MegaMegaMicroDork

I'm back from DragonCon in Atlanta. (OK, I've been back for days but this gives it a more contemporary feel). For those of you who don't know, DragonCon (www.dragoncon.org) is one of the biggest conventions (sci-fi, collector, comics, obsessive about any form of media) in the country. The schmancyish hotels - the Hyatt, Marriott, and basically all of downtown Atlanta-are overrun with costumed norks and dweerds to the nth degree. A place where you can play Magic:The Gathering in a ballroom at 3AM. A dorkotronic utopia where Levar Burton sits at a table all day long, smiling and waving, waving at YOU, beseeching you to come over and pose for a picture with him.

I'm not one of those people that feels the need to dwell on my own dorkiness, wear it as a badge in some sort of defiance to try to exonerate it. Because I realize that everyone is some form of dork. Whether it be about something more generally socially acceptable or the stereotypically nerdy things like D&D. And I am around the kinds of people that are into that stuff anyway.

That being said, a lot of these people were dorky in the more blatant ways. Not because of what they liked or how much they liked it, but more because of their non-endearingly painful social awkwardness and desperation. But at the same time, it was so great to see people unapologetically being themselves-even though an alarming number of times that "self" was a half-naked StormTrooper variant.

Some highlights:

- Our hotel room got COBRA-ed! Yes, LARPing was in full effect. Live Action Role Playing, GI Joe-style. A red and white sticker on our door late Saturday night... we were now living in enemy territory. Luckily, we were only forced to exist under this despotic rule for about 6 or 7 hours, when we got GI Joe-d.

- A light saber battle in the hotel lobby, complete with grunts and rolling on the floor. Re-enactment or original battle choreography? Not confirmed.

-Searching for one of the famed DragonCon parties in the Hyatt private rooms. Where were these fabled Vulcan orgies*? Finally, we pass a room enticingly jambed open, a pin-up girl taped to the front door and a sign saying something like, "I'm a big slut hehe!" (no, it wasn't that, but I swear it had the word slut in it). When we peeked inside at a crafty angle we saw that the whole room, walls and floors, was strewn with similar pin-up postcards, and Christmas lights. After a long, tiresome "Dare me to go inside?" session, one of our party charged the door and busted in. We waited with bated etc. He was there for about 15 seconds. "Well? What was in there? Writhing aliens?" Pause. "It was just... 5 guys... sitting cross-legged in a circle on the floor drinking beer. They said hi and asked if I wanted to sit down. I didn't." Oh you 5 Guys, you! You and your Hopeful Retro Soft Porn postcards! You are adorable.

*I didn't want to participate in the Vulcan thing. I don't even watch Star Trek.