Asylum 2009 Report Part One - Friday
Ummmm.... the main body of this report somehow ended up being 3,957 words long... and there weren't even any TALKS on Friday!
I was going to start off with a brief comment about how crap the organisation was, and about how very disappointed I was about all the things I had to miss due to said organisation. But then I decided that I'm not going to let my good memories be ruined by the bad ones. Overall I had a wonderful time and the guests were all AMAZING.
So, here are my memories of Friday... if anyone makes it all the way to the end I'll give em a cookie... *g*
Got to the hotel at just after 12 on Friday, it was lovely and sunny and the drive up had actually been quite nice (considering how tired I was!). I found a good parking space pretty easily (I usually have a nightmare parking at hotels for some reason), and then went inside...
There were HUNDREDS of people milling around the lobby and I thought 'oh bugger, this is gonna take a while'... so I joined the Forever Changing Queue (we were blocking a lot of stuff so they had to keep moving us back, at one point there were TWO different queues to join the main queue (I'm not kidding) and a bunch of people sitting on the grass outside who had been told not to even bother queuing to queue yet!
I'm glad I got there as early as I did, I wasn't too bad off compared to a lot of others - once registration opened it didn't take much more than half an hour to get to the desk. Whilst in the queue (alone - L arrived about an hour after me and is 7 months pregnant so obviously wasn't queuing with me - that actually worked out pretty nicely cause it meant she could check in and stuff while I was chatting to the people around me), anyhoo, whilst in the queue I met some cool people - a family from Cyprus who were really nice and friendly (and were saving my place every time I had to pop to the loo etc) - the two girls are huge fans and every time I saw them again over the weekend they recognised me and kept saying how great a time they were having (they're 12 & 14 I think). I also got chatting to 2 girls behind me who were first timers - one is a huge fan, the other is her sister who had only come so her little sister wouldn't have to go alone! Their parents had paid for her ticket so they could go together! I told them a few stories from previous conventions and stuff, and warned them not to expect the queuing situation to get any better over the weekend!
The volunteers came round periodically to let us know what was going on (registration was delayed a couple of times - I think it was an hour late in the end) and they were all polite and friendly (a bit brusque on occasion but out of necessity more than anything else I think) and were all wearing red t-shirts... they shall therefore be known as the Red Shirts from now on... :o)
Registration was, let's be honest, a bit rubbish. To be clear - the Red Shirts were all doing OK, they were getting through everyone really quickly and politely, but the packs were wrong. When I say 'the packs' I mean the packs of every single person I met all weekend - I'm not kidding - I didn't meet ONE PERSON who had all the right stuff in their pack! I had my Jared photo-op but that was it! So, after getting through Registration Part One, we then found out we'd have to queue again for Registration Part Two! Problem is - Part Two was taking place from the same desk as the photo shoot sales! L & I decided that, since we didn't actually need any of our photo-op tickets that day, and someone had told us that my email conf would be enough to get in for Jared's Autographs, we weren't going to bother queuing for Part Two until either later that night, or Saturday if necessary. L wouldn't actually have been able to manage that queue anyway.
I can't speak much about what was going on with the photo op queue after that, since I was too busy being Cold Air Monitor, but it seemed like the longest, most frustrating, HOTTEST queue of the weekend (at least that's how it looked every time I walked past it!).
So. Our next stop was for the Friday auto's. Since we hadn't been able to find anyone who could confirm if it was delayed or not (we were assuming the Jared & Jensen ones would be delayed since the J2 photo op was so late, but had no way of knowing if the other one would be (J&J were in a different room to everyone else, presumably due to having to do the photo op first - everyone else was always scheduled to start signing about an hour earlier than them).
Anyhoo, we knew which room it was in (having been assured the locations hadn't changed) but had no idea what time. It was due to start at 5pm, and we'd finally got through registration by just after 5 so we figured the safest thing was to go find the queue, get in it (me, while L found somewhere to sit down) and just wait. Once we found the room we got a bit concerned - there were only 2 people there already! We eventually decided it mush just be because we were the first ones with Friday Auto's to get through Registration (Part One) and started a queue - the girls who were already there weren't really forming a queue so much as just sitting in the middle of the little lobby bit in front of the room - we nudged em to sit right next to the door and I went and asked one of the hotel staff guys setting up the room next door if I could nick a chair for L (Side Bar - the hotel staff were ALL great).
So, I dragged a chair out, L sat herself down and lo and behold we had started the Friday Auto Queue! Which was, by a mile, the FUNNEST queue of the weekend. Right after L sat down, a small group of girls (3 of em) walked into the lobby thing and one of them was on crutches, so I suggested she get a chair too - the room I got L's chair from had been locked in the 2 minutes since I'd been in there, so I was left with no choice but to nip into the autograph room and nick one from there! I imagine any security guards looking at that footage would have had a good laugh...). And now we had proof we were in the right place, since the room was CLEARLY set up for an autograph session.
A little while after we started queuing (still with NO IDEA how late the auto's would be - they were already at least half an hour late at this point), a Red Shirt came round and said she wanted us all to know they had no idea how late it would be - she wasn't saying we shouldn't queue but she did want to warn us that we could very well be queuing for quite a while. In the end, it was about 2.5 hours I think.
So, the Autos Room (Sandringham Room I think) had a small lobby-type area and both double doors leading out of said lobby were open (that's where the queue was going), but the people in the queue behind us were sort of snaked around a corner - where there was no air conditioning on. i.e. they were getting BLOODY HOT. We asked about getting the fire doors open but were told it was probably alarmed so we couldn't. But. The Autos Room was pretty cool (Air Con & an external door which the nice cool outside air was coming through), so I held one of the doors open to get some cool air in the room - hence being christened 'Cold Air Monitor' by Claire.
You might be wondering who the heck 'Claire' is... well... one of the best things about conventions (as a lot of you will already know) is that you get to meet fellow fans. Some are odd, some are crazy, some are a little bit scary, but some are great and you find yourself very very glad you were lucky enough to meet them. We've met the latter type at every convention we've been to, and this one was no exception. C, J & Claire (I'm not gonna full name C & J cause they're also on LJ and I wouldn't feel right sharing their real names without permission but since Claire's not on LJ and has a pretty common name anyway I think it'll be all right. Although, for laziness sake, I'm gonna call her C2 from now on...).
Anyhoo, we ended up spending a lot of our time with the 3 of them over the weekend - with L being up the duff and C being on crutches, we were told to sit in the disabled/staff area so we actually sat together most of the weekend too. Along with a number of able bodied people who kept sitting there until someone told em to move! We had a laugh in the Friday Auto Queue, we tried to start a singalong but apparently no one (including us) knows more than the first couple of lines of Yellow Submarine...
So... eventually the guests (minus Jared & Jensen obviously) turned up. They’d had to walk past the queue for Registration Part Two and I can only IMAGINE what they must have thought about THAT! Especially the first timers (Amy actually looked pretty nervous by the time she walked past us!), they were all smiling and waving and looked genuinely surprised at the reception they got (LOTS of cheering as they walked past). We had to wait about another 30 minutes or so (not really sure why) and there was a bit of an argument going on behind us (the queue had somehow split into two and both sub-queues were claiming to be the True Queue and it all got a bit fraught. And then some people tried to push in right behind us and we told them (not especially politely) to SOD OFF, and pointed out the people MELTING in the corner who had been there for more than two hours by that point! Unfortunately, one of them was a girl who cried when one of the organisers tried to get her to move and he gave in upon the sight of tears! Wuss. I felt so bad for the people behind us, and have never been so annoyed at fellow fans before, it was SO out of order for them to do that! We really did argue a lot - swearing to the organiser that they hadn't been there before, but alas, to no avail.
ANYWAY. They finally opened the doors and told us that they were going to be ticking off badge numbers and letting people into the room. This is when something just horrible happened to the girls in front of us - they'd either mis-read their email, or there'd been a cock-up, whichever it was, the gist is - they weren't on the list! They were FIRST in the queue, had been queuing for TWO AND A HALF HOURS, and couldn't get in! They actually took it pretty well though. So, by this point we were 3rd (group-wise) in the queue (some girls pushed in front of us at some point but we somehow hadn't even noticed!) so we were among the first ones in and can I just say this about Matthew Cohen... he is FUCKING GORGEOUS. He is (don't throw things at me) BETTER LOOKING THAN JENSEN. I'm not kidding, he is INHUMANLY GORGEOUS!
Also, it was his first time and he was grinning like a loon the whole time! He was the first person up and I'd gone with my plan of getting people to sign the DVD cover thingy's (over the descriptions of the eps they were in), so I handed over the cover which had ITB on it and pointed to it saying 'please could you sign there?' and my sister (thinking I was pointing to it cause I didn't think he'd know the title, rather than cause I didn't want him to have to waste time searching for it) said "are you seriously pointing out to him the episode he was in? He probably knows..." (She said it in a jokey voice :D) so HE said (looking RIGHT AT ME! He's so GORGEOUS!) "Actually, I had forgotten it until you just said that." So I said "Really?" and HE said "No." In a very amused and sarky voice. He made a little joke with me and I have to say - that moment right there made up for the SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS I'd spent queuing up in the heat that day.
Next was Fred - we had previously decided we were going to skip him (bad experience at the last con we met him at) but in the room we decided it would be rude so we didn't. And I'm actually glad we didn't because he was very nice and polite, and even a bit charming this time round. He asked how far along L is and even went so far as to ask the baby's name so he could write the autograph to her!
And then on to Malik. What can I say about Malik other than that I fell in love with him a bit this weekend? He's so funny and charming and friendly and was obviously having fun and he's pretty much GORGEOUS too! He also asked after the baby (I forgot to mention - L was wearing a T-Shirt she'd had made which said across the belly [i.e. baby bump] "I'll be out in time for Season Five!" - everyone laughed and commented on it, even people we walked past in the various queues that day).
Amy was next and if you think she's pretty on TV... my GOD. She is the prettiest woman I have ever seen in real life. And so sweet and adorable too! When I handed over my DVD cover I told her I'd wanted her to sign over the ep she was in but that Matthew had such big writing he'd taken up all the space, so I asked her if she could please just sign somewhere near? She shook her head and said (grinning the whole time) "That Matthew! I'll shout at him for that later!" She then signed as close to the episode write up as she could and added a little heart at the bottom! (She presumably thought it meant a lot to me that she sign over the ep - she managed to get the very end of her name over it! Bless her!).
Next... Misha! Who told L he thought her T-Shirt was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. It will be no surprise to you that he's gorgeous and friendly and lovely in person will it? He actually got told off (in a nice way) by his Red Shirt for dallying... but they seemed to be having a nice bit of banter going so it's not like anyone minded. Saying that, bear in mind we were one of the first ones in, its possible people were getting a bit touchy later on!
Gabriel was next and he was so jetlagged he actually got halfway through writing something on L's photo and forgot what he was doing! He ended up writing 'I'm Jetlagged! I have no idea what's going on!' (or something like that). Actually, he also said L's T-Shirt was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. Hmmm... maybe I'm confusing him and Misha, Misha definitely said something about it though... anyhoo, Gabe was lovely :o)
As was Richard. L told him how much she LOVES Band Of Brothers (which I made her watch years ago) and he was very appreciative. And he has grown a cool beard. And he was also being really friendly (everyone was making direct eye contact and making sure they at least said hello to everyone).
Last but by NO MEANS LEAST, was Samantha. She's had her hair cut short and it looks WONDERFUL. She was very sweet and had a bit of a chat to L about having a baby (a brief chat obviously, we didn't want to get told off or cause a delay!), and when I told her I loved her hair she BEAMED and said 'Thanks!'.
Sooooo..... that was the Friday Auto's Part One over and done with... on to Part Two! We had to walk quite a way to get to the room Jared and Jensen were in, and the hallway outside where we had to queue was HOT, but it gave L a bit of time to pop off for a snack (she has to make sure she eats regularly) and it was worth it more than I can possibly say.
Jensen was absolutely polite and professional at the last con we saw him at (LA 2008) but he was a little bit reserved. I've seen that he's got a bit more relaxed with each subsequent convention but I really didn't know what to expect this time (I'm a Jared Girl but I do LOVE Jensen too!). We got in the room OK - the email confirmation worked as promised and our badge numbers were correctly on the list. And then we got to the front of the queue...
L was in front of me and he looked up, made eye contact, said hello, and then spotted her T-Shirt... and laughed. He did that head-down-quite-giggle thing he does and said something about it being really good. He then asked her when she was due and if she had a name yet, when she told him the name he said (with a smile and a little nod) "Nice!" and when L asked if he'd mind signing her die-cast Impala he said "Of course" and signed it happily. She moved to Jared's table and he looked up at me, made eye contact, smiled and said "Hi, how you doing?" and I probably said something back but I have no idea what. Then I put my photo down (THIS ONE) and he looked at it for a minute and then called over to Jared, then he called again cause Jared was ignoring him talking to my sister about her T-Shirt.
When he finally got Jared’s attention he said "Look at this, I don't think I've EVER seen this one before." And I said (because I am a moron, although I'm pretty sure I can claim the proximity to Jared and Jensen was what did it),
"It's from a promo shoot from season one."
Now, in my defence, I don't think it was all THAT obvious he meant he hadn't seen a copy of it... in retrospect it's obvious, but at the time I really thought he meant he hadn't ever seen it and didn't know where it was from... anyhoo, I'm almost glad I said it, cause he and Jared both looked at me and smiled (I’m glad my stupidity amused them :D) - they were both so nice about it - if that was me I probably would have said 'well, duh! I know when I posed for it!' They both looked at it for a while though, presumably remembering the shoot or something. I told Jensen it was one of my favourites and he smiled at me again and said thanks & have a nice weekend and he was just so friendly and nice and lovely and I really like his hair a bit longer cause he looks more like Alec.
Then it was my turn with Jared. He also made sure to make eye contact and was very smiley, if a bit hot (he asked Jensen if he thought they were in the only room in the hotel without air con... I didn't say anything cause I figured it was too early in the weekend to get all negative about stuff!). He's just so ridiculously gorgeous and lovely and adorable and SEXY in person. He said hello to me and when I said "Have a nice weekend" he said "Oh, thanks! You too!". I seem to remember a bit of banter about jetlag and Red Bull as well but I was slightly distracted by how gorgeous and smiley he was being!
Weirdly, my overall impression of the J&J autograph bit was that they were being so normal and down to earth, as though they were just saying Hi to a bunch of friends rather than a couple of hundred complete strangers. They absolutely spoke to my sister and I in a very friendly way, and made eye contact and I was nothing but impressed with their behaviour. It was kind of odd though, they spoke to me more than they did at the previous con (and looked even better, if that's possible) and I'm a bigger fan now, but I actually found myself a lot less 'star-struck' this time round - as though them being so down to earth actually made me see them more as real people than maybe I had before. It's strange, but in a good way. And don't get me wrong, I was a bit star-struck, just not as much as usual!
So. We'd somehow lost C, J & C2 by that point and we were both cream crackered (I hadn't slept in 2 nights and L's growing a person) so we headed to our room to dump our stuff and then decided to have dinner before setting off for Registration Part Two. By this time it was almost 10pm and we weren't sure what time Reg Part Two would close, but the Red Shirts were telling us it'd be a while so we weren't worried. We had a pretty quick dinner and by the time we joined the queue it wasn't too bad - the party had started by then. Mind you, we found out from someone in the queue that they hadn't actually managed to get through all of the Friday Auto people, I can't even imagine how angry the people who queued up for that long must have been! I feel I should point out; I wasn't taking as much time with everything as it might seem from the above comments - all convo's were VERY quick and I thought at the time that it was going really well time-wise, apparently not though.
Misha walked past while we were queuing (with no security whatsoever...) and stopped (presumably waiting for someone), he looked at me and smiled and then started walking again. As he walked away he said to all of us in the queue "I bet you thought you'd finished queuing for the day didn't you?"
Anyway, by the time we got towards the front of the queue we could hear a bit of the music from the party... Living On A Prayer came on and everyone in the queue started singing! It was AMAZINGLY cool!
The Red Shirts were running the 'Missing Stuff' counter so it was running pretty smoothly and efficiently, we were done in about 30 seconds! They were also being very nice and polite and friendly and considering they'd all been working (and on their feet) ALL DAY, I was very impressed with them.
So. That done, we decided to call it a night and try to get a good night's sleep to be ready for the morning.
End of Friday Report!!!!
Coming up in Part Two...
Jensen describing what Jared looks like in the bath. Matthew Cohen being star struck by us! The Malik and Gabe Comedy Show. The Great Pudding Robbery of 2009 and much, much more!
I was going to start off with a brief comment about how crap the organisation was, and about how very disappointed I was about all the things I had to miss due to said organisation. But then I decided that I'm not going to let my good memories be ruined by the bad ones. Overall I had a wonderful time and the guests were all AMAZING.
So, here are my memories of Friday... if anyone makes it all the way to the end I'll give em a cookie... *g*
Got to the hotel at just after 12 on Friday, it was lovely and sunny and the drive up had actually been quite nice (considering how tired I was!). I found a good parking space pretty easily (I usually have a nightmare parking at hotels for some reason), and then went inside...
There were HUNDREDS of people milling around the lobby and I thought 'oh bugger, this is gonna take a while'... so I joined the Forever Changing Queue (we were blocking a lot of stuff so they had to keep moving us back, at one point there were TWO different queues to join the main queue (I'm not kidding) and a bunch of people sitting on the grass outside who had been told not to even bother queuing to queue yet!
I'm glad I got there as early as I did, I wasn't too bad off compared to a lot of others - once registration opened it didn't take much more than half an hour to get to the desk. Whilst in the queue (alone - L arrived about an hour after me and is 7 months pregnant so obviously wasn't queuing with me - that actually worked out pretty nicely cause it meant she could check in and stuff while I was chatting to the people around me), anyhoo, whilst in the queue I met some cool people - a family from Cyprus who were really nice and friendly (and were saving my place every time I had to pop to the loo etc) - the two girls are huge fans and every time I saw them again over the weekend they recognised me and kept saying how great a time they were having (they're 12 & 14 I think). I also got chatting to 2 girls behind me who were first timers - one is a huge fan, the other is her sister who had only come so her little sister wouldn't have to go alone! Their parents had paid for her ticket so they could go together! I told them a few stories from previous conventions and stuff, and warned them not to expect the queuing situation to get any better over the weekend!
The volunteers came round periodically to let us know what was going on (registration was delayed a couple of times - I think it was an hour late in the end) and they were all polite and friendly (a bit brusque on occasion but out of necessity more than anything else I think) and were all wearing red t-shirts... they shall therefore be known as the Red Shirts from now on... :o)
Registration was, let's be honest, a bit rubbish. To be clear - the Red Shirts were all doing OK, they were getting through everyone really quickly and politely, but the packs were wrong. When I say 'the packs' I mean the packs of every single person I met all weekend - I'm not kidding - I didn't meet ONE PERSON who had all the right stuff in their pack! I had my Jared photo-op but that was it! So, after getting through Registration Part One, we then found out we'd have to queue again for Registration Part Two! Problem is - Part Two was taking place from the same desk as the photo shoot sales! L & I decided that, since we didn't actually need any of our photo-op tickets that day, and someone had told us that my email conf would be enough to get in for Jared's Autographs, we weren't going to bother queuing for Part Two until either later that night, or Saturday if necessary. L wouldn't actually have been able to manage that queue anyway.
I can't speak much about what was going on with the photo op queue after that, since I was too busy being Cold Air Monitor, but it seemed like the longest, most frustrating, HOTTEST queue of the weekend (at least that's how it looked every time I walked past it!).
So. Our next stop was for the Friday auto's. Since we hadn't been able to find anyone who could confirm if it was delayed or not (we were assuming the Jared & Jensen ones would be delayed since the J2 photo op was so late, but had no way of knowing if the other one would be (J&J were in a different room to everyone else, presumably due to having to do the photo op first - everyone else was always scheduled to start signing about an hour earlier than them).
Anyhoo, we knew which room it was in (having been assured the locations hadn't changed) but had no idea what time. It was due to start at 5pm, and we'd finally got through registration by just after 5 so we figured the safest thing was to go find the queue, get in it (me, while L found somewhere to sit down) and just wait. Once we found the room we got a bit concerned - there were only 2 people there already! We eventually decided it mush just be because we were the first ones with Friday Auto's to get through Registration (Part One) and started a queue - the girls who were already there weren't really forming a queue so much as just sitting in the middle of the little lobby bit in front of the room - we nudged em to sit right next to the door and I went and asked one of the hotel staff guys setting up the room next door if I could nick a chair for L (Side Bar - the hotel staff were ALL great).
So, I dragged a chair out, L sat herself down and lo and behold we had started the Friday Auto Queue! Which was, by a mile, the FUNNEST queue of the weekend. Right after L sat down, a small group of girls (3 of em) walked into the lobby thing and one of them was on crutches, so I suggested she get a chair too - the room I got L's chair from had been locked in the 2 minutes since I'd been in there, so I was left with no choice but to nip into the autograph room and nick one from there! I imagine any security guards looking at that footage would have had a good laugh...). And now we had proof we were in the right place, since the room was CLEARLY set up for an autograph session.
A little while after we started queuing (still with NO IDEA how late the auto's would be - they were already at least half an hour late at this point), a Red Shirt came round and said she wanted us all to know they had no idea how late it would be - she wasn't saying we shouldn't queue but she did want to warn us that we could very well be queuing for quite a while. In the end, it was about 2.5 hours I think.
So, the Autos Room (Sandringham Room I think) had a small lobby-type area and both double doors leading out of said lobby were open (that's where the queue was going), but the people in the queue behind us were sort of snaked around a corner - where there was no air conditioning on. i.e. they were getting BLOODY HOT. We asked about getting the fire doors open but were told it was probably alarmed so we couldn't. But. The Autos Room was pretty cool (Air Con & an external door which the nice cool outside air was coming through), so I held one of the doors open to get some cool air in the room - hence being christened 'Cold Air Monitor' by Claire.
You might be wondering who the heck 'Claire' is... well... one of the best things about conventions (as a lot of you will already know) is that you get to meet fellow fans. Some are odd, some are crazy, some are a little bit scary, but some are great and you find yourself very very glad you were lucky enough to meet them. We've met the latter type at every convention we've been to, and this one was no exception. C, J & Claire (I'm not gonna full name C & J cause they're also on LJ and I wouldn't feel right sharing their real names without permission but since Claire's not on LJ and has a pretty common name anyway I think it'll be all right. Although, for laziness sake, I'm gonna call her C2 from now on...).
Anyhoo, we ended up spending a lot of our time with the 3 of them over the weekend - with L being up the duff and C being on crutches, we were told to sit in the disabled/staff area so we actually sat together most of the weekend too. Along with a number of able bodied people who kept sitting there until someone told em to move! We had a laugh in the Friday Auto Queue, we tried to start a singalong but apparently no one (including us) knows more than the first couple of lines of Yellow Submarine...
So... eventually the guests (minus Jared & Jensen obviously) turned up. They’d had to walk past the queue for Registration Part Two and I can only IMAGINE what they must have thought about THAT! Especially the first timers (Amy actually looked pretty nervous by the time she walked past us!), they were all smiling and waving and looked genuinely surprised at the reception they got (LOTS of cheering as they walked past). We had to wait about another 30 minutes or so (not really sure why) and there was a bit of an argument going on behind us (the queue had somehow split into two and both sub-queues were claiming to be the True Queue and it all got a bit fraught. And then some people tried to push in right behind us and we told them (not especially politely) to SOD OFF, and pointed out the people MELTING in the corner who had been there for more than two hours by that point! Unfortunately, one of them was a girl who cried when one of the organisers tried to get her to move and he gave in upon the sight of tears! Wuss. I felt so bad for the people behind us, and have never been so annoyed at fellow fans before, it was SO out of order for them to do that! We really did argue a lot - swearing to the organiser that they hadn't been there before, but alas, to no avail.
ANYWAY. They finally opened the doors and told us that they were going to be ticking off badge numbers and letting people into the room. This is when something just horrible happened to the girls in front of us - they'd either mis-read their email, or there'd been a cock-up, whichever it was, the gist is - they weren't on the list! They were FIRST in the queue, had been queuing for TWO AND A HALF HOURS, and couldn't get in! They actually took it pretty well though. So, by this point we were 3rd (group-wise) in the queue (some girls pushed in front of us at some point but we somehow hadn't even noticed!) so we were among the first ones in and can I just say this about Matthew Cohen... he is FUCKING GORGEOUS. He is (don't throw things at me) BETTER LOOKING THAN JENSEN. I'm not kidding, he is INHUMANLY GORGEOUS!
Also, it was his first time and he was grinning like a loon the whole time! He was the first person up and I'd gone with my plan of getting people to sign the DVD cover thingy's (over the descriptions of the eps they were in), so I handed over the cover which had ITB on it and pointed to it saying 'please could you sign there?' and my sister (thinking I was pointing to it cause I didn't think he'd know the title, rather than cause I didn't want him to have to waste time searching for it) said "are you seriously pointing out to him the episode he was in? He probably knows..." (She said it in a jokey voice :D) so HE said (looking RIGHT AT ME! He's so GORGEOUS!) "Actually, I had forgotten it until you just said that." So I said "Really?" and HE said "No." In a very amused and sarky voice. He made a little joke with me and I have to say - that moment right there made up for the SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS I'd spent queuing up in the heat that day.
Next was Fred - we had previously decided we were going to skip him (bad experience at the last con we met him at) but in the room we decided it would be rude so we didn't. And I'm actually glad we didn't because he was very nice and polite, and even a bit charming this time round. He asked how far along L is and even went so far as to ask the baby's name so he could write the autograph to her!
And then on to Malik. What can I say about Malik other than that I fell in love with him a bit this weekend? He's so funny and charming and friendly and was obviously having fun and he's pretty much GORGEOUS too! He also asked after the baby (I forgot to mention - L was wearing a T-Shirt she'd had made which said across the belly [i.e. baby bump] "I'll be out in time for Season Five!" - everyone laughed and commented on it, even people we walked past in the various queues that day).
Amy was next and if you think she's pretty on TV... my GOD. She is the prettiest woman I have ever seen in real life. And so sweet and adorable too! When I handed over my DVD cover I told her I'd wanted her to sign over the ep she was in but that Matthew had such big writing he'd taken up all the space, so I asked her if she could please just sign somewhere near? She shook her head and said (grinning the whole time) "That Matthew! I'll shout at him for that later!" She then signed as close to the episode write up as she could and added a little heart at the bottom! (She presumably thought it meant a lot to me that she sign over the ep - she managed to get the very end of her name over it! Bless her!).
Next... Misha! Who told L he thought her T-Shirt was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. It will be no surprise to you that he's gorgeous and friendly and lovely in person will it? He actually got told off (in a nice way) by his Red Shirt for dallying... but they seemed to be having a nice bit of banter going so it's not like anyone minded. Saying that, bear in mind we were one of the first ones in, its possible people were getting a bit touchy later on!
Gabriel was next and he was so jetlagged he actually got halfway through writing something on L's photo and forgot what he was doing! He ended up writing 'I'm Jetlagged! I have no idea what's going on!' (or something like that). Actually, he also said L's T-Shirt was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. Hmmm... maybe I'm confusing him and Misha, Misha definitely said something about it though... anyhoo, Gabe was lovely :o)
As was Richard. L told him how much she LOVES Band Of Brothers (which I made her watch years ago) and he was very appreciative. And he has grown a cool beard. And he was also being really friendly (everyone was making direct eye contact and making sure they at least said hello to everyone).
Last but by NO MEANS LEAST, was Samantha. She's had her hair cut short and it looks WONDERFUL. She was very sweet and had a bit of a chat to L about having a baby (a brief chat obviously, we didn't want to get told off or cause a delay!), and when I told her I loved her hair she BEAMED and said 'Thanks!'.
Sooooo..... that was the Friday Auto's Part One over and done with... on to Part Two! We had to walk quite a way to get to the room Jared and Jensen were in, and the hallway outside where we had to queue was HOT, but it gave L a bit of time to pop off for a snack (she has to make sure she eats regularly) and it was worth it more than I can possibly say.
Jensen was absolutely polite and professional at the last con we saw him at (LA 2008) but he was a little bit reserved. I've seen that he's got a bit more relaxed with each subsequent convention but I really didn't know what to expect this time (I'm a Jared Girl but I do LOVE Jensen too!). We got in the room OK - the email confirmation worked as promised and our badge numbers were correctly on the list. And then we got to the front of the queue...
L was in front of me and he looked up, made eye contact, said hello, and then spotted her T-Shirt... and laughed. He did that head-down-quite-giggle thing he does and said something about it being really good. He then asked her when she was due and if she had a name yet, when she told him the name he said (with a smile and a little nod) "Nice!" and when L asked if he'd mind signing her die-cast Impala he said "Of course" and signed it happily. She moved to Jared's table and he looked up at me, made eye contact, smiled and said "Hi, how you doing?" and I probably said something back but I have no idea what. Then I put my photo down (THIS ONE) and he looked at it for a minute and then called over to Jared, then he called again cause Jared was ignoring him talking to my sister about her T-Shirt.
When he finally got Jared’s attention he said "Look at this, I don't think I've EVER seen this one before." And I said (because I am a moron, although I'm pretty sure I can claim the proximity to Jared and Jensen was what did it),
"It's from a promo shoot from season one."
Now, in my defence, I don't think it was all THAT obvious he meant he hadn't seen a copy of it... in retrospect it's obvious, but at the time I really thought he meant he hadn't ever seen it and didn't know where it was from... anyhoo, I'm almost glad I said it, cause he and Jared both looked at me and smiled (I’m glad my stupidity amused them :D) - they were both so nice about it - if that was me I probably would have said 'well, duh! I know when I posed for it!' They both looked at it for a while though, presumably remembering the shoot or something. I told Jensen it was one of my favourites and he smiled at me again and said thanks & have a nice weekend and he was just so friendly and nice and lovely and I really like his hair a bit longer cause he looks more like Alec.
Then it was my turn with Jared. He also made sure to make eye contact and was very smiley, if a bit hot (he asked Jensen if he thought they were in the only room in the hotel without air con... I didn't say anything cause I figured it was too early in the weekend to get all negative about stuff!). He's just so ridiculously gorgeous and lovely and adorable and SEXY in person. He said hello to me and when I said "Have a nice weekend" he said "Oh, thanks! You too!". I seem to remember a bit of banter about jetlag and Red Bull as well but I was slightly distracted by how gorgeous and smiley he was being!
Weirdly, my overall impression of the J&J autograph bit was that they were being so normal and down to earth, as though they were just saying Hi to a bunch of friends rather than a couple of hundred complete strangers. They absolutely spoke to my sister and I in a very friendly way, and made eye contact and I was nothing but impressed with their behaviour. It was kind of odd though, they spoke to me more than they did at the previous con (and looked even better, if that's possible) and I'm a bigger fan now, but I actually found myself a lot less 'star-struck' this time round - as though them being so down to earth actually made me see them more as real people than maybe I had before. It's strange, but in a good way. And don't get me wrong, I was a bit star-struck, just not as much as usual!
So. We'd somehow lost C, J & C2 by that point and we were both cream crackered (I hadn't slept in 2 nights and L's growing a person) so we headed to our room to dump our stuff and then decided to have dinner before setting off for Registration Part Two. By this time it was almost 10pm and we weren't sure what time Reg Part Two would close, but the Red Shirts were telling us it'd be a while so we weren't worried. We had a pretty quick dinner and by the time we joined the queue it wasn't too bad - the party had started by then. Mind you, we found out from someone in the queue that they hadn't actually managed to get through all of the Friday Auto people, I can't even imagine how angry the people who queued up for that long must have been! I feel I should point out; I wasn't taking as much time with everything as it might seem from the above comments - all convo's were VERY quick and I thought at the time that it was going really well time-wise, apparently not though.
Misha walked past while we were queuing (with no security whatsoever...) and stopped (presumably waiting for someone), he looked at me and smiled and then started walking again. As he walked away he said to all of us in the queue "I bet you thought you'd finished queuing for the day didn't you?"
Anyway, by the time we got towards the front of the queue we could hear a bit of the music from the party... Living On A Prayer came on and everyone in the queue started singing! It was AMAZINGLY cool!
The Red Shirts were running the 'Missing Stuff' counter so it was running pretty smoothly and efficiently, we were done in about 30 seconds! They were also being very nice and polite and friendly and considering they'd all been working (and on their feet) ALL DAY, I was very impressed with them.
So. That done, we decided to call it a night and try to get a good night's sleep to be ready for the morning.
End of Friday Report!!!!
Coming up in Part Two...
Jensen describing what Jared looks like in the bath. Matthew Cohen being star struck by us! The Malik and Gabe Comedy Show. The Great Pudding Robbery of 2009 and much, much more!