The Official Twilight Convention is underway in Parsippany, NJ, this weekend and long-time Friend of Doom and Twilight fanatic, the lovely CrueChik is on the scene for Geeks of Doom.

The convention kicked off yesterday with guests like Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke and stars Gil Birmingham (Billy Black) and Edi Gathegi (the vampire Laurent) and members of the Wolf Pack from New Moon on hand for Q&A panels and autograph sessions.

Our reporter has called in a few times to let us know the happenings at the Con and sent the image here at right (click for larger, full view), which is a sign at the entrance to the Con (there’s another sign with an arrow pointing the other way for ‘Werewolves’ — CrueChik is on Team Edward, which is why we have such a bias pic. UPDATE: She’s not that bias – here’s the other pic). But, I think she’s living it up so much that she hasn’t had much time to write in her official report (we don’t blame her — we told her to party hardy!).

Since CrueChik is a Con newbie, she didn’t know about having to get everyone ‘early’ (like those of us learned at Comic-Con), so she wasn’t able to get into the Catherine Hardwicke Q&A (though, she was able to get into the autograph/photo session). MTV was there and noted that the Twilight director said her original vision for Robert Pattinson’s Edward Cullen was for the vampire to have “long, romantic hair.” They even went so far as to have Pattinson sit for 8 hours for hair extensions, but in the end, the actor said “No” to his new locks.

CrueChik was able to sit in on the Q&A panel with Gil Birmingham, where the actor said he’s going to be busy for the next few years filming the sequels Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. Birmingham, who’s also a musician, put on a performance last night along with band The Twilighters.

My first experience with Twilight fans was at the 2008 SDCC Twilight panel, where audience members stood up during the Q&A sessions and asked the Twilight stars questions like, “Boxers or briefs?” I wondered if this fan convention would yield the same type of questions. CrueChik informs me that convention goers were told to keep their questions tasteful. Also, questions must be submitted in advance and placed in one of the special boxes throughout the Con, then at the panel, questions are chosen and read to the panelists. Only if there’s extra time at the end are audience members able to ask questions in person.

The pre-submitted questions are read by panel hosts The Hillywoods, a parody group that does impersonations of famous Hollywood people, and apparently in this case, of the Twilight actors (check out the video here below of the Twilight-themed episode of their show The Hollywood Show — it’s quite amusing — and a sneak peek of their upcoming New Moon parody). UPDATE: Also, check out the picture here at right (click for larger, full view) of CrueChik getting bitten by The Hillywoods at the Con.

Tonight is the highly anticipated Vampire Ball, with celebrity guests Edi Gathegi, Gil Birmingham, Alex Meraz, Kiowa Gordon, and Chaske Spencer in attendance. CrueChik will be at the event, so we’ll get to the full report soon after (or in the morning, depending on how hard the partying goes).

For a full schedule of this weekend’s events, check out the Official Twilight Convention Site. And we sure to check back with Geeks of Doom for our coverage of the Con.

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