Or rather, stupid youtube with copyrighted media detection.
Since youtube isn't allowing me to post stuff there, I'm going to put it here. Take that!
"Take a bite outta the silver sandwich!"
Hey, inspirational speeches are hard to come up with on the spot.
I'm worried that blogger might get mad if I try to put more than two videos in one post, so I won't.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
You know you haven't gotten enough sleep when...
It seems appropriate that one of my first posts in a long time would be similar to one of my first posts ever.
1. You don't take a nap because you're afraid that you'll sleep through the alarm and miss class--again.
2. You don't drink coffee because you know that, instead of waking you up, it will only make you think that you are going to have a heart attack.
3. You still don't have that song memorized from the album that you've been listening to all night, despite the fact that it's the only song on the album that has lyrics and it's only eight lines long.
4. You start compiling lists like this one.
5. You come up with an idea, but by the time you come up with evidence to support it, you forget what the idea was to begin with.
6. You take a shower to wake yourself up, but it only aggravates the scar tissue from an old neck injury, making it feel as though it was inflicted yesterday.
7. You go to look for a book, but have to hold the syllabus in your hand while you search because you forget the name of the book as soon as you look up from the page.
8. You're worried that you might fall asleep mid-blink.
9. You feel oddly comforted by a cartoon character's hallucination of sheep-cheerleaders.
10. You are reminded of the time when they passed around drunk goggles in class--your vision is both blurry and oddly clear at the same time.
11. After your morning class you think it's nighttime because of the overcast sky.
12. You spend several minutes looking at a picture via slide show, and become increasingly annoyed that you have to keep pushing the back arrow when it moves to the next picture, only to realize hours later that you had the picture set as your desktop background the whole time.
13. You compile a list like this, but only come up with 12 things.
This is the scene with the sheep:
I would have embedded the youtube link that I posted, but it came out all weird there. Aang decides that the only way to avoid his nightmares is to avoid sleeping altogether. As I said in the youtube description, thankfully I have never reached this stage.
1. You don't take a nap because you're afraid that you'll sleep through the alarm and miss class--again.
2. You don't drink coffee because you know that, instead of waking you up, it will only make you think that you are going to have a heart attack.
3. You still don't have that song memorized from the album that you've been listening to all night, despite the fact that it's the only song on the album that has lyrics and it's only eight lines long.
4. You start compiling lists like this one.
5. You come up with an idea, but by the time you come up with evidence to support it, you forget what the idea was to begin with.
6. You take a shower to wake yourself up, but it only aggravates the scar tissue from an old neck injury, making it feel as though it was inflicted yesterday.
7. You go to look for a book, but have to hold the syllabus in your hand while you search because you forget the name of the book as soon as you look up from the page.
8. You're worried that you might fall asleep mid-blink.
9. You feel oddly comforted by a cartoon character's hallucination of sheep-cheerleaders.
10. You are reminded of the time when they passed around drunk goggles in class--your vision is both blurry and oddly clear at the same time.
11. After your morning class you think it's nighttime because of the overcast sky.
12. You spend several minutes looking at a picture via slide show, and become increasingly annoyed that you have to keep pushing the back arrow when it moves to the next picture, only to realize hours later that you had the picture set as your desktop background the whole time.
13. You compile a list like this, but only come up with 12 things.
This is the scene with the sheep:
I would have embedded the youtube link that I posted, but it came out all weird there. Aang decides that the only way to avoid his nightmares is to avoid sleeping altogether. As I said in the youtube description, thankfully I have never reached this stage.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
#&%*&@
I'm only posting this here because, no matter what I did, youtube refused to put it up. Of course, this is also owned by google, but maybe it'll work anyway. Maybe.
Aren't they great together? Sorry about the sound being off. I doubt that I can make it any better. I don't want to tell you how long it took me to get it to work even this well, nor do I have the energy to explain why it took so long. But it was worth it, right? Right?
Aren't they great together? Sorry about the sound being off. I doubt that I can make it any better. I don't want to tell you how long it took me to get it to work even this well, nor do I have the energy to explain why it took so long. But it was worth it, right? Right?
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Oblivion
Yeah, I wrote this a couple of weeks ago now. Push!
So I've been playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for the last few days. Following Alec's recommendation, I started with the Assassin's Guild, since the Thieves' Guild requires that you not kill anyone, so it wouldn't be a good idea to do both of them at the same time. At first, most of the hits were pretty easy to rationalize. For instance, one of them was a murdering drug addict and another was a rapist. However, as they've progressed, they've become more difficult to stomach. Here follows my blow-by-blow (not really) account of my latest assignment:
For this one I was ordered to assassinate an entire family, starting with the mother. I found her outside her house, working her garden. I asked her where I could find her children, and she thought I was the present delivery person, and not only told me where they were, but gave me money. Worse still, after I shot her I went into her house to see if she had anything valuable in there, I found that she had a pet dog. He was apparently named Jake, and stood in the corner facing the place where her dead body was outside, barking and wagging his tail anxiously. Could you make it a little more heartwrenching?
Oh goodie. The next hit is a guard. He seems friendly. I approached him to see if he had anything important to say, and he seemed nonplussed when I didn't say anything (my other choices were something like "you and your family are dead!" and "I'm here for your soul!" I was in clear view of another guard, so those choices seemed unwise).
Aww!! This is horrible! This person lives in a cave with a bunch of animal friends: rats, and more importantly, wolves! After I killed her, I snuck back out of the cave past the wolves and rats. I don't think they would have attacked me, but better safe than sorry. As I passed one of the wolves (I was in the shadows so he couldn't see me) he sat down, wagged his tail, and tilted his head inquisitively. Then he barked in the direction of his mistress. Why do they do these things to me?!
Ak! The last one was a Captain of the Guard. That was annoying. Thank goodness for most people's inability to see into shadows. Also, for the fact that one can just turn up the brightness settings in order to see into shadows.
Pop! (I wonder how many people have read Gödel, Escher, Bach, and of those how many actually would get the whole Push-Pop reference. People to whom I've explained it multiple times don't count. Particularly if they still don't get it the next time I use it. *cough* Alec *cough*
Anyway, I'm posting this now even though I didn't really finish it. Well, if I did finish it it would probably be even longer and more boring, so I guess that's a good thing.
So I've been playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for the last few days. Following Alec's recommendation, I started with the Assassin's Guild, since the Thieves' Guild requires that you not kill anyone, so it wouldn't be a good idea to do both of them at the same time. At first, most of the hits were pretty easy to rationalize. For instance, one of them was a murdering drug addict and another was a rapist. However, as they've progressed, they've become more difficult to stomach. Here follows my blow-by-blow (not really) account of my latest assignment:
For this one I was ordered to assassinate an entire family, starting with the mother. I found her outside her house, working her garden. I asked her where I could find her children, and she thought I was the present delivery person, and not only told me where they were, but gave me money. Worse still, after I shot her I went into her house to see if she had anything valuable in there, I found that she had a pet dog. He was apparently named Jake, and stood in the corner facing the place where her dead body was outside, barking and wagging his tail anxiously. Could you make it a little more heartwrenching?
Oh goodie. The next hit is a guard. He seems friendly. I approached him to see if he had anything important to say, and he seemed nonplussed when I didn't say anything (my other choices were something like "you and your family are dead!" and "I'm here for your soul!" I was in clear view of another guard, so those choices seemed unwise).
Aww!! This is horrible! This person lives in a cave with a bunch of animal friends: rats, and more importantly, wolves! After I killed her, I snuck back out of the cave past the wolves and rats. I don't think they would have attacked me, but better safe than sorry. As I passed one of the wolves (I was in the shadows so he couldn't see me) he sat down, wagged his tail, and tilted his head inquisitively. Then he barked in the direction of his mistress. Why do they do these things to me?!
Ak! The last one was a Captain of the Guard. That was annoying. Thank goodness for most people's inability to see into shadows. Also, for the fact that one can just turn up the brightness settings in order to see into shadows.
Pop! (I wonder how many people have read Gödel, Escher, Bach, and of those how many actually would get the whole Push-Pop reference. People to whom I've explained it multiple times don't count. Particularly if they still don't get it the next time I use it. *cough* Alec *cough*
Anyway, I'm posting this now even though I didn't really finish it. Well, if I did finish it it would probably be even longer and more boring, so I guess that's a good thing.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Things about ComicCon that I forgot to mention before
At the Psych panel, Dule Hill tapdanced. He was pretty good, too.
David Tennant was wearing a black t-shirt with a picture of a stormtrooper's helmet drawn out with rhinestones.
John Barrowman asked Alec what his Dexter pin was from, and chided him for not knowing that it the new season had started the week before.
Here's a complete list of the action figures that I got:
*Tenth Doctor (w/Brainy Specs) and five Adipose
*Tenth Doctor (w/ Coat and Sonic Screwdriver), Rose, Cassandra, and Cassandra's spider spy
*Jack Harness (w/ sonic blaster; from "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances") and the Empty Child
*Donna Noble
*Mickey Smith (w/Preacher gun)
*Clockwork Man (w/ detachable mask)
*Sycorax leader (w/ whip, staff and detachable cape)
*Ood Sigma (w/ translator ball)
*Regular Ood (w/ translator ball)
*TARDIS bank (it makes sounds and the light flashes!)
At the booth for The Prisoner they gave out photo ID cards and assigned each person a number by which each person would henceforth be known. I had to get a second card and number because I lost my first one.
I told Colin Baker that I was woefully uneducated about any Doctor before Ninth, but he forgave me since I knew at least that much.
We learned the importance of going to the market at night, rather than trying to get food before we went to the Convention Center. Having nothing but bread to eat all day is not as fun as it sounds.
When one considers that the food at Carpe Diem in Eureka is free, it seems even more outrageous that the Carpe Diem in San Diego would charge $14 for a hamburger.
Someone from the audience asked a question, and requested that John Barrowman answer it with his Scottish accent. He obliged, but kept slipping back and forth between his Scottish and American accent. It sounded very interesting. He must have worked very hard in high school to get rid of his accent. (He went to HS in the US, but spent most of his childhood in Scotland, where his family is from. His family still lives there, and I believe his partner is Scottish as well).
David Tennant, of course, spoke with his natural Scottish accent the whole time.
I can't believe I forgot to say this before, but Alec got a signed photo from Adam Baldwin! He, Edward James Olmos (Bill Adama), Michael Hogan (Saul Tigh), and James Callis (Gaius Baltar), were all giving autographs and getting pictures taken with people. Plus, they were charging enough for each autograph that we got to stand around there for several minutes, grinning foolishly. I even got several (bad) pictures of them. As one bystander said, "I'm totally geeking out!" They all seemed friendly and nice, which is always good to see, and only slightly bored. Here's the picture that I took of Adam Baldwin and Alec:
And here's the picture that Alec took of me and John Barrowman:
I took many more pictures, of course, but it would take too long and take up too much space to put them all up here. I think I'll put them up on Picasa, which is where these pictures go, anyway.
When I think of anything else that I forgot I'll put it up in another post. Yay!
David Tennant was wearing a black t-shirt with a picture of a stormtrooper's helmet drawn out with rhinestones.
John Barrowman asked Alec what his Dexter pin was from, and chided him for not knowing that it the new season had started the week before.
Here's a complete list of the action figures that I got:
*Tenth Doctor (w/Brainy Specs) and five Adipose
*Tenth Doctor (w/ Coat and Sonic Screwdriver), Rose, Cassandra, and Cassandra's spider spy
*Jack Harness (w/ sonic blaster; from "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances") and the Empty Child*Donna Noble
*Mickey Smith (w/Preacher gun)
*Clockwork Man (w/ detachable mask)
*Sycorax leader (w/ whip, staff and detachable cape)
*Ood Sigma (w/ translator ball)
*Regular Ood (w/ translator ball)
*TARDIS bank (it makes sounds and the light flashes!)
At the booth for The Prisoner they gave out photo ID cards and assigned each person a number by which each person would henceforth be known. I had to get a second card and number because I lost my first one.
I told Colin Baker that I was woefully uneducated about any Doctor before Ninth, but he forgave me since I knew at least that much.
We learned the importance of going to the market at night, rather than trying to get food before we went to the Convention Center. Having nothing but bread to eat all day is not as fun as it sounds.
When one considers that the food at Carpe Diem in Eureka is free, it seems even more outrageous that the Carpe Diem in San Diego would charge $14 for a hamburger.
Someone from the audience asked a question, and requested that John Barrowman answer it with his Scottish accent. He obliged, but kept slipping back and forth between his Scottish and American accent. It sounded very interesting. He must have worked very hard in high school to get rid of his accent. (He went to HS in the US, but spent most of his childhood in Scotland, where his family is from. His family still lives there, and I believe his partner is Scottish as well).
David Tennant, of course, spoke with his natural Scottish accent the whole time.
I can't believe I forgot to say this before, but Alec got a signed photo from Adam Baldwin! He, Edward James Olmos (Bill Adama), Michael Hogan (Saul Tigh), and James Callis (Gaius Baltar), were all giving autographs and getting pictures taken with people. Plus, they were charging enough for each autograph that we got to stand around there for several minutes, grinning foolishly. I even got several (bad) pictures of them. As one bystander said, "I'm totally geeking out!" They all seemed friendly and nice, which is always good to see, and only slightly bored. Here's the picture that I took of Adam Baldwin and Alec:
And here's the picture that Alec took of me and John Barrowman:
I took many more pictures, of course, but it would take too long and take up too much space to put them all up here. I think I'll put them up on Picasa, which is where these pictures go, anyway.When I think of anything else that I forgot I'll put it up in another post. Yay!
ComicCon: Sunday
Full disclosure: I'm writing this on the Friday following ComicCon (already? wow), so the details are a little hazy. It's amazing how much stuff we packed into those five days, not to mention the time we spent in LA. We never did end up going to the Masquerade. Not that we'd have gotten into the actual event, mind you, but it might have been cool to at least go to one of the rooms where they showed recordings of it on screen. Oh well. We have our priorities, and we did see a number of the costumes just walking around on the floor.
We got up at around 6:30 in order to get to the lines earlier. Actually, we got up a little earlier on each successive day. The first three days we parked at Qualcomm stadium and took the trolley from there. The problem with that was that it took about an hour to get to the Convention Center from there. On the last two days we switched to parking at the Old Town Transit Center, which took a significant amount of time off the trolley ride-time and only added about a minute to the driving time (I'm mostly writing this for my future reference. I don't expect it would be very interesting to anyone else).
It's a good thing we did get there so early (about 8:00 or 8:30), because there were already a significant number of people waiting in line, and within 45 minutes twice that had line up behind us. Did I mention what we were lined up for? No? David Tennant is Who! (pun intended). There were tons of people with Doctor Who shirts, including Ari and me. We wore our Vote Saxon t-shirts. We saw a number of costumes as well, including several people dressed as Daleks in clever ways. We also saw a few Tenth Doctors, and even an Eleventh Doctor. I was very impressed with that one, considering how short a time they had to gather the components. Granted, a tweed coat with elbow patches, a bow tie, and army boots aren't that hard to come by, but he even had the hair exactly right. In fact, Russell T. Davies even noticed him in the crowd and pointed him out to everyone.
As I was saying, David Tennant!!!!! [grins insanely in memory]. He was very hyper and silly, and responded at once almost every time someone shouted something at him from the audience (for instance, someone yelled "I love your hair!" and he instantly said, "thank you!"). Also on the panel were Russell T. Davies (writer/exec producer), Euros Lyn (director) and Julie Gardner (exec producer).
After the panel was introduced, they played a preview of Tenth Doctor's final two-part special. The whole crowd cheered loudly when we saw that John Simm (The Master/Mr. Saxon) is indeed returning! We also gave a loud cheer for Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), and I was gratified to join in loud applause for Bernard Cribbins (Wilf Mott, Donna's grandfather).
I am glad to hear that everyone is looking forward to seeing Wilf be the Doctor's Companion as I am (yay!). David Tennant, who had not seen the preview before either, asked that they play the preview again, which they did, to loud applause. Later they played a trailer for "Waters of Mars," which is the next special. I had seen most of the footage in previous trailers, but not all of it. It was still pretty cool.
One of the audience members asked if the reason Tenth Doctor wears a Brown Coat is because he is a fan of Firefly, but David said that, while that is an interesting theory, it was incorrect. He said that the reason for the coat is merely that, when it came time for costuming, David Tennant requested that he have a long swishy coat (yay!). He added that while it was not the reason for the coat, he is indeed a fan of Firefly and Serenity (yay!) (OK, so that's probably not terribly interesting to most people, but it was yay-inducing to me. It's always nice to hear that someone from one of my favorite shows is a fan of another of my favorite shows).
Next was the American Dad panel. Alec went back to the floor for the duration of the panel, while Ari and I stayed to guard our seats (which were good. we moved even closer for the last panel). American Dad wasn't all that bad, particularly compared to The Cleveland Show. They showed a whole episode, which was incomplete. Only the last part was fully animated; the voice actors had to read the script for part of it.
Ari and I went to the floor during the next panel while Alec saved the seats during the next panel. He said all three of the mini-panels looked good: Paper Heart, Mystery Team, and Alien Trespass. Ari and I caught the very end of the last one, which looks like a sort of loving tribute/spoof on 50s scifi. (Alec left again during the next panel, and came back with an action figure of Bender from Futurama and a shirt from Firefly).
The next panel was for BBC America, the first part of which was devoted to Being Human. The show is going to air soon for the first time on BBC America, so the panel was meant to be a sort of preview for US audiences. It aired some time ago in the UK, so Alec and I, like much of the audience, had already seen it. That wasn't a problem, though. All three of the main actors were there, which was fun. They were all funny and charming, particularly Russell Tovey (George, the werewolf). Toby Whithouse the writer/creator of the show, talked about its inception. It was pretty interesting. Apparently, BBC originally approached him just to make a "genre nonspecific" show about three college students who buy a house together. It sounded extremely dull to him, until three full characters dropped into his head: An agrophobe, a recovering sex addict and a guy with anger management issues. He and the execs had trouble developing stories around these characters, however. Finally, they had one more meeting where they decided that they would come up with something or give it up. At that meeting the idea occurred to him that hey, a guy with anger management is kinda like a werewolf! From there it was an easy leap for the agrophobe to become a ghost and the sex addict to be a vampire. So now we have a show about Mitchell the vampire, George the werewolf and Annie the ghost who rent a flat together.
Despite how it sounds, the show is definitely not a comedy, though it does have humor in it. Every problem that they face, whether supernatural or not, is based on normal human issues.
The very last panel was for Torchwood. Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner, and Euros Lyn were back again, along with John Barrowman! He is every bit as over-the-top as Jack Harknes, and was very entertaining. He frequently had to read the card on the panel table reminding guests that there were members of the audience who were under 18. They talked mainly about Children of Earth, which is airing soon on BBC America.
They expressed their amazement at the reception of the miniseries, which took up a huge fraction of the television audience in the UK. In fact, even though it aired the week following Micheal Jackson's death, on the night of the episode in which Ianto dies, twitter had more traffic talking about Ianto's death than Micheal Jackson's. Awesome.
Finally, Comic-Con 2009 ended with a showing of "Once More With Feeling," the famed musical Buffy episode (in fact, someone asked the Torchwood panel if there would ever be a musical episode, to which John Barrowman gave a firm "no." Besides, Russell T. Davies added, who could ever top Buffy's musical?). Alec left after the first few minutes to wander on the Floor one last time, but Ari and I stayed. They put the subtitles on the screen to allow the audience to sing along with the songs. It was very fun seeing it with such a huge crowd of people who all knew all knew the songs and joined in. Also, I was amused by the fact that every time Dawn (Buffy's annoying little sister) spoke or did anything, a huge part of the crowd shouted "shut up, Dawn!" Apparently it's a tradition for public screenings of the musical.
After the end credits, there was a mass exodus to the trolley station, though not as bad as it could have been. On the drive back to the Schumachers' we decided to drive all the way back to Pacific Palisades that evening after dinner. We were somewhat delayed by a long (but interesting) conversation about religion, but we did make it that night.
The next day we went to see Ari's grandfather and step-grandmother, who made delicious barbecue ribs and extremely sweet corn. Their dog, a boxer well-named Matilda, was very sweet and playful. We made one final stop at the Vasquez Rocks. It was windy and hot, and the Rocks were deceptively steep, but I'm still very glad that we got to go.
At last we started up North. We went past Oakland and kept each other entertained by reading and Dealing With Dragons and Sunshine, which I had on my computer. Alec and I switched off driving every hour or so, just like the drive down, and we both drank canned Starbucks coffee, which was not as bad as it could have been. At one point we stopped for a few minutes to look at the stars, which were amazing, particularly after being in the city for so many days. We could see the whole Milky Way as well as Summer Triangle, Signus, and several other constellations. Jupiter was particularly bright, and we even saw a few meteors. By the time we got home it was about 3:15 am. I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I'm trying to think of a clever sentence to sum up our trip, but I'm failing. All I can say is, 357 days 'till Comic-Con #41!
We got up at around 6:30 in order to get to the lines earlier. Actually, we got up a little earlier on each successive day. The first three days we parked at Qualcomm stadium and took the trolley from there. The problem with that was that it took about an hour to get to the Convention Center from there. On the last two days we switched to parking at the Old Town Transit Center, which took a significant amount of time off the trolley ride-time and only added about a minute to the driving time (I'm mostly writing this for my future reference. I don't expect it would be very interesting to anyone else).
It's a good thing we did get there so early (about 8:00 or 8:30), because there were already a significant number of people waiting in line, and within 45 minutes twice that had line up behind us. Did I mention what we were lined up for? No? David Tennant is Who! (pun intended). There were tons of people with Doctor Who shirts, including Ari and me. We wore our Vote Saxon t-shirts. We saw a number of costumes as well, including several people dressed as Daleks in clever ways. We also saw a few Tenth Doctors, and even an Eleventh Doctor. I was very impressed with that one, considering how short a time they had to gather the components. Granted, a tweed coat with elbow patches, a bow tie, and army boots aren't that hard to come by, but he even had the hair exactly right. In fact, Russell T. Davies even noticed him in the crowd and pointed him out to everyone.
As I was saying, David Tennant!!!!! [grins insanely in memory]. He was very hyper and silly, and responded at once almost every time someone shouted something at him from the audience (for instance, someone yelled "I love your hair!" and he instantly said, "thank you!"). Also on the panel were Russell T. Davies (writer/exec producer), Euros Lyn (director) and Julie Gardner (exec producer).
After the panel was introduced, they played a preview of Tenth Doctor's final two-part special. The whole crowd cheered loudly when we saw that John Simm (The Master/Mr. Saxon) is indeed returning! We also gave a loud cheer for Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), and I was gratified to join in loud applause for Bernard Cribbins (Wilf Mott, Donna's grandfather).
I am glad to hear that everyone is looking forward to seeing Wilf be the Doctor's Companion as I am (yay!). David Tennant, who had not seen the preview before either, asked that they play the preview again, which they did, to loud applause. Later they played a trailer for "Waters of Mars," which is the next special. I had seen most of the footage in previous trailers, but not all of it. It was still pretty cool.
One of the audience members asked if the reason Tenth Doctor wears a Brown Coat is because he is a fan of Firefly, but David said that, while that is an interesting theory, it was incorrect. He said that the reason for the coat is merely that, when it came time for costuming, David Tennant requested that he have a long swishy coat (yay!). He added that while it was not the reason for the coat, he is indeed a fan of Firefly and Serenity (yay!) (OK, so that's probably not terribly interesting to most people, but it was yay-inducing to me. It's always nice to hear that someone from one of my favorite shows is a fan of another of my favorite shows).
Next was the American Dad panel. Alec went back to the floor for the duration of the panel, while Ari and I stayed to guard our seats (which were good. we moved even closer for the last panel). American Dad wasn't all that bad, particularly compared to The Cleveland Show. They showed a whole episode, which was incomplete. Only the last part was fully animated; the voice actors had to read the script for part of it.
Ari and I went to the floor during the next panel while Alec saved the seats during the next panel. He said all three of the mini-panels looked good: Paper Heart, Mystery Team, and Alien Trespass. Ari and I caught the very end of the last one, which looks like a sort of loving tribute/spoof on 50s scifi. (Alec left again during the next panel, and came back with an action figure of Bender from Futurama and a shirt from Firefly).
The next panel was for BBC America, the first part of which was devoted to Being Human. The show is going to air soon for the first time on BBC America, so the panel was meant to be a sort of preview for US audiences. It aired some time ago in the UK, so Alec and I, like much of the audience, had already seen it. That wasn't a problem, though. All three of the main actors were there, which was fun. They were all funny and charming, particularly Russell Tovey (George, the werewolf). Toby Whithouse the writer/creator of the show, talked about its inception. It was pretty interesting. Apparently, BBC originally approached him just to make a "genre nonspecific" show about three college students who buy a house together. It sounded extremely dull to him, until three full characters dropped into his head: An agrophobe, a recovering sex addict and a guy with anger management issues. He and the execs had trouble developing stories around these characters, however. Finally, they had one more meeting where they decided that they would come up with something or give it up. At that meeting the idea occurred to him that hey, a guy with anger management is kinda like a werewolf! From there it was an easy leap for the agrophobe to become a ghost and the sex addict to be a vampire. So now we have a show about Mitchell the vampire, George the werewolf and Annie the ghost who rent a flat together.
Despite how it sounds, the show is definitely not a comedy, though it does have humor in it. Every problem that they face, whether supernatural or not, is based on normal human issues.The very last panel was for Torchwood. Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner, and Euros Lyn were back again, along with John Barrowman! He is every bit as over-the-top as Jack Harknes, and was very entertaining. He frequently had to read the card on the panel table reminding guests that there were members of the audience who were under 18. They talked mainly about Children of Earth, which is airing soon on BBC America.
They expressed their amazement at the reception of the miniseries, which took up a huge fraction of the television audience in the UK. In fact, even though it aired the week following Micheal Jackson's death, on the night of the episode in which Ianto dies, twitter had more traffic talking about Ianto's death than Micheal Jackson's. Awesome.Finally, Comic-Con 2009 ended with a showing of "Once More With Feeling," the famed musical Buffy episode (in fact, someone asked the Torchwood panel if there would ever be a musical episode, to which John Barrowman gave a firm "no." Besides, Russell T. Davies added, who could ever top Buffy's musical?). Alec left after the first few minutes to wander on the Floor one last time, but Ari and I stayed. They put the subtitles on the screen to allow the audience to sing along with the songs. It was very fun seeing it with such a huge crowd of people who all knew all knew the songs and joined in. Also, I was amused by the fact that every time Dawn (Buffy's annoying little sister) spoke or did anything, a huge part of the crowd shouted "shut up, Dawn!" Apparently it's a tradition for public screenings of the musical.
After the end credits, there was a mass exodus to the trolley station, though not as bad as it could have been. On the drive back to the Schumachers' we decided to drive all the way back to Pacific Palisades that evening after dinner. We were somewhat delayed by a long (but interesting) conversation about religion, but we did make it that night.
The next day we went to see Ari's grandfather and step-grandmother, who made delicious barbecue ribs and extremely sweet corn. Their dog, a boxer well-named Matilda, was very sweet and playful. We made one final stop at the Vasquez Rocks. It was windy and hot, and the Rocks were deceptively steep, but I'm still very glad that we got to go.
At last we started up North. We went past Oakland and kept each other entertained by reading and Dealing With Dragons and Sunshine, which I had on my computer. Alec and I switched off driving every hour or so, just like the drive down, and we both drank canned Starbucks coffee, which was not as bad as it could have been. At one point we stopped for a few minutes to look at the stars, which were amazing, particularly after being in the city for so many days. We could see the whole Milky Way as well as Summer Triangle, Signus, and several other constellations. Jupiter was particularly bright, and we even saw a few meteors. By the time we got home it was about 3:15 am. I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.I'm trying to think of a clever sentence to sum up our trip, but I'm failing. All I can say is, 357 days 'till Comic-Con #41!
Saturday, July 25, 2009
ComicCon: Saturday
Again, I scarcely remember what happened this afternoon, let alone this morning. I got up at 6:30 to get ready to go, with the goal of getting the others up by 7:00 . I missed the mark (at least in Alec's case) by about 15 minutes. Oh well. We used an alternate route to get there, so we still got there in time to get ok seats. Better than the ones we had for other stuff, actually*, but not the best we've had (we got a bit spoiled the first night*). The first panel that we lined up for was Chuck. They opened the panel with a performance of "Jeffster," the "band" from the show which consists of the characters Jeff and Lester. 
They actually weren't all that bad. While they were still performing (Lester sings and Jeff plays a keytar) the rest of the panel came out. At this point the crowd (who had already been cheering constantly) gave a standing ovation. Granted, a good half of the standing people were doing so in order to get a better picture of the panelist, and much of the rest stood so that they could see the stage, which had been blocked by the other standing people, but it was impressive nonetheless. Part of the reason for the loud cheering was due to the fact that the show had been canceled, but brought back thanks to fan campaigns. There was a running quasi-joke through the whole panel that the writers have no idea where they’re going to take the show next, having been convinced that there was absolutely no chance that the show would be renewed for another season. Whenever someone from the audience asked a question that contained a good idea, one of the writers would say “good idea!” and write it down. The panel included a short video in which the writers find out that the show has been renewed, and begin weeping the phrase “I know kung fu? I know kung fu?!”
They actually weren't all that bad. While they were still performing (Lester sings and Jeff plays a keytar) the rest of the panel came out. At this point the crowd (who had already been cheering constantly) gave a standing ovation. Granted, a good half of the standing people were doing so in order to get a better picture of the panelist, and much of the rest stood so that they could see the stage, which had been blocked by the other standing people, but it was impressive nonetheless. Part of the reason for the loud cheering was due to the fact that the show had been canceled, but brought back thanks to fan campaigns. There was a running quasi-joke through the whole panel that the writers have no idea where they’re going to take the show next, having been convinced that there was absolutely no chance that the show would be renewed for another season. Whenever someone from the audience asked a question that contained a good idea, one of the writers would say “good idea!” and write it down. The panel included a short video in which the writers find out that the show has been renewed, and begin weeping the phrase “I know kung fu? I know kung fu?!” The panel had the entire main cast, including Adam Baldwin! They were all very funny. At one point someone from the audience asked if they would be making Chuck action figures, and many of the cast expressed their enthusiasm, until Adam Baldwin said, casually, “I need another one.” 
Zach Levi exclaimed that he would use his action figure to grind it in Jayne’s face. He pretended to hold two action figures, pounding one into the other, and said “what now, Jayne! What now!” repeatedly. It was highly amusing, particularly to Adam Baldwin.
The Futurama panel was a little later in Ballroom 20, so we had to wait through Family Guy and The Cleveland Show. The second show is a spinoff of Family Guy, and it’s even more stupid utterly humorless than Family Guy. The only good thing about it was that we got to see Seth Green, who is a castmember. Oh, and another castmember who was on That 70’s Show.
Unfortunately, the cast of Futurama wasn’t there, because they’re in negotiations with FOX or something. The writers were there though, including Matt Groening. As Alec later said, it was slightly disappointing that the cast wasn’t there, but it was gratifying to see how truly nerdy the writers all are.
After that we went back to the floor, this time staying together for a while. There were a lot more things for sale on this day, since it was the day before closing. It was also the day with by far the most people, partially because it is the day of the Masquerade. Also because of that there were a lot more people in costume (including me). Ari didn’t end up wearing her Lethifold costume because she was so badly sunburned from the day before and didn’t want swaths of fabric on her skin. Anyway, the reason her sunburn was so bad was because she was wearing her BSG costume, which involves two tanktops, so her shoulders were bare. I made everyone late because my costume took longer to assemble than I anticipated. Silly me. As we left Ballroom 20 some people asked to take my picture professionally, apparently for an iPhone ap. They said that they would send me the pictures in a couple of weeks. I hope they do, since those are the only pictures that I got of my costume.
Ari found an action figure of Dark Willow from Buffy, and when we got back to the cousins’ Ari took her out of the package and I took out my Donna. Ari made
*Ari said these phrases. She was looking over my shoulder while I wrote.
This is Donna and
hello my name is lethifold. nuh uh. i' n b bv eoyittokioioieorioioiioiiiiih
eyyyyy!! ! !!!!1 SMITE!
Friday, July 24, 2009
ComicCon: Friday
Another long but fantastic day! Oy, what did we even do? I guess that's why I'm writing this.
Um... yes.
We tried to get up earlier this morning, hoping that we might get a better place in the line to get to the floor. We got to the BBC America line just in time to wait a couple of minutes and then be told that they were out of Doctor Who bags. It was sad. After that we split up: Alec and I dashed up up to the Farscape panel and Ari went down to Ballroom 20 so she could get a seat for the Caprica panel.
The Farscape panel was for the 10th anniversary of Farscape. Amazing. it was moderated by the guy who writes the scripts for the comics, and had one of the original writers, Brian Henson, aaaand Claudia Black and Ben Browder! Surprisingly, Brian Henson was the talkyest, while Claudia Black and Ben Browder mostly just spoke when they were asked a direct question. Oddly, Virginia Hey was not there. In fact, she wasn't even mentioned, dispite the fact that she was there all four days doing autographs. After that Alec and I went down to the booth where they were selling Farscape comics and got all of the published comics that continue the story after Peacekeeper Wars, and got them signed by the author.
We got covers for the comics, and then wandered the floor for a while. We were passing by a booth when Alec pointed out someone sitting at the table. "What?" I said, not seeing who he was pointing at. "It's Jack," Alec responded, and I saw that yes, it was indeed John Barrowman! Alec very generously got me a big limited-edition photograph and tickets for an autograph for my birthday! And Alec took a picture of me and John Barrowman! (yes, that's three sentences ending with an exclamation point).
We went back up to Ballroom 20, but found that there was no way that we would be getting in to see Joss Whedon that afternoon. The hall was already full to capacity. Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication, Ari came out of the hall to meet us, like we had originally planned, instead of staying in there to keep her seat. After mediocre pizza for lunch we decided to go to see Peter Jackson instead. He was to be appearing in a panel that afternoon in Hall H, which is the biggest hall. The line for Hall H is mostly outside, which was unpleasant because we had foolishly not put sunscreen on that morning, not anticipating that we would need it. Sitting outside in the burning sun for about two hours gave us all sunburns. Ari was particularly affected. Her shoulders are just shy of lobster red. The burns on our arms have an interesting pattern because we were reading most of that time. Alec and Ari mostly avoided getting burned on their faces because they draped their bags over their heads, but my bag was ill suited for such a purpose, since it had stuff in it. Oh well.
When we did eventually get into the hall it was during the middle of a panel on the animated film 9. The panelists included Tim Burton, who was the exec producer, Elijah Wood, who is starring as the titular character, and Jennifer Connelly, who is also starring. Apparently the movie is an expansion of a short by the director. It appears to be about a group of little creature-things that were created to help put the world back together after it has been destroyed.
The next panel was for Legion. In it, God apparently decides that He is tired of humans, so he sics his angels on them. Humanity's only hope is a pregnant woman in a diner in the middle of nowhere. The angel Michael comes to help defend her and her baby. Basically, the movie is about angels with machine guns. The panel included Paul Bettany (who plays Michael), Tyrese Gibson, and Doug Jones. Oddly, two of the cast have appeared in Fast and the Furious movies (Tyrese Gibson and another guy, Lucas Black). I'm not sure what that says about the quality of the movie, but whatever. It seems like it could be good. Reserving judgement.
Finally, Peter Jackson came up to present District 9, which he produced. It's a low-budget quasi-documentary set in South Africa. A damaged alien spaceship has arrived on Earth, and its crew have become refugees in Johannesberg. The human government decides that the best way to protect humans is to relocate all the aliens into internment camps. They object. It looks cool.
After that we went back to the floor. We found three booths in a row that sold nothing but Doctor Who stuff, and most of it was action figures. Plus, Colin Baker (Sixth Doctor) was there. Sadly, I didn't have anything for him to sign, but we did talk to him a little. Ari and Alec both gave up on me and left to do more interesting things than watch me hover over the piles of action figures.
Ari and I got Chuck bags and wandered around some more, and then we decided to go home relatively early. Of course, that didn't stop me from staying up 'till about 1:00 finishing my leaf headdress. Oh well. I'll sleep when we get home.
Um... yes.
We tried to get up earlier this morning, hoping that we might get a better place in the line to get to the floor. We got to the BBC America line just in time to wait a couple of minutes and then be told that they were out of Doctor Who bags. It was sad. After that we split up: Alec and I dashed up up to the Farscape panel and Ari went down to Ballroom 20 so she could get a seat for the Caprica panel.
The Farscape panel was for the 10th anniversary of Farscape. Amazing. it was moderated by the guy who writes the scripts for the comics, and had one of the original writers, Brian Henson, aaaand Claudia Black and Ben Browder! Surprisingly, Brian Henson was the talkyest, while Claudia Black and Ben Browder mostly just spoke when they were asked a direct question. Oddly, Virginia Hey was not there. In fact, she wasn't even mentioned, dispite the fact that she was there all four days doing autographs. After that Alec and I went down to the booth where they were selling Farscape comics and got all of the published comics that continue the story after Peacekeeper Wars, and got them signed by the author.
We got covers for the comics, and then wandered the floor for a while. We were passing by a booth when Alec pointed out someone sitting at the table. "What?" I said, not seeing who he was pointing at. "It's Jack," Alec responded, and I saw that yes, it was indeed John Barrowman! Alec very generously got me a big limited-edition photograph and tickets for an autograph for my birthday! And Alec took a picture of me and John Barrowman! (yes, that's three sentences ending with an exclamation point).
We went back up to Ballroom 20, but found that there was no way that we would be getting in to see Joss Whedon that afternoon. The hall was already full to capacity. Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication, Ari came out of the hall to meet us, like we had originally planned, instead of staying in there to keep her seat. After mediocre pizza for lunch we decided to go to see Peter Jackson instead. He was to be appearing in a panel that afternoon in Hall H, which is the biggest hall. The line for Hall H is mostly outside, which was unpleasant because we had foolishly not put sunscreen on that morning, not anticipating that we would need it. Sitting outside in the burning sun for about two hours gave us all sunburns. Ari was particularly affected. Her shoulders are just shy of lobster red. The burns on our arms have an interesting pattern because we were reading most of that time. Alec and Ari mostly avoided getting burned on their faces because they draped their bags over their heads, but my bag was ill suited for such a purpose, since it had stuff in it. Oh well.
When we did eventually get into the hall it was during the middle of a panel on the animated film 9. The panelists included Tim Burton, who was the exec producer, Elijah Wood, who is starring as the titular character, and Jennifer Connelly, who is also starring. Apparently the movie is an expansion of a short by the director. It appears to be about a group of little creature-things that were created to help put the world back together after it has been destroyed.
The next panel was for Legion. In it, God apparently decides that He is tired of humans, so he sics his angels on them. Humanity's only hope is a pregnant woman in a diner in the middle of nowhere. The angel Michael comes to help defend her and her baby. Basically, the movie is about angels with machine guns. The panel included Paul Bettany (who plays Michael), Tyrese Gibson, and Doug Jones. Oddly, two of the cast have appeared in Fast and the Furious movies (Tyrese Gibson and another guy, Lucas Black). I'm not sure what that says about the quality of the movie, but whatever. It seems like it could be good. Reserving judgement.
Finally, Peter Jackson came up to present District 9, which he produced. It's a low-budget quasi-documentary set in South Africa. A damaged alien spaceship has arrived on Earth, and its crew have become refugees in Johannesberg. The human government decides that the best way to protect humans is to relocate all the aliens into internment camps. They object. It looks cool.
After that we went back to the floor. We found three booths in a row that sold nothing but Doctor Who stuff, and most of it was action figures. Plus, Colin Baker (Sixth Doctor) was there. Sadly, I didn't have anything for him to sign, but we did talk to him a little. Ari and Alec both gave up on me and left to do more interesting things than watch me hover over the piles of action figures.
Ari and I got Chuck bags and wandered around some more, and then we decided to go home relatively early. Of course, that didn't stop me from staying up 'till about 1:00 finishing my leaf headdress. Oh well. I'll sleep when we get home.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
ComicCon: Thursday
Today has been a long day. We got up early to get to the Floor to get better swag, but unfortunately most of it was already gone by the time we got into the Hall. OK, to be fair, I'm only bitter because they were out of Doctor Who bags at the BBC America booth. However, we did get tons of other stuff, including giant IMAX bags. They were pretty much full of heavy swag by the time we left, including four more sets of Doctor Who action figures! I got one of Jack and the Empty Child, one of a Clockwork Man, an Ood, and Mickey Smith (defending the Earth) (three of those cost $5 each; I couldn't resist). Alec split off from Ari and me for maximum swaggage, and he got a boxed set of the complete original series of Red vs Blue and a RvB messenger bag. He also got it signed by several members of the cast, who were at the booth.
Next we went to Ballroom 20, which is the second-biggest hall (where the thing last night was). We had to get there super early to ensure that we had seats for things that we actually wanted to see, so we saw about half the panel on Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, which is an animated movie with Chris Pine (Kirk in Star Trek, he wasn't there, but he called one of the panelists' cellphones), William Shatner (Kirk in Star Trek), Robert Picardo (he was there!), and... uh... a bunch of other people who I'm too lazy to type out. Only Robert Picardo was there of the actors, anyway (at least who we recognized). Here's the IMDb page.
Next was a panel moderated by EW, called "Wonder Women," about strong female roles. The guests were Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse, Buffy, Angel), Sigourney Weaver (um... yeah), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), and Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet on Lost). We all thought Zoe was dumb at first, but she quickly proved us wrong. She tied for most articulate with Sigourney, who was also very articulate.
After that was the first of the panels that we actually came for: Burn notice. The panel had the creator of the show/writer and various other writers and directors. It also had the actors for two badguys, and the guy who plays Michael's brother. Oh yeah, and Michael Shanks (Daniel Jackson, Victor on Burn Notice) was the moderator! The real star of the show was Bruce Campbell, who plays Sam Axe. He is very well-known in nerddome for playing small but memorable parts (for instance, he plays a different character in each of the Spider-Man movies). He is best known among the cult crowd for playing the main character (Ash) in the Evil Dead movies. He was hilarious. He went off on tangents constantly. More than half the audience questions were directed at him, and he replied with consistently funny answers. He also did things like give money to members of the audience who asked questions that he particularly liked (for instance, one person asked if we would be seeing more scenes where Sam beats people up rather than the other way around). Finally, everyone in the audience got tickets which, when redeemed, got us big Burn Notice shirts!
The next panel was for Psych. The entire main cast was there, except for the Chief. All of them were hilarious. They picked two random characters out of the audience, and promised to name characters in the next season after those people. We also got more free swag! A Psych t-shirt, a "magic Psych ball," and a Psych comic.
The final panel of the day was for Dexter. Four main cast members and four writers/directors/producers were on the panel. There were few interesting questions asked by the audience, and Julie Benz was annoying, but it was still good. Alec had me plug my ears during particularly spoilery parts.
After that, we waited in line to redeem our tickets for our swag, then went across the street and ate at the Carpe Diam, which is/was basically a diner run by the SyFy channel (Carpe Diam is the name of the cafe in Eureka). It was generally overpriced, but hey, it's the SyFy channel!
After that we met Robert and William, who had been there that day with their friends, and rode the trolley back to their house.
Next we went to Ballroom 20, which is the second-biggest hall (where the thing last night was). We had to get there super early to ensure that we had seats for things that we actually wanted to see, so we saw about half the panel on Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, which is an animated movie with Chris Pine (Kirk in Star Trek, he wasn't there, but he called one of the panelists' cellphones), William Shatner (Kirk in Star Trek), Robert Picardo (he was there!), and... uh... a bunch of other people who I'm too lazy to type out. Only Robert Picardo was there of the actors, anyway (at least who we recognized). Here's the IMDb page.
Next was a panel moderated by EW, called "Wonder Women," about strong female roles. The guests were Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse, Buffy, Angel), Sigourney Weaver (um... yeah), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), and Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet on Lost). We all thought Zoe was dumb at first, but she quickly proved us wrong. She tied for most articulate with Sigourney, who was also very articulate.
After that was the first of the panels that we actually came for: Burn notice. The panel had the creator of the show/writer and various other writers and directors. It also had the actors for two badguys, and the guy who plays Michael's brother. Oh yeah, and Michael Shanks (Daniel Jackson, Victor on Burn Notice) was the moderator! The real star of the show was Bruce Campbell, who plays Sam Axe. He is very well-known in nerddome for playing small but memorable parts (for instance, he plays a different character in each of the Spider-Man movies). He is best known among the cult crowd for playing the main character (Ash) in the Evil Dead movies. He was hilarious. He went off on tangents constantly. More than half the audience questions were directed at him, and he replied with consistently funny answers. He also did things like give money to members of the audience who asked questions that he particularly liked (for instance, one person asked if we would be seeing more scenes where Sam beats people up rather than the other way around). Finally, everyone in the audience got tickets which, when redeemed, got us big Burn Notice shirts!
The next panel was for Psych. The entire main cast was there, except for the Chief. All of them were hilarious. They picked two random characters out of the audience, and promised to name characters in the next season after those people. We also got more free swag! A Psych t-shirt, a "magic Psych ball," and a Psych comic.
The final panel of the day was for Dexter. Four main cast members and four writers/directors/producers were on the panel. There were few interesting questions asked by the audience, and Julie Benz was annoying, but it was still good. Alec had me plug my ears during particularly spoilery parts.
After that, we waited in line to redeem our tickets for our swag, then went across the street and ate at the Carpe Diam, which is/was basically a diner run by the SyFy channel (Carpe Diam is the name of the cafe in Eureka). It was generally overpriced, but hey, it's the SyFy channel!
After that we met Robert and William, who had been there that day with their friends, and rode the trolley back to their house.
ComicCon: Preview Night
"Yeah, this is pretty much the Superbowl for nerds."
--Man overheard while waiting to get into the Con.
Where do I begin?
We took the trolley downtown, stopping on the way to eat pizza. While we were there we saw a man ordering a large quantity of pizza who was carrying a briefcase and a large flat object wrapped in bubble wrap. He was clearly on his way to ComicCon. While we waited for the next trolley we had fun guessing which people were on their way to the Con. We guessed that at least half were. Some of the people were easy, such as the man wearing a Spamalot t-shirt. There was also the pair of guys carrying briefcases who were unlikely to be buisnesspeople since one of them had a spiked mohawk.
A large group of us piled out at the station, most of us grinning broadly as we streamed across the street towards the convention center.
There was a surprisingly short wait to get the badges, thanks to the large number of check-in stations. Actually, it was mostly due to the fact that there wasn't anything to do there for another three hours. We checked in at about 3:00, and nothing started until 6:00. We wandered around for a while trying to find the line for the Exhibit Hall (or Floor). We wandered for some time, following various false directions from volunteers before we realized that the floor wasn't going to open until 6:00.
We bought extremely expensive and terrible prezles, then got in line for the pilot screenings. They were played in the second-largest hall, which sat 6500. We had excelent seats; we could actually see the faces of the presenters just by looking at them, rather than looking at the screens. Warner Bros. played three full pilots for new shows. The first one was for Human Target, which is about a guy who is hired to protect people who have recieved death threats. Paraphrasing dialogue, he wears a bullet-proof vest but his cliants don't, because he is their vest. The show had potential, but, as Alec said, it did unfortunately have one of those "immortal fight scenes," in which the combatants miraculously survive being repeatedly hit on the head with heavy objects. However, it did have the advantage of not taking itself too seriously.
The second pilot was a remake of the show V. It was pretty awesome. It's a remake of the classic 1983 miniseries. Lizard people! It had lots of people familiar to science-fiction viewers whom I don't feel like naming (it would take too long). Every time one of them came on screen for the first time the whole crowd cheered loudly. The two actors from Whedon shows (Alan Tudyk (Wash) and Morena Baccarin (Inara)) got particularly loud cheers. Morena Baccarin is particularly well-cast as the creepy leader of the lizard people (they look human on the outside, but really are lizardy). She does several rapid blinks every few minutes. We guess that that's supposed to resemble the flickering tongue of a reptile moistening their eyes.
We left--along with about a third of the crowd--before the start of the third pilot, which was The Vampire Diaries, which is "an edgy and romantic new drama in which two vampire brothers--one good, one evil--are at war for the soul of one girl." *cough* Twilight *cough.* Instead of watching that pilot we went down to the Floor to look for free swag.
The giant bags were all gone, but there were other cool free things, like preview books from Darkhorse Comics. Plus, best of all, I got a Tenth Doctor action figure!
--Man overheard while waiting to get into the Con.
Where do I begin?
We took the trolley downtown, stopping on the way to eat pizza. While we were there we saw a man ordering a large quantity of pizza who was carrying a briefcase and a large flat object wrapped in bubble wrap. He was clearly on his way to ComicCon. While we waited for the next trolley we had fun guessing which people were on their way to the Con. We guessed that at least half were. Some of the people were easy, such as the man wearing a Spamalot t-shirt. There was also the pair of guys carrying briefcases who were unlikely to be buisnesspeople since one of them had a spiked mohawk.
A large group of us piled out at the station, most of us grinning broadly as we streamed across the street towards the convention center.
There was a surprisingly short wait to get the badges, thanks to the large number of check-in stations. Actually, it was mostly due to the fact that there wasn't anything to do there for another three hours. We checked in at about 3:00, and nothing started until 6:00. We wandered around for a while trying to find the line for the Exhibit Hall (or Floor). We wandered for some time, following various false directions from volunteers before we realized that the floor wasn't going to open until 6:00.We bought extremely expensive and terrible prezles, then got in line for the pilot screenings. They were played in the second-largest hall, which sat 6500. We had excelent seats; we could actually see the faces of the presenters just by looking at them, rather than looking at the screens. Warner Bros. played three full pilots for new shows. The first one was for Human Target, which is about a guy who is hired to protect people who have recieved death threats. Paraphrasing dialogue, he wears a bullet-proof vest but his cliants don't, because he is their vest. The show had potential, but, as Alec said, it did unfortunately have one of those "immortal fight scenes," in which the combatants miraculously survive being repeatedly hit on the head with heavy objects. However, it did have the advantage of not taking itself too seriously.
The second pilot was a remake of the show V. It was pretty awesome. It's a remake of the classic 1983 miniseries. Lizard people! It had lots of people familiar to science-fiction viewers whom I don't feel like naming (it would take too long). Every time one of them came on screen for the first time the whole crowd cheered loudly. The two actors from Whedon shows (Alan Tudyk (Wash) and Morena Baccarin (Inara)) got particularly loud cheers. Morena Baccarin is particularly well-cast as the creepy leader of the lizard people (they look human on the outside, but really are lizardy). She does several rapid blinks every few minutes. We guess that that's supposed to resemble the flickering tongue of a reptile moistening their eyes.
We left--along with about a third of the crowd--before the start of the third pilot, which was The Vampire Diaries, which is "an edgy and romantic new drama in which two vampire brothers--one good, one evil--are at war for the soul of one girl." *cough* Twilight *cough.* Instead of watching that pilot we went down to the Floor to look for free swag.
The giant bags were all gone, but there were other cool free things, like preview books from Darkhorse Comics. Plus, best of all, I got a Tenth Doctor action figure!
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
ComicCon countdown: Day Zero!
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) was far too big for us to see it all in one day, let alone part of an afternoon. We spent most of our time in one building, and most of that time on just one floor. My favorite piece of art was a huge miniature house. It had three stories, and each was full of every detail of a house. A whole corner of the house was ripped open by another smaller house (which had Asian architecture), which looked like it had crashed into the western house. A large parachute was attached to the top of the smaller house.
Another of my favorite pieces of art took up half the bottom floor of the building. It was a gigantic ribbon of rusty iron about 20 feet high that was twisted in loops. We got to walk inside the loops, which were mazelike and slightly claustrophobic. We also saw a number of works by Andy Warhol and one by Jackson Pollok. I was rather too pleased with myself for identifying a painting that we looked at in Dante, and a Bauhaus chair that we looked at in Art History. Oh, and we got to ride in a giant elevator. I’m not at all shallow.
By the time we started down to
Last but certainly not least, today is Opening Night!!!! We are going to go downtown at about
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
ComicCon countdown: 1 day to go
So yesterday we went to the recording of the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. They filmed most of the night's show (I believe they had already recorded a third guest whom we did not see). For some reason they also filmed much of August 12th's show, including the guest segment. And who is August 12th's guest? ERIC BANA! [insert happy dance] He was there promoting The Time Traveler's Wife, which apparently comes out on August 14.
Before the show we wandered around the Farmer's Market, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary. We got to the studio (in Hollywood) about an hour and a half early, so we were the second group in line. Thankfully we were in the shade and there was a nice breeze. We also had books that we got at a Barns & Noble in the market, so we had something with which to entertain ourselves while we waited. Amazingly, we were not the only people who brought books; we saw someone with a copy of Hitchhiker's Guide.
They lined us up on benches, and then a warm-up comedian came to make sure that we would be good enough "show enhancers." Actually, there was a warm-up guy for the warm-up guy. The main guy made lots of lewd jokes to make sure we wouldn't make shocked noises when Craig Ferguson made his jokes. Then we got into the studio and he warmed us up more, having us practice our "loud and natural-sounding laughter." Alec got special recognition for his laugh.
Finally, the show started, with all its usual silly weirdness. Surprisingly, he only redid one segment, and that was a short one. Parts of it were scripted (such as his opening stand-up thing), but most of it seemed to be completely spontaneous. When he was supposed to be done with a segment (he ran over-time frequently), the teleprompter turned away and we could see the words on it, and they seemed fairly sparse. For instance, the screen for the emails segment just said "emails' and then "we'll be right back."
Anyhoo, like I said, ERIC BANA was there. Margaret Cho (a comedienne) and Michael Lewis (an author) were also there for the night's show. I haven't found a copy of the night's show online yet, but you can see the back of Alec's head in the bottom right corner of the screen in shots of the audience!
Here's a picture of Eric Bana and Craig Ferguson on a previous show:
Today we plan on going to the La Brae Tar Pits and the Musiem of Modern Art. After that we'll drive down to San Diego. Now, if only I can get the others to get up. Maybe I'll go out the front door and come back in, so Georgie barks loudly at me...
Before the show we wandered around the Farmer's Market, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary. We got to the studio (in Hollywood) about an hour and a half early, so we were the second group in line. Thankfully we were in the shade and there was a nice breeze. We also had books that we got at a Barns & Noble in the market, so we had something with which to entertain ourselves while we waited. Amazingly, we were not the only people who brought books; we saw someone with a copy of Hitchhiker's Guide.
They lined us up on benches, and then a warm-up comedian came to make sure that we would be good enough "show enhancers." Actually, there was a warm-up guy for the warm-up guy. The main guy made lots of lewd jokes to make sure we wouldn't make shocked noises when Craig Ferguson made his jokes. Then we got into the studio and he warmed us up more, having us practice our "loud and natural-sounding laughter." Alec got special recognition for his laugh.
Finally, the show started, with all its usual silly weirdness. Surprisingly, he only redid one segment, and that was a short one. Parts of it were scripted (such as his opening stand-up thing), but most of it seemed to be completely spontaneous. When he was supposed to be done with a segment (he ran over-time frequently), the teleprompter turned away and we could see the words on it, and they seemed fairly sparse. For instance, the screen for the emails segment just said "emails' and then "we'll be right back."
Anyhoo, like I said, ERIC BANA was there. Margaret Cho (a comedienne) and Michael Lewis (an author) were also there for the night's show. I haven't found a copy of the night's show online yet, but you can see the back of Alec's head in the bottom right corner of the screen in shots of the audience!
Here's a picture of Eric Bana and Craig Ferguson on a previous show:
Today we plan on going to the La Brae Tar Pits and the Musiem of Modern Art. After that we'll drive down to San Diego. Now, if only I can get the others to get up. Maybe I'll go out the front door and come back in, so Georgie barks loudly at me...
Monday, July 20, 2009
ComicCon countdown: 2 days to go
So we drove down to Sacramento on Saturday, and Ari got to meet our exciting relatives. She has new cause to be glad that she does not know any of her relatives. Thankfully our Pacific Palisades relatives are slightly more sane. Also, Georgie the dog is sweet and furry, and really likes pets. We went to the Santa Monica Pier last night, and I took a bunch of blurry pictures. Maybe I'll post them later. We went on the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster. Ari had never been on a roller coaster before, so that was fun. It was a pretty good introductory roller coaster, actually, since it was pretty small.
We don't have any plans for today except to go to the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. We're going to have to get there about an hour and a half early to ensure that we get seats, so it takes up a good chunk of our time. It's in Hollywood, so we might spend some time after that driving around and looking at the sights
In other news, Eleventh Doctor wears a bow tie! (awesome)
Here he is with his bow tie (note his resemblance to a "science geek." Hello, Tish!):
Here's one with his new Companion (note his boots, which look like they might be good for leaping about on unstable terrain as opposed to Tenth's hightops which were better suited for running on pavement):
Here he is with his newly redecorated TARDIS, which resembles First Doctor's:
Here's a picture of Eleventh Doctor, his Companion, and the TARDIS:
And finally, here's a picture of the Doctor and River Song (she's back!):
And finally, upon request (sortof) here is the clip from "Blink' in which the Doctor shows us his Timey-Wimey detector, which Goes Ding When There's Stuff.
Coincidentally, Happy Lunar Landing day!
We don't have any plans for today except to go to the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. We're going to have to get there about an hour and a half early to ensure that we get seats, so it takes up a good chunk of our time. It's in Hollywood, so we might spend some time after that driving around and looking at the sights
In other news, Eleventh Doctor wears a bow tie! (awesome)
Here he is with his bow tie (note his resemblance to a "science geek." Hello, Tish!):
Here's one with his new Companion (note his boots, which look like they might be good for leaping about on unstable terrain as opposed to Tenth's hightops which were better suited for running on pavement):
Here he is with his newly redecorated TARDIS, which resembles First Doctor's:
Here's a picture of Eleventh Doctor, his Companion, and the TARDIS:
And finally, here's a picture of the Doctor and River Song (she's back!):
And finally, upon request (sortof) here is the clip from "Blink' in which the Doctor shows us his Timey-Wimey detector, which Goes Ding When There's Stuff.
Coincidentally, Happy Lunar Landing day!
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
ComicCon countdown
[Inaudible high-pitched squeaking]
[More high-pitched sounds]
[No longer breathing]
[Thinks about it again and starts squeaking again]
DAVID TENNANT IS GOING TO BE AT COMICCON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TALKING ABOUT DOCTOR WHO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AND JOHN BARROWMAN IS GOING TO BE THERE TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HAPPYHAPPYHAPPYHAPPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
cough.
That is all.
[More high-pitched sounds]
[No longer breathing]
[Thinks about it again and starts squeaking again]
DAVID TENNANT IS GOING TO BE AT COMICCON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TALKING ABOUT DOCTOR WHO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AND JOHN BARROWMAN IS GOING TO BE THERE TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HAPPYHAPPYHAPPYHAPPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
cough.
That is all.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Children of Earth "Day 5"
It's been more than a day since we watched "Day Five," and I still feel a little depressed every time I think of Torchwood. To say that Jack's life sucks seems like a major understatement. Of course, like I said just after we watched it, I can't help but imagine Jack running into the Doctor as both of them run away from their pasts:
Doctor: Oh, that sucks dude. You had to sacrifice your own grandson to save the world?
Jack: Yeah and Ianto died.
Doctor: Bummer.Jack: And I can't kill myself because I'm immortal.Doctor: I'm so sorry.
Jack: Yeah. I can't imagine someone's life being any worse.
Doctor: ...
Jack: What?
Doctor: ...
Jack: What?Doctor: I sacrificed my entire species to save the freaking universe, including my entire family.
Jack: [looks away awkwardly and shuffles his feet.]
Doctor: I'm also over 900 years old. How old are you? Like 150 years old?
Jack: Actually...
Doctor: And no, that time you spent buried under Cardiff doesn't count.
Jack: But--Doctor: No.[Awkward pause]
Jack: Hey, so how's Donna?
Doctor: I had to erase all memory of me from her mind. My knowledge was going to make her head explode.
Jack: I see. That sucks.
Doctor: Yeah.[Awkward pause]
Jack: Well, I should go. I have... stuff...Doctor: You do that.
Jack: Yeah.Doctor: But hey, I'm sure your life is worse than anyone could imagine.
Jack: Um. Yeah. Bye.
OK, so nothing like this would ever happen, but still. I can imagine. ;-)
Speaking of Donna, the depression level of this episode is reminding me of the end of "Journey's End." My standard cure for that is to watch "Runaway Bride," but Alec doesn't want to watch it. I guess I can just watch it on my computer. 'Course, "Day 5" doesn't segue into "Runaway Bride" quite as smoothly as "Journey's End" does, but... Maybe I'll watch it anyway. Then again, writing this and selecting the pictures might suffice for now.
Doctor: Oh, that sucks dude. You had to sacrifice your own grandson to save the world?
Jack: Yeah and Ianto died.
Doctor: Bummer.Jack: And I can't kill myself because I'm immortal.Doctor: I'm so sorry.
Jack: Yeah. I can't imagine someone's life being any worse.
Doctor: ...
Jack: What?
Doctor: ...Jack: What?Doctor: I sacrificed my entire species to save the freaking universe, including my entire family.
Jack: [looks away awkwardly and shuffles his feet.]
Doctor: I'm also over 900 years old. How old are you? Like 150 years old?
Jack: Actually...
Doctor: And no, that time you spent buried under Cardiff doesn't count.
Jack: But--Doctor: No.[Awkward pause]Jack: Hey, so how's Donna?
Doctor: I had to erase all memory of me from her mind. My knowledge was going to make her head explode.
Jack: I see. That sucks.
Doctor: Yeah.[Awkward pause]Jack: Well, I should go. I have... stuff...
Doctor: You do that.
Jack: Yeah.Doctor: But hey, I'm sure your life is worse than anyone could imagine.
Jack: Um. Yeah. Bye.
OK, so nothing like this would ever happen, but still. I can imagine. ;-)
Speaking of Donna, the depression level of this episode is reminding me of the end of "Journey's End." My standard cure for that is to watch "Runaway Bride," but Alec doesn't want to watch it. I guess I can just watch it on my computer. 'Course, "Day 5" doesn't segue into "Runaway Bride" quite as smoothly as "Journey's End" does, but... Maybe I'll watch it anyway. Then again, writing this and selecting the pictures might suffice for now.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
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