Before I move on to Day 2 of Dragoncon, I remembered one more interesting comment of Mira's. She was asked what were the immediate differences she noticed between filming in the U.S. versus the former Yugoslavia. She related how since there is far less money involved in Yugoslavian films, the pace in the filming is very slow and laid back. She found the reverse to be true in B5. The pace was very fast from day to day as they had less than a week to film each episode. The difference was a jarring one to begin with.

Day 2 of Dragoncon found my husband, daughter, and I arriving bright and early around 8am at the Hyatt Regency. After a leisurely breakfast, we went to the big main conference room and watched a sword play/fencing demonstration that was scheduled right before the panel with Wayne, Bob, and Robin. I recalled how funny Wayne and Robin were last year when they crashed Pat Talman's talk with a big brown sack, and then proceeded use the full size blender form the bag to make margaritas under the table. :-) Robin, Bob, and Wayne came on stage for the panel and started to talk. Moments into their talk Jason Carter ran in through the door, (whom no one knew was there - he wasn't a scheduled guest) bounded to the stage, leaped on it doing a somersault landing up to the table to the introduction from Wayne and Robin, "And ladies and gentlemen, Jason Carter!" The crowd in the packed huge room went wild. Jason took a seat at the left end of the panel table beside Robin. One of the actors commented that the "have and have nots" with hair were sitting at the opposite ends of the table. Wayne stood up and showed he didn't even have any chest hair. :-) Jason commented how with his shorter hair now people asked him if he wore a wig when he played Marcus. He rolled his eyes and said, "No.. I got a "hair cut*!" Robin and Robin commented how jms replaced one long haired Englishmen in Season 4 with another long haired Englishman in Season 5.

This panel turned out to be the funniest Con event I ever attended. All four of these guys could be stand up comedians. They told dirty and clean jokes, and Jason recited some absolutely hilarious poetry that Heather talked about in her con report . The capacity audience was laughing so hard they were falling out of their chairs. These guys could take this stuff to Vegas. Bob told a great preacher joke. He says he gets them in the mail as he plays a minister on the daytime soap opera, "One Life to Live".

In the midst of all the jokes and poetry they fielded questions from the audience. Wayne was asked the most difficult thing about wearing the Lorien makeup. He said the worst part was that after they put the long fingers on, he couldn't perform any "plumbing chores" the rest of the day. On of the other actors commented Lorien would have made a great proctologist. :-) Wayne also said eating lunch with the long sticks on his fingers was near impossible .....especially peas. John Copeland used to sit across from him at lunch make fun his "cop stick" finger predicaments. Wayne said that he could only wear Lorien's gold contact lenses 20 min at a time, and would have to go around pleading for them to be taken out after that length of time was up. When he was asked to do Lorien, Wayne told jms that his only requirement he had that was that Lorien should be taller than Bruce. :-) Wanealso related that it was a very intense three days filming the Sebastian scenes alone with Mira in the room. There wasn't any of the usual humor and cutting up between the takes. It was all very focused due to the nature of the story.

Bob related what fun he had playing the evil Cartagia. He said it was great to be able to show his range in playing a very nasty and evil part because he plays a minister and pretty good guy on "One Life to Live". He told the story of the prank jms played on Peter while filming the scene with Londo, Cartagia, and all the chopped off heads. jms put a bowl of cereal in the drawer of Cartagia's desk and told Bob to take it out and start eating it in the middle of the gruesome head scene. Well, they started filming the scene. Peter, as Londo, had a handkerchief over his nose as the smell from the rotting heads would have been pretty potent. When Bob felt it was the right moment in Cartagia's speech to Londo, he reached in the drawer, pulled out the bowl, and began to eat the cereal. He said Peter's eyes were doing the "what the hell is he doing" look. Then Peter's shoulders started to shake, his mouth still hidden behind the handkerchief, as he tried really hard not to break character before he finally burst out laughing. :-)

Robin was asked what was his most memorable scene on B5. He said it was the sex scene with Pat on top with those spooky black eyes. He recalled how they were constantly misting his bare body down so he would look his sexiest. The camera and Tony Dow, the director, were positioned behind Pat looking under her arm. Tony would ask Robin to move Pat a bit to the side for a better camera angle so he had his hands on Pat's breasts, lifting and holding them to the side so the camera had a good angle. :-)

Jason commented that in his opinion Marcus did not die a virgin. After all, he gave all his life force to Susan and that must have been one heck of an experience.

After the panel was over and we had all stopped laughing and wiped our eyes, I did have to go back to the autograph lines and get Jason's autograph and Claudia's. Since Jason was a surprise guest, they hadn't arranged to put him in the B5 section of the Walk of Fame where the autographing took place. The had him in the Willie Wonka section. Go figure. He was a real charmer though and he had his wife there helping with the autographing. He drew a little stick figure with a pike under his name for my autographs. :-)

After the final foray into the autograph lines, we went back to the main large video room where John Hudgen's showed all his *wonderful* B5 music videos. He works for a WB affiliate in Knoxville and does this kind of superb editing for a living. He did the first one for fun during Season 1 to Top Gun music. jms saw it and liked it, showed it at a con. He then insisted on paying John this time to do more. jms and John take these videos around and only show them at the cons. John has a new video to the Star Wars music that plays during the epic light saber duel between Darth Maul and Qui Gon. After one showing of this new music video during an actor's panel, the Mira/Claudia/Julie/Maggie end of the panel commented they had tears in their eyes it was so beautifully done.

The last B5 event we attended on Friday was a showing of the new Babylon Park video that was done by some very talented Atlanta B5 fans. It was a spoof of South Park, B5 and Star Gate and was an absolute hoot! They had also done a claymation feature with Crusade characters, the evil TNT, and a captured jms. This claymation feature had taken several months to do and it was very well executed and has a hilarious story line.

I also heard from other Atlanta fans the B5 Music Consortium had a wonderful J&D music video which I missed seeing. Maybe a fellow Dragoncon attendee might report on it. We just slipped up in our scheduling and missed that event.

More on about Saturday and Sunday tomorrow.

Chrystie