I can feel my feet!
(Iron Man statue from the Marvel booth at Comic-Con)
Sigh. I have been having several issues with the
video on the site as well as some RapidWeaver
crashes, which are kind of driving me nuts. I hate
having to retype stuff!!! ARGH!
Anyway, I'm back in LA after what was a great time in
San Diego for this year's Comic-Con. Though we were
there for longer than last year, this year's show
seemed to go by much more quickly. It was a strange
show, in a way; there were not "super announcements"
that drove the show forward (though there were plenty
of announcements and news). It was kind of an odd
show and I can't really put my finger on what made it
different. I never really felt relaxed, that's for
sure, and even when I was in panels I was enjoying, I
couldn't help but feel I was missing out on something
else. Still, it was a blast. Comic-Con is by far one
of my favorite events of the year and I am already
looking foward to next year's. Kinda.
I won't attempt to give a broad overview of the news
that came out of the con (for that sort of thing go
here, here and here). This was the first show that
I caught one of the bigger panels; usually I show
I up for them and they are completely sold out,
but this time I was able to drag myself out of bed
and get to the Con early enough to spend most of
the day in Ballroom 20, where the highly
anticipated Heroes and Battlestar Galactica talks
were. Both were fairly cool; I mean, it's cool and
all to see the creators of the shows and to see
the actors, but I must admit that I always get a
little squirmy when I go to these things. As an
actor who is working very hard to get on shows
like these, part of me is resistant to hanging out
in a room full of adoring fans to hear what people
who technically my colleagues have to say about
what is admittedly a fantastic gig. But then
again, I am a fan and I enjoy hearing their
stories and I appreciate the time they take to sit
down and take questions from their fans and all
that. It's just odd. I go back and forth,
though--I really love both of these shows and I
also happen to think that the casts of these shows
are absolutely fantastic. Indeed, both shows have
some of the best acting on TV, period, so it's a
good thing for me to hear what they think about
the jobs, what the challenges are and what their
hopes are for the future of the shows (and their
careers). In the end, I guess, I just wanna be up
there, too! Which is good--you should know what
you want from life, right? Once you define it, you
can obtain it. So, next year, I'll have a photo
the opposite of this one:
Where I am looking at the audience from the table
(one of the Heroes guys actually took a
picture like that, I think it was Greg Grunberg.)
So I spent most of Saturday near Ballroom 20, which
was fun, but I hate waiting in line, which I did all
morning, so it sucked a bit, too. Long story short, I
basically got there at 9 and waited over 2.5 hours to
get into the hall, which holds almost 2000 people).
At one point the line actually lapped
itself, so there was another line that started right
near us (were were very close to the door,
thankfully) that wrapped all the way around the
hall. The organizers basically told them the
line was closed a short time later. Insane. They have
a hall there that can hold 6,000 people--they should
have used that hall for these two presentations.
Backing up a bit, Whit and I had a really good time
on Friday. Very soon after Whit and I arrived, we
ended up watching a taping of the iFanboy
podcast, where I actually ended up
participating in during the Q&A session. Sadly, the audio
didn't work out, but it was fun nonetheless.
Later, after attending one of the DC panels, we
ended up at the iFanboy/Totally Rad Show party that
night, which was a lot of fun, followed by a
staggering walk down to the Hyatt with a few
friends, including Jonathan London (from the very
good Geekscape podcast), who is a
total crack up. Really fun night, but whew,
Saturday was ro-ugh.
Back to Saturday...we actually ended up going home
for a disco nap before arriving at the PopCandy party
that night, which was super fun (if way too small and
way too hot with way too little air).
Why so fun? Well, we were finally able to hang out a
bit with the always-fantastic friend James Sime, whom I have known
for many, many years as the owner of the greatest
comics store on the planet, Isotope. I've known James since
he bought the old Comics and Da'Kiine, which was
one of my old shops when I was a kid in San
Francisco. James was actually one of the Eisner Award judges this year,
which was super, super cool. James is really one
of the most inspirationally cool cats you can hang
out with; he is one of those guys that just
contributes so much to the whole comic book scene.
I will go on and on about him sometime later,
suffice to say, I am a big fan of his and feel
very lucky to watch him work so hard and be so
successful. So cool.
Of course, I spent much of my time with the iFanboy
guys, which was a lot of fun, as always, as well as
Ash (Asche??), talking about the show and comics. I
actually don't get a chance to talk about comics with
that many people, so I really, really love that
aspect of the show. I also had a great time chatting
with Alex Albrecht from Revision3's Diggnation and The Totally Rad Show. I'm a big
fan of Diggnation from waaay back (I watched the
first 4 or 5 episodes back to back armed with a 6
pack of beer while I put up a ceiling fan in our
bedroom. Whit came in at one point to see who I
was talking to and why I was laughing so loud--and
yes, the fan works fine), and it was fun to
finally meet Alex, who is also an actor in LA with
a background in technology and all things somewhat
geeky. It was great to talk to him about his show
and what he is up to. In a very real way, I was
more stoked to talk with Alex about all this stuff
than I was to see the cast of Heroes, I
must admit.
This entry's getting a little long so I will end it
here, but I will scrap up some more stories tomorrow.
I've posted a few of our photos here and will discuss some of
the comic and movie news over the next few days!
See ya!
Oh, and finally, I am trying out the Twitter thing for awhile. It
was really, really useful during the Con but we
shall see if it matters the rest of the time...
comic-con update
(photo ©2007
Oliver Siodmak)
Hey there...really
quickly...I am at Comic-Con in San Diego and so far,
it's been awesome. We're just getting up from a disco
nap before we head down for the Saturday night
throwdowns. Spent most of the day either in line or
in some pretty crazy panels (2,000 people in a room
for both Battlestar Galactica and
Heroes talks). The show is just getting
bigger and bigger. It's fun, though; we hung out with
the iFanboys last night and are looking
to meet up with them later tonight.
Still, I can't help but think I blew it by not coming
in earlier. There were tons of talks that I wanted to
check out on Thursday, but I was so busy I never
actually looked at the schedule before getting it
when I arrived yesterday. Now I just wanna run back
to the show, check out the floor, and meet up with
folks. We've been very bad about taking pictures but
we'll talk a bunch tomorrow. I am already sad it's
close to over, which is ridiculous.
Okay, time to wake Whitney up. Latro!