Dragon*Con 2012

Got back yesterday and here are some cool pix.  I didn't take nearly as many as I had in the past and there's a simple reason for that: we took our 9-year-old son with us.  Far more stressful than we imagined it would be.  While we navigated the crowds, we were too focused on getting him through with us intact and not so much on taking pictures.

Regardless, he had fun, we did, too, and here are some of the highlights for which we managed to take pictures.

 At the parade, a slew of Ghostbusters, including Jake & Elwood Blues.

Dr. Clayton Forrester (in boxers, for some reason) and The Master from "Manos": The Hands of Fate.

A DeLorean Time Machine (with Dr. Forrester at the wheel?).

A classic Time Machine, straight outta HG Wells.  The disk spun, too.

The Dude, complete with White Russian.

A Steampunk UFO, I think.  Whatever.  It looked cool.

Stan Lee.  Excelsior!

Amidst the video game characters, there came a group of Tetris blocks.

Mr. & Mrs. Freeze.  Nice that Nora came out of the cryo tank and joined him in his life of crime.

Go, Speed Racer!

Random characters, including Marceline the Vampire Queen, Lock, Stock & Barrel, Inspector Gadget, Mr. Hat and Carmen Sandiego.

The entire periodic table was represented, as seen here.

Sleestaks!  SSSsssssSSssssssSSSSSssssssssssss ...

AMC was on the ball with their anti-DishTV campaign.  The faux campaign character was staggering through the parade and meeting people all day long.

My son as Finn the Human, poses with Lady Rainicorn at the Cartoon Network store in the CNN Center.

He also managed to pose with a couple of Fiona's.  Here's one.

Here's another.  There were more but we didn't always get pictures.  And, for some reason, he didn't want his picture taken with one particularly badass (and hot) looking Marceline.

We did other stuff, too.

He met Adam West.  We've been watching the original series and he got a big kick out of that.

I saw Gillian Anderson.

She was totally making eyes at me.

We also met (and got an autograph from) Katee Sackhoff.  So pretty.  I had her convinced for half-a-sec that my son knew her as Bitch Pudding.

My favorite autograph is still this one from the Shat back in '09:

The Star Trek: TNG panel with Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn and LeVar Burton was a riot, the Saturday Galactica panel with an unscheduled Aaron Douglas filling in for Katee was hilarious, the big Lord of the Rings/Hobbit panel was funny ... Oh, and the Masquerade.  I nearly forgot.

This to-scale Totoro captured hearts and an award.

So did this cool pair of dinosaur skeletons.  Seems to have a Tyrannosaur skull, but with three-fingered forearm claws and a raptor toe claw ... I'm a dork.  I know it.

Stuff-wise, my son got a purring Tribble and an Adventure Time map, my wife got some jewelry and I got a signed Batman print from Neal Adams.

I realized after all was said and done that I missed something.  No, not a thing that was there and I missed but something that just plain wasn't there.  I knew going in it wouldn't be there but I didn't expect it to dampen my enjoyment as much as it did.  What was it?

The lack of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Seriously.  This was our fifth trip to Atlanta for Dragon*Con and for every other trip, there was some contingent of MST3K vets there to talk about the show, present some Cinematic Titanic or Rifftrax stuff and sign things.  In a day or two, I'll post the thing that really made me appreciate their coming.

In the meantime, Dragon*Con 2012.  It was fun.