Dragon*Con '96 Con Report, Part II
"Storm's Arrival"
by Paul W. Cashman
Wednesday morning. I got down to the hotel and immediately put my car in valet parking, while there was still room. Sure, it's $9/day, but the luxury of having a guaranteed parking space throughout the convention more than made up for the extra expense!
A quick check in at the Embassy Room on the fourth floor, where VIP Services and the DAILY DRAGON were based -- had a quick look at Wednesday's issue; looks good so Tim Farley is off to Kinko's with the master copy.
Off I go to find John Tackett, director of guest transportation,
as he and I were to take one of the convention's rent-a-vans to the
airport and pick up Storm and her boyfriend Jim, plus another arriving
guest. We arrive at the airport and....Bloody hell! Their flight's
arriving 25 minutes early; heck, it's already in! Storm and Jim are
arriving way out at Concourse E, and since it's an international flight
from Amsterdam they have to clear Customs and come through the
International Arrivals Lobby. John
goes off to fetch the other guest and I go to await Storm and Jim,
hoping against hope I can beat them to the Arrivals Lobby. I did, but
there's no real way to tell once you get there, so I'm anxiously
watching the news crews gathered to cover her arrival....
Oh, they're here to cover the Bosnian Olympic Team's arrival?
*snore* :)
After an endless 45 minutes Storm emerges, resplendent in a tye-dye dress, wearing her trademark dark-hued hat/hairpiece/something neeto on her head. (It looks like dreadlocks, nearly waist-length.) She has a nose-ring. Her companion Jim is 6'3" or so, slender, long red hair, wearing a black Fields of the Nephilim shirt, black pants and combat boots. Yea, U.S. Customs just -loves- folks like them.....
(The times I spent with Storm and Jim during the following week -- they had to stay through the next Wednesday to obtain the cheapest airfare -- form some of my fondest recent memories. I'll write up a separate account of these memories, but suffice it to say that I was glad indeed to have helped her and Jim bridge the Atlantic at last.)
Clutching their luggage (which they're supposed to recheck after Customs finishes dismantling it, but screw that), we head back for the long tram-ride back to the terminals. Initial hesitation gradually diminishes and soon we're chatting amiably. Back at the North Terminal we await John, but since Customs took so long giving my new friends the hairy eyeball, he had to dispatch the van back to the hotel with guests, and we had to take a taxi instead. No problem, as John's the-man-with-the-plan-and-the-cash. Thankfully Dragon*Con had thought of this exigency and planned for it.
We arrive back at the hotel and get Storm situated in her room. No problems, no complications, but the room is a nonsmoking room and both Storm and Jim are smokers. Normally I wouldn't care -- I've had friends smoke in my nonsmoking room at cons before, with no repercussions -- but there's this beady-eyed smoke alarm on the ceiling, and who knows what embarassments might lurk? "Uh, hello, front desk? We have a slight problem...." No problem, and a bellhop shows up promptly with another room key and we troop downstairs one floor. Everything's set. Storm and Jim are "knackered out" by the long journey (Birmingham UK to Amsterdam, and then Amsterdam to here, 9 long hours without a cigarette), so I bid them adieu and head downstairs.
Now it's time to go rope in Bonedance at their practice room, about two miles away from the hotel (thankfully!), and get them and their gear set up for their show. First I had to go pick up my friend Chris at his parents' place in Norcross, about an hour roundtrip, so I scamper up to his place, grab him, then head back to the hotel. We had plans to meet at the practice room at 8pm, so I head over there with Chris in tow (he's also a fan). We have some anxious moments awaiting Eric, the sometimes-tardy drummer, but finally he arrives and we start loading equipment into vehicles.
We arrive at the Hilton to find the usual madness at the loading docks. The Hilton has a decent loading dock area, but with a dealers' room the size of Dragon*Con's there's never enough room -- and we're supposed to load the band's equipment in through there, too. (Our facilities in 1997 and beyond all have excellent loading areas, thank goodness!)
Okay, we're given a bay to quickly get the stuff upstairs, and wonder of wonders, we actually find a food-service cart that's not being used! Brian (guitar) and Eric park their pickup trucks and we get started. With the gear finally upstairs and ready in the main ballroom Brian suddenly vanishes. "We need this loading bay cleared!" "Yea, I know. We're finding him!" Time passes. The Earth moved slowly in her diurnal course. "Uh, maybe we can get a few strong guys and pick the truck up and move it?" But Brian shows up in the nick of time (darn!) and we get the trucks moved out (ever tried to move someone else's truck with a tight clutch? Gosh, it's more fun than water torture).
The band before Bonedance, Ursa, is already about done with their unremarkable set, so it's time to set the stage and get ready. Ed had promised badges wouldn't be checked for the Wed. night show -- important, since we'd announced on college radio that they wouldn't be -- and yet Security had orders to check "rigidly" for badges. I got this cleared up, but it may have been too late.
Bonedance went on just a little behind schedule, and played to about 40 people. We were hoping for more, but to their credit they played as intense a show as I've ever seen them, surmounting a few technical problems in the process. Their sound is best described as an all-original "heavy alternative" hybrid of two bands, Korn and Rage Against the Machine (without most of the political baggage of the latter), and they didn't disappoint the crowd. I didn't see a single person leave once they started, and some people came in, curious about the sounds from the ballroom. More people came rushing in when they launched into their blistering cover of Rage's "Killing in the Name," and my friends Tim Hurd and Chris, Kelly Lockhart and I hopped up on stage (a tradition for Bonedance's finale, getting people up on stage) to help with the vocals. The radio call said it all: "Hey, there's two directors on stage with the band!" :)
After the show, exhausted by traversing the back-areas of the Hilton about 30 times (not to mention my earlier hikes at the airport), we recovered the trucks and my car without incident and chugged back to the practice space to offload. I gladly bought my friends a 12-pack of beer -- they deserved it after a good show and a grueling load-in and load-out! -- and made them promise to return later in the weekend to see Dragon*Con in its full glory, and of course, to see GWAR. :)
A stop for me and Chris at Waffle House and then back to my apt.,
since my hotel room at the Hilton didn't start until Thursday night.
We arrive finally and open the trunk.
In unison: "Ooops!"
Jon, bassist for Bonedance, had left his bass in my trunk. Oh, well,
now I had this really kewl bass in my trunk. :)
The storm -- and Storm -- had arrived. Thursday would bring the convention in earnest. :)