So the Con hits the A this weekend and we’ve got you covered. We already have links to two interviews WMLB did with Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, as well as a couple of photo galleries from the scene yesterday and this morning.
Fore more updates as they happen head over to our Dragon*Con 09 tag page on our Culture Surfing blog.
(Photo by TL Pixley)
Jennifer & Neil, Chicago: We’re Helga and Olav from Stupendgarden. We’re a beer girl and beer boy. We’re really impressed with the ambassadors and the greeters. We’ve never seen that before. It was very welcoming. We went to McDonald’s in Buckhead and people were very accepting of our differences. Chicago has three comic book conventions, but because it’s so large and there’s so many other conventions, it’s too spread out. It doesn’t have that homey feel that it does here. You wouldn’t feel as welcom[ed] in Chicago as you do here, although we love Chicago. Go Cubs!
Raven & Treg, Cincinnati: We love it. You guys have an amazing bus system. It’s clean, efficient. Cincinnati has nothing like it. And no one yells at you on your buses. In Cincinnati, law enforcement wouldn’t cooperate. They tried to have the Botcon [Transformer] Convention there and it was horrible. When the world comes to an end, you’ll want to move to Cincinnati because everything there happens 10 years later. The bus here runs every 15 minutes. Awesome. With Cincinnati, half the time they don’t know what they’re doing. And your hospitals are awesome. We got in and out in less than two hours. The doctors were so efficient and so clean.
Sascha & Lance, Walnut Hill, Fla.: Atlanta is a pretty central location. It’s a major city but it still has that Southern hospitality. That makes it appealing to people coming from out of town. MARTA is wonderful — although it is a little uncomfortable when you get on in full costume. They do look at us like we’re crazy, but they’re nice. Though we did scare a little girl this morning. The transportation in Orlando is awful. This is the biggest convention in the South and we enjoy being in Atlanta so much.
(Photos by Jeff Slate)
Are you having trouble deciding whether to attend Easter sunrise services, or to learn new techniques for hog-tying and flogging your submissive? Well, we don’t mean to influence you in this difficult choice, but allow us simply to point out that Frolicon, Atlanta’s annual adult-oriented sci-fi convention, is going on this weekend.
Something like a Dragon*con for people who’d rather get busy with each other than discuss Buffy plotlines, Frolicon has an extensive “kink” programming track featuring hands-on seminars with such can’t-miss titles as Couples Genital Shaving, Erotic Waxing, Fat Can Be Sexy!, Bottoms Up, Watersports (don’t ask) and, somewhat tellingly, Health Insurance.
But the event isn’t all about pervy sex. There’s also the obligatory costume contest, a cocktail-mixing competition, the celebrated Frolicon Pants-off Dance-Off and a contest intriguingly called Most Spankable Ass.
Come to think of it, maybe the convention is all about sex. Anyway, it starts tonight. If you go, please report back with a prurient story so the rest of us can live vicariously through your exploits. Promise?
Tomorrow, it will be seven full years since my cover story about the then-impending trial of Dragon*Con founder Ed Kramer on charges of child molestation. At the time, it had been more than a year since Kramer’s August 2000 arrest. He’d already gone to jail, been granted house arrest, had his house arrest revoked, suffered a spine injury during a jailhouse riot and been placed once again under house arrest so he could receive treatment for a laundry list of medical conditions.
Ed Kramer last September
For most of the seven intervening years, Kramer has remained confined to his Gwinnett County home with an ankle bracelet. This past May, according to the AJC, a judge ruled that he could be allowed off electronic monitoring, so long as he check in with the DA’s office every day. That would explain why I saw him this past September at a Libertarian fundraiser in Sandy Springs, dressed head-to-toe in black and wheeling about on an electric scooter.
Why has it taken so long to get Kramer inside a court room? Well, many of the delays have been the result of actions taken by his own musical-chairs legal team. The first postponement came in 2002 when his first attorney, high-priced litigator Walt Britt of Buford, succeeded in getting Gwinnett’s entire jury pool thrown out on procedural grounds.
In 2003, the DA’s office put the case on hold in order to file more charges. Kramer had initially been accused of molesting two brothers, age 13 and 15, during sleep-overs at his house; at the time, he was dating their mother. But a third boy came forward and alleged that he’d been molested by Kramer over a period of several years.
Prosecutors say Kramer has used a variety of stalling tactics – claiming he needed medical treatments, requesting extra time so new attorneys could get up to speed – in order to evade the 60-year prison sentence he faces if convicted. And a little more than a year ago, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed that most of the delays could be blamed on Kramer.
Kramer’s new trial date appears to be May 11. I don’t plan to hold my breath, but it does seem that the courts and prosecutors are ready to finally see this one through. It’s about time.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
CL wavered through weekend construction traffic downtown (not really, some of us took MARTA) to witness the amazing spectacle that is a Miss Klingon pageant – and everything else during this weekend’s Dragon*Con.
See all the pics at Creative Loafing’s Sideshow Atlanta photo blog.
1) Dragon*Con continues!
2) Park Tavern hosts the fourth annual Beer and Whiskey Fest.
3) Louvre Atlanta: Houdon at the Louvre continues at the High Museum of Art.
4) Brown Sugar Sunday Brunch is at Underground Atlanta.
5) Marshall Chapman plays Eddie’s Attic.
(Photo courtesy Dragon*Con)
Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s Chanté LaGon and Curt Holman chatting about blogging vs. authorship, with Dragon*Con and the Decatur Book Festival as a backdrop.
Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.
Thanks to the Decatur Book Festival and Dragon*Con, writers will be descending upon Atlanta like a horde of Visigoths this Labody Day Weekend. In advance of two of my favorite local events, in the Arts section this week, the story “Books vs. Blogs” explores the virtues and pitfalls of author’s blogs. Since so many writers have blogs, the story focused on a few noteworthy examples, including science fiction author John Scalzi and his popular, 10 year-old old blog Whatever (anthologized in the upcoming volume Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded); horror novelist Cherie Priest and her Livejournal blog; and cartoonist Rich Tommaso’s Seattle Sketchbook.
Since there are soooo many author’s blogs out there, I won’t claim to offer a complete list of blogging guests of the Decatur Book Festival, let alone Dragon*Con, but here’s a few interesting ones. If you have suggestions of the “How dare you not include this one!” variety, please offer them in the comments field. (No, really.)
Kristen Chase: Motherhood Uncensored
Mir Kamin: Woulda Coulda Shoulda
The Place Where Jack Pendarvis has a “Blog” (featuring “McNeil’s Gold Medal International Emergency Exit Theatre”)
Every year Comic-Con steals some of the thunder of Atlanta’s Dragon*Con (this year held Aug. 29-Sep. 1). The San Diego comic book, fantasy and all around geek showbiz convention has gradually become Hollywood’s unofficial venue for hyping genre projects. That neat-0 Iron Man trailer from last year, for instance, debuted at Comic-Con. A friend of mine who lives in Los Angeles and frequently attends Comic-Con said that the studio hype is getting a little out of hand: “This is the year that Hollywood Officially Ruined Everything.” I wasn’t there, but here are a few apparent highlights. (Any of you who did attend Comic-Con, please let us know what else looked cool.)
Pixar presented an extremely short teaser trailer for next year’s Up — which, based on the company’s track record, could be one of next year’s best movies. Up stars the voice of Ed Asner and has been called “”a Pixar-meets-Miyazaki art film version of About Schmidt,” so it could be the studio’s riskiest venture yet:
DRAGON*CON PARADE: APD Chief Richard Pennington went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that Han Solo and Chewbacca did not attack Saturday’s parade.
Seemingly every social subgroup had its own special event last weekend. Hot-rod-loving, tattooed rock fans had Drive-Invasion. Proud, black, gay people had Black Gay Pride. People with exceptionally bad taste in music had Hootie & the Blowfish at Chastain.
And the sci-fi and fantasy set? They, of course, had Dragon*Con. This year’s special guests included the usual selection of stars of space-themed shows (Gil Gerard, Richard Hatch, Jonathan Frakes, etc.) as well as, mysteriously, Erik Estrada. The hunky Hispanic actor rode a black motorcycle in Saturday’s Dragon*Con Parade, evoking his days as “Ponch†on the late 1970s cop dramedy “CHiPs.” Estrada was my generation’s Wilmer Valderrama.
(Photo by Sarah Harms)
You see, it’s all about the Femme Troopers. And helping strangers with their cleavage.
-Shelbinator narrating his excellent short video documentary of Dragon*Con.
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Walking in the scorching Atlanta sun shouting “I’m Black, I’m Out and I’m Proud”! was life affirming and reminiscent of the civil rights movement, a different struggle, but a struggle I identify with nonetheless.
-Darian at Living Out Loud on marching during Black Gay Pride
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What I doubt she understands is that she is trapped in a classist dilemma. She’s a Little Five Points hipster, which means she has to be very carefully correct about tolerating diversity. However, she’s an educated child of the haute bourgeois culture of mid-town, , which means she has to hate everything about the DriveInvasion, which is working class, not-so-covertly racist and anti-intellectual to a fault.
-AnselPixel’s surprising take on Drive-Invasion
