- the panels from our vantage point (up front and slightly right of center if you're facing the dais)
- images of the True Blood autographs I was able to get (Rebecca is currently experiencing technical difficulties and is therefore unable to get images posted; I'm sure she'll work it out soon)
- some of the "general con craziness" she mentioned in her comment to some of our readers from her last post - hard to believe that we went from three amazing True Blood events, to a literary panel, to the "Last Party On Alderon" (yeah, we were into Star Wars as kids, but who wasn't?) all in one weekend!
- and last but not least, some pics of downtown Atlanta thrown in for good measure to give you an orienting sense of place
Downtown Atlanta...where the skies are always blue (at least on Labor Day weekend 2010), and if the streets of NYC were ever as deserted, we would think we had somehow survived the zombie apocolypse!
The view from our hotel room's balcony...the Varsity fast food joint where Sam Trammell tweeted that he grabbed a bite at was within our sights!
Thursday, 9/3/10. Our first day in Atlanta...the dreaded badge gauntlet...our site of torture for 3 1/2 hours in line...we were seperated and I had the distinct (dis)pleasure of going through it TWICE once Rebecca and I finally reunited! My first gauntlet pass culminated in my being told by a surly volunteer - after an hour and a half of waiting in line - that I did not have to wait at all since I had will call tickets. Rebecca had preregistered and as such she was directed to a different line that wrapped around the Sheraton and through a parking garage. By the time we entered the gauntlet (me for a second pass and Rebecca for her first to claim her badge) it was after 11PM and rumors were flying that we might be turned away only to have to take on the gauntlet again in the morning. The first True Blood panel started at 10AM on Friday, so we weren't having it and happily that did not come to pass...
...back at our home base, what DID come to pass, however, were post-gauntlet adult beverages!
By our second day in Atlanta - the first full con day - we knew it was on...
I'm not posting pictures from Friday's panel because they did not come out very well (an announcement was made not to use flash photography and I was trying to be a conscientious con goer - that idea went out the window by the next day), but after the panel Rebecca I went to the Walk of Fame event that she described in her last post. Here's the autographs I was able to get:
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| Nelsan Ellis (Lafayette Reynolds) |
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Sam Trammell (Sam Merlotte) And here's another fun DCON artifact - my con badge that Sam used as a cheat sheet for signing my autograph |
And here's our post-Walk of Fame cocktails, artfully arranged...hey, meeting and talking with True Blood stars for the first time and telling them about this blog takes a lot out of a girl! We HAD to decompress...and celebrate!
We both got Kristin Bauer van Straten (Pam) and Michelle Forbes (Maryann Forrester) autographs after the Saturday panel:
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| Kristin Bauer van Straten (Pam) |
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| Does the image Michelle Forbes (Maryann Forrester) signed her name next to look familiar? It should; it's the pre-dynastic Egyptian artifact the True Blood creative team used as the template for Maryann's collector's piece that figured prominently in the show and in her character development. I was able to tell Michelle how when the artifact first appeared on True Blood while Rebecca and I were watching together at my house, I leapt up from the couch to grab the book she autographed for me, "The Once and Future Goddess" off my bookshelf and immediately leafed to that image since I had instantly recognized it as The Bird Headed Snake Goddess which is on display at the Brooklyn Museum. Michelle told us she has seen the original there, and wondered where I, and this book, had been when she was preparing to play Maryann! |
Next up are some shots of the con hotels; they are enormous and absolutely amazing...and have the odd effect of an intergalactic space station...perfect for DCON!
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This one's a little different, all the wrought iron gives the impression of the Old South...
There were Sookies aplenty...
And general costumed DCON craziness...
One of these things is not like the other...at a few points during DCON we felt like Sookie at Fangtasia or Lou Pines...our "normal" attire had us looking a little out of place...
I will be putting up pics of the Saturday "True and A" panel in my next post along with the notes I took on all the panels, but for now, here's some shots of the Sunday panel - the last DCON True Blood event of the weekend entitled, "Sin and Salvation in Bon Temps"; this was a little deceiving since the moderator did not structure the session around that theme, much to our disappointment. The images you see here are of the packed house prior to the panel, and of each actor coming onto the dais:
By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around we had fully gotten our "con legs" and really didn't want to go home! I snapped a picture of our home away from home as we took the short walk from the con hotels back to the Downtown Renaissance where our luggage awaited with the bellman. Here you'll also see the hotel lobby where we whiled away a few hours waiting to teturn to the airport...and almost stayed too long!
Hope you've enjoyed your visual immersion in our experience of the weekend. I'll be back to post a full roundup of Day II at DCON, our wild time with the "True and A", some pictures of that event, and lots of information and insights gleaned from the panels themselves!
~ Rachel
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