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.
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!
