Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

While I’m busy catching up on things at home and furiously recalling in the written word every single little thing I did during my last two days at Comic Con, I thought I’d share a little video with you that I wish I’d seen before Comic Con. Because I would have visited Booth #1435 with a RedBull if I had.

What a gloriously clever and well-done promo! This past weekend, Liz told me that I needed to start reading the Looking for Group webcomic immediately. You should, too! (Their site is a little slow today, but I’m guessing that’s because of post-Comic Con traffic.)

More of my Comic Con adventures coming soon.

My computer wasn’t cooperating with me last night, and I was more tired than the horde of people dressed as zombies walking up and down Fifth Avenue yesterday afternoon/evening, so I zonked out very quickly without blogging. And now it’s the last day of the con and I need to get going, so…

I spent 5 hours in the main Ballroom yesterday, not including wait time, and saw 5 panels from the 8th row: Futurama, Simpsons, Dean Koontz. Joss Whedon’s new Dollhouse, and Battlestar Galactica.

Liz and Josh didn’t make it there early enough to get in for Futurama or Simpsons, so they saw The Office panel where they scored 4 passes to a 7:30 sneak peak of Rainn Wilson’s new movie, The Rocker. We tagged along and saw the movie, which was introduced by Rainn Wilson who then did a Q&A after the movie and signed my seriously-I-know-it’s-dorky autograph book.

Lots of other people signed my autograph book the last couple days, well several anyway, and I’m heading to the con now to try to get some more. Except not Richard Dreyfuss because why the hell was he charging $20 for an autograph? Does he really need the frakking money?

(Continued from Comic Con Day 2 Recap, the Wil Wheaton Part)

After meeting Wil Wheaton, I relaxed a little but was still high on endorphins. I headed to my last panel of the day, “What’s Up with Penguin,” where publishing editors shared synopses and cover art for upcoming Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels. I was reminded how cheesy some of the cover art for fantasy novels can look… there’s just something about a girl or woman in a semi-realistic pose (except for the unrealistic body proportions, of course) can remind me of the covers on YA books I used to read. (I always loved the Z for Zachariah cover, though). From the description, I thought that they were going to be giving away free advance reading copies to everyone in the panel, but only a few people received them from the drawing they held. I’m not a huge fantasy genre reader, but I was still bummed about not getting any free books from the panel after basically listening to an hour of advertising.

I met up again with Ben after the panel and we walked over to one of the Marriott hotel’s ballrooms where they have movie screenings until the wee hours of the morning. We caught the last half of The Gamers: Dorkness Rising which was good and funny in a cheesy way, especially if you’ve ever roleplayed. We finished the evening off by walking to the Horton Plaza with our friends Liz and Josh and having a delicious Mandarin Chinese late-night dinner at Panda Inn. The Plaza is like a big mall, but it’s open-air. Weird and cool. Outdoor escalators would never work in the seasonal climates that I prefer.

And now I’ve stayed up WAY too late writing to get anywhere close to a good night’s sleep. Will I make it to the 10:00am Futurama panel tomorrow? Who knows! Will I make it the Battlestar Galactica panel tomorrow afternoon, or will I choose the Fables panel instead, knowing that Bill Willingham has related swag to hand out?

Oh, I forgot to mention that while Ben and I were walking around, we passed through the autograph area and got Richard Hatch’s autograph in my Moleskine notebook. I’ve never had an autograph book before and I’m really not sure what to do with it. It seems really dorky to have an autograph book as an adult. Or maybe cosplay as an adult is dorkier? I’m sure that’s a matter of opinion.

(Continued from Comic Con Day 2 Recap, Part 1.)

From there, I went to the Dumbrella booth where Wil Wheaton was supposed to be signing autographs. I got there about 5:40, in plenty of time for his 5:30-6:30 signing, except I didn’t remember his Twitter post correctly because it was really 4:30-5:30. Crap! I got lucky, though, because around the back of the booth I spotted him (squee!) being interviewed. Not knowing how quickly he was going to run off afterwards, I stood back and took a photo.

As I waited like a real geek in my bold black and yellow Star Wars tee, I realized that the woman interviewing him was Leah from Mahalo Daily. Cool! The interview kept going, so I meandered around the adjacent booths pretending to be looking at their stuff when really I was just waiting in the wings to pounce on Wil when the taping stopped. I found an inconspicuous spot behind him so at least I wouldn’t look like a stalker. And then suddenly I realized that I may have been in the line of vision of the freakin’ Mahalo Daily camera… I bolted out of that as quickly as possible when I realized it. I was in no condition to have my disheveled and sweaty geek self recorded for all eternity on the internet, staring intently at the celebrity giving an interview I couldn’t even hear. Gah. Hopefully I didn’t actually make it into the footage.

[Edit: I'm in the shot from minute 6:28 until you see a brief look of terror and my quick departure at 6:49. I'm semi-fuzzy in the background, so thankfully I'm not as horrified after the fact.]

Anyway. The interview finally ended and they chatted off camera for a little while longer. Then, when the Mahalo Daily people turned away, two fanboys pounced on Wil before I could from my slightly more inconspicuous (really this time) spot. One guy invited Wil to his film screening, and the other just wanted to say hi after comfirming that he was the kid from Stand By Me.

“I’m a bigger fan,” I thought to myself, imagining scenarios in which I could shove the guys aside cartoon violence-style. “After all, I’ve read his books and I subscribe to his Twitter feed and his blog and I’m a fan of his writing, and he would appreciate that.” I thumbed my Moleskine notebook while talking to myself and then suddenly realized that the second guy was leaving. I started sweating nervous buckets when he glanced at me, possibly wondering if I was just going to follow him around all night being a creepy fangirl in the shadows.

“Hi,” I blurted in his direction. “I know you were signing autographs earlier, and I missed it…”

He interrupted me and caught me completely off guard by saying “Well, I’m still here, so it looks like you didn’t miss me.”

So I stammered out an autograph request that sounded so completely retarded out loud I thought he might just laugh nervously and run away. What exactly I said, I don’t remember, but he responded warmly and put me more at ease because he was just so approachable, which somehow turned right back around and made me nervous as hell.

I told him that I read his blog and he expressed surprising gratitude that made me just want to hug him. I had wanted to say how much I took from his journey to becoming a writer in Just a Geek, but it came out more generic. “You really inspire me as a writer,” or something. *facepalm* I told him that I was tickled that he was also inspired by David Sedaris (as he wrote about on his blog a few weeks ago).

The whole time that I blabbered on about this or that, he maintained a very engaged, steady eye contact. I was a little too nervous to maintain steady eye contact myself (which normally is no problem for me). He was really listening to me, which speaks volumes. I wish I’d dabbed off my sweaty glow before approaching him!

And then came the part that is still making my face flush. I had been holding my geeky business card while walking, and finally held it out to him. “Well, this is me, and I just want you to know that if I ever become a writer you should know that you inspired me.”

Wil graciously took the card from me and I thanked him again. I wanted to just reach out and hug him, but didn’t want to go that far and completely invade his personal space, so I just held out my hand for him to shake. He shook it with both hands, which surprised and delighted me. He expressed thanks with more sincerity than I think I did. I grinned and we parted ways, though I turned back after a couple steps and watched him walk away, not wanting to lose the moment but at the same time wanting to relax and return to my normal non-fangirl self.

Now I not only want to be a writer like Wil Wheaton. If I ever reach a celebrity position of any level, I also want to be gracious fan-friendly celebrity like Wil Wheaton.

The thing I’m learning about attending Comic Con is that you need to keep a pretty strict schedule to do all the things you want to do. That contradicts my somewhat laid-back approach and has resulted in a few missed opportunities. The flip side is that I’ve stayed pretty relaxed and have avoided crankiness.

Ben and I got started earlier than yesterday, though we still didn’t make it in time to see the first panel that I was interested in (Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends). We decided to go stand in line to see a panel with Shaun of the Dead stars Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, but the line was very, very long and snaked in and out of the building onto the veranda and we decided to skip it. I did get a free Stan Lee adverfan in the hallway, though. I don’t know what it’s really called, but it’s a sturdy paper cut-out of Stan Lee’s cartoon face stuck to a piece of wood that’s pimping a documentary of his life, True Believer. Advertising fan. Adverfan.

Other freebies I picked up today: a lot of button pins from various booths, a Ghost Hunters 4-inch statuette of Jason Hawes, a bright orange Nickelodeon slap bracelet, issue #1 of a comic called Burn, a paperback copy of Kushiel’s Scion by Jacqueline Carey (who signed it for me at the publisher’s booth), a Land of the Lost movie promo lanyard, an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes bag, and tons of random postcards.

I made it to three panels today. “Looking at Our World: Eye on the Present” was supposed to be about how authors use the supernatural in stories of contemporary society, but covered stuff that was sort of hit-or-miss according to my interests. Authors were Kelley Armstrong, L.A. Banks, Kate Brallier, Marjorie M. Liu, C.E. Murphy, Justine Musk, LIlith Saintcrow and Samantha Sommersby. I mostly went to that panel (with Ben in tow) so that I could squat a seat for the next panel, “The World of Graphic Novels.” Turns out that neither filled up, but oh well.

I learned a few interesting things from the author-illustrators on the second panel, but was disappointed that none of them were just writers or just illustrators. As a potential graphic novel writer, I’m interested in learning how writers can best collaborate with artists when their art skills don’t exactly fall under the umbrella of the word “talent.” The panelists were Nick Abadzis, Eddie Campbell, Rutu Modan, Alex Robinson, Adrian Tomine and it was moderated by Tom Spurgeon. I’d heard of Rutu Modan’s graphic novel, Exit Wounds, and she had a lot of interesting things to say. She’s Israeli but her book has not yet been published in Israel… the comics/graphic novel scene is almost nonexistent there and so she turned to the U.S. I recorded all these panel sessions and hope to be able to post them in some format on my website after I return home.

After the first two panels, Ben and I headed down to the exhibit hall to visit totally famous artist Katie Cook, a geek girl who we first met at Wizard World in 2004 when she drew a fun monster couple for us on the spot. I love her style, but she’s much busier these days so we settled for a signed print of her cartoony Darth Vader holding two small kitties with the caption “The Dark Side… is full of cat people.”

Then Ben and I split off and I happened to walk by the G4 tv channel booth… where Attack of the Show’s Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn were interviewing Samuel L. Jackson! I got a few crappy photos of him and my hands may have been visible in the background. I wanted to yell “Tell me more about your role in S.H.I.E.L.D.” but would have been drowned out by the retards who were just randomly screaming “SNAKES ON A PLANE!” Seriously, WTF. There was a mega horde of bodyguards surrounding him at all times.

From there, I walked around the exhibit hall and took lots of photos of cosplayers… even Barf from Spaceballs!

To be continued…

We arrived at the convention center at the lazy noonish hour and hit the exhibit hall right away. It only took 5 minutes for Ben to tire of my distracted walking pattern and run off on his own. I enjoyed strolling around at my own pace, stopping to look at everything that interested me. Aside from the big booths (Marvel, DC, Hasbro, Lucasfilm, LEGO, Gentle Giant, etc.), here are a few that I liked and had snaggable websites (that are all safe for work):

gwinarmy.com Little vinyl Tux penguin shapes with fun paint jobs. Ben likes “Bunny” the best.

mistertoast.com I love the little original watercolor cards the creator and his wife (?) were selling. I’m going back to see if they found any with Inky the ink well that they could sell me tomorrow. Because, you know, I’m a writer and stuff. So it makes sense.

comicimages.com I snapped a great photo of employee Ken wearing his company’s Yoda backpack. It really felt like I was in Dagobah! (photo to follow)

mimobot.com Designer USB flash drives. Cool as shit and just as expensive. I want C3P0. It would also be cool if an audio clip of Threepio saying “Oh, hello” played upon the computer recognizing the drive.

chessex.com Dice, dice, dice! Lots of lovely dice! All shapes, sides, and sizes. Ben and I picked up a couple 30-sided dice (“Those will be great for playing Magic [the Gathering],” said my husband who didn’t think there’d be anything of much interest to him at Comic Con).

After walking around for a while and seeing some amazing costumes (I kept running into a very tall Ghost Rider (sans motorcycle) on the floor), I caught two interesting panels: “Science Fiction That Will Change Your Life,” sponsored by io9.com and “Spotlight on Bill Willingham” with Mark “Bucky” Buckingham.

The Sci-Fi panel was interesting and I hope that my new voice recorder caught all the titles that I’ve never heard of and need to read now. There were some interesting perspectives on the genre and people’s personal experiences with it. Also, I about died for Graeme McMillan’s Scottish accent. I mostly attended the panel so that I could squat a seat for the Willingham panel in the same room, but I’m very glad I went.

Fables was the first comic to really pull me into the genre of comics, and that’s because I have a thing for folklore and fairy tales. I love new takes on old tales, so Fables was thematically my cup of tea and I was pleasantly surprised to discover the wonderful writing and beautiful artwork in the comics. It turns out that one of my early loves, the Fractured Fairy Tales shorts from Rocky & Bullwinkle was also an inspiration to Bill Willingham and he’s a huge connoisseur of folklore and fairy tales, too. He talked about his start in comics writing/drawing and assured the crowd that Fables will not end at the conclusion of the big war story arc. I asked a question about in what format Bill provides his story to Mark, and Bill commented that it was a good question (squee!). Everyone in the audience received a one-page Fables comic on glossy cardstock with the tiny woodland creatures of Fabletown and it’s quite cute.

After the panel, I jetted to the DC/Vertigo booth to stand in line to have Bill and Mark sign my newly acquired one-page comic, as well as Bill’s old comic reprinted in graphic novel format, Pantheon. Haven’t checked it out yet. Special thanks to Catherine, a Batman-loving senior English major from SF State who was in line behind me and held my place while I ran to the hard-to-find booth that was selling those graphic novels. We had a very nice geek girl chat during our wait time, and she recommended the best Batman graphic novels that she’s read.  (I wonder if I choose the correct spelling of Catherine?)

Then I met up again with Ben and almost didn’t get into the “Comics Experience: How to Write a Pitch!” panel. Ben waited on the beautiful veranda while I got some good tips, and then we met up with Liz and Josh and had dinner at Karl Strauss Microbrewery. I’m not a huge beer drinker, but I highly recommend their signature Amber Ale. Liz and Josh do not recommend their Melon Martini.

That about sums up today. We came back to the hotel to relax and get to bed early… which turned into Ben zonking out quickly and me blogging into the almost-wee hours. Crap. I need to get some sleep because tomorrow will be a long day. Not sure if I’ll be able to blog about it but I’ll try.

We decided to take a slightly laid-back approach to Comic Con today in order to be better rested after a hellish travel day. On the trolley ride down to the convention center, we sat across from a nice (but a little odd) middle-aged man who was missing a front incisor (tooth #6; residual knowledge from working at a dental office).

His first question when we sat down was “What do you read?” though he wasn’t familiar with anything until I mentioned X-Men. He’s writing a screenplay with the title “Flapjacks: The Movie” about life in San Diego and when I told him I was a writer, he offered me a comic idea that had been floating around in his head and said that I should write it.

He pitched a story about a worm who wiggles around and recognizes places in the earth he’s been before, then discovers the surface of the ground where he is plucked up by a boy who puts him on a fishing hook and introduces him to the water.

“How does it end?” I asked. “Is he eaten by a fish?”

“I don’t know,” the man replied. “I leave that up to you, the writer. It’s your story now.”

Then conversation turned and he asked where we were from, and never just wanting to say “Utah” I responded “Originally from Ohio.”

“Not from Cleveland, I hope,” he said. Ben and I glanced at each other.

“Yeah, actually…”

He apparently knows a guy who is a security guard at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and opened up a binder filled with looseleaf notebook paper to write down his name for us.

“Next time you’re there, we’ll have to work out a practical joke for you to play on him, to really freak him out.” He had a huge grin on his face s he mulled it over. “Maybe you can pretend to have ESP. Yeah, that would be great.”

He handed me the paper with just the guy’s name on it and slowly shared more ideas and talked about his friend’s good sense of humor. We just sat there wide-eyed, listening and nodding our heads, alert to the bizarre nature of the moment.

I asked him to write “security guard at R&R Hall of Fame” on the paper, which he took back from me and happily did. He also wrote down his email address so that we could contact him to discuss the details of our plan.

Then the trolley stopped and he looked up and told us he had to get off – that his stop was a long time ago and he’d have to take the next train back to his destination.

We said goodbye and I folded up the paper and put it in my purse. I don’t think that I’ll contact him to plan a practical joke on his friend, but if I ever write his worm comic, I think I will drop him a line. He’ll want to know how it ended, I’m sure.

Additional notes from standing in line yesterday for the con registration:

Regarding the tremendous number of people slowly walking in the line toward registration, Ben quipped: “Just shows you that people will do anything if you tell them Mark Hamill will be there.” (I don’t think Mark Hamill will be there, but you get the point)

There were several people standing on the roof of a parking garage overlooking the south end of the convention center. Two guys were standing on the ledge (much to the dismay of their mothers*, I’m sure), clearly enjoying the gasps and finger-pointing from the crowd below. One of them was wearing a Batman costume. I wanted to scream “Fly, fatass, fly!” but I didn’t want people to, you know, think I was a geek or anything.

*Ben says the guys were probably our age, but still.

(I’ll have to update my stories with photos later tonight… it’s time to head out for day #1!)

[Edit: I added the photo, and must admit that my camera has better vision than my eyesight. The kid on the right is wearing a black cap and black clothes, not a Batman costume as I saw with my "corrected" astigmatism.]

It’s been a long day, and the next few days will probably be filled with more excitement… but I want to make sure to write a couple thoughts about today before they blend into everything else.

Ben and I went to bed late, then got up at 5am and made it to the airport in plenty of time for our 8:30 flight. Well, plenty of time on my clock, and not enough on Ben’s. We’ve learned to compromise over the years on that. The flight was oversold, and we nearly got free tickets and first class seats on the next flight… but some retards never checked in so we got on our scheduled flight and arrived in San Diego without incident.

We left Utah’s sunny, dry, 90+ degree heat and arrived to experience San Diego at a very pleasant low-70s with a fair amount of humidity. And palm trees! It warmed up a little during the day, but cooled off to the point of needed a light sweater in the evening.

At the airport, it was obvious that some people were coming to town for the Comic Con. Geeky T-shirts, overheard conversations, empty plastic poster tubes, etc. One guy was wearing a geeky black t-shirt (I don’t remember exactly what it was, something with orange flames) and was wearing a real top hat!

We had to wait an annoyingly long time to get into our hotel room, so we stashed our luggage at the hotel and stalled by eating a mediocre brunch at the nearby Denny’s. After our food arrived we basically zoned in and out of consciousness and every other statement to each other was “Sorry, I just zoned out there for a minute.” We camped out in the lobby for another hour after that, where Ben popped open his laptop to help him stay awake and I passed out in about three seconds on his shoulder. I figure there’s nothing like a snoring, travel-weary loiterer spread out in a hotel lobby to make the hotel clerks want to put me into a room.

After we finally were given keys to our room, and then missed the elevators after walking right by them, the first thing we did was put down our luggage and collapse into a nap for a few hours. It felt great, though we probably could have slept for a while longer and been fine with it.

The Trolley station that looked on a map to be a quite walkable distance from the hotel turned out to be a much different experience than planned. When I’d called to ask about walking, the guy I talked to said it was kind of a boring walk through an industrial area. What he didn’t say was that we’d have to walk past a strip club and through a somewhat seedy area to get to the Trolley station. Yeah, that was fun. I made Ben cough up a couple extra bucks to take a short taxi ride from the station back to the hotel later on because I didn’t like the thought of walking that in the dark. I’m just a baby from a small town, I guess, but sometimes it’s worth 6 bucks to trust your instincts. We’ll walk the same way tomorrow during the day and play it by ear at night, I guess.

My eyes are drooping and I haven’t even gotten to the Comic Con Preview Night exclusive to 4-day pass holders part yet!

We had to walk a good distance to get to the convention center from the Santa Fe Depot station because we decided to walk instead of dealing with transferring trolleys. A different guy told us it was only a half mile walk, but I would say more like a mile and a half. Anyway, it was a nice walk and we seemed to pick up other pedestrians heading to the con as we walked along.

The lines outside the hall were really long for Preview Night. And when I say really long, I mean OMFG ARE YOU KIDDING ME THIS IS JUST FOR EARLY REGISTRATION?!? We arrived at the north end of the convention center and headed toward attendee registration on the middle/south side. The line going inside seemed to be moving at a good pace, so we happily went to look for the end of the line. We became less happy as we followed the line to 3/4 AROUND THE BACK OF THE ENORMOUSLY HUGE CONVENTION CENTER. I have never been in that long of a line, though I have to give them credit because for as long as it was, it moved pretty quickly. And when we finally made it to the front doors, we kept following the line… up the escalators, down the hall, outside across a patio, into the actual registration hall where we were herded into aisles with Actual! People! Dispensing! Badges!

The totally awesome thing about registration is that even though Ben only had Thursday/Friday 1-day passes, the girl who printed out my 4-day pass also printed out his. We thought Ben was going to have to wait in line again, but he got really lucky! And even better, we had to get his colored badge holders from a little side booth, and the woman there gave him a sticker to wear that would allow him into the convention hall on preview night with me! So I got to walk around a lot more with him there (instead of waiting outside) and he won’t have to wait in that godawful line tomorrow to get in.

The convention hall: it’s about 3 times the size of all the other conventions I’ve been to put together. There’s so much to see that I’m going to have a hard time seeing everything and attending the panels I want to attend in the next few days. The place was packed with people fighting for the booth freebies and I could have done with a little more personal space. Hopefully that will be available in the hall as attendees are not all in hall because of panels, film festivals, various eating schedules, etc. Excitement was pretty mega-high throughout the place.

I’ve narrowed the number of panels I want to try to get into tomorrow to five. I’m guessing that I’ll be hard-pressed to actually make it to two, given the amount of time I’d likely have to devote to waiting in line beforehand. We’ll have to see on that.

I need to get some rest tonight… the next few days are going to be very busy and I’d like to have some relaxation time fit into the schedule as well!

With the discovery of some ice on Mars and all the potentially earth-like planets being discovered, somebody better start building a Battlestar with FTL capabilities.

(I’m hoping to score at least a sighting of the Battlestar Galactica cast this weekend at Comic Con.)