San Diego Comic Con
Pics are now up (and have been for a couple days…). I hope you enjoy them. It’s taken me this long to recover enough to post and write about it.
San Diego Comic Con, as you’d probably guess from the pictures, and of course last years (arguably…better[?] pictures) it was a packed madhouse. I didn’t notice as many costumes this year, but it may have been the whirlwind of activity that shielded me from that. I did see Adam Savage from Mythbusters in his Joker henchman outfit (and we of course realize this after the fact once his Twitter feed was read). I clearly remember scoffing at the costume as well – Joker-related costumes were SO last year. Jamie S Rich told me there was a gal on the floor in a TARDIS outfit, but the closest I could find was the Dalek Girl. Oh, Dalek Girl…we shall not have the “Exterminate!” jokes. No, no.
The first night I crashed with Jamie and Jöelle Jones, who were kind enough to let me stay with them after I managed to extend my travel plans by one extra day. It was actually five of us in the same room. Four really. One of our party decided to camp out for the Disney panel in Hall H the next day. Initially she was going to pass, but we cajoled her into it. Hayao Miyazaki was going to be on the panel and she wanted to ask him a question in Japanese as she is in the Japanese program at the University of Oregon. We made sure that she was going to be safe camping out overnight, fortunately there were others there for similar reasons, and security was on site. So Jöelle and Terry made sure that she had some blankets and a pillow and in the morning went to collect them and bring her some coffee. She got second row in the hall (and if you know Hall H – you know it’s a vast cavern-like structure that holds…untold thousands…second row is about as good as it gets). Meanwhile, up in our secret hotel room lair, I got to look over some of Jöelle’s artwork for the upcoming Dr. Horrible comic and hang out.
On this same day was the panel that I was fortunate enough to have been invited to attend! A spotlight panel on Mike Allred. It was just an honor sitting up there with Jamie, Jöelle, and Mike, Laura and Han Allred. I also made the horrible mistake of wearing my new Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars that haven’t been broken in yet. Comic Con is not the time to break shoes in. Ever. They will break your feet instead, and that’s just what happened. You don’t need the details. I also got to move to my regular hotel located in…Fashion Valley. Fashion Valley is nowhere near downtown San Diego. So I had a bit of a hike to the trolley station and a 20 minute trolley ride into the convention. This pretty much wrecked my plans to attend the iFanboy/Totally Rad Show part Friday night. Ah well.
Lessons learned for next year: Travel light (keep traveling light). If Jamie wants to split a room – go for it (and thank you again, Jamie!). Stay close to the con to put anything you get at the show away quickly and easily to get back. Don’t bother with the horribly big, bulky and generally unwieldy messenger bag – just use any shopping bags you get on the show floor and walk about freely. Make your plans and be ready to scrap them. Stay an extra day to recover and fly out leisurely. Arrive a day early to get situated and meet up with people you came to see but might not get to spend lots of time with once the show starts up in full swing.
Still – it was a blast! Next year is the third year back – third time is a charm!
