I was talking to Jessica today, and the conversation (unsurprisingly) drifted to Dragon*Con. It brought me around to several of the little snippets of experience about which I meant to post here. It's been a few months, but here's one of them.
As the meal was winding down, Dead Mic and I had to go back up to the sound console to keep the microphones and such running for the entertainment. Part of the entertainment that evening was provided by Robert Picardo (probably best known for his roles as doctors in China Beach and Star Trek: Voyager). He was doing kind of a combo stand-up and singing act that night (and a very funny one, might I add). We had a CD up at the sound console which contained his music, and he had prepped us ahead of time on which tracks to play. Well, during his act the positive crowd response convinced him to add another song he hadn't planned on doing. After telling the audience this, he looked at us and said which track from his CD was necessary. He then turned back to the crowd to introduce the song and give us time to queue up the track.
We were trying to quickly get the CD player on the correct track, and in our haste we somehow managed to accidently start another track (not the correct one). We realized our mistake, but not in time to prevent the first couple of seconds of the track from playing. The bizarre part is that just as Picardo had made a funny self-deprecating remark, the snippet–which sounded exactly like a standard comedy routine rimshot–played over the house PA. It was perfect comedic timing. Picardo looked at us, dumfounded, and said "You guys are good!". The whole room laughed, and we came off looking like we had done it on purpose! If only all mistakes turned out so well.