Frosty about to take a big bite out of Blonde's head.
LOAF: If that had been worst thing one of my sidekicks wanted to do to Blonde, the weekend would have gone pretty well.
ChrisReid: We were pretty happy with hour our first full meal turned out.
LOAF: Actually, not to harsh yalls mellows, but I had actually had meals before.
ChrisReid: And Frosty made a fresh batch of ice juice.
LOAF: ... and the Frosty cup dangles precipitously above a laptop. And above the cup: the official Crack Dot Com Abuse abuse-gun hangs, waiting for the slightest jostle to knock it down.
ChrisReid: In the early evening, we decided to head over to the Hyatt to see what was going on there. Sometimes this crossing had a crossing guard.
LOAF: The mirror universe version of me, who tucks his bright orange shirt in, is over there.
ChrisReid: The Hyatt had this nice sign.
LOAF: 'Avanzare' is the word in Secret Hotel Language that means disregard, sign not true.
ChrisReid: We ran into Aaron Allston downstairs near a life size Jabba the Hut. Unfortunately we left the giant stack of Claw Marks in the hotel and we didn't run into him again after this.
LOAF: I left the giant-er stack at Joe's house.
ChrisReid: There is a bathroom in the Hyatt basement that his this special germ killer by the exit. It has an important warning sign that explains most germs come from the door handles, and that you needed to use this sanitizer to protect youself. We only saw this at the men & women's bathroom in this one corner of this one building in Atlanta. It could be part of some antibacterial trial, except it's been there for years. Why do they maintain this one pair of units and not other bathrooms?
LOAF: It's designed for the needs of the Driver Human.
ChrisReid: We checked out the con suite upstairs. I guess it's a tradition for conventions to have dirty rooms full of awful free food, but I don't know why they bother.
LOAF: BECAUSE HALMAN NEEDS TO EAT.
ChrisReid: There were trays of Twinkies next to a pallet of moon pie sandwiches.
LOAF: BECAUSE HALMAN NEEDS TO EAT.
ChrisReid: I think Halman filled his pockets with moon pies, because he was eating them all night after this.
LOAF: BECAUSE HALMAN NEEDS TO EAT.
ChrisReid: Up on the second floor balcony, we got a good look at costumed people in the Hyatt lobby.
LOAF: BECAUSE... well, you get it.
ChrisReid: The crowd started off kind of light.
LOAF: They look pretty heavy to me!
ChrisReid: Here's a Silent Hill Pyramid Head.
LOAF: That's a Chig from Space: Above and Beyond.
ChrisReid: We saw Rob & Gary downstairs in their costumes.
LOAF: Stargate costumes look a lot like Wing Commander suits.
ChrisReid: Halman ran down with Hades to bug a Halo guy about hitting him on the head.
LOAF: He thought there might be a girl in the Halo robot outfit.
ChrisReid: An Indiana Jones setup.
LOAF: This was unrelated to the convention, there was an archaeology presentation going on in the Hilton.
ChrisReid: At one point during the evening some guy came out of his hotel room and started playing the bag pipes.
LOAF: Of all the souls I've met on my journeys... his was the most... human.
ChrisReid: The hotel maid staff stopped by to see everyone dressed up.
LOAF: These two pictures go together; the bagpipe guy is the pied piper of latina women.
ChrisReid: This is not that great of a BloodRayne costume.
LOAF: That's a great John Romero costume she's talking to, though.
ChrisReid: This is a much better BloodRayne.
LOAF: I don't know what a BloodRayne is, but I wouldn't mind having sex with it, if you can grasp such a complex double - nay triple - entendre.
ChrisReid: I guess Halman's about to get eaten by an alien.
LOAF: The technical terms are 'that jerk' and 'Xenomorph', respectively.
ChrisReid: And Silas is about to get eaten by a zombie.
LOAF: That's Grand Admiral Thrawn.
ChrisReid: Ande we're all about to eat various cakes.
LOAF: Per Haskins' Cleaning & Oil v. City of New Orleans, an eclair is not legally a kind of cake.
Continue to Day Two
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