Dragon Con 2009

Me and my buddy Pat attended Dragon Con in Atlanta back in September over Labor Day weekend. Even though I live only a little over 2 hours away from Atlanta, I had never been to Dragon Con before. And it's been going on for over 25 years now. So with Pat leaving for Chicago by the end of the year, this was a golden opportunity to go and we were going to jump on it. Pat is a fellow comic book and movie enthusiast like me. And Dragon Con is the type of event you wanna go with someone who shares the same tastes in things. Well we had a blast. Dragon Con was awesome. This event is so huge it is spread out across four hotels: The Hyatt, The Hilton, Marriott, and Sheraton. We got there about 8:30 on Saturday and it was a little rainy, but that cleared up within the hour. We saw tons of people, I think they said the total number for the entire convention was over 25,000 people. There were lots of people dressed in costume. I swear we saw over 100 Ghost busters. Let me put it this way, if Atlanta became over run with ghosts that day, we would have been ok.

Saw several people dressed as super heroes ranging from Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman,and Supergirl. We saw Imperial Stormtroopers, Klingons, Predators, Dark Sith Lords, Colonial Marines, World of Warcraft, Federation officers, and so on. There was this lady with a great costume of Ms. Marvel, and another one of Uhura. Sadly, I wasn't able to get pictures of them, but I did get several other shots. At the Hall of Fame, where the celebrities were signing autographs and taking pictures, we met a lot of actors and actresses. The big guns of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy held a Q&A on Friday night so we missed them. And Patrick Stewart held a discussion session the day we were there but it was completely filled. Anyway we met and chatted with Alan Ruck (Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off)and he was cool as shit. I shook his hand and he said "Jesus man, that's some grip you got there. I thought you were gonna break it".

We also talked with Felicia Day of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog and The Guild. She was nice. Pat ended up getting a pic with her. I got pics with Karen Allen (Marion from Indiana Jones) and she was really nice. I also got a pic with the original Supergirl, Helen Slater. We ran into Lou Ferrigno, and it was funny because we also had the scene from I Love you Man, where Paul Rudd and Jason Segel run into Lou and Jason flips out on him. Well we didn't flip out but we were kinda vocal about how much he wanted to charge to have his pic taken. Most of the celebrities there were charging like $10 bucks, but Lou wanted $30. We were like damn Lou.

But anyway, we also saw John Schneider and Catherine Back from Dukes of Hazzard; the original Buffy - Kristy Swanson; James Marsters (Spike from the Buffy TV show); Malcolm McDowell; Traci Lords; Anthony Daniels (C-3PO); Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) and lots more. We stayed until about 6 and enjoyed every minute of it. I know everyone raves about Comic Con in San Diego because of the Hollywood presence, but I believe Dragon Con is right up there with it. If you get a chance, check it out. It happens every year in Atlanta, usually the first week of September.