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.

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.

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!

ComicCon countdown: Day Zero!

Yesterday we went to the La Brea Tar Pits museum and the LACMA. The Tar Pits were pretty cool. They were more geared towards little kids of course, but there were some pretty cool fossils, like dire wolves, saber tooth cats, mammoths, and giant sloths. They also had a cool display of birds.

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 San Diego it was already traffic-y, but we got to the cousins’ house eventually, only getting slightly lost towards the end.

Last but certainly not least, today is Opening Night!!!! We are going to go downtown at about noon. Check-in starts at 3:00, but we figure the line will have started oh [checks clock, 9:58] three hours ago. Yay! Nerds! Free stuff! Awesomeness!

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...

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!

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.

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.

Torchwood: Children of Earth

This is what I think of the end of "Day 4:"





I can't say anything else.

Signs that you have been playing Fallout 3 for too long

I played Fallout 3 all day yesterday (11am to 2am, with a few breaks) and half of today (11am to 3pm) on Alec's 360. I'm not even close to being done with the plot. So many maps to explore (and get lost in) so many random things to find, so many things to buy and sell, so many people to talk to, so many mutants to shoot, so little time. The game is set 200 years after a nuclear war. You grew up in a fallout shelter that was supposedly locked shut for that whole time. You leave to look for your father, who left the shelter under mysterious circumstances. You wander the Capitol City Wasteland and the ruins of D.C., fighting baddies and stealing their stuff, etc. Its gameplay is first-person shooter RPG: For the most part your perspective is like a FPS (you can only see your hands), but like an RPG, you level up with experience and can chose which skills to develop, and you can choose to play it good or bad (my character is currently "very good," and my title is "Ranger of the Wastes" Edit: Now I'm a "Protector").

Anyhoo, thanks to my experience thus far, here is my list of signs that you have been playing Fallout 3 for too long:

7. Your finger is sore from where it rests on the underside of the controller.

6. The sides of your hands are sore from where they've been resting on your lap as you hold the controller.

5. You go to bed because you are tired, and know that sleeping will bring your health bar back up to full.

4. You begin to look at objects around the room as though they are items that you would consider picking up to sell.

3. When you approach a light switch you expect to see a prompt asking you if you want to "activate" it.

2. You begin judging plots of movies and TV episodes in terms of what parts would be made into quests, and what the quests would entail.

1. You sleep poorly, because you keep being woken up as you finish parts of an entire quest that you complete in your dreams.

That's only seven. Maybe I'll have more after I play longer. Oy.

Oops. I need a picture. Here's a poster from the game:

Oh, and did I mention that Liam Neeson does the voice for the father? That alone gives the game big bonus points.