Always Traveling Hopefully.
Going through customs in the airport, I was, as we all are these days, questioned by an American agent. I assume they have been trained by the Department of Homeland Security not to show any emotion as they ask you about the details of your trip. Our conversation went, in part, like this:
CUSTOMS AGENT: Where are you going?
ME: Atlanta.
CUSTOMS AGENT: Why?
ME: I have a film in Dragon*Con, a film festival held there.
CUSTOMS AGENT: What’s your film called?
ME: Uhh…The Love Box…
CUSTOMS AGENT: What’s it about?
ME: Uhh…yes, well…it’s about a…a family that lives over and runs the biggest porn store in the world.
When the customs guy broke out laughing, I knew the film was going to be a success.
Observations about air travel.
Now that everybody has to take off their shoes, working airport security must be a foot fetishist’s dream job.
Don’t you think that the fact that they give away baggies (for small bottles) at airports would attract drug dealers? I mean, it makes sense, right?
Arriving.
On the shuttle from the airport to the hotel, Natalie (which may or may not be her real name to protect the innocent, guilty or person or persons of indeterminate culpability) explained to me that she was in Atlanta for Black Gay Pride Weekend. (As it happens, the hotel in which I was staying, which was not one of the three official Dragon*Con hotels, was the official hotel of Black Gay Pride. I’m neither black nor gay, but I was proud…)
Natalie (or not) started telling me about this woman she had been seeing. She was cute, but really clingy; when Natalie (?) hinted that maybe the relationship wouldn’t be getting serious, the other woman seemed to hold on tighter. When I asked Natalie (okay, this device has stopped being funny) if she always discussed her personal life with complete strangers, she said, “Yeah, pretty much.” Besides, she pointed out, I was a writer. I’m still not sure what special powers Natalie believed that conveyed on me, but I’m pretty sure she was wrong about them.
As we passed one of the official Dragon*Con hotels, Natalie saw some of the costumed attendants. She remarked that maybe she had come to the wrong event. Costumes at gay pride? I assured her that she had nothing to worry about on that score.
How best to describe Dragon*Con?
It’s like Mardis Gras with light sabers. And, without the beads. Or the flooding. Or the looting. Or the general governmental incompetence.
You know it’s true.
My grand ambition for Dragon*Con.
I figured I would go out there a nobody and come back a nobody who had been out there.
It wasn’t on purpose. Honest.
I broke the computer at Dragon*Con.
When I first got to the convention/film festival, I went to pick up my ID tag, only it wasn’t in the folder for the Ns, so I had to go to the (and I wish I was making this up, but I’m not) Trouble line. After a few minutes in the Trouble li – okay, to be honest, I’m actually kind of proud of being in put there – eventually, I got to head of the line, and the woman behind the Trouble counter said there would be no problem printing up a tag for me.
Two minutes go by. After five minutes, the woman says it doesn’t usually take this long just to print up an ID tag. After ten minutes, somebody comes over and says, “Uhh, yeah, the computer is down. You’ll probably lose whatever you were working on. We’ll have it back up as soon as we can.”
It’s a curse. Or, a gift.
Oddly enough, you rarely see women in cat suits at Cannes.
I didn’t come with plans to dominate Dragon*Con… Really.
I was listening to the moderator of a panel and one of the speakers talk about the state of the Canadian film industry, and, before I knew what I was doing, I went off on a five minute rant on the subject. The other speaker said, “Gee, maybe you should be on this panel – you seem to know more about this than I do.”
Thus, it came to pass that I sat on a panel on Film Production Around the World.
As it happened, the panel was made up of two Canadians and two Australians, so the view of the world may have been a little constricted. It’s also true that our two industries seem very similar (at times, the main difference was that we were whining about American domination of our cinema while they were whinging about it). Still, I’m sure it was highly educational for the mostly American audience. Yes. I’m sure it was.
Missed photo opportunity, take one.
Superman standing by an escalator, talking on a cell phone, his head buried in his hand. When he was in the midst of some great emotional crisis, would you ask Superman to pose for a photograph?
Why Dragon*Con beats TIFF.
One evening, I was having dinner at a table in front of three rotting corpses. You just don’t see that at the Toronto International Film Festival.
You’re mean.
Dragon*Con Koan.
If a minor celebrity has a table at a convention and nobody walks up to it and asks them for an autograph, did they really attend the con?
Missed photo opportunity, take two.
Thor peeing at a bathroom urinal. Would you want to ask Thor for a photograph while he was doing his business? (Men, would you really want to see the penis of a Thunder God? Really? Why do you think they call him the God of Thunder?)
What’s wrong with this picture?
A teenage boy and an older man, presumably his father, were having dinner at a table near mine. The older man was the one who had taken apart a phaser and was fiddling with its insides.
Dreams of Japanese animation dancing (killing and possibly even screwing) in her head.
Favourite amazing and great moment.
After it was all over, having a couple of drinks and shooting the cinematic shit with the Amazing Amanda and Great Ron (whose wonderful film Jakob and the Angels won the award for best film at the festival). David and Kelly were there, too, but they were only filmmakers, and, while I believe completing a short film is a minor miracle, which makes the filmmakers miracle workers, they weren’t officially Amazing or Great. I mostly listened. By this time, I was exhausted, and I have learned that, being neither Amazing nor Great myself, I can say really dumb things when in this condition. It’s a filter malfunction just waiting to happen. Still, good times.
Missed photo opportunity, take three.
In the Atlanta airport, waiting to board my plane, I saw this woman with an amazing white bird on her shoulder. Would you want to explain to the friendly people at Homeland Security why you were taking a photograph in an airport?
