AgtSpooky's Hangout

Day Three of winchestmidwest...

The first panel Sunday morning was the best, about special effects make up, run by lily_cat who does this professionally for a living. She asked for three volunteers, so of course I raised my hand. :-) I got to have the binding link from Born Under a Bad Sign put on my own arm. And it looked FANTASTIC. Like a real burn! I was totally impressed. Next, wilde_moon got to have Castiel's hand print from Lazarus Rising put on her arm, and again, Sarah did a simply amazing job. Last was agent_jl36 who got the works done to her, as Dean from the end of Swan Song, after Sam beats the crap out of him. Let's put it this way - after we were done the three of us (and a few others) went down to the bathroom so Jen could see what she looked like in a mirror and someone in the lobby asked if they should call an ambulance. :-)

   

    


asyouleft was up next, talking about Tropes in SPN. I love Megan's panels. They're always well put together and a LOT of fun, as Megan is totally at ease talking in front of a room full of people and has an awesome sense of humor. :-) I honestly didn't realize how many tropes SPN uses!

After that was queeberquabbler 's panel on the mythology of The Mother of All, and how it looks like SPN went about combining a few different myths and legends to create her, and their version of Purgatory. I love mythology, so I was totally fascinated. Excellent job, Jen! :-)

The spoiler panel was next, but as opposed to previous years, we have little in the way of spoilers for the remaining episodes of the season, so we ended up talking about what we'd like to see happen. Some interesting ideas were thrown out there. All I know is, we're fast running out of episodes and there seems to be a LOT of ground we need to cover.

We did some raffle items after that and I won two magnets and a bookmark while Chris won all of that and the western-themed WinchestMidwest sign. Chris and I also took part in the Scavenger Hunt and while we completed all our tasks we ended up not winning. :-(

The very last thing we did was go outside so that lily_cat could show off her 1967 black, four-door Chevy Impala! It's a little worse for wear, but damn, it's the freaking Impala! We all got to sit in it and get our pictures taken and we also had our group photo taken in front of it. Many thanks to Sarah for bringing the car for all of us to see!

Then unfortunately it was time to say goodbye. :-( Hugs were exchanged and many photos were taken with promises to see everyone next year, same time, same place. :-)





( PICTURES! PICTURES! PICTURES! )

Many thanks to ant3ka and trillian276709 for putting on another great convention!

Now that I've gotten some sleep I feel a bit more coherent and able to write up my post about winchestmidwest this past weekend.

In case you don't know, WinchestMidwest is a fan run con here in the Chicago area that attracts folks from Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, etc. I love it because it's only a half hour from where I live. :-)

I missed last year, so it was great to go again this year with my best buddy, charityflint (aka Chris). I also made a new shirt for the con - Hee!




After we got to the hotel Friday night we went and registered and hooked up with folks like queeberquabbler , seesmooshrun , wilde_moon , asyouleft , the_other_sandy (who was sick and in self-imposed quarantine) and lily_cat .

First up was a panel about Seasons 1-5: the Kripke Years, accompanied by very well put together videos that summed up each season. It was very interesting to go back and think about and discuss all of the major arcs that the show has gone through, all of the characters that have come and gone and all of the shenanigans that went on as well (loved that sign queeberquabbler !).

We were supposed to have Skyped with the art crew on the set of SPN up in Vancouver, but they were unable to, so we watched The French Mistake, followed up directly by And Then There Were None, which left many of us devastated. Lots of us (including me) compared it to the X-Files episode, Ice, which I thought was rather appropriate since both Steven Williams and Mitch Pileggi were on XF.

Pie-a-Palooza came next aka Pin the Pie in Dean's Pie Hole. As you can probably guess, much hilarity abounded as we were each blind folded and spun around and attempted to stick our piece of pie onto Dean. :-) I had to leave the room for a bit after my turn, but I think my buddy charityflint won! Many thanks to lily_cat for making all the delicious pies we ate afterwards!




More to come about Saturday in the next post!

Whoo-hoo! It's Wednesday, which means winchestmidwest is only two days away! I wasn't able to go last year, so I'm excited to see a bunch of you guys. Yes, I'm looking at you wilde_moon, asyouleft, queeberquabbler and trillian276709.

Hey, seesmooshrun and the_other_sandy, will you both be there, too?  Who else on my flist is going?

Myself and my best buddy charityflint are excited about the lockpicking demonstration (should we bring our own paperclips? *g*), all of the panels and of course watching Stonehenge Apocalypse with a room full of fangirls. :-)

Here's hoping the hotel has a bar, because I'm gonna be wanting to down some purple nurples!

Check this out. :-)

This past weekend at winchestmidwest, inside our registration packets was a temporary tattoo of Sam and Dean's protection symbol. I was going to put mine on at the con, but then decided to wait until Monday morning instead, right before I went to work. I wanted to see how many people I could freak out and convince the tattoo was real. Heh.

I knew the perfect place to put it, too. Right on the back of my neck. :-)

I wore a shirt with a wide neck, so you could see about 80% of it above my collar. Sure enough, I completely freaked out all my friends and co-workers once they spotted it. LOL! I really had some of them going, too, telling them I was at the convention and a bunch of us decided to go and do it. Ha! One lady who sits in the cubicle behind mine, who is ultra religious, took one look at the tattoo and wouldn't speak to me all day! Reminded me of the Supernatural pilot, where Sam and Dean are talking to the girls about the pentagram and "devil stuff". :-)

So here's what it looked like on my neck:




I actually think it looks pretty darn cool there and I need to send Andie a message, ask if she has any more of the tattoos I can purchase from her, because I'd like to put one of these on again every so often. :-)

Well, winchestmidwest is coming to a close today. :-(

But last night was a LOT of fun. After dinner we turned off all the lights and sat on the floor with a couple of candles and a flashlight and we each took turns telling our own personal ghost stories. And DAMN, some of them were really freaking creepy! I told mine, about the ghost at work (who I named Fred *g*) who turns on the treadmill next to me in the mornings at work when I'm in the exercise room.

After that it was time for the ghost hunt tour with Weird Chicago. But at the last minute I decided not to go. Just wasn't feeling up to it for some reason, so I stayed behind with six other folks and we had movie night, which turned out to be a blast. :-)

First we watched Jared in Cry_Wolf, which I loved, then we watched Eric Kripke's Boogeyman, which three of us, including myself, had never seen. OMG, people it was SO BAD! LOL! Within five minutes of the movie starting we again had a hilarious Mystery Science Theater going and we laughed the entire way through. :-) That movie was so freaking confusing! With closets that led to under a bed, with under a bed leading to a motel room...it went on and on until my head hurt. Thank god Eric got this out of his system and moved on to creating an awesome show like Supernatural. :-)

This morning after breakfast we "graded" our SPN trivia pages and asyouleft and I almost won, missing out by just one question. Darn! So close! :-) Then we did a raffle and I won a book called Ghosts Stories of America.

After that we had a panel on Angels, Demons and the gray space in between, which included a lot of religious information that I didn't know. Then a panel on creating graphics for LJ and right now my sparkly, bubbly friend asyouleft is up front presenting a panel on character alignment in Supernatural, which is generating some great discussion. If you're at all familiar with D&D you'll know the terms Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, etc. and we're applying them to Sam, Dean, Castiel, etc.

Lunch is coming up next, then a tribute video to Kim Manners, which is sure to make us all melancholy. After that one final open discussion panel and it'll be time to say goodbye. :-(

My butt is totally dragging after several late nights and early mornings, but it's been worth it for a very fun weekend.

I've got a zillion comments to catch up on, so I'll try and get to all of you guys sometime tomorrow.

Hope all of you had a great weekend, too!

Hey guys!

I'm having the BEST time at winchestmidwest! Though it started off rather bizarre...

I'd only been in my room for about a half hour when I heard two young girls trying to get in my room. I opened the door and scared the crap out of them. They literally jumped backwards! LOL! I told them this was my room and they apologized, said they weren't trying to break in (I knew that wasn't the case) then ran off down the hallway calling for "Dad". They never came back, but about 10 minutes later someone else was trying to get in! I threw open the door and this time scared the crap out of a hotel maintenance man! LOL! He apologized, said he was sent up here to change a lightbulb, and was told that the room was vacant. He left and I was about to go down to the front desk to ask what was going on when then my phone rang! It was the front desk! I'm like, "why are people trying to get in my room?" He apologized, asked for my last name and checked in the computer. Turns out the woman who checked me in never put in the computer that she'd put me in this room! When he asked me if I remembered who checked me in I described her and he's like "Oh, well that explains it." She's not the brightest employee they've got, apparently. [shakes head]

After that was taken care of I went to the restaurant to have dinner, where I met up with the_other_sandy. We hadn't been sitting there long when the fire alarm went off! Geez, what ELSE could happen?? We noticed not a single employee in the restaurant paid any attention to the alarm. Our waitress happened to come over and we're like "what's going on?" She just waived her hand and said, "Smoke in the kitchen. Happens all the time." The fire department showed up and my heart started beating a little faster, seeing as I've got a thing for those guys (Light My Fire, anyone?) and wished I'd had my camera to take a pic of them in their full turn-out gear. (turns out asyouleft is psychic and took a pic of the fire truck for me! *g*)

After dinner, Sandy and I went to registration, which was in full swing. We immediately got caught up in a fannish Bingo of sorts and I was ambushed by asyouleft, wilde_moon and alphabet26. :-)

anteka got us started with what was going to be happening tonight - first a trivia game, then outside to the parking lot (I'll get to that in a minute) and then movie night! A double feature of My Bloody Valentine and Friday the 13th. :-)

The trivia game was a hoot, and not very easy! We were supposed to do it individually, but since I had no pen, asyouleft and I decided to partner up. Well, that soon became most of us at the table "partnering up" and sharing answers. :-) We turned in our pages to anteka and then it was time to go outside.

See, turns out that anteka knows a guy named John who owns - wait for it - a black, 1967 Chevy Impala. And he brought it to the con. SQUEE!! OH. MY. GOD, people. It was fantastic!! We got our picture taken with it, both inside and out (charityflint, wordsindreams and sn_24lover can attest to this, as I sent them my pic from my cell phone. HA!) AND - AND we got to go for a ride in it! It was so freakin' SWEET! Man, I can see why Dean loves that car. Best part was, John got us a bit lost and me and wilde_moon and alphabet26 got a lot longer ride than everyone else! All we needed was Back in Black blasting and it would've been PERFECT. What's cool was, now I've got up close and personal knowledge of the car so that I can make my fanfic stories even better. [snerk]

After everyone got a ride in the car, it was time to head inside for movie night. Now, I've never seen either MBV or F13 because blood and guts is so not my thing. But asyouleft promised to hold her hands up when it got gross. :-) She failed miserably but that was okay, because I had the BEST time watching that movie! Yes, it was gross and disgusting beyond belief but about 2 minutes into the film, we all decided to do a Mystery Science Theater to it and I swear I haven't laughed that hard in ages! And I was making just as many comments as everyone else, because good LORD that movie was stupid! Jensen, I love you dearly, but please, next hiatus, pick your script a bit more carefully. :-) Anyway, it turned out to be a lot of fun, helped along by the bottle of hard cider I was drinking and the peanut M&M's, Twizzlers and popcorn (thank you asyouleft and wilde_moon!). Oh, but I have to admit the end of the movie was pretty cool. Crazy ass Jensen was awesome!

They're showing F13 right now, but sorry, Jared, I'd had enough blood for one night. :-)

So yeah, it's only been about five hours into the con but I'm having a blast and I'm looking forward to the panels tomorrow during the day then the ghost hunt tomorrow night with Weird Chicago. Cool!

Ok, time for bed. Geez, please don't let me dream about My Bloody Valentine! LOL!

Look at this wild and crazy bunch!



All right, now that I've gotten some sleep and can think coherently again, here's my report on what all happened at winchestmidwest

( Panels and karaoke and purple nurples, oh my! )