Archive for the ‘Diary’ Category

During Christmas of 2021, my dad (we call him ‘Dappy’ because that’s the nickname his first granddaughter gave him) handed out seven handmade wooden boxes as gifts. Two to his children (me and my sister) and five to his granddaughters (my four nieces and my daughter, Grace.) They were amazing, and are worthy of some showcasing.

Each wooden box was in the form of a book. They really look like books. Each one was roughly the size (a bit larger) than my hardback collected volume of The Lord of the Rings.

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I recently had the great honor (at least, from my perspective) of being invited to record an episode of a LOST re-watch podcast, covering two of LOST‘s near-the-end-of-the-first-season’s episodes.

There will be spoilers for LOST, the TV show. This is your final warning.

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Con of Thrones 2019

Posted: July 22, 2019 by patricksponaugle in Diary, Game of Thrones
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For three days mid-July, 2019, Nashville Tennessee played host to the third Con of Thrones. (If the name doesn’t make it clear, this is a convention for fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones – as well as the book series the show is based on.)

The convention returned to Nashville where it debuted in 2017 after spending 2018 in Dallas, Texas. As a resident of the East Coast, I was happy that the convention was once again within driving distance.

This year’s featured guest was the Kingslayer himself, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, along with Jerome Flynn who played the upwardly-mobile sellsword Bronn on the show. Returning guests included Hannah “Gilly” Murray and Miltos Yerolemou, who taught Arya Stark to water dance as Syrio Forel and has given fencing workshops at all previous Con of Thrones.

Guests aside, the convention featured a tremendous amount programming in the form of discussion panels. Con of Thrones has always had a great deal of fan engagement, not only in the audience attending panels covering various topics related to the show and books, but also in the wide variety of fan-expert panelists. The panels were stacked with entertainment writers, authors, podcasters, Reddit moderators, bloggers, YouTubers, cosplayers, lawyers, therapists, and actors.

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A few days ago, I received some sad news: Dr. Rodney Slusher had died.

Rodney was thirty-nine.

I’d never met Rodney in person, and I can’t say that we’d had a lot of interactions over the years, but news of his death was a shock. Not just because he was young, which he was. But because I had been looking forward to talking to him specifically in the year to come. I knew Rodney because of HBO’s television show Game of Thrones, and it feels wrong that he should be gone before the final season.

Okay, I’m probably messing this up as a tribute.

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Con of Thrones 2018

Posted: June 2, 2018 by patricksponaugle in Diary, Game of Thrones
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For three days at the tail end of May (May 25th through May 28th) Dallas, Texas played host to the second ever Con of Thrones.

I attended last year’s inaugural convention (I wrote about that here) and wanted to update everyone on how things progressed from the first convention to its second event.

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For three days, running from June 30th to July 2nd,  Nashville Tennessee hosted the first-ever Con of Thrones.

CoT wasn’t the first-ever convention dedicated to the book series A Song of Ice and Fire or HBO’s show Game of Thrones, but the convention’s inaugural effort solidly established itself with an impressive venue, the amount and variety of stars from the show, the massive engagement of fan experts in the programming, and the support of a dedicated app that provided scheduling, maps, and a social media component that was surprisingly effective. (I have some things to say about this app.)

I was pleased to attend the convention, and lucky enough to be a panelist talking about the Night’s Watch. What follows will be some of my experiences at the convention, along with some observations. (I know a handful of my friends, as well as my Game of Thrones-watching dad, wanted some kind of after-action report. But mostly pictures.)

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Back in my college days, my days of misspent youth where I could have studied more and partied more and thus enriched my life, I almost saw the Ramones play.

Ramones_Logo_Greyscales

I kind of heard them play. I was definitely in the auditorium where they were performing. I was probably no further than 20 feet from them for about an hour. But I can’t say that I saw them play.

Let me explain.

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(AKA My Recent Weekend in New York. (The City. (In Case You Didn’t Know.)))

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This weekend, my wife and I visited New York, largely to see an off-Broadway play. A very funny play. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

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