Dragoncon will be the Tolkien/SF event of the year!
© Michael Martinez
It's way past time that I started talking about Dragoncon. As Chico Esquala might put it, "Dragoncon has been bery, bery good to me!" I mean, I served as the Hercules and Xena track director for two years and this year I get to be the Tolkien and Middle-earth track director. That means I get to run around the convention for four days looking for microphones, water pitchers, VCRs, and missing guests while the rest of the people enjoy smooth-running session after smooth-running session in more than a dozen programming tracks. They'll also get to see movies, bands, over a hundred authors, artists, actors, screenwriters, and producers, thousands of people in a myriad of costumes, and....
Someone stop me before I resign!
Dragoncon is a great place to have fun. I suppose marriages are founded there, careers are made, and millions of dollars' worth of wheeling and dealing go on behind closed doors (I'm not allowed to say what else supposedly goes on behind those closed doors, but let's just say Mary Poppins would be hard put to keep the kids in line). But for the average convention goer it's just the biggest convention on the east coast, and the largest fan-run convention in North America. They boasted an attendance of over 38,000 people last year.
My job as the Tolkien and Middle-earth track director is to put together a well-oiled machine that ensures you get four days of intensive Tolkien-related programming. That means we have to have enough people to guard the room during all the hours it's being used. But it also means we have to find guests and panelists for our four days' worth of sessions, and I think we've found a powerhouse collection of guests and panelists. In fact, we're still waiting to hear if one BIG NAME ACTOR who may have had some part in the Peter Jackson films will be accepting our invitation to the convention. I can't say whom just yet because, well, if someone comes to Dragoncon expecting to see this actor and he doesn't show up, I'll have some splainin' to do that even Lucy and Ethel together couldn't work out.
Nonetheless, we DO have a BIG NAME actor coming to the convention. Raise your hand if you've never heard of Brad Dourif, ladies and gentlemen! That's right, Piter DeVries from the ill-fated "Dune" movie himself will be showing up (okay, you probably remember him from movies like One Flew Over The Cookoo's Nest, Bride of Chuckie, Blue Velvet and a whole slew of other films I don't have space to list).
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