Comic-Con Day 2 Recap!
At long, long last, here we are. It's done! I've finished recapping Day 2 of Comic-Com 8D
We had a slow start on Friday. We were all exhausted from the day before, and K and J were heading back out of town for a wedding so it took us some time to get out of the hotel room and on the road looking for breakfast. I’d read some hotel reviews saying there was a decent Mexican spot nearby, and we found it, in the form of the Hacienda Something-or-Other. Google’s got it listed as Antonio’s Hacienda and the Hacienda Casa Blanca, but whatever you call it, I call it good eats.
I was close to ordering delicious but same-old-same-old chorizo, but instead I decided to try machaca, to be more in keeping with my spirits of ebullient optimism. Sure, my feet were thrashed and we’d lagged so long I was missing the Powerpuff Girls panel even at that moment, but it was sinking in that I was on Vacation here and I had better start living it up. I even ordered a mimosa, all while worrying that drinking, and so early, would have me crashing by midday. The machaca came with potatoes and peppers and cheese and beans and it was so savory and tasty. If you’re wondering why there’s no picture, first of all, you know me very well, and second, I forgot the camera in the car.
I wouldn’t do it again for Comic-Con, since it was way too far to be anything but a pain in the ass, but El Cajon ain’t a bad little place to stay on the cheap in the SD area. We didn’t stay at the Rodeway Inn, I just thought the sign for the Magnolia Market was charming.
After we ate, K and J dropped me off downtown near the convention center. As I made my way up toward the panel areas, I passed not one but a pair of gold bikini Leias on the escalator opposite me, which is basically Comic-Con boiled down to an essence. A sexy essence. I was hoping to get into the panel for the show Spaced, but by the time I made it, it was already full. So instead I got myself a nice seat for the EW Visionaries: TV Showrunners panel.
This was actually a pretty good panel, by virtue of being moderated by someone from EW that actually had interesting and informed questions.
The panel included the dude from Chuck/Gossip Girl, CARLTON AND DAMON, the dude from Pushing Daisies, and the dude from Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Terminator guy and Chuck guy are both named Josh, so they took to calling them stuff like “Terminator Josh”.
In case you don’t know, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are the main guys behind LOST. I took a lot of videos of their contributions (they’re all in 30 second intervals) and uploading everything to Flickr was laborious, to put it gently, so I really hope they turn out to be of interest to someone else 8D
In these clips, the mod asks Damon and Carlton about the circumstances of the changing length of this year’s season. See, first the season got shortened by several episodes thanks to the writer’s strike, but then they added one bonus hour for the season finale:
Here Carlton talks about how televisions shows have expanded into larger brands, and how LOST uses new media platforms to further explore their mythology in ways they can’t do on the “mothership”. You know, for the geeks:
And here Damon takes on the same subject, with a musical metaphor and amusing f-bomb. Mobisodes.
Without a doubt, one of the biggest things that people were talking about during the Con was Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible‘s Sing-Along Blog. I overheard people talking about it more than any other project, by a huge margin. Here Damon says his piece:
At this point I’ll point out that I am being utterly ruthless here. There were videos that I didn’t even upload, and now I’m getting even pickier. There are a few more videos in my Flickr stream that I‘m not going to add here, please to enjoy them there if you’re so inclined. Moving on!
The panel spent some time talking about genre shows, and their mythologies, and Carlton used a tasty metaphor to talk about their philosophy at LOST:
Home stretch of the panel here. If you watched LOST this season, you probably are well familiar with the episode The Constant. It was easily the most popular episode of the season, at least based on the reactions I‘ve seen. I love every episode for some reason or another, even the ones people hate on, so maybe I’m not the best judge, but my guess is it’s because The Constant was an example of LOST playing to it’s two biggest strengths: character-based drama and crazy Island mind fuckery. Here Carlton and Damon talk about working on the episode:
And, finally, we’ve got the most over-asked fucking question in the history of LOST fandom, “Do you guys have a plan or just make everything up as you go along?”:
I didn’t realize it until leaving the Showrunners panel just how close the convention center was to the water. I walked out the wrong door, and found myself literally on the ocean. Right by da beach. Boyee!
I didn’t head down to the exhibit hall area yet, since there was a King Kong panel that I thought was going to be interesting. Note the past tense there. Maybe it’s my own fault. I don’t think my expectations were too high, I thought we were going to hear about how Kong was relevant even at his 75th anniversary, and maybe about the next development for the character. I read waaaaaay too much into it though, since it turned out to be a handful of guys sitting on stage bitching about how inferior the remakes were to the originals.
Even the Peter Jackson one!!! One of them even said the dinosaurs in the original movie were better than Peter Jackson’s, which...come on. The only reason I didn’t walk out of the bore-fest was because it was in such a rinky dink tiny little room that it would have felt rude.
Dude in the center with his hand up? He busted me trying to sneak into the line to get into this panel, and he got all “oh no you didn’t”. Considering I was only trying to cut into the very end of the line I wasn’t particularly feeling “give a fuck”, but I pulled appropriately apologetic faces. Turns out his great great somebody or other played the chick that gets sacrificed to Kong before Ann shows up. You’d think in that case he wouldn’t have been at the very end of the line for the panel, but you’d be wrong.
More more more Star Wars, with more to come another time.
Oh, the Snoopy inflatable. I went by this thing every single day of the Con, debating whether I should get it or not. See, there’s this certain webmaster that I felt really compelled to buy it for. I even checked ebay without luck to see if the price was reasonable, since it seemed steep at $35. I was still strongly tempted to buy it but when I showed up at the booth on Sunday, it was finally gone. It’s probably for the best anyway; if I bought every present I saw that would be perfect for one of my imaginary internet friends I would go broke pretty fast.
It’s probably because of Tom Servo here that I was able to get into the MST3K panel at all. Let me back up…Due to the policy of not clearing the rooms between panels, sometimes the line for the show you want to get into is closed for being too long, despite the line being full of people who aren’t even into what’s being presented. I’m divided about how I feel about it. Eventually I figured out how to make it work for me, but I wasn’t feeling it on this particular day. Thanks to an abundance of adult swim and Stargate fans, this line for MST3K was closed every time that I went by.
So when I saw a girl in a sexed up Joel jumpsuit in line with a group of friends, I zeroed right in on them and shamelessly begged for them to let me get cutsies, but even with all my powers of persuasion, they were having none of it. Soon, though, a guy showed up with Tom here, and the same idea as me, and I hitched my wagon to his star without an ounce of compunction. Between the two of us, we wore them down. The people directly behind us weren’t even interested in MST3K, but the show after, so they didn’t care. I heard later that there were empty seats in the back of the room during the MST3K panel, which just shows how the whole system can backfire. But it didn’t matter for me, because I got in! I made sure to find “sexed up Gizmonics employee” and her friend “steampunk girl” afterwards and thank them again.
Patton Oswalt moderated the panel, and he did a serviceable job.
Is that damning with faint praise? I don’t totally mean to. I thought the panel was great at the time, but looking back I think the hardcore fans are going to have a lot of nits to pick with how he did things. The biggest issue is, it was pretty obvious that he only followed the show through before it moved to the SciFi channel, since he only made reference to the oldest of episodes. He didn’t even recognize Paul Chapin or Bridget Jones-Nelson! Worst of all, he completely ignored Bill Corbett’s work as Crow, focusing completely on Trace Beaulieu.
Speaking of awkward, don’t ask me why they had Joel right next to Jim Mallon (for those that don‘t know, Joel left the show because of clashes with Mallon, and some issues have continued to this day). It was obvious that there was mad dislike there, at least in my opinion, but Joel very specifically took care to throw questions to Mallon to answer. Passive agressilicious.
So speaking of Joel Hodgson and how awesome he is, the man has a voice like…hot cocoa on a cold day. Frosty lemonade on a hot one. Sinking your toes into the sand on the beach. It’s lovely, is what I’m saying. Here he and then Josh Weinstein talk about the creation of the robots, way back when:
I seriously can’t believe Patton didn’t give any love to Observer or Professor Bobo. That’s dangerously close to hater territory, I just have to say. At least he was familiar with the Pearl Forrester character, and he asked Mary Jo Pehl about how she was developed. LOL for mommy issues:
Another one from the overasked questions file, though it’s more forgivable than the LOST version since there’s actually something to say in response, “What do the filmmaker’s think about what you guys do? Does Joe Don Baker really want to kick your asses?”:
This was a great moment here. Patton asked a really in-depth question about what the inspiration behind the Gizmonics Institute was, and Joel’s response was absolutely priceless:
One more great moment. Patton started to ask how the show might have been different if it was launched in the internet age, but the answer gets a little sidetracked. You hear me absolutely bust the fuck up during this one because Kevin totally has my number on the Twittering:
All in all, a great and hilarious panel. Don’t hire this guy to be your babysitter:
After the panel ended, I left the center to go grab some dinner. As I hit the streets, I ran into Patton Oswalt walking with Brian Posehn. I told Patton that the panel had been great. With Brian, my mouth got ahead of my brain. See, BP’s got this bit where he talks about how he looks…distinctive. Specifically, he mentions that he looks like a “bag of farts”. Somehow my mouth decided it would be good to reference this before running it by my brain. At the last minute my brain hit the emergency brake, so what came out was a big muddle of what the fuck did that crazy girl just say. It was quite the smooth move.
At this point I met up with my mom, who’d driven down that afternoon. We were walking down the street looking for something quick because I wanted to get back for the Spaced screening, and passed restaurant after restaurant full of people (the guy from Attack of the Show! was standing out in front of one fooling with his cell phone, more on him later). We decided to walk a few blocks down to try to find something less crowded, and as we made our way I realized we were walking just behind Nathan Fillon, who I understand is most famous for Firefly and Dr. Horrible. However, I’m a LOST fan, so I know him best as Kate’s husband from that time she was Monica:
An unexpected LOST sighting? Score! I tried to explain who he was to my mom, but “a crazy musical that you can watch on iTunes but wasn’t ever on TV or anything” is a little beyond her ken. After Nathan Fillon and his very lovely female companion disappeared, I realized that the people behind me were talking about Dr. Horrible, as I’d already heard so many people doing. I turned around at a street corner, thinking I might strike up a conversation, and discovered I had been eavesdropping on Neil Patrick Harris. He is a tiny, hot little man.
I almost forgot to talk about the crazy bicycle parade!
Truly, this was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen, in a weekend full of them. If I hadn’t seen a news story later that night, I would still be wondering what the hell this was.
I know there’ve been a lot of videos so far, but these must be seen. So many people on bikes! Apparently this is a monthly thing, where a bunch of people gather together to ride through town. It’s some kind of statement about cyclists right to the road, but it seems like most people use it as an excuse to grab a bike and act silly.
I love the impromptou drum circle, and dancing guy wearing what I’m almost positive is a Dora the Explorer backpack.
I also love the green bike that rides sloooooowly by at the end. Makes me laugh every time.
Dinner was hurriedly eaten carnitas tacos, and then it was back to the convention center for Spaced. I got into what was an unexpectedly long line behind a pair of friendly Canadians. Along with a fellow from Atlanta, we had a discussion about the differences between our lands of origin. I learned that Quebecers are the losers of Canada, and that indeed, some of the stereotypes about British Columbia are true.
The masculine half of the coolest couple in Canada was a graphic designer, and here he is showing off his handiwork. He gave me the scoop; after he submitted his initial design, all the stars came back with notes on how they wanted to be portrayed. The scruffy host (remember I mentioned him earlier?) specifically requested more scruff.
So then it was time for the Spaced screening. I’ve met and geeked out over Edgar Wright before, and he was as impish as I remembered. It was my first time ever seeing Simon Pegg or Jessica Stevenson, and my first time seeing more than one episode of Spaced for that matter. Thankfully I knew enough to participate in the biggest finger gun battle ever.
It was a long and busy day. Not much in the way of swag or purchases, since I spent most of my day in panels. Once we made it back to the hotel (quite late) I surgically removed my socks from my feet (if you recall, I had demolished them with bad shoes back on Day 1) and soaked the sad little bitches in a steaming hot bath, while I read the Red Sonja I picked up on Thursday. I was too keyed up to get to sleep at anything approaching a reasonable time, something I would regret a whole lot the next morning.
But that will have to wait for the next post! I will admit, since I spent most of Saturday on the actual convention floor, that’s pretty much where all the best pictures are. So now that you’ve sat through this recap, there’s a killer one on the way. Shouldn’t take another month to show up, either. Thanks for reading!
We had a slow start on Friday. We were all exhausted from the day before, and K and J were heading back out of town for a wedding so it took us some time to get out of the hotel room and on the road looking for breakfast. I’d read some hotel reviews saying there was a decent Mexican spot nearby, and we found it, in the form of the Hacienda Something-or-Other. Google’s got it listed as Antonio’s Hacienda and the Hacienda Casa Blanca, but whatever you call it, I call it good eats.
I was close to ordering delicious but same-old-same-old chorizo, but instead I decided to try machaca, to be more in keeping with my spirits of ebullient optimism. Sure, my feet were thrashed and we’d lagged so long I was missing the Powerpuff Girls panel even at that moment, but it was sinking in that I was on Vacation here and I had better start living it up. I even ordered a mimosa, all while worrying that drinking, and so early, would have me crashing by midday. The machaca came with potatoes and peppers and cheese and beans and it was so savory and tasty. If you’re wondering why there’s no picture, first of all, you know me very well, and second, I forgot the camera in the car.
I wouldn’t do it again for Comic-Con, since it was way too far to be anything but a pain in the ass, but El Cajon ain’t a bad little place to stay on the cheap in the SD area. We didn’t stay at the Rodeway Inn, I just thought the sign for the Magnolia Market was charming.
After we ate, K and J dropped me off downtown near the convention center. As I made my way up toward the panel areas, I passed not one but a pair of gold bikini Leias on the escalator opposite me, which is basically Comic-Con boiled down to an essence. A sexy essence. I was hoping to get into the panel for the show Spaced, but by the time I made it, it was already full. So instead I got myself a nice seat for the EW Visionaries: TV Showrunners panel.
This was actually a pretty good panel, by virtue of being moderated by someone from EW that actually had interesting and informed questions.
The panel included the dude from Chuck/Gossip Girl, CARLTON AND DAMON, the dude from Pushing Daisies, and the dude from Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Terminator guy and Chuck guy are both named Josh, so they took to calling them stuff like “Terminator Josh”.
In case you don’t know, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are the main guys behind LOST. I took a lot of videos of their contributions (they’re all in 30 second intervals) and uploading everything to Flickr was laborious, to put it gently, so I really hope they turn out to be of interest to someone else 8D
In these clips, the mod asks Damon and Carlton about the circumstances of the changing length of this year’s season. See, first the season got shortened by several episodes thanks to the writer’s strike, but then they added one bonus hour for the season finale:
Here Carlton talks about how televisions shows have expanded into larger brands, and how LOST uses new media platforms to further explore their mythology in ways they can’t do on the “mothership”. You know, for the geeks:
And here Damon takes on the same subject, with a musical metaphor and amusing f-bomb. Mobisodes.
Without a doubt, one of the biggest things that people were talking about during the Con was Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible‘s Sing-Along Blog. I overheard people talking about it more than any other project, by a huge margin. Here Damon says his piece:
At this point I’ll point out that I am being utterly ruthless here. There were videos that I didn’t even upload, and now I’m getting even pickier. There are a few more videos in my Flickr stream that I‘m not going to add here, please to enjoy them there if you’re so inclined. Moving on!
The panel spent some time talking about genre shows, and their mythologies, and Carlton used a tasty metaphor to talk about their philosophy at LOST:
Home stretch of the panel here. If you watched LOST this season, you probably are well familiar with the episode The Constant. It was easily the most popular episode of the season, at least based on the reactions I‘ve seen. I love every episode for some reason or another, even the ones people hate on, so maybe I’m not the best judge, but my guess is it’s because The Constant was an example of LOST playing to it’s two biggest strengths: character-based drama and crazy Island mind fuckery. Here Carlton and Damon talk about working on the episode:
And, finally, we’ve got the most over-asked fucking question in the history of LOST fandom, “Do you guys have a plan or just make everything up as you go along?”:
I didn’t realize it until leaving the Showrunners panel just how close the convention center was to the water. I walked out the wrong door, and found myself literally on the ocean. Right by da beach. Boyee!
I didn’t head down to the exhibit hall area yet, since there was a King Kong panel that I thought was going to be interesting. Note the past tense there. Maybe it’s my own fault. I don’t think my expectations were too high, I thought we were going to hear about how Kong was relevant even at his 75th anniversary, and maybe about the next development for the character. I read waaaaaay too much into it though, since it turned out to be a handful of guys sitting on stage bitching about how inferior the remakes were to the originals.
Even the Peter Jackson one!!! One of them even said the dinosaurs in the original movie were better than Peter Jackson’s, which...come on. The only reason I didn’t walk out of the bore-fest was because it was in such a rinky dink tiny little room that it would have felt rude.
Dude in the center with his hand up? He busted me trying to sneak into the line to get into this panel, and he got all “oh no you didn’t”. Considering I was only trying to cut into the very end of the line I wasn’t particularly feeling “give a fuck”, but I pulled appropriately apologetic faces. Turns out his great great somebody or other played the chick that gets sacrificed to Kong before Ann shows up. You’d think in that case he wouldn’t have been at the very end of the line for the panel, but you’d be wrong.
More more more Star Wars, with more to come another time.
Oh, the Snoopy inflatable. I went by this thing every single day of the Con, debating whether I should get it or not. See, there’s this certain webmaster that I felt really compelled to buy it for. I even checked ebay without luck to see if the price was reasonable, since it seemed steep at $35. I was still strongly tempted to buy it but when I showed up at the booth on Sunday, it was finally gone. It’s probably for the best anyway; if I bought every present I saw that would be perfect for one of my imaginary internet friends I would go broke pretty fast.
It’s probably because of Tom Servo here that I was able to get into the MST3K panel at all. Let me back up…Due to the policy of not clearing the rooms between panels, sometimes the line for the show you want to get into is closed for being too long, despite the line being full of people who aren’t even into what’s being presented. I’m divided about how I feel about it. Eventually I figured out how to make it work for me, but I wasn’t feeling it on this particular day. Thanks to an abundance of adult swim and Stargate fans, this line for MST3K was closed every time that I went by.
So when I saw a girl in a sexed up Joel jumpsuit in line with a group of friends, I zeroed right in on them and shamelessly begged for them to let me get cutsies, but even with all my powers of persuasion, they were having none of it. Soon, though, a guy showed up with Tom here, and the same idea as me, and I hitched my wagon to his star without an ounce of compunction. Between the two of us, we wore them down. The people directly behind us weren’t even interested in MST3K, but the show after, so they didn’t care. I heard later that there were empty seats in the back of the room during the MST3K panel, which just shows how the whole system can backfire. But it didn’t matter for me, because I got in! I made sure to find “sexed up Gizmonics employee” and her friend “steampunk girl” afterwards and thank them again.
Patton Oswalt moderated the panel, and he did a serviceable job.
Is that damning with faint praise? I don’t totally mean to. I thought the panel was great at the time, but looking back I think the hardcore fans are going to have a lot of nits to pick with how he did things. The biggest issue is, it was pretty obvious that he only followed the show through before it moved to the SciFi channel, since he only made reference to the oldest of episodes. He didn’t even recognize Paul Chapin or Bridget Jones-Nelson! Worst of all, he completely ignored Bill Corbett’s work as Crow, focusing completely on Trace Beaulieu.
Speaking of awkward, don’t ask me why they had Joel right next to Jim Mallon (for those that don‘t know, Joel left the show because of clashes with Mallon, and some issues have continued to this day). It was obvious that there was mad dislike there, at least in my opinion, but Joel very specifically took care to throw questions to Mallon to answer. Passive agressilicious.
So speaking of Joel Hodgson and how awesome he is, the man has a voice like…hot cocoa on a cold day. Frosty lemonade on a hot one. Sinking your toes into the sand on the beach. It’s lovely, is what I’m saying. Here he and then Josh Weinstein talk about the creation of the robots, way back when:
I seriously can’t believe Patton didn’t give any love to Observer or Professor Bobo. That’s dangerously close to hater territory, I just have to say. At least he was familiar with the Pearl Forrester character, and he asked Mary Jo Pehl about how she was developed. LOL for mommy issues:
Another one from the overasked questions file, though it’s more forgivable than the LOST version since there’s actually something to say in response, “What do the filmmaker’s think about what you guys do? Does Joe Don Baker really want to kick your asses?”:
This was a great moment here. Patton asked a really in-depth question about what the inspiration behind the Gizmonics Institute was, and Joel’s response was absolutely priceless:
One more great moment. Patton started to ask how the show might have been different if it was launched in the internet age, but the answer gets a little sidetracked. You hear me absolutely bust the fuck up during this one because Kevin totally has my number on the Twittering:
All in all, a great and hilarious panel. Don’t hire this guy to be your babysitter:
After the panel ended, I left the center to go grab some dinner. As I hit the streets, I ran into Patton Oswalt walking with Brian Posehn. I told Patton that the panel had been great. With Brian, my mouth got ahead of my brain. See, BP’s got this bit where he talks about how he looks…distinctive. Specifically, he mentions that he looks like a “bag of farts”. Somehow my mouth decided it would be good to reference this before running it by my brain. At the last minute my brain hit the emergency brake, so what came out was a big muddle of what the fuck did that crazy girl just say. It was quite the smooth move.
At this point I met up with my mom, who’d driven down that afternoon. We were walking down the street looking for something quick because I wanted to get back for the Spaced screening, and passed restaurant after restaurant full of people (the guy from Attack of the Show! was standing out in front of one fooling with his cell phone, more on him later). We decided to walk a few blocks down to try to find something less crowded, and as we made our way I realized we were walking just behind Nathan Fillon, who I understand is most famous for Firefly and Dr. Horrible. However, I’m a LOST fan, so I know him best as Kate’s husband from that time she was Monica:
An unexpected LOST sighting? Score! I tried to explain who he was to my mom, but “a crazy musical that you can watch on iTunes but wasn’t ever on TV or anything” is a little beyond her ken. After Nathan Fillon and his very lovely female companion disappeared, I realized that the people behind me were talking about Dr. Horrible, as I’d already heard so many people doing. I turned around at a street corner, thinking I might strike up a conversation, and discovered I had been eavesdropping on Neil Patrick Harris. He is a tiny, hot little man.
I almost forgot to talk about the crazy bicycle parade!
Truly, this was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen, in a weekend full of them. If I hadn’t seen a news story later that night, I would still be wondering what the hell this was.
I know there’ve been a lot of videos so far, but these must be seen. So many people on bikes! Apparently this is a monthly thing, where a bunch of people gather together to ride through town. It’s some kind of statement about cyclists right to the road, but it seems like most people use it as an excuse to grab a bike and act silly.
I love the impromptou drum circle, and dancing guy wearing what I’m almost positive is a Dora the Explorer backpack.
I also love the green bike that rides sloooooowly by at the end. Makes me laugh every time.
Dinner was hurriedly eaten carnitas tacos, and then it was back to the convention center for Spaced. I got into what was an unexpectedly long line behind a pair of friendly Canadians. Along with a fellow from Atlanta, we had a discussion about the differences between our lands of origin. I learned that Quebecers are the losers of Canada, and that indeed, some of the stereotypes about British Columbia are true.
The masculine half of the coolest couple in Canada was a graphic designer, and here he is showing off his handiwork. He gave me the scoop; after he submitted his initial design, all the stars came back with notes on how they wanted to be portrayed. The scruffy host (remember I mentioned him earlier?) specifically requested more scruff.
So then it was time for the Spaced screening. I’ve met and geeked out over Edgar Wright before, and he was as impish as I remembered. It was my first time ever seeing Simon Pegg or Jessica Stevenson, and my first time seeing more than one episode of Spaced for that matter. Thankfully I knew enough to participate in the biggest finger gun battle ever.
It was a long and busy day. Not much in the way of swag or purchases, since I spent most of my day in panels. Once we made it back to the hotel (quite late) I surgically removed my socks from my feet (if you recall, I had demolished them with bad shoes back on Day 1) and soaked the sad little bitches in a steaming hot bath, while I read the Red Sonja I picked up on Thursday. I was too keyed up to get to sleep at anything approaching a reasonable time, something I would regret a whole lot the next morning.
But that will have to wait for the next post! I will admit, since I spent most of Saturday on the actual convention floor, that’s pretty much where all the best pictures are. So now that you’ve sat through this recap, there’s a killer one on the way. Shouldn’t take another month to show up, either. Thanks for reading!