Well, the weekend is over, and so is StarFest 2008, Denver, CO.
I was flying solo this weekend, as my co-host had to work. So since my car isn't running, and I didn't feel like riding my motorcycle 50 miles each way each day (Max had some teeth out, so I had to come back at night to give him his meds), I hitched a ride with Jason and Heather Martin from ArtPlayMix.com. Getting in was no problem. I went up and told them who I was, the lady looked, unsuccessfully, for a list of press people, gave up and just gave me the worth-more-than-it-weighs-in-gold "All Access" badge, and I was on my way.
Turns out Anime Pulse drove the most traffic to the StarFest site out of any sites doing banner ads for them. Since I "won", they gave me two free autograph/photograph tickets, which I immediately used for Adam Baldwin (see pic below.. Oh Yeah!).
There were a lot of cosplayers, especially Empire. And I lost count of the number of Browncoats wearing Jayne's stupid hat. The dealers room had a lot of good geekery schwag, and I managed to find one dealer who had two small boxes of Anime keychains. But that was the only Anime stuff there. There were some Anime cosplayers, which was nice to see.
The video room. They had one Anime video room, that was really good. They showed lots of new stuff and, to my approval, they actually showed fansubs. This meant that there were actually people in the rooms, as some stuff they might not have seen yet. Although I had already seen them, I stopped in for a couple episodes of the first season of Code Geass and Spice and Wolf.
Prior to the costume contest they had a Sci-Fi Parody Skit hour, which was great. They had a Sci-Fi match game, with horrible jokes, then a Star Wars play/musical and then a Star Wars TNG/Terminator: SCC play/musical. They were hilarious. See the pics.
Adam Baldwin had a Q&A panel, that absolutely packed the main events room. Prior to him coming out from behind the curtain, the MC had all the Browncoats in the room stand up. Then the "leader" of the Browncoats had apparently arranged to sing the "Hero of Canton" but didn't know the words past the chorus! I was so offended. I could have gotten up there and sang every single verse, and I didn't even need to prepare. Seriously, why not actually do a bit of study if you're going to do something like that for Adam Baldwin. But luckily Adam is an awesome guy. He came out, make some jokes, did some background on himself and his career, and then started the Q&A session. I didn't stay much past the start of that, since it's filled with people going "I love you man, thanks for coming, blah blah blah", and finally a question, maybe.
Attendance was good, the hotel seemed pretty packed. The only real problem I had with this con was traffic. They needed to get some of the NDK people in charge of that, because it was horrible. They thought it was a good idea to set up caricature booths and photo op booths (see the storm troopers/Darth Vader and R2-D2 pics for what I'm talking about) right in the middle of the major funnel points, causing huge traffic jams from the second the con started to the end of the night. It never cleared out. It got so bad I would loop all the way around the long way just to avoid it. Whoever thought that was a good idea should have their head examined.
So, traffic issues aside, all the staff was very friendly, the attendees were in good cheer, the weather cooperated and the guests were great. In my humble opinion StarFest 2008 was a success, and I would go back another year in a heartbeat. Download Now on the AP review scale for StarFest... Oh yeah, and Adam Baldwin put his arm around me, so yeah, awesome.
