This weekend Balticon 45 takes over the Marriott’s Hunt Valley Inn in Baltimore, as it does every memorial day weekend. Ben Bova is the Guest of Honor, and they are doing the world premiere of Ninjas vs. Vampires amongst the other fun; day passes are still available and there is a Twitter Hashtag to follow. Also this weekend, Syfy is running a Star Trek Movie Marathon for those who want to into couch potato mode.
Doing the first Cosplay video montages (a fancy word for slide shows) brought back so many memories for me the other week, I figured I had to do it again. Cosplay is a way to express yourself you usually can not do without risking psychiatric ward time; thank ghod for Cons!
This weekend is the New York Anime Festival, one of the truly monster events of the Anime calendar. This party is embedded in another one, the New York Comic-Con, but it has kind of become the tail wagging the dog. Musical guests alone include the Boom Boom Satellites, Vamps, Puffy Ami Yumi, Yoshiki of X-Japan, Zazen Boys, and many more. Tricia Helfer and Bruce Campbell will be there for the other con as well. Cosplay, Anime screenings, panels and parties, everything an Otaku could want in one place.
Boom Boom Satellites -Kick It Out
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If you are going to be at DragonCon this weekend, make sure to pick up your Dragon Con App for your iDevice, or for your Android. This is not the first App I have heard of built specifically for a Sci-Fi Con, but I don’t think SkepTrack counts, since it just a specialized App for a specific DragonCon track. And yes, the main App has full browse by track support, as well as the ability to break events out by day, time, people, and more. This may just be the new face of Sci-Fi Cons, and for a full list of all things digital at DragonCon just follow the link. Earlier Con Apps include the famous Tron App from this years SDCC. Also at DragonCon this year, BAR2D2, the droid that gets you drunk. It caries 15 kinds of beer and a variety of fixings, and is programmed to build 5,000 different mixed drinks when you put in your order via laptop; and yes, they are building an app for that so you don’t need the clunky laptop.
Coming up on September 5th at Dragon Con is the Steampunk Exhibition, which looks like it will be a hoot with the best and the brightest of Steampunk engineers and artificers from around the world. On top of that, they are going for a Guinness world record for the largest Steampunk photograph (they better be using an authentic Steampunk photography system). And yes, Steampunk is what happens when Goths discover brown. Of course, there will be a gazillion other things going on at DragonCon, so you might want to consider attending next year (I am pretty sure this year, like most of the last decade, is completely sold out).
I am sure I will have to add to this when later today actually happens, but I had to mention this now. The wack jobs from the Westboro Baptist Church (the idiots who protest at the funerals of America’s fallen war heroes if they think they might be anything other than hetero) decided to protest at Comic-Con this week, since everyone attending was obviously strange in some fashion (and proud of it!). This definitely tops my What Were They Thinking? list for this month, and possibly this year. I am betting they were not ready for the spontaneous counter protest that immediately broke out, with signs that included All Glory to the Hypno-Toad (and another Futurama reference with a cosplay Bender holding a sign saying Kill All Humans), the Marvelite Odin is God, and the classic When I ride through the Valley of Death I Will Fear No Evil, for the Dark Knight is by my side. The folks at Comics Alliance posted a great photo spread, and many thanks to Space Gypsies for the heads up on this one.
Word is out that Flash Forward might be picked up by Starz, and the series continued! Keeping my fingers crossed. If true, that makes two rescued properties on the Starz network, since they signed a contract with the BBC to do season 6 of Torchwood; glad that network is on my channel lineup.
Meanwhile, the best interview I have yet seen about this event comes from Geek Girls Network, where they talk with a major player who attended almost 20 years ago, and shared some critical perspective. And because I liked that one, I had to go for the Comic Con Gurls, seen below.
And just because I couldn’t resist, the True Blood season 3 trailer…