And I mean few. Stuff happened over the weekend that overshadowed the con for me, so I got to do relatively little compared to other cons. In addition, the one celeb panel I went to, I ran out of memory and wasn’t able to record the whole thing. I’ll post what I managed to get to YouTube (link eventually to your right), but last time I checked someone had already posted the entire panel anyway, so I’ll just drop in some highlights.
Warning: cussing below. If you’re sensitive, now’s the time to leave.
After the relatively sane organization of Philly Comic Con, FandomFest was a clusterfuck. A big part of the problem was that the venue, the Galt House, consisted of meeting rooms in each of two towers. The program listed what room the presentation would be in–but did not list whether the room was in the Suite Tower or the Rivue Tower. To find that out, I had to flip through the back of the schedule and look at schematics of each floor of the hotel (six in all) to find out where the room was. If I hadn’t printed out a hard copy of my own, I would have had no idea what was going on. If Gareth Lloyd hadn’t posted a link to the schedule on his Facebook page, I wouldn’t have even known there was a schedule. By Sunday afternoon I finally saw someone walking around with an actual program, but that was the first and only time all weekend I saw one.
After standing in line to register (and it took a while to figure out what line), I had to get back in line to buy tickets for photo ops and autographs since the online order page had been shut down before I knew I was going to go to the program. I heard from people that there was actually a date posted for when the page would be shut down, but my guess is that it was on the Fright Night page and not the FandomFest page, since I didn’t know there were two separate pages until right before the con.
I managed to get through the lines by about 7:30 and ran off to find the room of a program I wanted to attend–only to find it was empty. Several of the rooms where there were programs scheduled were empty, despite the fact that the programs were scheduled to run 1-1 1/2 hours. I thought I’d at least catch the tail end of the talk, but no. If this were a business convention, and I was supposed to be there for an hour and a half to give a talk and do a meet-and-greet, and I took off early, I would catch holy hell. I was not happy.
I took a quick turn through the vendor areas, and was pleased to see that there was actually some merchandise I was interested in. I noticed that a lot of the celebrities (who were supposed to be there until 9 p.m. on Friday) were not there; either they too had packed up and left early or they hadn’t bothered to come down at all.
So Friday night was a great disappointment. The one good thing was that I did get registered, because as fucked up as it was on Friday, Saturday looked like Armageddon. Saturday was the day that Bruce Campbell was there, and, well, you can imagine what it was like.
Photo ops were equally chaotic on Saturday. The people at the door were giving contradictory information, so the fans had to take it upon themselves to be aggressive in getting information and passing it along to others. The plus side: the photos were some of the best I’ve ever gotten. Everything was done with a ticket, and you had to surrender your ticket to get your photo. All the photos were kept private in a filing folder, which meant they were not tossed on a table somewhere where someone else could see them or knock them to the floor and stomp on them. The prices were also reasonable, and included a JPEG. The bad: supposedly they were to give you a slip to tell you where to go to download the JPEG, but no one ever did. That meant an email to the organizers, which first was rejected as undeliverable, and then went through–and hasn’t been answered yet. So there’s the possibility that I may never get the JPEGs that were included in the fee (can anyone blame me for having Torchsong flashbacks here?).
I also bought some autographs. These were the same price as those at Comic Con, which I thought was pretty steep for this venue. The photos were running $10-20 cheaper than photos at Comic Con, so I expected that the autographs would be less expensive too. I waited until Sunday to do the autographs. I had managed to track down the people I wanted to sign–and they weren’t there. I wandered around a bit and came back–to find that they had moved them into a different room without bothering to put up a sign telling us that they were moving.
Yes, that’s right. The celebrities were scattered across three different rooms, and except for the Buffy and Boondock celebs, there wasn’t clear signage. Again, I had to be aggressive and go up and pester organizers to get the information I needed.
The good thing about the autographs was that once I found the celebrities, I got to chat with them a bit, which was nice. At Comic Con they rush you through so fast you barely have time to say hello. I had taken my copy of Blue Gillespie’s Seven Rages of Man in the hopes that Gareth would be willing to sign it, and since things were quiet we actually got to take a few minutes to chat about the album and what’s going to happen to the band now that Clark has quit (yes, Rhys really is playing both parts; no, they aren’t hiring a new guitarist; Rhys will play that part live; if they do hire someone, it will be to play bass for live gigs only. Gareth emphasized that creatively Blue Gillespie will always be him and Rhys and Nick). Gareth said there is a new backdrop that g has been working on for the gigs, and they’re going to premier it at the upcoming concert. He also chewed my ass off about American fans not doing more to get the band over here to the US, specifically to Austin for Comic Con in October, so fellow Blue Gillespie fans, I pass the ass-chewing on to you–go email (politely) Wizard World and let them know that you want the band to come to the States this fall.
It should be no surprise after reading the above (and kudos to you if you made it this far), then, that the only celebrity panel I got to attend was the one with Gareth and Peter Davison and Colin Ferguson from Eureka. I haven’t watched Eureka on a regular basis, but I have to confess I now have a huge crush on the man. It was Confess Your Inner Geek day at the con, and Colin admitted that he was horribly shy and didn’t get comfortable speaking in school until he was in his twenties. Peter was more into sci fi books rather than media and said he liked H.G. Wells when he was growing up (Warehouse 13 giggles anyone?). Gareth confessed that when he was a boy he had all the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes on VHS and had taken one of his school notebooks and numbered and catalogued each episode so that he could find them. Not only that, he wrote brief synopses of each episode and then he wrapped the notebook in aluminum foil so it would look futuristic. So since we’re in the nerd confessional here, I’ll confess that I too had recorded nearly all the STTNG episodes (as well as Classic Trek), but I will concede the point to Lloyd coz I did not get creative with tin foil. Kindred geek souls, unite.
Peter Davison was just, Peter Davison. I mean, what else is there to say? I got the to see the Doctor, my Doctor, the one I remember best from the Classic series, and he was just as cool and classy as I imagined he would be. *swoon* And to make it better–he did a voiceover in Sherlock. Yes, Sherlock. His was the voice doing the astronomical lecture while the mayhem was ensuing in the planetarium in the first series. I need to pay closer attention to my shows, don’t I? How could I have missed that? (oh, right. Cumberbatch).
Yes, there were Jello shots, and I thought at one point I was going to get lobbed one from the stage, but alas, I didn’t. It was a fun panel, but the only real “news” I got from it was that Gareth has a four-episode arc on Holby City (which he described as something akin to ER) coming up this summer, so that is good news. There needs to be more Lloyd on tv.
I know a lot of this has been bitching, but I do want to end making the point that with better organization, this could be a really fun convention. The fact that there are three tracks–literary, film, and celebrity–means that there’s a lot you can potentially do at a con like this one. I loved the Galt House, and I was so happy that there were several restaurants on premises, a 24 hour deli, and a gorgeous lounge where you could hang out and catch your breath. There were many, many areas where folks could sit down (in actual chairs, not the floor–other con organizers, do you hear?) and chat or check your messages or just hang out and people watch. The fact that the hotel was downtown and that there was a Starbucks within walking distance just made things even better. And I had a gorgeous view of the Ohio outside my room, along with the Belle of Louisville casino boat. I could have done without the pipe organ playing Here Comes the Bride and God Bless America at wildly inappropriate moments, but it was still fun.
Oh, and I actually ran into Norman Reedus at the elevators. I was this close to him as he was signing autographs for some fans. Jealous, girls and guys? Not my type, but up close, I get why everyone swoons over him. But what can I say? My heart belongs to the Brits.
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