Tie-Dyed Brain Rays

Epic Fail-Con USA: Putting The Con In Convention

LynchMobOrganizer on the Fedcon USA boards wrote filk lyrics on the Epic Fail-Con USA meme, sung to the tune to "Faith of the Heart."

Epic Fail Con
To the tune of "Faith of the Heart"(Enterprise Theme)
------------------------------
It'll be a great show
That's what the con staff say
It'll be a great time
But something's off the first day

Aaron Douglas should've warned me right then and there
Things were going wrong
Saturday morning the show's shut down
Now all I can do is sing a song

Of Epic Fail, at the con
Not Even Dr. Phlox could save it
Epic Fail, of the staff
they can't do anything
Epic Fail of the lies
Our Con Chair's Spine is leaking
Shoulda Just Stayed at Home
Epic Fail, Epic Fail, Fail of the Con

Pretty clever, LynchMobOrganizer!

On TrekMovie.com John Champion filed this report on the demise of Fedcon USA. TekToday.com also ran a story. But the real skinny comes from Aaron Douglas, Chief Tyrol on Battlestar Galactica, who has scathing comments about Tim Brazeal's mishandling of the contractual details and travel arrangements for this Kobayashi Maru. His Live Journal is complete with emails between himself, his agent and Fedcon USA organizers. It doesn't paint a pretty picture. Douglas was online refuting the Brazeal propaganda machine even as the convention (what there was of it) was in progress. With an amazing A+B button spinning death-kick combo, the Brazeal team managed to not only screw the fans out of seeing a couple of their favorite stars, they screwed Aaron Douglas out of a bonding experience with his cast mates:

I cleared my schedule to be there. My schedule that is now in the final 2 weeks of shooting. Shooting the show that has meant so much to so many for 6 years of my life. We are shooting on location next week and the cast and crew are heading there early to spend the weekend together. James and I chose differently. We chose to go to Dallas and be with all of you, much to the chagrin of many of our castmates. I was so excited to watch the final episode in a room full of fans and then have drinks and talk about it.
This is profoundly disappointing to me.

Meanwile, back at the Death Star, the Fedcon USA website was still promoting Aaron Douglas and James Callis as confirmed guests. Mr. Douglas suspects that this was done deliberately to lure unsuspecting fans, and their money, to a convention that had no intention of delivering the goods.

I just got a call from a friend in Dallas who was listening to the radio and it stated that myself and James will be at Fedcon this weekend?

WHAT!?!?!?!

are you insane?

tell you what fans. I am consulting my lawyer in the morning and I will look into a blanket letter I can sign that you will all be able to use to have your credit card charges reversed because you bought your tickets with the promise that I would be there when they clearly had no intention of ever having James or myself.

This smells a lot like fraud. I am not saying it is... just smells like it.

Now that's putting the CON in convention!

Something that really sticks in my craw is that Tim Brazeal claims that his budgetary woes are due in part to a large out-lay for media spots:

I know that we all had high hopes for the show. I am not sure what happened exactly.. I spent thousands on radio, print advertisement etc.. So it was not from lack of trying. JackFM ran and is running over 200 commercials for the show. I did newspaper etc.. anyway. I don't see a reason in making everyone continue to suffer through this.. So I told them to shut it down now.

I contacted Fedcon USA as early as January to offer them as many 20 minute interview slots as they could fill on the biggest NewsTalk radio station in Central Texas. I offered them live spots, pre-records-- whatever they needed, to be aired during morning drive time. I asked for interviews with any of the scheduled guests, who were contractually obligated to do media according to Chris McKeown, the media relations person for Fedcon USA at that time. I also asked to interview Tim, Richard Anderson, or any other of the convention organizers they wished to provide. I was eager to help promote this event up to the day of the convention, report from the convention and do follow up interviews after the convention to help jump start the buzz for the next one. He couldn't have bought the airtime I was offering for free!

Phone calls and emails were not returned. No interviews ever materialized. Even at the convention, Steven Burkholder, who replaced Chris McKeown couldn't score me a single interview with guest, fan or the hotel employee who was cleaning up the empty press room. While Steven appears to be a nice enough kid, and is at least as good at disappearing as Harry Houdini, I'm not sure he was actually qualified to park the cars. "Dude, I partied too late last night," he told me on Saturday morning. "I think I saw Robert O'Reilly in the elevator. I'll try to go get him," he said before he vanished in a puff of smoke(screen).

And while KXYL is not a major market urban affiliate, we do reach a potential listening audience of 100,00 people in the mid and small sized towns and in the outlying rural districts. There are several large colleges in our listening area as well as several community colleges and Junior colleges, all full of eager young fans. You might be surprised at how well science fiction plays down on the farm. Our station gave away ten pairs of tickets to some of those eager fans who drove upwards of 200 miles to see the show. Imagine the embarrassment to the station when I had to call these folks and tell them, "oops! My bad. No show. So sorry." I personally called them all on Saturday, as soon as I heard the bad news, which was delivered by some random, disappointed, fan as we stood by the elevators. Unfortunately, most of those folks had already arrived, some having even plunked down the cash for rooms.

If you got burned in this deal, or if you want to share stories of the actors who stepped up to the plate for the fans, please contact me. I would like to set up short phone interviews for a podcast on this blog. Please email me at [email protected] or [email protected] to make arrangements. 

Epic Fail-Con USA

Here's the official story of how Fedcon USA collapsed from Tim Brazeal:

There are a dozen reasons that lead to the downfall of FedConUSA, and truth be told, none of them are pretty. We could have been more organized. We could have communicated better with the public and staff and actors. We could have done more advertising. The economy was already headed to the pits a year ago when we started this thing. El Niño, simply because it's been too long since we've blamed something on El Niño. In the end, however, it all came down to money.

As anybody who has run a convention can tell you, it's not a cheap thing to do. There are a thousand little things that add up, as well as many big things. When we started off on this endeavor with FedCon Germany at our side, we had the financial backing and experience of one of the best convention organizations on the planet. However, with their understandable withdrawal from FedConUSA, we were left without the inside experience and cash reserves.

We had expected much more walk-in attendance than we received, and hoped that we would have been able to pull things together enough that the show could go on. As you know, that didn't happen. We are truly sorry to everyone for what has happened and disappointed that we couldn't have put on a better show.

You can read the full text of Tim's comments here.

The angry, disappointed, fans who shelled out the latinum and drove or flew long distances to attend this debacle don't seem impressed or in a forgiving mood. Many had bought non-refundable airline tickets with travel restrictions and had pre-paid for expensive hotel rooms only to find themselves all dressed up (as Klingons) with no place to go. Some hit the Fedcon Usa forums trying to put together impromptu outings to kill the time while they were stuck in Dallas. Several mentioned taking a trip to the Sixth Floor Museum, no doubt fantasizing about Tim Brazeal motoring through Dealey Plaza in an open car.

The chatter on the Fedcon USA forums include terms like "fraud" and "class action lawsuit." For Tim Brazeal it will in the end, no doubt all come down to money as those on booth sides of the ticket booth demand redress. And this is not the first time Mr. Brazeal's name has been associated with Star Trek related fiduciary problems. He was behind the Trek United, "Save Enterprise" fiasco which cost trusting fans their hard-earned money and accomplished exactly nothing.

It certainly seems that accounting is not Mr. Brazeal's strong suit. Perhaps the failure of Fedcon USA was best articulated by an irate conventioneer who obviously had some experience in this arena. He lectured a group of dazed and weary volunteers holed up in the box office. "You NEVER depend on the gate to pay the bills," he growled. "You NEVER risk somebody else's money like this. You raise the seed money yourself and hope to make your investment back. You hope the dealer's room will pay for the convention and the gate will pay the actors, but unless you already have the money in the bank you have no business putting on a show."

And while the no one officially involved in the Fedcon USA (dis)organization seemed to know what was going or to be able to accomplish much other than pass the buck and make excuses, the stars did what they could to salvage the weekend. They valiantly soldiered on, like the band who stayed and played to boost the passenger's morale as the Titanic slipped beneath the waters of the icy North Atlantic. While all the actors, writers and other talent did yeoman work keeping spirits up, the posters on the Fedcon USA forums credit John Billingsley with making sure the autograph room remained open for the fans and taking the lead in getting answers from convention organizers.

I didn't get the pleasure of interacting with John Billingsley or the other guests, but I did corral Garrett Wang for a few minutes and he was most gracious. He was willing to grant me an interview even as the convention was falling apart around him. He requested that we do it in the autograph room as he promised that he would sign for the fans. He was friendly, accessible and upbeat despite the circumstances. The autograph room quickly filled up with eager fans wanting their last shot at meeting their favorite actors, and I didn't want to pull his attention away from the guests who bought tickets and flew or drove long distances for this event. I thanked him for his willingness to give me an interview, got a quick snapshot and prepared to leave. He asked for my contact info and promised to get in touch with me sometime in the next week for a phone interview under better conditions. He certainly didn't have to go that extra mile for me or the fans and I think that shows what a class act he is.

Garrett Wang-- a class act!

See a small gallery of snapshots from the con and get links to my posts on the Fedcon Usa forum in the post continuation

Honoring Fallen Heroes

Powered by Podbean.com

Listen to my full interview or Download the mp3.

This morning on our show we talked to Phil Taylor, an artist who feels called to paint the portraits of every Texas soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. To that end he has established the Texas Fallen Soldier Project. With the number of fallen Texas soldiers over 400 and climbing it is a sometimes daunting mission.

Through letters, photos and personal items from the soldier's family, he begins to distill the essence of each man. Phil spends as much as forty hours on a single portrait hoping to capture as much of the spirit of the individual as one can with brush and canvas. Once the portraits are completed he gifts them to the families. The artist's process brings him to an intimate, sometimes painful , but always rewarding connection to these fallen heroes and their families.  It is one of the most noble things I've ever  encountered.

Download 032008_phil_taylor.mp3

Cactus Cuties Rockin' The Anthem

This one is for Toby and Bear and everybody else fighting the good fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just in case anybody needs a reminder of what they're fighting for, how about college basketball and little girls belting out the National Anthem? If this doesn't make you stand up and salute nothing will. The video was posted by the littlest girl's granddaddy.  We had the pleasure of talking to the Cactus Cuties and their mentor Cami on our show today. Listen to the interview in the post continuation.

Go Joe! (I've Got a Tough Assignment For You)

On last Thursday's show I mentioned the big G.I. Joe convention that is going on in Arlington this weekend. I reminisced a little about all the fun I had playing with G.I. Joe as a kid. J.R. gave me a ration of grief for "playing with dolls."  Oh yeah, he's one of those guys.

I've found in my experience that the he-man macho types who were afraid to play with certain toys or wear certain "feminine" colors are the ones most likely to end up getting their mugshots snapped dressed as Carmen Miranda.   I played with all sorts of action figures-- superheroes, army guys, Star Trek figures, robots and cowboys, and as far as I can tell none of my many quirks and peccadilloes can be traced back to them.

Dax Flame 1984

Stephenville UFO sighting, MUFON Interviews in Dublin, Texas 1/19/08

This is the first of several videos I shot at the recent MUFON debriefing in Dublin, Texas concerning the multiple sightings of unusual lights in the sky over Stephenville on January 8th. MUFON investigator James Shatley takes a moment to tell me how the investigation will proceed and what they hope to discover from eyewitnesses.

Maker Faire Austin Video

A sampling of the wondrous creations at Austin's Maker Faire with interviews of Mark Frauenfelder, Mitch Altman, Bre Pettis and John P. Funk.

I interviewed some of the other makers too, but either the sound was too bad to use (I was recording with the camera's on-board mic and it picked up all the ambient noise.) or I had to cut them for time. Keeping the video within YouTube's 10 minute constraint was a challenge. I would have like the music montage at the end to be longer, for example.

Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport

We had animals in the studio the other day.

Outback Jack smacks me in the head near the end. It wasn't hard, but the message was clear, "Pony up the kangaroo chow, Buddy!"

I love the critters. That was just about the most fun I've ever had in studio.

Here's a little additional video-- nothing Earth-shaking, just a few minutes of footage after the interview with a slo-mo replay of the kangaroo smack at the end.

See The Light

Tie-dyed Tehuti trips the light fantastic in Mitch Altman's Brain Machine. "It's full of stars!"

I'm still editing the video from our recent foray to the Austin Maker's Faire. We had a great time and met lots of interesting makers. I caught interviews with folks such as Mark Frauenfelder, Bre Pettis, Mitch Altman and John P. Funk. I'll have the highlights posted soon. In the meantime enjoy my recent radio interview with Mitch Altman.

Download My Interview with Brain Machine inventor Mitch Altman

I blogged Mitch's brain machine along with other mind-altering technology on Vox.

Brain Hacking Part 1

Brain Hacking Part 2

And in case you missed it, here's my interview with Make Magazine editor in chief Mark Frauenfelder.