DALLAS — Blast has been talking about TwiCon, the nation’s largest fan-run “Twilight” convention for a long while now, and it’s finally come and gone. With 3,000 attendees, the convention centered loosely on standing in lines for specific events like photograph sessions with the cast, autographs and the question and answer session, but the cast, as well as other guests like Bobby Long, Marcus Foster and Sam Bradley, made sure it was all worth the wait.

Jackson Rathbone was probably the busiest cast member at TwiCon this past weekend, attending not only as the actor portraying Jasper in “Twilight” but as a part of his band, 100 Monkeys. They played a concert at TwiCon, and in downtown Dallas, to huge, adoring crowds. Blast was backstage before the TwiCon show, and got to see the boys getting hyped up, and Rathbone having a moment with his family before going on stage. Rathbone also wrapped up the convention with a private question and answer session on Sunday morning after his late-night 100 Monkeys concert Saturday night. Charming, and no doubt as tired as he could be in the same clothes he was wearing the day before, he was carefree as he joked with the crowd. When asked which musician of all time he would pick to play with, he chose Bach. “That would be awesome” Rathbone laughed. “He could be crazy on the piano and I would play some electric guitar. So yeah, Bach.”

Alex Meraz, the “New Moon” actor playing Quileute werewolf, Paul, had a private brunch event with about 250 lucky attendees. Sweet and honest, Alex answered questions, including how Stephenie Meyer approved of his casting and his advice to Taylor Lautner to lay off the weight lifting and weight gaining in between films.

Throughout the weekend, Blast’s favorite Brits became a fan favorite as well. Each took turns playing at the VIP party on Thursday evening, followed by Sage, a musician and friend of Nikki Reed. The sound situation wasn’t ideal, and the boys had to mic the guitars as if they were playing back at the open mic nights they met at years ago in London. The show was still great — intimate and endearing, and they all had more shows at Poor David’s Pub in Dallas during the weekend, and all performed at the Volturi Masque Ball event on Saturday night.

The cast Q&A session, though definitely too short, was hilarious. Between Peter Facinelli’s death defying act of jumping off the stage and running down the aisles of screaming fans and Jackson Rathbone’s snarky answer concerning Peter’s layered birthday acting method, the cast put on a great show. The session included all of the cast attending the convention: Peter Facinelli, Jackson Rathbone, Alex Meraz, Kellan Lutz, Billy Burke and Christian Serratos. Questions were sent in by fans, and while some elicited humorous answers on their own, like when Kellan misheard the question and thought he had been asked “which werewolf would you eat” instead of “which werewolf would you be” a great number of the questions centered around how the actors “prepared” for their respective roles. And while preparing to play vegetarian vampires might have been a challenge in the beginning with “Twilight” most of the development wasn’t that drastic in “New Moon” and could have been answered with “I prepared for my role by going to acting school.” However, Rathbone instead started in on a very complicated technique of acting in order to make things more interesting: Peter Facinelli’s birthday technique.

“Peter told me” Rathbone began, “to get into the darker side of Jasper, I needed to pretend like people know it’s my birthday, but they forgot. Then he said that wasn’t dark enough, so I had to pretend it was my birthday, people knew, but then they threw a party for this girl instead. I thought she was my cake.” After pausing for a moment to allow for the uproar of laughter, Jackson finished saying, “actually, Peter has a book coming out and it’s called, “ËœHow to Act and the Birthday Technique.”

YouTube sensation Evil Iguana Productions (we discovered them!) was also attending the convention as special guests, and premiered their latest “Twilight” spoof, which was received with lots of laughter. While introducing the spoof, Craig Deering asked, “Why another ‘Twilight’ spoof?” to which Allen Murphy answered, “Do you know how many girls love ‘Twilight?!'” He’ right of course, considering at least 2,990 of the 3,000 attendees must have been female, and definitely love EIP.

Check back for more exclusive pictures and interviews from the TwiCon weekend.

About The Author

Liz McClendon is a two-time graduate of Virginia Tech and now spends her time traversing the internet, where she writes and continues her seemingly everlasting quest to be gainfully employed.

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