OK, last week I wrote this huge post about Comic-Con and for some reason it never showed on my journal. Perhaps it was the internet gods saying "You know Kirst, there were no real insights in there, why do you have another go and in the meantime we'll just delete this hour's work". Well, screw you internet Gods! Now I can't remember what I wrote so I'm going to have to go through my little notebook to see what I did on my holiday. I will break it into manageable chunks.
Shout Outs To The US -massive (aka some of the people we met)
At the LA Greyhound station there were a couple of people clearly going to Comic-Con. One of them was a guy named Greco from, as he put it, 'the crazy country of Chile'. He had a costume from Battle of the Planets and he was very excited to be one of the 50 people chosen for the masquerade. We mentioned that we had mistakenly got two passes each and he gave us his mobille number asking whether he could have the spare for his friend. He told us he knew someone at the Dark Horse booth but when we tried to deliver said pass they said they'd never heard of him. Greco showed up at a few Q and As, usually asking completely nuts questions. One of them was to the Family Guy panel - "When are you going to make fun of the crazy country of Chile?", to which Seth Green responded "How about right now?".
At the Browncoat social on the Saturday night (while others were schmoozing with Joss and getting invited to the IESb party with Zach Quinto, not that I'm jealous. Except I am) we met three great kids called Jasmine,Mike and I forget the other one. They were really cool though and we had a great time talking to them about all sorts of nonsense from Eddie Izzard to tiger training. Also in attendance were the awesomely hard working people from the California Browncoats and it was a great night, I'm glad we did it.
It was also great to bump into people from various message boards and internet places at the Browncoat fan panel where me and Kev talked about Serenity marketing and websites and ended up inadvertently launching our new collaboration 'JJ and Joss', whih is a musical puppet show based on the early life of Joss Whedon and JJ Abrams. People laughed at the concept, or towards the concept, which is good enough for me.
TV Is Awesome (aka Panel time)
The first panel we went to was Doctor Who and Torchwood in Ballroom 20 on Thursday. Steven Mofft, the new showrunner and writer of Doctor Who was very funny and the panel altogether was great, I had no idea that there was such a strong Who folllowing in the US. I accidentally ruined the series finale for a guy next to me because I didn't realise that they hadn't caught up yet, so sorry mate.
Torchwood panel was basically the John Barrowman show but I got some sweet footage of him singing a song from Miss Saigon with Naoko Mori.
Friday was the Dr. Horrible panel, which was legen- wait for it - dary. You'll have seen it on youtube no doubt so I won't bore with the details but it was nice to keep seeing Dr Horrible and Captain Hammer tshirts everywhere. I got myself a Dr Horrible one because the airline lost my damn bag and I literally had nothing to wear. I spent about £50 of Air France's money on shirts through the weekend. The screening of Dr Horrible was nice too, great to see it on the big screen and here the anguished cries of those who had never seen it before at the denoument.
We also saw the American Dad panel which was basically a table read of the first act of a new episode followed by an unrendered version for the second act and the finished product for the last act. It was a clever way to do it and it flowed straight into the Family Guy panel which also had an hilarious ten minutes from a new episode. Seth MacFarlane's voice is awesome.
On Saturday morning we got to Hall H for 8.00 am, two and a half hours before the start of the Heroes panel, and we still had to join the queue almost half way round the back of the convention centre. I was worried we wouldn't get in but the capacity of the room was 6,000 so we were fine. I was most excited about this panel and when they announced that they would be screening the entire first episode of Season 3 I almost vomited with pleasure. I've never seen Heroes on the big screen before either so it was doubly special. I was furiously writing down everything that happened for my mates on 9th Wonders, the official UK fanclub site, only pausing to go "I knew it!" when we found out who Nathan's assassin was, and when a certain other character appeared and did his thing. The question and answer session had to be quite short and unfortunately there was rather rubbish screening of questions which meant that one guy admitted he had never seen Heroes before and asked the castt to summarise the two seasons, and another woman asked if she could hug Milo Ventimiglia because she had bad eyesight or some such nonsense.
We managed to miss the Dollhouse panel because of Heroes but we got into Ballroom 20 early for the Fringe panel and ending up seeing Chuck, including Adam Baldwin. (Apparently ZQ was there for both Chuck and Fringe but I managed to miss him completely). We'd seen the screening of the Fringe pilot on preview night and I was really into it. I was hoping that someone would ask JJ more about Star Trek but no-one did and he didn't venture much information, except to say that they had no screenable clips because none of the FX were done yet.
Sunday morning saw us participating in a panel of our own, rather excitingly (see above). The final thing we did at Comic-Con was to go to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical screening in Ballroom 20 which was really good, but tinged with sadness becaue they kept announcing that Comic-Con was over. I'd really fallen in love with the place by this point and I definitely want to go back in the future.
Shopping madness
I got my hands on some really cool stuff including my beloved Heroes watch which apparently sold out on Sunday morning. I have a nice tan line to show my devotion to the watch. I also camped out in front of the Paramount stand trying to get a Spock poster, which I achieved after using Neuro Linguistic Programming on the guy handing them out. I felt such geeky achievement when I got my hands on that poster, it was the nerd holy grail of the weekend. After all the hassle I had trying to get the first one I accidentally got a second one by just walking by at an opportune time and sticking my hand out. I'm going to give the second one away in a contest when the Trek Movie gets closer, because I'm nice like that.
I also got a handbag that looks like a hotdog, and a Kingdom of Loathing tshirt. Their booth was awesome, though I haven't yet tried out the free item thing that they gave out. I am now a Level 9 Accordion Thief and have an 'I Stole Your Accordion' sticker for my erm, accordion case.
Well, I can't think of anything else, all in all it was a magical weekend! Bring on next year!
Shout Outs To The US -massive (aka some of the people we met)
At the LA Greyhound station there were a couple of people clearly going to Comic-Con. One of them was a guy named Greco from, as he put it, 'the crazy country of Chile'. He had a costume from Battle of the Planets and he was very excited to be one of the 50 people chosen for the masquerade. We mentioned that we had mistakenly got two passes each and he gave us his mobille number asking whether he could have the spare for his friend. He told us he knew someone at the Dark Horse booth but when we tried to deliver said pass they said they'd never heard of him. Greco showed up at a few Q and As, usually asking completely nuts questions. One of them was to the Family Guy panel - "When are you going to make fun of the crazy country of Chile?", to which Seth Green responded "How about right now?".
At the Browncoat social on the Saturday night (while others were schmoozing with Joss and getting invited to the IESb party with Zach Quinto, not that I'm jealous. Except I am) we met three great kids called Jasmine,Mike and I forget the other one. They were really cool though and we had a great time talking to them about all sorts of nonsense from Eddie Izzard to tiger training. Also in attendance were the awesomely hard working people from the California Browncoats and it was a great night, I'm glad we did it.
It was also great to bump into people from various message boards and internet places at the Browncoat fan panel where me and Kev talked about Serenity marketing and websites and ended up inadvertently launching our new collaboration 'JJ and Joss', whih is a musical puppet show based on the early life of Joss Whedon and JJ Abrams. People laughed at the concept, or towards the concept, which is good enough for me.
TV Is Awesome (aka Panel time)
The first panel we went to was Doctor Who and Torchwood in Ballroom 20 on Thursday. Steven Mofft, the new showrunner and writer of Doctor Who was very funny and the panel altogether was great, I had no idea that there was such a strong Who folllowing in the US. I accidentally ruined the series finale for a guy next to me because I didn't realise that they hadn't caught up yet, so sorry mate.
Torchwood panel was basically the John Barrowman show but I got some sweet footage of him singing a song from Miss Saigon with Naoko Mori.
Friday was the Dr. Horrible panel, which was legen- wait for it - dary. You'll have seen it on youtube no doubt so I won't bore with the details but it was nice to keep seeing Dr Horrible and Captain Hammer tshirts everywhere. I got myself a Dr Horrible one because the airline lost my damn bag and I literally had nothing to wear. I spent about £50 of Air France's money on shirts through the weekend. The screening of Dr Horrible was nice too, great to see it on the big screen and here the anguished cries of those who had never seen it before at the denoument.
We also saw the American Dad panel which was basically a table read of the first act of a new episode followed by an unrendered version for the second act and the finished product for the last act. It was a clever way to do it and it flowed straight into the Family Guy panel which also had an hilarious ten minutes from a new episode. Seth MacFarlane's voice is awesome.
On Saturday morning we got to Hall H for 8.00 am, two and a half hours before the start of the Heroes panel, and we still had to join the queue almost half way round the back of the convention centre. I was worried we wouldn't get in but the capacity of the room was 6,000 so we were fine. I was most excited about this panel and when they announced that they would be screening the entire first episode of Season 3 I almost vomited with pleasure. I've never seen Heroes on the big screen before either so it was doubly special. I was furiously writing down everything that happened for my mates on 9th Wonders, the official UK fanclub site, only pausing to go "I knew it!" when we found out who Nathan's assassin was, and when a certain other character appeared and did his thing. The question and answer session had to be quite short and unfortunately there was rather rubbish screening of questions which meant that one guy admitted he had never seen Heroes before and asked the castt to summarise the two seasons, and another woman asked if she could hug Milo Ventimiglia because she had bad eyesight or some such nonsense.
We managed to miss the Dollhouse panel because of Heroes but we got into Ballroom 20 early for the Fringe panel and ending up seeing Chuck, including Adam Baldwin. (Apparently ZQ was there for both Chuck and Fringe but I managed to miss him completely). We'd seen the screening of the Fringe pilot on preview night and I was really into it. I was hoping that someone would ask JJ more about Star Trek but no-one did and he didn't venture much information, except to say that they had no screenable clips because none of the FX were done yet.
Sunday morning saw us participating in a panel of our own, rather excitingly (see above). The final thing we did at Comic-Con was to go to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical screening in Ballroom 20 which was really good, but tinged with sadness becaue they kept announcing that Comic-Con was over. I'd really fallen in love with the place by this point and I definitely want to go back in the future.
Shopping madness
I got my hands on some really cool stuff including my beloved Heroes watch which apparently sold out on Sunday morning. I have a nice tan line to show my devotion to the watch. I also camped out in front of the Paramount stand trying to get a Spock poster, which I achieved after using Neuro Linguistic Programming on the guy handing them out. I felt such geeky achievement when I got my hands on that poster, it was the nerd holy grail of the weekend. After all the hassle I had trying to get the first one I accidentally got a second one by just walking by at an opportune time and sticking my hand out. I'm going to give the second one away in a contest when the Trek Movie gets closer, because I'm nice like that.
I also got a handbag that looks like a hotdog, and a Kingdom of Loathing tshirt. Their booth was awesome, though I haven't yet tried out the free item thing that they gave out. I am now a Level 9 Accordion Thief and have an 'I Stole Your Accordion' sticker for my erm, accordion case.
Well, I can't think of anything else, all in all it was a magical weekend! Bring on next year!