FX Show 2008 Con Report
FX Show 2008! I went!
Here lies a con report in which Jen gets “We Need a Little Christmas” stuck in her head, speculates over the size of Nathan Fillion’s other parts in relation to his nose, falls hopelessly in love with Greg Grunberg, eats a bowl of fruit, meets with Nicholas Brendan in secret, and sort of resents Kinkos for charging by the minute. Not necessarily in that order.
Yay con!
The following contains a few spoilers for aired episodes of Heroes and Desperate Housewives, so be sure you've either seen it all or don't care before you read further. My apologies to dialers-up for the image-heavy post. Oh, and I apologize for some of the pictures being fuzzy. Okay, ready?
Okay.
This was my third time going to the FX Show in Orlando, Florida. This is the con that popped my con cherry back in 2006 (it feels like forever ago) and even though it’s kind of small, I always enjoy myself. So I was really looking forward to this year, and it did not disappoint! Except when it did. Which I will explain. But overall it was a lot of fun.
The con started on Friday, but we only had passes for Saturday and Sunday, so I worked on Friday anyway until noon. We were planning to leave town by one, meet my sister Sara in Macon by three, and then get to Orlando before late. So I’d been planning to pack on Thursday night, but then I accidentally fell asleep... for four hours... then woke up in the middle of the night, ran around trying on clothes for about twenty minutes, and then fell asleep again. (This always happens to me. I guess it’s like a con tradition?) So when I got off work at noon, I still had to pack. Which was okay because Mama still had to shower. Are you not awed by our procrastinating power? ARE YOU NOT?
We ended up leaving town at around 2:20, but that was okay because my sister was running late anyway. Figures.
Things we made sure to pack:
1. my Firefly DVDs (for signing purposes)
2. the most yummiest chicken salad ever
3. my new Counting Crows CD
4. my laptop
Things I wish we had packed:
1. my Heroes DVDs (for signing purposes)
2. crackers for the most yummiest chicken salad
3. any other CDs
4. the Internet :(
We picked up Sara at about 4:00, stopped for gas, and then headed to Florida. Yay! Except it kind of smells like swamp. We also stopped once at a Burger King and once for more gas at a place called Wildwood Travel Center. But we ended up making it to the Rodeway Inn at about 10:30PM, which was earlier than I had anticipated, considering that last year we didn't get to our hotel until about 1:30AM. But then, last year we did have two men with us.
We stayed here because they were running a really good deal on the rooms over the weekend. And I figured since I was paying, cheap was the way to go. :)
Isn’t it funny how car trips make you tired, even though you haven’t done anything? Like, I sat down for eight hours straight and was completely exhausted afterwards. What’s with that? I do that every day at my job and don’t get that tired. Anyway, Friday night we pretty much just sat in our pajamas eating chicken salad and m&ms and talking about how excited we were to be meeting Nathan Fillion and Greg Grunberg the next day. And listening to Sara talk about her job, because we hadn’t just done that for several hours in the car. Oh, wait...
I had a hard time sleeping. Partly because I was so excited about Saturday, but also because the Rodeway Inn calls things beds which are, in fact, not beds. But you get what you pay for, so I'm not complaining. :)
Saturday morning, we left the hotel at a quarter after ten. Sara had been singing "We Need a Little Christmas" while she was getting ready, and thanks to her, it was stuck in my head ALL DAY. The Angela Lansbury version. *sigh* We didn't eat a proper breakfast, but the hotel had a little snack shop thing downstairs called "Lite Bite," so we each bought a muffin there. It was raining, and while Sara went to get the car for us, these two dudes came out to smoke and eye my muffin. One of the guys was barefoot and the other had on one shoe. (How does that happen? How do you go outside only wearing one shoe?) They wanted to know where I got the muffin, and I told them "Lite Bite," and they gave me completely blank looks. But we were currently standing a whole ten feet away from Lite Bite, so I can see why they were confused.
The FX Show was at the Orange County Convention Center.
This is the picture I took from the car last year. But it's the same place.
It cost $6 to park. The guy in the booth knew immediately that we were there for the convention, and Sara got worried that we looked like Sci-Fi con goers. Which I suppose we do, because that's what we are. Is it weird to be self-conscious for being recognized as something that you are?
The convention center is about six times the size of my hometown. We parked where everyone else was parking, but then we had to walk about three miles (on the inside) to get to the part of the building where the con was going on. We passed a Kinkos on the way there.
There was a long line at the Admission stand, but the Will Call stands had very few people in line. We went to the Will Call place because we had ordered our tickets online at the FX website.
The obligatory shot of Mama in line. Oh, little did we know...
I showed my ID to the volunteer at the desk, because the tickets were in my name. But. She couldn't find them. She said they didn't have a record of my buying tickets at all, but if I had my receipt with me then they could just give me some anyway. Only, Mama had left the receipt in her camera case in the car, which was three miles away. They couldn't find Sara's tickets either, but she hadn't brought a receipt at all. So the volunteer very helpfully pointed out that we could go to Kinkos to print our receipts from the Internet.
The volunteer also said that this had been happening a lot and they didn't know why. She said they didn't have any record of about 5% of the people who bought their tickets online. And you know, 5% doesn't sound like a lot when you compare it to the 95% that they DO have, but... 5% turns out to be quite a bit when you're included in it. So my mom was like, "So it's better just to wait and buy the tickets here?" And the girl goes, "Oh, it's better to buy online because the line is shorter." Which doesn't make a difference if they don't have your tickets, right?
So we went to Kinkos to print our receipts. They charge by the minute for you to use the computers, and then they charge by the page for you to print something. There were some other people there doing the exact same thing as us.
Sara at Kinkos = not a happy con goer.
I just signed into my Paypal account and printed the receipt and logged off, so I only had to pay $2.80, but Sara sort of didn't know where to go, and then she called Scott (because it was his account) to get the log-in information, and by the time she printed the receipt, she had to pay about $5. So, our tickets cost more than everyone else's.
I wasn't going to let this bother me because I was still so excited about being there. But then, when we went back to the Will Call booth, I showed my receipt to the girl and expected her to just give me some new tickets - but she looked at my name and then pulled out an envelope with my name printed on it, and our tickets were in there! And we were like, "You had them the whole time?" And she gave us completely circular doe-eyes and said, "I have no idea what happened."
They also had Sara's tickets, after telling her there were no Hugheses listed.
And then they gave Sara a lanyard for her to wear the two tickets around her neck, so I went back up and asked if I could have a lanyard, and they said I had to buy a three-day pass to get one. I asked Sara if she had snuck and bought a three-day pass while we weren't looking, and she gave me doe-eyes and said, "I have no idea what happened."
So, that was... weird. But then we were officially there, so *spits* we will speak of it no more!
Almost everything at the FX Show this year was in the same room. I mean, it was a big honkin' room. They had the celebrities all lined up along the left wall, then the dealers set up in rows in the middle of the room, then the comic book artists along the opposite wall. Toward the back of the room, there was a stage with lots of chairs set up for the panels, and behind that, there were restrooms and places to get food. I liked the set-up for the most part - it was convenient not to have to go in and out all the time - but I think I would have put the panels in a different room. Because like, when the panelists were talking into the mics, their voices were heard all over the place, even if you weren't actually attending the panel. And when we first came in, Michael Winslow (the guy who can do like a bazillion sound effects) was grunting and screaming into the mic, and we couldn't hear ourselves. So we looked around a little bit and talked to the people at the photo-op place and waited for Mr. Winslow to get finished before we met anyone famous.
Nathan Fillion's line was crazyinsane like I had expected, and I was too nervous to start out with Greg Grunberg because I have a pretty gigantic crush on him, so the first person we went to meet was Stephen Tobolowsky, who plays Bob on Heroes. Sara was so excited about meeting him because he's Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day, which is one of her favorite movies.
Ned: Ned... Ryerson. "Needlenose Ned"? "Ned the Head"? C'mon, buddy. Case Western High. I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing! Ned Ryerson, got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate? Bing, again! Ned Ryerson, I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple of times until you told me not to anymore? Well?
Phil: Ned Ryerson?
Ned: BING!
Stephen was wearing a scarf even though we were inside. I don't think I actually said anything to him, but Sara told him that she shows Groundhog Day in one of her college classes every year and has the students write an argumentative essay about how long Phil must have lived the same day over and over by the end of the movie, in order to change into the person that he becomes. Stephen was interested in how long she thought it was, and then he said that it was actually supposed to be about 10,000 years. And then he mentioned that the 15-year anniversary edition of the movie is coming out soon, and they talked about feeling old, and the volunteer sitting with him commented that he thought Sara was still a teenager. Heh. Anyway, it was a very cool little meeting, and Sara asked him to write something that ends with "Bing!" on her autograph, so he wrote:
That's a line Ned says a few times in the movie. My favorite part is the little bing at the end!
Sara was kind of giddy after meeting him and admired the autograph for a few minutes. But then it was time for the Heroes panel, so we went over to the stage area and sat down. But Greg Grunberg's photo-op was scheduled to start immediately following the panel, so I left my stuff with Mama and Sara and ran across the room to buy a photo-op ticket, then ran back across the room and sat down just in time for the panel to start.
There were three Heroes actors there: Greg (who plays Matt), Stephen (who plays Bob), and George Takei (who plays Hiro's dad). So the three of them were the panelists. Greg is so cute! Like, he's even cuter in person than on the show. And he's funny! Sara filmed a lot at the con, and I'm posting some of the clips, but you'll have to excuse my technical difficulties. For some reason, when I watch the footage from the dvd it's fine, but when I rip the clips, the picture messes up. So this clip has black space for a few seconds at a time, but the sound is all there and clear, if you're interested.
The question was something like, what would you like to see happen to your character in future episodes?
So, what's with George Takei's voice? I mean, I love it. But it sounds like he learned to talk by watching game shows. He said that nothing is ever definite on Heroes, so even though his character is dead, that doesn't mean that he won't be back. And he told kind of a longish story about meeting the emperor of Japan, but to be honest I don't think very many people were listening to that part.
Someone asked Stephen a question about Bob being a bad guy, and he said that he doesn't really know if he's a bad guy or not, because everything he does that could be considered bad ends up being for a good reason. (Like when he takes Claire's blood but then saves Bennet's life with it.) His actual words were, "I have little to no idea."
Greg said his favorite episodes of Heroes are "Company Man" and the one where he traps his dad in a nightmare. And he said the pilot was one of his favorites until he got cut from it. Heh. George said his favorite episode was the one where he gets to teach Hiro how to swordfight. Stephen said he likes the one where he takes Claire's blood and then there's a shootout at the beach, and then Greg was like, "But you're a nice guy!" and then repeated, "I drain her blood and then have a shootout at the beach..." in an ominous voice.
Someone asked which other character they would like to be, and Stephen said something like, "Can we say which ones we wouldn't want to be? I would not want to be Sendhil! He has so many long speeches and I have no idea what he's talking about. Maybe Adrian. All his lines are like, yeah, sure." George said he would switch with Sylar. He said it like it was two words: Sigh Lar. Greg said he'd switch with Masi, and then he did a Hiro impression where he squeezed his eyes shut like he was stopping time. And then he said, "That's sort of the face I make when I do sit-ups." ♥
Someone asked the inevitable question: which superpower would you want if you could choose? Stephen said he would choose to walk through walls, because there are a lot of walls in people's lives. The whole time, Sara was looking at him and nodding like he was sooo smart. :D George said he would choose to read minds, because he's nosy. Greg said he'd have super-metabolism. "I'd fly around with a big C on my chest and eat all the carbs I want!" ♥
That is so the power I'd choose too. (He must have read my mind!) Actually, I think I would choose the power to be in several different places at once. But if I were on Heroes, I'd probably end up with something really lame, like... I could make my nosehair glow, or... dispense mustard from my navel. And I don't even like mustard.
Moving on!
After the Heroes panel, I ran straight over to the photo-op place and got in line to have my picture taken with Greg. There were already several people in line, which I thought was kind of weird because they must have left the panel early to get there. And who would want to do that? Anyway, I got really nervous while I waited. Like, most people say when they feel nervous their knees get weak, but for me it's like, all the joints in my entire body feel weak except my knees. My knees sort of lock, and then it's hard to walk. And I end up embarrassing myself.
When I walked in the little photo area thing, Greg smiled at me and said, "Hey, how are you?" And I was like, *big cheesy grin and total silence,* and then he was like, *blinks,* and then I blurted, "Will you pretend to read my mind?" And he sort of laughed and said, "Yeah, sure!"
So we took the picture, only he was standing behind me so I couldn't see whether he was doing the mind-reading face or not. And then I got paranoid that I was posing and he wasn't, and the photographer laughed but I couldn't tell if he was laughing at me or at both of us. And I felt pretty dumb. But! It turns out that Greg really DID do the mind-reading face, and I was very pleased with the result.
He signed it for me later, but don't read that part because I haven't gotten to it yet. Where are my teeth?
I shook hands with Greg and thanked him, and walked out feeling kind of light-headed. Is that what "starstruck" means? It's too bad being starstruck makes you lightheaded and fluttery instead of something useful like beautiful and witty.
I found Mama and Sara at a booth looking at action figures. They had gone to the bathroom, and my mom heard Elizabeth Rohm in there saying, "She had her foot on my bladder! I just went, but then she put her foot on my bladder so I had to go again." So we decided she was either pregnant or really close to her volunteer. But just a minute after I walked up, Sara got this horrified look on her face and went, "Oh no!" It turns out she had left her Stephen Tobolowsky autograph in the restroom, and she took off running. We met her there a minute later, after she'd found it. Which was a huge relief. But while we were standing over there, Greg walked right by us to go to the bathroom, and I almost squeed my pants. Sara was ready with her camcorder when he came out.
Sara told me later that when I came back from the photo-op with Greg, I was vibrating. That's what I do - I vibrate when I get nervous. Maybe it's my superpower?
After invading the privacy of an attractive celebrity, as you do, we went to get tickets for the virtual line to get Nathan Fillion's autograph. The way a virtual line works is this: you get tickets with numbers on them, and they have a whiteboard beside the line that says something like, "Now Serving Ticket #__." And if your number is below the one listed, you can get in line. It's so you don't have to wait in the line for a long time, just check back periodically. My number was 426, and they were on 340 when we got our tickets - although Nathan had just gone to lunch. So then we went and bought a photo-op pass for the Nathan photos as well, and then we looked around at the booths to shop.
At this con, I was planning to buy a whole lot of 6-inch Spike figures, since I already have all the 6-inch, 12-inch, and puppet Angels. So I wrote down which Spike figures I already had (I can never remember them because I hardly ever look at them) and went hunting. I only found one Spike figure that I didn't have - "Just Rewards" Spike - but he cost $30 at that booth and I wanted to look around more before I bought him because I was pretty sure I could find him somewhere else for cheaper. But! I did find some Angel ornaments and a bust from a different booth that I absolutely HAD to have.
I had to have them because I didn't already, and it's so rare for me to find Angel merch that I don't already have. Yaybust!
Nathan's photo-op was scheduled for 1:50 to 2:30, so we went to stand in the line at about 1:35... and it was SO long! He was definitely the most popular actor there. No one else's line got nearly this long. We ended up standing about halfway back.
Part of the line for Nathan.
We stood in line until about 2:25 before it was our turn. Some of the fans behind us in the line were talking about Nicholas Brendan, and I heard one of them say (in disgust) that he was charging $50 for his autograph. I don't know if that's true or not because I didn't buy an autograph from him this time (I got his autograph at Dragon*Con in 2006), but I was surprised because everyone else was only charging $25. One lady was like, "I'm going back to the Power Rangers - at least they were cheap!"
(Side-note: Eric Estrada was charging more for photos than anyone else because he posed with his humongous white motorcycle. One day I will probably meet Eric Estrada. He's been at every convention I've been to.)
When we bought our Nathan photo-op ticket, we had paid for an extra copy of the picture, and the volunteer guy, Tim, told us to remind him when we got to the front that we were supposed to get two copies instead of one. So when we got there, we paused for a second to do that. But since the line was still so long and Nathan's time was almost up, one of the other volunteers, Barb, got really mad that we stopped (even though the people ahead of us were still with Nathan). She turned around and screamed, "LADIES!" in my ear and grabbed my arm to get me to move up in the line. And then I took off my bag and tried to set it down so it wouldn't be in the picture, and she snapped at me to give my stuff to this other girl to hold. Which... didn't make sense to me, but whatever. So me and Sara and Mama loaded the girl down with our stuff. She appeared less than thrilled.
Nathan was really nice, though! He smiled and shook hands with all three of us and asked our names. His hands were big. (At least, they were big relative to mine, but I guess I sort of have small hands.) And then he put his arms around me and my sister, and he was SO TALL OMG, and he was also... well, I said "squishy," but Sara didn't want me to use the word squishy because that sounds like he isn't fit, which he is. And then I wanted to use the word soft, but she felt the same way about that. I think we decided on the word comfortable? He was very comfortable. ♥
My mom tried to stand beside me, but Nathan asked her to come around in front. At first I was afraid she was going to block him, but it turns out he's like eight feet tall, so it worked fine. While we were standing there, Nathan said, "Okay, it's gonna flash - don't look." And then it flashed and Sara said, "Oh no, I looked!" And he goes, "It's okay." Heh! Sara claims she didn't finish her sentence - she was going to say she looked away. But I laughed at what she said (because she sounded like it was the end of the world), and that's why I'm grinning like a maniac in the picture. *facepalm*
It looks like a family portrait! I told my mom we ought to use this picture in our next church directory. Check out Nathan's wingspan. Also, Sara clearly didn't look away. And my teeth have reappeared with a vengeance.
So we all thanked Nathan, who was very friendly (and NOT squishy), and then we got our stuff back from the girl, who was not very friendly at all and practically shoved it back into our arms. Sara accidentally bumped the girl's nose with her purse strap and apologized, and the girl said sarcastically, "It's okay; it was only my nose." Like, I know they were in a rush, but does being rude help at all? Hmm.
As soon as we walked out of the photo-op place, I went over to the table of prints to see if my Greg Grunberg photo was out yet. And it was! He had the exact same smiling expression in every single photo except this one. And I wouldn't have been disappointed if I just got a picture of the two of us smiling, but it's even more fun to have one that's different, you know?
Let me draw your attention to my right shoulder. Where his hand is. I just want to point out that he's touching me. (Probably wondering why I'm vibrating. I seriously thought I would be blurry because I couldn't stop shaking.)
Other people's pictures with Greg were good too, though. He had his arm around them and was smiling. He does a good photo-op, as opposed to someone like, say, Adam West, who just stands there and looks as though he doesn't know someone's taking his picture. A couple of Adam West photos were sitting out at the table, and they just looked like two random people had wandered in front of the camera at the same time. It doesn't even look like they met each other.
Anyway, we giggled over my picture for a while, and then went to get Greg's autograph. While we were standing in line to meet him, a couple of guys commented on the awesomeness of the photo. I am so pleased with it! And then when we got to the front, the volunteer sitting beside Greg saw it and said something like, "That's a good picture," and Greg looked over from the autograph he was writing and said, "Oh, that's awesome!" The people in front of us left, and Greg took my photo and said, laughing, "Look at that," and pointed at my expression. Heh!
I told him my name and said, "I was hoping you could write down what you think I'm thinking," and he goes, "Okay!" and wrote my name and then sort of... stared at the picture for a few seconds, like he was really trying to come up with something. And then he looked up and said, "How about I just write 'I know what you're thinking'?" And I said that would be great! ♥
Honestly, though, I'm pretty sure he didn't know what I was thinking.
ps. lets do sex an I wanna have ur bebbiz ok?
The little drawing on the table in front of him was cute. I wonder when he had time to do that.
While Greg was signing my picture, Sara mentioned to him that she had recently seen the movie Six Degrees of Separation, which had J.J. Abrams in it, and he ad libbed a line that was something like, "Remember our old pal Greg Grunberg?" This was before Greg was famous. He said yeah, that J.J. actually did the line several times in several different takes, and the director or someone asked who this Greg Grunberg person was, and J.J. was like, "Just wait." He also told us that when they were kids, J.J. would write and direct movies and Greg would star in them. Like, they were nine years old making these little 8mm movies. How cute is that?
This picture was taken after Greg watched "The Ring" and failed to make a copy of it.
I think my sister was commenting on her husband in this picture. Or else she was squishing Greg's head.
So, I've met a lot of celebrities at the five cons that I've been to, but Greg Grunberg has been by far my favorite. He just seems like the friendliest person ever in the whole world, and... I'm sort of half in love with him. It's almost enough to make a person want to watch Felicity. (Almost.)
I was vibrating again when we walked away.
The line to meet Nathan was at this point serving #360, so we decided to get something to eat. We bought some ridiculously expensive food (I got a bowl of fruit - honey dew, canteloupe, and watermelon - with some yogurt and granola) and we sat down at a table with some other conventioneers to eat and to discuss Greg and Nathan as though they were no more than pieces of meat placed on this earth for our ogling pleasure. (Sara finds Nathan more attractive but Greg more approachable while I find Greg more attractive and neither one of them approachable because I'm shy. Sara thinks Greg looks like a normal person but Nathan looks like a movie star. I think they both look like movie stars and Nathan has a longish nose, which may or may not indicate certain things about certain other parts of him, which I'd certainly be willing to find out. For like, scientific purposes. Or something.)
Oh, and while we were in the line to get food, one of the women working at the food place admired my earrings, which were shaped like zippers. Actually, I think she admired them, but she did it in Spanish, so I don't know. It sounded like, "Spanishspanishspanishspanish ZIPPER spanishspanish!"
Near the tables where we ate, there was a small arena thing set up for kids to playfight with foam light sabers, and we watched some of them. What I learned from this: there are few things as satisfying as seeing small children beat the crap out of each other.
When we were done eating, we went back to Autograph Alley for Mama to take a picture of Adam West. Nathan's line was still very long, but no one was in Nicholas Brendan's line.
Maybe he charged twice as much as everyone else so he wouldn't have to sign as many autographs?
(I kid. He probably didn't even have a choice in how much his price was going to be.)
Our numbers were up for Nathan, but we decided to put off meeting him until Sunday. So we could work up to it, or something. We checked out more of the dealer booths, and Sara bought an illustrated X-Men book for her husband Scott for a dollar, and I bought a TPB of Y by Brian K. Vaughan.
This? Is good.
When I bought the book, the guy I was buying it from got all excited. I think maybe he didn't know very many girls? And he asked me if I'd been reading the series, and I said I just saw it and wanted it because it was Brian K. Vaughan, and then he wanted to know everything I'd ever read by Brian K. Vaughan. To be honest, I've never read anything by him. But the boy was so excited, and he started listing off all of these comics, and he said Runaways, so I just said yeah, Runaways (which I'd heard of because Joss worked on it and I knew I could hold a conversation about it without looking like an idiot). But then the boy wanted to talk about how much better Vaughan is than Whedon. So I left.
You'd think people at sci-fi cons would know to be careful what they say about Joss Whedon.
When we checked back at the photo table at 5:04, our picture with Nathan hadn't been put out yet. There were lots of people milling around or sitting on the floor waiting for the pictures, so we sat and waited as well. Almost all of Nathan's pics looked exactly the same - like Greg's - but there were a couple where he was doing funny faces, which I thought was cute.
When our picture did get put out, there was only one, even though we had paid for two. (Thanks, Tim.) Sara and I asked the woman who had yelled at me about the other picture, and she said that since they were running behind then they would just mail it to us. So we asked how they would know where to send it or even which photo it was, and she was like, "Didn't you put your contact information on the back of the ticket?" And we were like, uh, no? And she gave us this really put-upon look and said that's why she'd been telling everyone to write their mailing addresses on the back of the tickets - which she didn't tell us, by the way, or we'd have done it. So finally, after being very rude, she pulled out a business card and wrote a makeshift receipt on it and told us to come back early Sunday to get our other picture and to bring the card.
I just wanted to post this again. You know, not many people can get away with smiling with their mouth closed in a picture. That's talent. Plus - TEETH! God, we look like we're gonna eat him alive.
While we waited for our picture, we looked at the Nick Brendan photos that were waiting to be picked up. He had the exact same expression in every photo - like, EXACT. I mean, all of Greg's and most of Nathan's were the same expression, but Nick was like... same angle and everything. It looked like someone had just taken one photo of him and then cut out his head and pasted it on all of the pictures. It was actually kind of freaky. Mama made a comment about him looking the same in all the photos, and the guy standing next to us said (like we didn't realize), "He's the celebrity." I think he thought she was commenting on the fact that it was the same person in all the photos, but... she wasn't. Because duh.
The con ended at 6, so that's when we left. We were hungry again already, so we went to Bennigan's for supper.
I'll take the ooey gooey chewy chocolate delight... and a diet coke.
There was a party that night at 9, but you could only go to it if you had special passes, which we didn't. So after we ate, we went back to the hotel and pretty much crashed. I don't know what it is about cons, but they wear me out like whoa, even if the whole thing is in one big room. Sara and I also went downstairs to the lobby where they had wireless internet access, then came back to the room and watched Nathan's episode of Lost. While Lost was on, my brother called to chew me out - once again - for loaning his Buffy DVDs to Scott... without asking for explicit permission... because he and his girlfriend have been watching the series together and have been using my DVDs to do so, but one of my season 2 disks was missing. (I actually had it with me.)
Sara went to sleep fairly early, but my mom and I stayed up late talking. And then I still couldn't sleep, so I got up and read the book I'd bought. The whole thing. And I really wish I had known when I bought it that it wasn't complete. *sigh* I finally went to bed around 4, but I didn't sleep very much.
On Sunday morning, we checked out of the Rodeway Inn a few minutes after 10. But first we got more muffins at Lite Bite.
Goodbye, Rodeway! You served us very well for being so inexpensive. As a thank you, I've decided not to post pictures of your garish tropical bedspreads.
It was $6 to park again at the convention center. One 3-mile walk later, we were back and talking to Barb about our other Nathan photo print. She took back the card she had given us, as well as the first photo, and told us to come back in a little while to pick up both copies. So then we walked over to get Nathan's autograph, and the line was already really long even though it was still early. I was the only one who still had her virtual line ticket from Saturday, so we got new tickets and then went shopping again.
There were several booths right together where people were getting tattooed. In the middle of a con! With an audience! And I tried to find the booth again where I had seen the Spike figure I wanted, but I couldn't find it. However, I DID find another Angel thing to buy:
They're Angel playing cards! (Whoops, is my OTP showing? How embarrassing...)
When our numbers were up, we went and stood in line to talk to Nathan finally. The line was still long, even though they were doing the virtual line thing, so we felt a little rushed. He was really nice, but I think he was trying to hurry people through so that he could get to everyone. Which was fine with me because I never have anything to say to these people anyway. I'm just happy to be there.
I shook hands with him and told him my name - and he asked how to spell it, so I spelled it for him - and I asked him to write "We're still flying" on one of my Firefly DVD covers, so he did:
Yay! Now I have Nathan, Alan, Summer, Adam, and Ron.
Sara had picked up a picture of Nathan from Desperate Housewives for him to sign for her and Scott:
Housewives everywhere? Heh. We were kind of like, wtf? I wonder if he wrote that on everyone's picture if they chose that one, or if it just came to him when we were up there...
Sara asked him if he was going to be on Lost again, and he said he didn't know but he hoped so. And she asked him if he knew what was really supposed to be in the note on Desperate Housewives. (His character finds a note that apparently reveals a big secret and then he tells his wife he's leaving her, but the audience doesn't know what the note says.) He said that the note actually said, "I loved you in Buffy! You were great as Caleb." And there was a little smiley face with a priest collar. The prop guy wrote that for him! Heh.
And then he said that if you watch the series, the clues are all there (about what's in the note). So Sara said what she thought it was, and he said, "There you go!" and gave her a significant look.
Oh, and instead of saying "Thank you," Nathan says "Cheers." In case anyone is writing RPS and needs to know. :)
After we met him, we went to check on our photos. We were only there a couple of minutes when Barb came out and handed them to us. And it turns out when we said we bought two copies, she thought we meant two copies plus the original, so we ended up with three pictures instead of two. Which was cool. I would have returned one of them, but it's not like they could sell it to someone else, so we just thanked her and kept it. And I don't feel too bad about it because the money we would have spent on a third picture was the money we spent at Kinkos the day before.
The Whedonverse panel was going to start in a few minutes, so we went ahead to the main stage area and sat down. We actually caught the tail end of the panel before it, called Anime Taboo. It's where two people go on stage and one gives clues and the other one has to guess which anime they're talking about. But they can't use certain words in the clues. It was kind of interesting, but I only knew a few of the answers (mostly the Nintendo ones).
The point is that we got pretty good seats for the Whedonverse panel. So, yay.
The panel was Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Rohm, and Nicholas Brendan.
Here is what I learned from this panel:
1. Give Nathan Fillion an audience, and he can entertain himself forever.
2. Pretty much no one is interested in Kate, but Elizabeth herself is cool.
3. Nicholas Brendan is an alcoholic.
They're onto you, Nicky.
I sort of got the feeling he was drunk during the Q&A, but to be fair, when I talked to him later he didn't smell drunk (not like Andy Hallet last year). I actually have no kind of proof at all, so maybe he was just... I don't know. Nervous or something? But he was doing that thing some people do when they're drunk - repeating the same thing over and over because they think it's funny even though no one else thinks it's funny. And a couple of times Nathan and Elizabeth looked at him and then at each other and sort of rolled their eyes. But that was only at the beginning of the panel - he got better. So maybe it was just nerves.
My sister filmed most of the panel, but I'm not putting the whole thing online because, like I said, I'm experiencing technical difficulties. So I'm just posting pieces of it. Here's the first three or so minutes, in which Nathan is modest, Elizabeth is pregnant, and Nicky is repetitive. (He says the word "remarkable" about 20 times. No lie. Which averages out to... about once every ten seconds. But it feels like more.)
Nathan cofounded a charity called Kids Need to Read. He said the website was KidsNeedtoRead... SomethingSomething... dot com. Nick said, "And then there's my website - YouCan'tMakeMeRead.com." And Nathan told him, "Just keep looking at the pictures and moving your lips. No one will know."
Nathan was nominated for a daytime Emmy on One Life to Live. He said it was for "Best Joey Ever." Heh.
Nathan and Elizabeth were excited to find out they had both been on One Life to Live. They sort of bonded over it. It was cute. (They high-fived.)
A woman asked Nathan which male character he would play on Firefly if he weren't Mal.
Nathan: You cut me short there. It has to be male? Well, I guess I would say... I would do Jayne. Because uh... it would cut down my getting ready time, because I wouldn't have to shower.
Nicholas: What would change? You're not showering now.
Nathan: Well, now I powder.
Nathan calls himself a terrible driver. And... that would be the first time I've ever heard a guy admit that. Nice.
Nick's favorite episodes of BtVS to film were Once More with Feeling and Hush. (His least favorite was the one where he lost his eye.) Elizabeth's favorite Angel episode was Sense and Sensitivity: "It was the first time I was ever funny in my life, and I think the last. And I loved it." Nathan's favorite Firefly was Out of Gas. (Also my favorite.)
Nathan: I have a cat. She came with the house I rent. Not a fan of cats. She's eighteen years old - I go, "Great! She's gonna die!" Pretty soon, right? That's one dead cat. Six years ago.
Elizabeth: He still has to buy catfood. Remarkable.
Nicholas: Just stop buying the cat catfood.
Nathan: ...Problem solved!
Nick said that when Nathan poked him in the eye, "It hurt SO bad!"
Nathan: I was once approached by European scientists that wanted to clone me. And I said no. No. That would be wrong.
Nathan said the people who didn't get Firefly asked questions like, "Why horses? Why no aliens?" And Nick said, "That's when you say the horses are aliens." (I have always said this! Horses and fish!)
This was Elizabeth's expression when a dude said he'd never seen Buffy or Angel.
At one point, someone asked Nathan if it was true that Firefly being cancelled was Joss' fault for not getting along with the network, or the producers, or something. It was funny, because as soon as he invoked Joss and then implied blame, the entire audience tensed up. Like, you could feel everyone getting defensive. If we'd been cats, our tails would have puffed. (I think mine did, a little.) But Nathan was quick to answer that things like that rarely ever happen because of personal issues. It had to do with numbers versus art.
Someone asked what other creative outlets Nathan, Elizabeth, and Nicky had besides acting, and Nathan said that he likes to write (he blogs on Myspace), but that he doesn't do it very often because he types very slowly. Nick said that's why he audio blogs instead - and then he said something like, "Do you overcomma? I'm a commawhore." Nathan suggested the word "Commaholic," but Nick said that he was a kind of "holic" that had nothing to do with commas.
Nick also said that he found out about Xander losing an eye by reading the script - no one told him beforehand. And then he said he found out later that Joss actually wanted to kill him off, but the writers talked him out of it. And then he gave us all some handy advice: "If anyone's got a drinking problem... don't let it affect your work."
Right before the panel was over, Nathan told us that he's glad everyone took a bunch of pictures, but if we've got 60 pictures of him, when we go online, maybe only post the good ones? "Maybe take out the ones where I'm..." *funnyface* So I've got a lot of pictures, but I'm only posting like six of him.
Including this one.
Nick said, "As far as I'm concerned, there are no bad pictures of me." But my memory card begs to differ. :)
After the panel, we didn't really have anything else planned to do, so we decided to check out the booths we hadn't seen yet. Most of the vendors had started marking down their prices because they didn't want to have to pack up everything they hadn't sold, so I found a pretty good deal on some action figures - they were 5 for $15, which I couldn't pass up even though there weren't any Angels or Spikes. I bought human!Darla, vampire!Darla, Chosen Buffy, and two of the same Wesley so I can open one of them. And now I will have enough open figures to reenact episodes! Not that I do that... ever... *shifty eyes* I also found the Just Rewards Spike I wanted, and the vendor had changed the price from $30 to $10. When I bought it, he was like, "I just want you to know you're getting a really good deal."
Action figures! I still haven't found a place for the last 803 figures I bought, and now I've got six more.
One booth was selling old comics at five for a dollar, so Sara bought ten of them for Scott. She has no idea about comics, so her selection was random. Which you'd think would mean it wouldn't take very long to choose them. But no.
The Battlestar comic made me laugh.
I also bought Buffy Season 8 #1. I already have it, but mine is from the second printing, and I saw a copy from the first printing with the Jeanty cover, so I figured it was worth having since I'm sort of collecting them. It was already bagged and boarded, and it was only $5 (although for some reason it had a $25 sticker on it).
At that point, we were pretty much ready to go, but Sara wanted to stop by Autograph Alley one more time to take a picture of Jake Lloyd (the kid that played Anakin in Phantom Menace) and the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. So we got there and of course she went to take another picture of Nathan first.
Devastating yet attractive.
So then Sara and Mama walked down the row to take more pictures, but while I was standing there waiting for them to come back, I noticed that there was only one person at Nicholas Brendan's table. And I was holding the Buffy comic that I had just bought, and during the panel Nicky said that he hadn't read any of the comics because he'd not had a chance to get them yet - and didn't know where to get them - and he'd said that he wished that they would just send the comics to him so he could see what they were like. So I decided to give him mine, since I already had it anyway.
I walked up to the table while he was talking to the other person, and the volunteer sitting with him tried to sell me an autograph - which I didn't want. I told her I was just coming up to say hi. And then the girl he was talking to couldn't remember the other thing she was going to say to him, so he told her to think of it and come back but to let him sign an autograph for me first. Which was kind of embarrassing for me because I didn't actually want his autograph. But she walked away and he smiled and said hi to me, and I said something like, "I just wanted to give you this, since you said you hadn't read it yet," and handed him the comic. And he was like, "Oh, cool! I just didn't know where to get it. Thank you." And while I was talking to him, I said something about him... like, doing a certain thing in the comic or something. And then I was like, "I mean, not you, but..." And he kind of laughed and said, "It's my likeness. But people say that a lot."
Anyway, he was very friendly, and when we were done talking, I felt sort of bad walking away from his table because there was literally no one else there to see him and he was at the table next to Nathan's, where there was still a really long line. But I'm sure they don't care about that sort of thing. It's probably a relief when you get little breaks from the crowd like that.
It occurred to me later that I had left the $25 price sticker on the comic. I hope he doesn't think I actually paid that much for it.
When Sara and Mama came back, I told them that I had just given Nick my Buffy comic, and Sara was mad because she would have taken a picture of me talking to him. But I like that I was able to talk to a celebrity by myself without doing something really stupid. I barely even vibrated. :)
Here are the pictures Sara took:
Jake Lloyd is like eighteen now! When did that happen?
I saw the soup nazi browsing through stuffed animals. And it made me think of the word incongruous, which I had been trying to remember.
Alas, we managed to leave the FX Show without getting any pictures of Jason David Frank, who played the white ranger (and the green ranger, and the black ranger) on Power Rangers. I had a ridiculous crush on him when I was in seventh grade, and I totally missed my chance to finally talk to him. Oh well. Maybe in another life, Jason. If it's meant to be, it'll happen.
Same to you, Eric Estrada.
My mom went back and bought one more thing before we left - it was a tiny stuffed pig with wings and had a magnet in its nose - for my other sister Amy, who couldn't come with us.
And that was it! We left the convention center at about 3:30 or 4. But stopped on the way out to show Kinkos how we really felt about charging by the minute.
Take that, Kinkos! DOWNGRADE.
The highlight of the FX Show this year, for me, was definitely anything that had to do with Greg Grunberg. In fact, he has been the highlight of my entire con experience. But what's funny is that, out of the five cons we've been to, this is the one that had the best parts and the worst parts. Which I guess makes it sort of average in rank? But I'm so glad I went! Even though I kind of feel like I've complained a lot. And I just now noticed something - I didn't take any pictures of people in costume this year! There weren't very many, though. I think Dragon*con spoils me for costumes, because so many there are fantastic.
So the report ends here. The only other thing that happened is that we had a stupid argument about where to eat lunch, and the place we finally chose overcharged me and then didn't refund the whole difference because the girl didn't know how to do math. She literally said, "I can't even do basic math!" and almost cried, so I told her not to worry about it. (I always feel very sorry for people with worse jobs than me.) We arrived back home at almost 2AM, and I had to get up early for work the next morning. Totally worth it, though.
I'm already looking forward to Dragon*Con!
ETA: Someone just posted [this clip of Nathan on a scooter] on Nathan's myspace page. Heh! Looks like it's mostly volunteers there, so it was probably just before the con opened or right after it ended. Silly boy.
*
Here lies a con report in which Jen gets “We Need a Little Christmas” stuck in her head, speculates over the size of Nathan Fillion’s other parts in relation to his nose, falls hopelessly in love with Greg Grunberg, eats a bowl of fruit, meets with Nicholas Brendan in secret, and sort of resents Kinkos for charging by the minute. Not necessarily in that order.
Yay con!
The following contains a few spoilers for aired episodes of Heroes and Desperate Housewives, so be sure you've either seen it all or don't care before you read further. My apologies to dialers-up for the image-heavy post. Oh, and I apologize for some of the pictures being fuzzy. Okay, ready?
Okay.
This was my third time going to the FX Show in Orlando, Florida. This is the con that popped my con cherry back in 2006 (it feels like forever ago) and even though it’s kind of small, I always enjoy myself. So I was really looking forward to this year, and it did not disappoint! Except when it did. Which I will explain. But overall it was a lot of fun.
The con started on Friday, but we only had passes for Saturday and Sunday, so I worked on Friday anyway until noon. We were planning to leave town by one, meet my sister Sara in Macon by three, and then get to Orlando before late. So I’d been planning to pack on Thursday night, but then I accidentally fell asleep... for four hours... then woke up in the middle of the night, ran around trying on clothes for about twenty minutes, and then fell asleep again. (This always happens to me. I guess it’s like a con tradition?) So when I got off work at noon, I still had to pack. Which was okay because Mama still had to shower. Are you not awed by our procrastinating power? ARE YOU NOT?
We ended up leaving town at around 2:20, but that was okay because my sister was running late anyway. Figures.
Things we made sure to pack:
1. my Firefly DVDs (for signing purposes)
2. the most yummiest chicken salad ever
3. my new Counting Crows CD
4. my laptop
Things I wish we had packed:
1. my Heroes DVDs (for signing purposes)
2. crackers for the most yummiest chicken salad
3. any other CDs
4. the Internet :(
We picked up Sara at about 4:00, stopped for gas, and then headed to Florida. Yay! Except it kind of smells like swamp. We also stopped once at a Burger King and once for more gas at a place called Wildwood Travel Center. But we ended up making it to the Rodeway Inn at about 10:30PM, which was earlier than I had anticipated, considering that last year we didn't get to our hotel until about 1:30AM. But then, last year we did have two men with us.
We stayed here because they were running a really good deal on the rooms over the weekend. And I figured since I was paying, cheap was the way to go. :)
Isn’t it funny how car trips make you tired, even though you haven’t done anything? Like, I sat down for eight hours straight and was completely exhausted afterwards. What’s with that? I do that every day at my job and don’t get that tired. Anyway, Friday night we pretty much just sat in our pajamas eating chicken salad and m&ms and talking about how excited we were to be meeting Nathan Fillion and Greg Grunberg the next day. And listening to Sara talk about her job, because we hadn’t just done that for several hours in the car. Oh, wait...
I had a hard time sleeping. Partly because I was so excited about Saturday, but also because the Rodeway Inn calls things beds which are, in fact, not beds. But you get what you pay for, so I'm not complaining. :)
Saturday morning, we left the hotel at a quarter after ten. Sara had been singing "We Need a Little Christmas" while she was getting ready, and thanks to her, it was stuck in my head ALL DAY. The Angela Lansbury version. *sigh* We didn't eat a proper breakfast, but the hotel had a little snack shop thing downstairs called "Lite Bite," so we each bought a muffin there. It was raining, and while Sara went to get the car for us, these two dudes came out to smoke and eye my muffin. One of the guys was barefoot and the other had on one shoe. (How does that happen? How do you go outside only wearing one shoe?) They wanted to know where I got the muffin, and I told them "Lite Bite," and they gave me completely blank looks. But we were currently standing a whole ten feet away from Lite Bite, so I can see why they were confused.
The FX Show was at the Orange County Convention Center.
This is the picture I took from the car last year. But it's the same place.
It cost $6 to park. The guy in the booth knew immediately that we were there for the convention, and Sara got worried that we looked like Sci-Fi con goers. Which I suppose we do, because that's what we are. Is it weird to be self-conscious for being recognized as something that you are?
The convention center is about six times the size of my hometown. We parked where everyone else was parking, but then we had to walk about three miles (on the inside) to get to the part of the building where the con was going on. We passed a Kinkos on the way there.
There was a long line at the Admission stand, but the Will Call stands had very few people in line. We went to the Will Call place because we had ordered our tickets online at the FX website.
The obligatory shot of Mama in line. Oh, little did we know...
I showed my ID to the volunteer at the desk, because the tickets were in my name. But. She couldn't find them. She said they didn't have a record of my buying tickets at all, but if I had my receipt with me then they could just give me some anyway. Only, Mama had left the receipt in her camera case in the car, which was three miles away. They couldn't find Sara's tickets either, but she hadn't brought a receipt at all. So the volunteer very helpfully pointed out that we could go to Kinkos to print our receipts from the Internet.
The volunteer also said that this had been happening a lot and they didn't know why. She said they didn't have any record of about 5% of the people who bought their tickets online. And you know, 5% doesn't sound like a lot when you compare it to the 95% that they DO have, but... 5% turns out to be quite a bit when you're included in it. So my mom was like, "So it's better just to wait and buy the tickets here?" And the girl goes, "Oh, it's better to buy online because the line is shorter." Which doesn't make a difference if they don't have your tickets, right?
So we went to Kinkos to print our receipts. They charge by the minute for you to use the computers, and then they charge by the page for you to print something. There were some other people there doing the exact same thing as us.
Sara at Kinkos = not a happy con goer.
I just signed into my Paypal account and printed the receipt and logged off, so I only had to pay $2.80, but Sara sort of didn't know where to go, and then she called Scott (because it was his account) to get the log-in information, and by the time she printed the receipt, she had to pay about $5. So, our tickets cost more than everyone else's.
I wasn't going to let this bother me because I was still so excited about being there. But then, when we went back to the Will Call booth, I showed my receipt to the girl and expected her to just give me some new tickets - but she looked at my name and then pulled out an envelope with my name printed on it, and our tickets were in there! And we were like, "You had them the whole time?" And she gave us completely circular doe-eyes and said, "I have no idea what happened."
They also had Sara's tickets, after telling her there were no Hugheses listed.
And then they gave Sara a lanyard for her to wear the two tickets around her neck, so I went back up and asked if I could have a lanyard, and they said I had to buy a three-day pass to get one. I asked Sara if she had snuck and bought a three-day pass while we weren't looking, and she gave me doe-eyes and said, "I have no idea what happened."
So, that was... weird. But then we were officially there, so *spits* we will speak of it no more!
Almost everything at the FX Show this year was in the same room. I mean, it was a big honkin' room. They had the celebrities all lined up along the left wall, then the dealers set up in rows in the middle of the room, then the comic book artists along the opposite wall. Toward the back of the room, there was a stage with lots of chairs set up for the panels, and behind that, there were restrooms and places to get food. I liked the set-up for the most part - it was convenient not to have to go in and out all the time - but I think I would have put the panels in a different room. Because like, when the panelists were talking into the mics, their voices were heard all over the place, even if you weren't actually attending the panel. And when we first came in, Michael Winslow (the guy who can do like a bazillion sound effects) was grunting and screaming into the mic, and we couldn't hear ourselves. So we looked around a little bit and talked to the people at the photo-op place and waited for Mr. Winslow to get finished before we met anyone famous.
Nathan Fillion's line was crazyinsane like I had expected, and I was too nervous to start out with Greg Grunberg because I have a pretty gigantic crush on him, so the first person we went to meet was Stephen Tobolowsky, who plays Bob on Heroes. Sara was so excited about meeting him because he's Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day, which is one of her favorite movies.
Ned: Ned... Ryerson. "Needlenose Ned"? "Ned the Head"? C'mon, buddy. Case Western High. I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing! Ned Ryerson, got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate? Bing, again! Ned Ryerson, I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple of times until you told me not to anymore? Well?
Phil: Ned Ryerson?
Ned: BING!
Stephen was wearing a scarf even though we were inside. I don't think I actually said anything to him, but Sara told him that she shows Groundhog Day in one of her college classes every year and has the students write an argumentative essay about how long Phil must have lived the same day over and over by the end of the movie, in order to change into the person that he becomes. Stephen was interested in how long she thought it was, and then he said that it was actually supposed to be about 10,000 years. And then he mentioned that the 15-year anniversary edition of the movie is coming out soon, and they talked about feeling old, and the volunteer sitting with him commented that he thought Sara was still a teenager. Heh. Anyway, it was a very cool little meeting, and Sara asked him to write something that ends with "Bing!" on her autograph, so he wrote:
That's a line Ned says a few times in the movie. My favorite part is the little bing at the end!
Sara was kind of giddy after meeting him and admired the autograph for a few minutes. But then it was time for the Heroes panel, so we went over to the stage area and sat down. But Greg Grunberg's photo-op was scheduled to start immediately following the panel, so I left my stuff with Mama and Sara and ran across the room to buy a photo-op ticket, then ran back across the room and sat down just in time for the panel to start.
There were three Heroes actors there: Greg (who plays Matt), Stephen (who plays Bob), and George Takei (who plays Hiro's dad). So the three of them were the panelists. Greg is so cute! Like, he's even cuter in person than on the show. And he's funny! Sara filmed a lot at the con, and I'm posting some of the clips, but you'll have to excuse my technical difficulties. For some reason, when I watch the footage from the dvd it's fine, but when I rip the clips, the picture messes up. So this clip has black space for a few seconds at a time, but the sound is all there and clear, if you're interested.
The question was something like, what would you like to see happen to your character in future episodes?
Click to viewSo, what's with George Takei's voice? I mean, I love it. But it sounds like he learned to talk by watching game shows. He said that nothing is ever definite on Heroes, so even though his character is dead, that doesn't mean that he won't be back. And he told kind of a longish story about meeting the emperor of Japan, but to be honest I don't think very many people were listening to that part.
Someone asked Stephen a question about Bob being a bad guy, and he said that he doesn't really know if he's a bad guy or not, because everything he does that could be considered bad ends up being for a good reason. (Like when he takes Claire's blood but then saves Bennet's life with it.) His actual words were, "I have little to no idea."
Greg said his favorite episodes of Heroes are "Company Man" and the one where he traps his dad in a nightmare. And he said the pilot was one of his favorites until he got cut from it. Heh. George said his favorite episode was the one where he gets to teach Hiro how to swordfight. Stephen said he likes the one where he takes Claire's blood and then there's a shootout at the beach, and then Greg was like, "But you're a nice guy!" and then repeated, "I drain her blood and then have a shootout at the beach..." in an ominous voice.
Someone asked which other character they would like to be, and Stephen said something like, "Can we say which ones we wouldn't want to be? I would not want to be Sendhil! He has so many long speeches and I have no idea what he's talking about. Maybe Adrian. All his lines are like, yeah, sure." George said he would switch with Sylar. He said it like it was two words: Sigh Lar. Greg said he'd switch with Masi, and then he did a Hiro impression where he squeezed his eyes shut like he was stopping time. And then he said, "That's sort of the face I make when I do sit-ups." ♥
Someone asked the inevitable question: which superpower would you want if you could choose? Stephen said he would choose to walk through walls, because there are a lot of walls in people's lives. The whole time, Sara was looking at him and nodding like he was sooo smart. :D George said he would choose to read minds, because he's nosy. Greg said he'd have super-metabolism. "I'd fly around with a big C on my chest and eat all the carbs I want!" ♥
That is so the power I'd choose too. (He must have read my mind!) Actually, I think I would choose the power to be in several different places at once. But if I were on Heroes, I'd probably end up with something really lame, like... I could make my nosehair glow, or... dispense mustard from my navel. And I don't even like mustard.
Moving on!
After the Heroes panel, I ran straight over to the photo-op place and got in line to have my picture taken with Greg. There were already several people in line, which I thought was kind of weird because they must have left the panel early to get there. And who would want to do that? Anyway, I got really nervous while I waited. Like, most people say when they feel nervous their knees get weak, but for me it's like, all the joints in my entire body feel weak except my knees. My knees sort of lock, and then it's hard to walk. And I end up embarrassing myself.
When I walked in the little photo area thing, Greg smiled at me and said, "Hey, how are you?" And I was like, *big cheesy grin and total silence,* and then he was like, *blinks,* and then I blurted, "Will you pretend to read my mind?" And he sort of laughed and said, "Yeah, sure!"
So we took the picture, only he was standing behind me so I couldn't see whether he was doing the mind-reading face or not. And then I got paranoid that I was posing and he wasn't, and the photographer laughed but I couldn't tell if he was laughing at me or at both of us. And I felt pretty dumb. But! It turns out that Greg really DID do the mind-reading face, and I was very pleased with the result.
He signed it for me later, but don't read that part because I haven't gotten to it yet. Where are my teeth?
I shook hands with Greg and thanked him, and walked out feeling kind of light-headed. Is that what "starstruck" means? It's too bad being starstruck makes you lightheaded and fluttery instead of something useful like beautiful and witty.
I found Mama and Sara at a booth looking at action figures. They had gone to the bathroom, and my mom heard Elizabeth Rohm in there saying, "She had her foot on my bladder! I just went, but then she put her foot on my bladder so I had to go again." So we decided she was either pregnant or really close to her volunteer. But just a minute after I walked up, Sara got this horrified look on her face and went, "Oh no!" It turns out she had left her Stephen Tobolowsky autograph in the restroom, and she took off running. We met her there a minute later, after she'd found it. Which was a huge relief. But while we were standing over there, Greg walked right by us to go to the bathroom, and I almost squeed my pants. Sara was ready with her camcorder when he came out.
Sara told me later that when I came back from the photo-op with Greg, I was vibrating. That's what I do - I vibrate when I get nervous. Maybe it's my superpower?
After invading the privacy of an attractive celebrity, as you do, we went to get tickets for the virtual line to get Nathan Fillion's autograph. The way a virtual line works is this: you get tickets with numbers on them, and they have a whiteboard beside the line that says something like, "Now Serving Ticket #__." And if your number is below the one listed, you can get in line. It's so you don't have to wait in the line for a long time, just check back periodically. My number was 426, and they were on 340 when we got our tickets - although Nathan had just gone to lunch. So then we went and bought a photo-op pass for the Nathan photos as well, and then we looked around at the booths to shop.
At this con, I was planning to buy a whole lot of 6-inch Spike figures, since I already have all the 6-inch, 12-inch, and puppet Angels. So I wrote down which Spike figures I already had (I can never remember them because I hardly ever look at them) and went hunting. I only found one Spike figure that I didn't have - "Just Rewards" Spike - but he cost $30 at that booth and I wanted to look around more before I bought him because I was pretty sure I could find him somewhere else for cheaper. But! I did find some Angel ornaments and a bust from a different booth that I absolutely HAD to have.
I had to have them because I didn't already, and it's so rare for me to find Angel merch that I don't already have. Yaybust!
Nathan's photo-op was scheduled for 1:50 to 2:30, so we went to stand in the line at about 1:35... and it was SO long! He was definitely the most popular actor there. No one else's line got nearly this long. We ended up standing about halfway back.
Part of the line for Nathan.
We stood in line until about 2:25 before it was our turn. Some of the fans behind us in the line were talking about Nicholas Brendan, and I heard one of them say (in disgust) that he was charging $50 for his autograph. I don't know if that's true or not because I didn't buy an autograph from him this time (I got his autograph at Dragon*Con in 2006), but I was surprised because everyone else was only charging $25. One lady was like, "I'm going back to the Power Rangers - at least they were cheap!"
(Side-note: Eric Estrada was charging more for photos than anyone else because he posed with his humongous white motorcycle. One day I will probably meet Eric Estrada. He's been at every convention I've been to.)
When we bought our Nathan photo-op ticket, we had paid for an extra copy of the picture, and the volunteer guy, Tim, told us to remind him when we got to the front that we were supposed to get two copies instead of one. So when we got there, we paused for a second to do that. But since the line was still so long and Nathan's time was almost up, one of the other volunteers, Barb, got really mad that we stopped (even though the people ahead of us were still with Nathan). She turned around and screamed, "LADIES!" in my ear and grabbed my arm to get me to move up in the line. And then I took off my bag and tried to set it down so it wouldn't be in the picture, and she snapped at me to give my stuff to this other girl to hold. Which... didn't make sense to me, but whatever. So me and Sara and Mama loaded the girl down with our stuff. She appeared less than thrilled.
Nathan was really nice, though! He smiled and shook hands with all three of us and asked our names. His hands were big. (At least, they were big relative to mine, but I guess I sort of have small hands.) And then he put his arms around me and my sister, and he was SO TALL OMG, and he was also... well, I said "squishy," but Sara didn't want me to use the word squishy because that sounds like he isn't fit, which he is. And then I wanted to use the word soft, but she felt the same way about that. I think we decided on the word comfortable? He was very comfortable. ♥
My mom tried to stand beside me, but Nathan asked her to come around in front. At first I was afraid she was going to block him, but it turns out he's like eight feet tall, so it worked fine. While we were standing there, Nathan said, "Okay, it's gonna flash - don't look." And then it flashed and Sara said, "Oh no, I looked!" And he goes, "It's okay." Heh! Sara claims she didn't finish her sentence - she was going to say she looked away. But I laughed at what she said (because she sounded like it was the end of the world), and that's why I'm grinning like a maniac in the picture. *facepalm*
It looks like a family portrait! I told my mom we ought to use this picture in our next church directory. Check out Nathan's wingspan. Also, Sara clearly didn't look away. And my teeth have reappeared with a vengeance.
So we all thanked Nathan, who was very friendly (and NOT squishy), and then we got our stuff back from the girl, who was not very friendly at all and practically shoved it back into our arms. Sara accidentally bumped the girl's nose with her purse strap and apologized, and the girl said sarcastically, "It's okay; it was only my nose." Like, I know they were in a rush, but does being rude help at all? Hmm.
As soon as we walked out of the photo-op place, I went over to the table of prints to see if my Greg Grunberg photo was out yet. And it was! He had the exact same smiling expression in every single photo except this one. And I wouldn't have been disappointed if I just got a picture of the two of us smiling, but it's even more fun to have one that's different, you know?
Let me draw your attention to my right shoulder. Where his hand is. I just want to point out that he's touching me. (Probably wondering why I'm vibrating. I seriously thought I would be blurry because I couldn't stop shaking.)
Other people's pictures with Greg were good too, though. He had his arm around them and was smiling. He does a good photo-op, as opposed to someone like, say, Adam West, who just stands there and looks as though he doesn't know someone's taking his picture. A couple of Adam West photos were sitting out at the table, and they just looked like two random people had wandered in front of the camera at the same time. It doesn't even look like they met each other.
Anyway, we giggled over my picture for a while, and then went to get Greg's autograph. While we were standing in line to meet him, a couple of guys commented on the awesomeness of the photo. I am so pleased with it! And then when we got to the front, the volunteer sitting beside Greg saw it and said something like, "That's a good picture," and Greg looked over from the autograph he was writing and said, "Oh, that's awesome!" The people in front of us left, and Greg took my photo and said, laughing, "Look at that," and pointed at my expression. Heh!
I told him my name and said, "I was hoping you could write down what you think I'm thinking," and he goes, "Okay!" and wrote my name and then sort of... stared at the picture for a few seconds, like he was really trying to come up with something. And then he looked up and said, "How about I just write 'I know what you're thinking'?" And I said that would be great! ♥
Honestly, though, I'm pretty sure he didn't know what I was thinking.
ps. lets do sex an I wanna have ur bebbiz ok?
The little drawing on the table in front of him was cute. I wonder when he had time to do that.
While Greg was signing my picture, Sara mentioned to him that she had recently seen the movie Six Degrees of Separation, which had J.J. Abrams in it, and he ad libbed a line that was something like, "Remember our old pal Greg Grunberg?" This was before Greg was famous. He said yeah, that J.J. actually did the line several times in several different takes, and the director or someone asked who this Greg Grunberg person was, and J.J. was like, "Just wait." He also told us that when they were kids, J.J. would write and direct movies and Greg would star in them. Like, they were nine years old making these little 8mm movies. How cute is that?
This picture was taken after Greg watched "The Ring" and failed to make a copy of it.
I think my sister was commenting on her husband in this picture. Or else she was squishing Greg's head.
So, I've met a lot of celebrities at the five cons that I've been to, but Greg Grunberg has been by far my favorite. He just seems like the friendliest person ever in the whole world, and... I'm sort of half in love with him. It's almost enough to make a person want to watch Felicity. (Almost.)
I was vibrating again when we walked away.
The line to meet Nathan was at this point serving #360, so we decided to get something to eat. We bought some ridiculously expensive food (I got a bowl of fruit - honey dew, canteloupe, and watermelon - with some yogurt and granola) and we sat down at a table with some other conventioneers to eat and to discuss Greg and Nathan as though they were no more than pieces of meat placed on this earth for our ogling pleasure. (Sara finds Nathan more attractive but Greg more approachable while I find Greg more attractive and neither one of them approachable because I'm shy. Sara thinks Greg looks like a normal person but Nathan looks like a movie star. I think they both look like movie stars and Nathan has a longish nose, which may or may not indicate certain things about certain other parts of him, which I'd certainly be willing to find out. For like, scientific purposes. Or something.)
Oh, and while we were in the line to get food, one of the women working at the food place admired my earrings, which were shaped like zippers. Actually, I think she admired them, but she did it in Spanish, so I don't know. It sounded like, "Spanishspanishspanishspanish ZIPPER spanishspanish!"
Near the tables where we ate, there was a small arena thing set up for kids to playfight with foam light sabers, and we watched some of them. What I learned from this: there are few things as satisfying as seeing small children beat the crap out of each other.
When we were done eating, we went back to Autograph Alley for Mama to take a picture of Adam West. Nathan's line was still very long, but no one was in Nicholas Brendan's line.
Maybe he charged twice as much as everyone else so he wouldn't have to sign as many autographs?
(I kid. He probably didn't even have a choice in how much his price was going to be.)
Our numbers were up for Nathan, but we decided to put off meeting him until Sunday. So we could work up to it, or something. We checked out more of the dealer booths, and Sara bought an illustrated X-Men book for her husband Scott for a dollar, and I bought a TPB of Y by Brian K. Vaughan.
This? Is good.
When I bought the book, the guy I was buying it from got all excited. I think maybe he didn't know very many girls? And he asked me if I'd been reading the series, and I said I just saw it and wanted it because it was Brian K. Vaughan, and then he wanted to know everything I'd ever read by Brian K. Vaughan. To be honest, I've never read anything by him. But the boy was so excited, and he started listing off all of these comics, and he said Runaways, so I just said yeah, Runaways (which I'd heard of because Joss worked on it and I knew I could hold a conversation about it without looking like an idiot). But then the boy wanted to talk about how much better Vaughan is than Whedon. So I left.
You'd think people at sci-fi cons would know to be careful what they say about Joss Whedon.
When we checked back at the photo table at 5:04, our picture with Nathan hadn't been put out yet. There were lots of people milling around or sitting on the floor waiting for the pictures, so we sat and waited as well. Almost all of Nathan's pics looked exactly the same - like Greg's - but there were a couple where he was doing funny faces, which I thought was cute.
When our picture did get put out, there was only one, even though we had paid for two. (Thanks, Tim.) Sara and I asked the woman who had yelled at me about the other picture, and she said that since they were running behind then they would just mail it to us. So we asked how they would know where to send it or even which photo it was, and she was like, "Didn't you put your contact information on the back of the ticket?" And we were like, uh, no? And she gave us this really put-upon look and said that's why she'd been telling everyone to write their mailing addresses on the back of the tickets - which she didn't tell us, by the way, or we'd have done it. So finally, after being very rude, she pulled out a business card and wrote a makeshift receipt on it and told us to come back early Sunday to get our other picture and to bring the card.
I just wanted to post this again. You know, not many people can get away with smiling with their mouth closed in a picture. That's talent. Plus - TEETH! God, we look like we're gonna eat him alive.
While we waited for our picture, we looked at the Nick Brendan photos that were waiting to be picked up. He had the exact same expression in every photo - like, EXACT. I mean, all of Greg's and most of Nathan's were the same expression, but Nick was like... same angle and everything. It looked like someone had just taken one photo of him and then cut out his head and pasted it on all of the pictures. It was actually kind of freaky. Mama made a comment about him looking the same in all the photos, and the guy standing next to us said (like we didn't realize), "He's the celebrity." I think he thought she was commenting on the fact that it was the same person in all the photos, but... she wasn't. Because duh.
The con ended at 6, so that's when we left. We were hungry again already, so we went to Bennigan's for supper.
I'll take the ooey gooey chewy chocolate delight... and a diet coke.
There was a party that night at 9, but you could only go to it if you had special passes, which we didn't. So after we ate, we went back to the hotel and pretty much crashed. I don't know what it is about cons, but they wear me out like whoa, even if the whole thing is in one big room. Sara and I also went downstairs to the lobby where they had wireless internet access, then came back to the room and watched Nathan's episode of Lost. While Lost was on, my brother called to chew me out - once again - for loaning his Buffy DVDs to Scott... without asking for explicit permission... because he and his girlfriend have been watching the series together and have been using my DVDs to do so, but one of my season 2 disks was missing. (I actually had it with me.)
Sara went to sleep fairly early, but my mom and I stayed up late talking. And then I still couldn't sleep, so I got up and read the book I'd bought. The whole thing. And I really wish I had known when I bought it that it wasn't complete. *sigh* I finally went to bed around 4, but I didn't sleep very much.
On Sunday morning, we checked out of the Rodeway Inn a few minutes after 10. But first we got more muffins at Lite Bite.
Goodbye, Rodeway! You served us very well for being so inexpensive. As a thank you, I've decided not to post pictures of your garish tropical bedspreads.
It was $6 to park again at the convention center. One 3-mile walk later, we were back and talking to Barb about our other Nathan photo print. She took back the card she had given us, as well as the first photo, and told us to come back in a little while to pick up both copies. So then we walked over to get Nathan's autograph, and the line was already really long even though it was still early. I was the only one who still had her virtual line ticket from Saturday, so we got new tickets and then went shopping again.
There were several booths right together where people were getting tattooed. In the middle of a con! With an audience! And I tried to find the booth again where I had seen the Spike figure I wanted, but I couldn't find it. However, I DID find another Angel thing to buy:
They're Angel playing cards! (Whoops, is my OTP showing? How embarrassing...)
When our numbers were up, we went and stood in line to talk to Nathan finally. The line was still long, even though they were doing the virtual line thing, so we felt a little rushed. He was really nice, but I think he was trying to hurry people through so that he could get to everyone. Which was fine with me because I never have anything to say to these people anyway. I'm just happy to be there.
I shook hands with him and told him my name - and he asked how to spell it, so I spelled it for him - and I asked him to write "We're still flying" on one of my Firefly DVD covers, so he did:
Yay! Now I have Nathan, Alan, Summer, Adam, and Ron.
Sara had picked up a picture of Nathan from Desperate Housewives for him to sign for her and Scott:
Housewives everywhere? Heh. We were kind of like, wtf? I wonder if he wrote that on everyone's picture if they chose that one, or if it just came to him when we were up there...
Sara asked him if he was going to be on Lost again, and he said he didn't know but he hoped so. And she asked him if he knew what was really supposed to be in the note on Desperate Housewives. (His character finds a note that apparently reveals a big secret and then he tells his wife he's leaving her, but the audience doesn't know what the note says.) He said that the note actually said, "I loved you in Buffy! You were great as Caleb." And there was a little smiley face with a priest collar. The prop guy wrote that for him! Heh.
And then he said that if you watch the series, the clues are all there (about what's in the note). So Sara said what she thought it was, and he said, "There you go!" and gave her a significant look.
Oh, and instead of saying "Thank you," Nathan says "Cheers." In case anyone is writing RPS and needs to know. :)
After we met him, we went to check on our photos. We were only there a couple of minutes when Barb came out and handed them to us. And it turns out when we said we bought two copies, she thought we meant two copies plus the original, so we ended up with three pictures instead of two. Which was cool. I would have returned one of them, but it's not like they could sell it to someone else, so we just thanked her and kept it. And I don't feel too bad about it because the money we would have spent on a third picture was the money we spent at Kinkos the day before.
The Whedonverse panel was going to start in a few minutes, so we went ahead to the main stage area and sat down. We actually caught the tail end of the panel before it, called Anime Taboo. It's where two people go on stage and one gives clues and the other one has to guess which anime they're talking about. But they can't use certain words in the clues. It was kind of interesting, but I only knew a few of the answers (mostly the Nintendo ones).
The point is that we got pretty good seats for the Whedonverse panel. So, yay.
The panel was Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Rohm, and Nicholas Brendan.
Here is what I learned from this panel:
1. Give Nathan Fillion an audience, and he can entertain himself forever.
2. Pretty much no one is interested in Kate, but Elizabeth herself is cool.
3. Nicholas Brendan is an alcoholic.
They're onto you, Nicky.
I sort of got the feeling he was drunk during the Q&A, but to be fair, when I talked to him later he didn't smell drunk (not like Andy Hallet last year). I actually have no kind of proof at all, so maybe he was just... I don't know. Nervous or something? But he was doing that thing some people do when they're drunk - repeating the same thing over and over because they think it's funny even though no one else thinks it's funny. And a couple of times Nathan and Elizabeth looked at him and then at each other and sort of rolled their eyes. But that was only at the beginning of the panel - he got better. So maybe it was just nerves.
My sister filmed most of the panel, but I'm not putting the whole thing online because, like I said, I'm experiencing technical difficulties. So I'm just posting pieces of it. Here's the first three or so minutes, in which Nathan is modest, Elizabeth is pregnant, and Nicky is repetitive. (He says the word "remarkable" about 20 times. No lie. Which averages out to... about once every ten seconds. But it feels like more.)
Nathan cofounded a charity called Kids Need to Read. He said the website was KidsNeedtoRead... SomethingSomething... dot com. Nick said, "And then there's my website - YouCan'tMakeMeRead.com." And Nathan told him, "Just keep looking at the pictures and moving your lips. No one will know."
Nathan was nominated for a daytime Emmy on One Life to Live. He said it was for "Best Joey Ever." Heh.
Nathan and Elizabeth were excited to find out they had both been on One Life to Live. They sort of bonded over it. It was cute. (They high-fived.)
A woman asked Nathan which male character he would play on Firefly if he weren't Mal.
Nathan: You cut me short there. It has to be male? Well, I guess I would say... I would do Jayne. Because uh... it would cut down my getting ready time, because I wouldn't have to shower.
Nicholas: What would change? You're not showering now.
Nathan: Well, now I powder.
Nathan calls himself a terrible driver. And... that would be the first time I've ever heard a guy admit that. Nice.
Nick's favorite episodes of BtVS to film were Once More with Feeling and Hush. (His least favorite was the one where he lost his eye.) Elizabeth's favorite Angel episode was Sense and Sensitivity: "It was the first time I was ever funny in my life, and I think the last. And I loved it." Nathan's favorite Firefly was Out of Gas. (Also my favorite.)
Nathan: I have a cat. She came with the house I rent. Not a fan of cats. She's eighteen years old - I go, "Great! She's gonna die!" Pretty soon, right? That's one dead cat. Six years ago.
Elizabeth: He still has to buy catfood. Remarkable.
Nicholas: Just stop buying the cat catfood.
Nathan: ...Problem solved!
Nick said that when Nathan poked him in the eye, "It hurt SO bad!"
Nathan: I was once approached by European scientists that wanted to clone me. And I said no. No. That would be wrong.
Nathan said the people who didn't get Firefly asked questions like, "Why horses? Why no aliens?" And Nick said, "That's when you say the horses are aliens." (I have always said this! Horses and fish!)
This was Elizabeth's expression when a dude said he'd never seen Buffy or Angel.
At one point, someone asked Nathan if it was true that Firefly being cancelled was Joss' fault for not getting along with the network, or the producers, or something. It was funny, because as soon as he invoked Joss and then implied blame, the entire audience tensed up. Like, you could feel everyone getting defensive. If we'd been cats, our tails would have puffed. (I think mine did, a little.) But Nathan was quick to answer that things like that rarely ever happen because of personal issues. It had to do with numbers versus art.
Someone asked what other creative outlets Nathan, Elizabeth, and Nicky had besides acting, and Nathan said that he likes to write (he blogs on Myspace), but that he doesn't do it very often because he types very slowly. Nick said that's why he audio blogs instead - and then he said something like, "Do you overcomma? I'm a commawhore." Nathan suggested the word "Commaholic," but Nick said that he was a kind of "holic" that had nothing to do with commas.
Nick also said that he found out about Xander losing an eye by reading the script - no one told him beforehand. And then he said he found out later that Joss actually wanted to kill him off, but the writers talked him out of it. And then he gave us all some handy advice: "If anyone's got a drinking problem... don't let it affect your work."
Right before the panel was over, Nathan told us that he's glad everyone took a bunch of pictures, but if we've got 60 pictures of him, when we go online, maybe only post the good ones? "Maybe take out the ones where I'm..." *funnyface* So I've got a lot of pictures, but I'm only posting like six of him.
Including this one.
Nick said, "As far as I'm concerned, there are no bad pictures of me." But my memory card begs to differ. :)
After the panel, we didn't really have anything else planned to do, so we decided to check out the booths we hadn't seen yet. Most of the vendors had started marking down their prices because they didn't want to have to pack up everything they hadn't sold, so I found a pretty good deal on some action figures - they were 5 for $15, which I couldn't pass up even though there weren't any Angels or Spikes. I bought human!Darla, vampire!Darla, Chosen Buffy, and two of the same Wesley so I can open one of them. And now I will have enough open figures to reenact episodes! Not that I do that... ever... *shifty eyes* I also found the Just Rewards Spike I wanted, and the vendor had changed the price from $30 to $10. When I bought it, he was like, "I just want you to know you're getting a really good deal."
Action figures! I still haven't found a place for the last 803 figures I bought, and now I've got six more.
One booth was selling old comics at five for a dollar, so Sara bought ten of them for Scott. She has no idea about comics, so her selection was random. Which you'd think would mean it wouldn't take very long to choose them. But no.
The Battlestar comic made me laugh.
I also bought Buffy Season 8 #1. I already have it, but mine is from the second printing, and I saw a copy from the first printing with the Jeanty cover, so I figured it was worth having since I'm sort of collecting them. It was already bagged and boarded, and it was only $5 (although for some reason it had a $25 sticker on it).
At that point, we were pretty much ready to go, but Sara wanted to stop by Autograph Alley one more time to take a picture of Jake Lloyd (the kid that played Anakin in Phantom Menace) and the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. So we got there and of course she went to take another picture of Nathan first.
Devastating yet attractive.
So then Sara and Mama walked down the row to take more pictures, but while I was standing there waiting for them to come back, I noticed that there was only one person at Nicholas Brendan's table. And I was holding the Buffy comic that I had just bought, and during the panel Nicky said that he hadn't read any of the comics because he'd not had a chance to get them yet - and didn't know where to get them - and he'd said that he wished that they would just send the comics to him so he could see what they were like. So I decided to give him mine, since I already had it anyway.
I walked up to the table while he was talking to the other person, and the volunteer sitting with him tried to sell me an autograph - which I didn't want. I told her I was just coming up to say hi. And then the girl he was talking to couldn't remember the other thing she was going to say to him, so he told her to think of it and come back but to let him sign an autograph for me first. Which was kind of embarrassing for me because I didn't actually want his autograph. But she walked away and he smiled and said hi to me, and I said something like, "I just wanted to give you this, since you said you hadn't read it yet," and handed him the comic. And he was like, "Oh, cool! I just didn't know where to get it. Thank you." And while I was talking to him, I said something about him... like, doing a certain thing in the comic or something. And then I was like, "I mean, not you, but..." And he kind of laughed and said, "It's my likeness. But people say that a lot."
Anyway, he was very friendly, and when we were done talking, I felt sort of bad walking away from his table because there was literally no one else there to see him and he was at the table next to Nathan's, where there was still a really long line. But I'm sure they don't care about that sort of thing. It's probably a relief when you get little breaks from the crowd like that.
It occurred to me later that I had left the $25 price sticker on the comic. I hope he doesn't think I actually paid that much for it.
When Sara and Mama came back, I told them that I had just given Nick my Buffy comic, and Sara was mad because she would have taken a picture of me talking to him. But I like that I was able to talk to a celebrity by myself without doing something really stupid. I barely even vibrated. :)
Here are the pictures Sara took:
Jake Lloyd is like eighteen now! When did that happen?
I saw the soup nazi browsing through stuffed animals. And it made me think of the word incongruous, which I had been trying to remember.
Alas, we managed to leave the FX Show without getting any pictures of Jason David Frank, who played the white ranger (and the green ranger, and the black ranger) on Power Rangers. I had a ridiculous crush on him when I was in seventh grade, and I totally missed my chance to finally talk to him. Oh well. Maybe in another life, Jason. If it's meant to be, it'll happen.
Same to you, Eric Estrada.
My mom went back and bought one more thing before we left - it was a tiny stuffed pig with wings and had a magnet in its nose - for my other sister Amy, who couldn't come with us.
And that was it! We left the convention center at about 3:30 or 4. But stopped on the way out to show Kinkos how we really felt about charging by the minute.
Take that, Kinkos! DOWNGRADE.
The highlight of the FX Show this year, for me, was definitely anything that had to do with Greg Grunberg. In fact, he has been the highlight of my entire con experience. But what's funny is that, out of the five cons we've been to, this is the one that had the best parts and the worst parts. Which I guess makes it sort of average in rank? But I'm so glad I went! Even though I kind of feel like I've complained a lot. And I just now noticed something - I didn't take any pictures of people in costume this year! There weren't very many, though. I think Dragon*con spoils me for costumes, because so many there are fantastic.
So the report ends here. The only other thing that happened is that we had a stupid argument about where to eat lunch, and the place we finally chose overcharged me and then didn't refund the whole difference because the girl didn't know how to do math. She literally said, "I can't even do basic math!" and almost cried, so I told her not to worry about it. (I always feel very sorry for people with worse jobs than me.) We arrived back home at almost 2AM, and I had to get up early for work the next morning. Totally worth it, though.
I'm already looking forward to Dragon*Con!
ETA: Someone just posted [this clip of Nathan on a scooter] on Nathan's myspace page. Heh! Looks like it's mostly volunteers there, so it was probably just before the con opened or right after it ended. Silly boy.
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