Comic Con, Day 3: Welcome to Hotel California

Ricky got up at 5 am this morning, out the door by 6. I slept in until 7. These mornings give me a chance to blog, but I know I have to be out of the hotel by 8 am or before. I have to go pick up sandwiches for the both of us, and then join him in line. Right now I'm waiting for the call that tells me where he is. We always hope he'll be in a place I can access later, rather than behind ropes or something like that.

On Wednesday afternoon, I had just driven the 2-hour journey from Anaheim to San Diego, and pulled in to the Hilton. I was very happy I made it safely and on time, beating Ricky by at least 30 minutes or more. I was chatting with the bellman who was helping me with my luggage when I learned from the desk clerk that all the two-bed rooms were gone. Impossible, I said.

I booked a year in advance. I'm one of the Hilton Honors faithful. She sympathized but repeated: they were all out. She then said they had a few of the roll-away beds left, and she could order one for me. At an extra $20 a night. I was seething.

But I realized there was nothing I could do. When I got into the room, I checked my original reservation, and, sure enough, there is no reservation for a room type. Just a room. The number of beds, etc., would be "determined at check-in." I then suddenly remembered that conversation that I had had with the reservations clerk about the same subject...a year ago.

The Hilton is a very simple hotel, very few amenities. I don't like their restaurant. But they have one thing I need: location. They're right across the street from the convention center, so it's very convenient at the end of a long day. And I've been staying here three years in a row. That relationship is now over.

I can honestly say, though, that the weather has certainly cooperated. Except for the first day in line, when the sun came out early and beat down on us, it's been cool in the mornings and overcast, and then the sun has come out later and is present when we leave the convention. San Diego consistent.

Well, I'm getting ready for Ricky's phone call. I'll check in later. We're doing Hall H again, but I plan to leave before 2 to see if I can get those elusive Watchmen t-shirts.

Comic Con, Day 2: The Watchmen Cometh

We got in line this morning a bit earlier today, after Thursday's miscue. We didn't get to sit where we wanted to, and...

Okay, change that script to "Ricky got in line..." and "We didn't get to sit where Ricky wanted to..." I don't want to get in line that early because I don't care, really, where we sit. There are huge screens all around, and that's what I watch. I do like to sit on the aisle, however.

First up was what most of the people wanted to see: Watchmen, Zack Snyder's new film based on the graphic novel. We've been waiting to see this film ever since 300. That means I've had two years or so to catch up and prepare. But I haven't. The movie is something about some misfit heroes who have strange powers. And they get depressed a lot.

The most interesting of these characters is called Rorschach, played by Jackie Earle Haley, an actor who was just incredible in Little Children. I don't know what his power is, but Rorschach's face constantly changes, or at least the splotches do. It's like interactive measles. The footage Zack put out there for us was visually stunning. No dialogue, but a brief look at each of the 7 or so characters in this. To my surprise, I recognized some of the actors as they filed out on stage: Billy Crudup, Carla Gugino (again), and Matthew Goode, as well as those I didn't recognize: Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Patrick Wilson. Oh, and one other woman who played the same character that Carla plays. Same name, but I think they're mother and daughter.

Anyway, I am really looking forward to seeing this one. It comes out in March 2009. I know it'll be dark, but I'm hoping the bright colors will revive me.

After that, we had Trailer Park, and saw trailers for the following films (with a wanna see or don't wanna see after each name):
Scorpion King 2 - NO
X-Files: I Want to Believe - YES
Quarantine - NO
The Rocker - NO (Rainn Wilson looks awfully funny in this, however...)
The Librarian - NO
Lost Boys: The Tribe - NO
Taken (Liam Neeson) - NO...well, maybe.
Hamlet 2 - Maybe - looks like a funny movie
Body of Lies (Russell Crowe, Ridley Scott directs) - NO
Mirrors (Kiefer Sutherland) - NO
Babylon A.D. (Vin Diesel) - YES
Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller et al.) - NO, but I may see this just for Robert Downey, Jr.
Star Wars: Clone Wars - YES
(Rick said during the screening, "It's so fake." I answered, "Of course it's fake! It's animation!" The girls in front of us laughed.)
Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond film - YES
Pineapple Express - NO
Step Brothers - NO
The Mummy - NO
Twilight (that vampire movie) - Maybe
Terminator Salvation (T3.5) - YES
Watchmen - YES

Next up we had a remake of The Wolfman? Why, you ask? Because Rick Baker was willing to do it. Rick is the award-winning special effects artist who has done wolves, etc., before (American Werewolf in London). And Benicia del Toro was willing to play the old Lon Chaney, Jr. part. Looks promising, although our footage did not include transformational scenes. Rick said about his process: "It's not all that different than what Jack Pierce did in the original. Not CG stuff, but a man in makeup. Stick a nose on him and glue some hair on him. Pretty old school." However, he did admit they'll probably go to CG for the transformation from man to wolf.


The Spirit, the long-awaited rendition of Will Eisner's work from long ago, is in Frank Miller's hands. Frank is a new director, having co-directed Sin City with Robert Rodriguez, but knows visually what he wants. Much of the cast was there with him: Samuel L. Jackson as Octopus, the villain, and Jaime King as Lorelei. In my opinion, after a good look at two long trailers, this one won't come close to the brilliance of Sin City, but does have the same interesting artistic approach (read: blue screen). I may see it.

We had dinner tonight at our same old place, Lou & Mickey's, and plotted the next day as we do every night. It's even earlier for us, a 5 am wake-up call with a 6 am line-up. Oops, change that to: Rick gets up at 5 am, gets in line by 6. Linda brings up the rear, gets the sandwiches, and brings them over to the line. When it suits her.

Comic Con, Day 2: It's Purely Physical

I left Hall H at about 4:30 pm, after sitting there for almost 7 hours. I went directly over to the Warner Bros booth, trying to turn in the ticket voucher for a gift representing the new Watchmen movie, only to find out they had run out. "Try back tomorrow," she said rather nicely. She must get tired of saying that to the 5,000 people who didn't get their t-shirt.

It's dog-eat-dog in that convention hall, or rather Stormtrooper-eat-Pikachu. Thursday night, before we went back to the hotel, we took our usual tour for freebies. I saw dozens of people hanging out at the Sci Fi booth, but really didn't know why. (Three years ago, it would've been for Farscape autographs. No more.) Nothing was happening there at all. I wandered by the Warner Bros. booth -- on one side it had a high-topped shelf where the women helpers would lead over and hand you something .... or not. In this case, they had dozens of posters, from Transformers to G.I. Joe to the new James Bond movie. I couldn't get over to the other side to grab what was sitting there on the shelf, so I had to squeeze and, pardon me, shove the mostly women in front of me who refused to move, waiting instead to see if the helpers were going to hand them something new.

I am sporting a rather large bruise on my right arm that I picked up on preview night. Yeah, the shoving started then. I'm not intimidated by that. Strangely enough, mostly it comes from women who feel (I guess) they're going to be bowled over by the young geeks running over to get that one last collectible. The men don't seem to notice. It does get tiring. I can only take it for so long.

I did wander by the Sci Fi Channel booth on my way out, saw that a feeding frenzy was taking place, and dove in. It was a Ghost Hunter's bobblehead. And I got one.

I'm putting that on eBay tonight. I'm disappointed, though, that I didn't get the Watchmen shirt. I saw what it looks like on eBay because somebody else put it up for auction. We'll try again tomorrow.

Comic Con, 1st Day: Bring in the Aussies!

I was waiting in the Hall H line with Ricky no more than 10 minutes when I became aware that I had to find a bathroom. I left him and went all the way over to "E" in the main convention center, but they wouldn't let me in. No matter of persuasian would convince them that a humane thing to do was to let me temporarily in to use just one of the entire bank of restrooms they had available inside.
So I went across to the Hilton, back to our room, and waited another hour before rejoining Rick. By that time, the line had started to move.

They let us into Hall H at 9:30, still a good two hours before programming started. As we walked in, they handed us each a "Klaatu Borada Nikto" t-shirt, obviously a promo for The Day the Earth Stood Still, the new movie coming out starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly.
Keanu plays Klaatu, Jennifer an astrophysicist, and Gort will definitely be in it. They showed some really nice dramatic trailers, but no sign of what Gort is going to look like. Why TDTESS? Direcctor Scott Erickson had met Robert Wise as a film student, and told him at that time that TDTESS was one of his favorite Wise films.

Next up, we had a promo panel for the movie Max Payne, starring Mark Wahlberg. Mark, Mila Kunis (from That 70's Show), and Ludacris (going by his real name) showed up for the panel. The movie is based on the popular video game, a game I never heard of. However, Ricky tells me that Brandon has been calling him, bugging him for news about Max Payne. So it must be popular. Wahlberg commented that the movie website gets "6,000 hits a day," so buzz is positive. The footage looks spectacular for a shoot-em-up.

After that, a surprise visit: "I just got off Qantas, direct from Australia, because I wanted to come back to Comic Con and show you guys footage from Wolverine!" announced Hugh Jackman. His hair long and his beard scruffy, he boomed his enthusiastic message over to us. He got his start at Comic Con in promoting the X-Men, and he knew where to come for this latest venture. The footage from X-Men Origins: Wolverine looks intense and fantastic. At one moment, Hugh jumped off stage and ran over to the side, saying, "I just have to shake the hand of the guy who jumpstarted my career!" The Wolverine comic creator was who he was talking about.


He was only on stage about 15 minutes, which, due to the fact that the high-strung curtains in back began falling on people, delayed the presentations by about 45 minutes. However, they soon caught up, mostly. Many of the directors or producers seemed to be Australian, which I found kind of interesting. Certainly none of them had San Diego accents.

Next was Summit Entertainment, and it was their first visit to Comic Con. Push was their first movie for us, starring Chris Evans. It's about people walking among us with psychic powers, and the footage was jarring and graphic. Dakota Fanning, who showed up later after being stuck in traffic between San Diego and L.A. for 7 hours, gushed about how much we'd like the film. It doesn't look like an easy film to take, but it expands the mythology in interesting ways, and I think I'll take a look.

Knowing is another movie with psychic interpretation, starring Nicolas Cage. Nic couldn't come this time to promote the film. But the footage. which involves a time capsule from a school unearthing numbers that can predict future disasters, looked interesting if not compelling.

The next film, however, seems to be what everybody that day was standing in line for, a film we've never heard of: Twilight. Apparently there are best-selling novels out about this continuing love story between a vampire man and human woman. The author, Stephenie Meyer, was there, along with the director and most of the main cast. I didn't recognize any of the cast except for the guy who plays "Edward," Robert Pattinson, who played Cedric in the Harry Potter films. A lot of the interest was for him as well as his vampire nemesis, played by Cam Gigandet. Both Gigandet and Pattinson were fairly inarticulate, with gutteral sounds passing for speech. The screaming girls in the audience didn't seem to mind.

Footage for Twilight seems to feature some rather well-filmed fight scenes. Picture really powerful people going at it in mortal settings. This little film looks to be very popular.

After Twilight, we had the stars from Escape to Witch Mountain, Dwayne Johnson and Carla Gugino, appear with their director to promote the film. This is "not a sequel, but 30 years later." The Rock was terribly funny in anything he said. A very articulate man, I find him really hysterically funny. In spite of the talents of the Rock and Carla Gugino, this movie's trailer didn't show much that was intriguing at all.

Right when we were about to take off to register for next year and cruise the convention center dealer's room, they squeezed in another treat: a trailer for the new TRON movie. Wow! Everybody went wild with applause when the film showed Jeff Bridges. He was in the first movie, so many years ago. As Ricky said later, however, it still looks like the same boring film, people moving in a straight line across a grid. Yeah, but with fast-moving motorcycles this time.

Comic Con - 1st Day, Thursday

One has to sacrifice for art. We got up at 5:45 this morning to get ready to get in line for the first day of Comic Con. It may not be our art, but it's gotta be somebody's.

Last night was interesting. Comic Con has completely sold out, meaning that all 125,000 people -- mostly geeks -- are expected over the next 4 days. At least, oh, 90,000 are four-day pass people, which means that we saw them all last night at Preview night.

Registration last night was a breeze. It opened at 3 pm, we showed up around 4 pm, and then got our badges, a process that took less than 30 minutes. We then retreated to Lou and Mickey's, the restaurant across the street, for a leisurely view of our program.

I then asked Ricky, what's the game plan? When are we standing in line tomorrow. We're going to Hall H for all day tomorrow, as that's where the major movie and T.V. programming is. But he couldn't tell me when. He said, ominously, "I'll know when I see the crowds" at Preview Night. Ooooh.

Keanu Reeves will be there, promoting The Day the Earth Stood Still. Klaatu Borada Nicto. Jennifer Connelly is also there, playing the Patricia Neal part. Max Pain movie will be promoted - some video game - Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis will be there. The movie Push will also be promoted - Chris Evans. And Disney's Race to Witch Mountain, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will be there.

Well, we could barely walk along the floor of the convention hall. We went from booth to booth, hitting all the major studios like Warners, Disney, New Line, Sony, Paramount, Fox, NBC, Family, Sci Fi Channel, LucasFilm, ABC, Marvel -- most of which gave out freebies. If you don't know, I take the more lucrative and promising freebies and put them on eBay.

We found giveaway sacks that were larger than our Comic Con ones, and immediately went about stuffing them with toys, pamphlets, books, posters, trading cards, anything that hawkers gave us. And then we all brought it back to the room and sorted it out.

I now have 12 auctions on eBay, two of which have bidders.

Today we hope the major studios will give away neat SWAG....which I will bring back to the room and put on eBay tonight.

I doubt we'll get to the dominoes set I brought along.


This morning we went over to the little liquor store across the alley from the Hilton. We had scoped it out last night to inquire about hours and sandwiches available. We ordered our sandwiches this morning, and I gave her 14 ones. "Thank you," she gushed. "You're the best."

Now we get in line for Hall H. The main convention center opens at 9:30, but that's not for us: we're waiting for programming that starts at 11:30. Whew.

Toy Story Midway Mania

I walked 5 miles today. I’m kind of surprised at that. I’m betting most of it was to get back to Toy Story Midway Mania.

And that’s where I headed once I checked into The Desert Inn & Suites. I finished his sentence when he started into “and your room is way in the back.” I know.

But I was able to get into California Adventure by 3 pm, and start singing to the California songs as I made my way, a long way, to the area of the park that boasted roller coasters. I found the line and got into it. I was pleased that, since it was over 80 degrees in Anaheim today, only about 10 minutes of the line was in the sun. About 20 minutes after that was under umbrellas that had been put up, and then I made it into the line protected by the structure itself. 40 minutes all together.

I took several photos of Mr. Potato Head, as voiced by Don Rickles, as I went by. Mr. Potato Head is constructed so that he can interact with the crowd. Very little of that, however, was going on. He said something pointedly to a boy, but there was no boy in front of him at the moment. And I never saw him remove his ear, which I understand is one amazing trick.

However, the line moves swiftly, and you spend less than 5 minutes in front of the big potato. The line moves right on. Before the final turn, the line goes by the 3D glasses, and invites you to take one. The children in line seemed to wonder why they were there, and the wait was torture for them. The teenagers looked bored, but seemed to believe there was pay dirt at the end.

The carts have two people in front, and two in back. I got in and they put someone in beside me. As it turned out, she has done this once before, she told me in our short chat before it got too loud. She pointed to the two younger boys she was with; whomever got the lowest score, she explained, had to buy dessert tonight.

We faced five different targets. I would guess that the ride is 10 minutes, but I really have no idea. It does seem reasonable that we spent two minutes on each target, but it may very well have been less. The cannon was operated by pulling a string, and I loved that. It didn’t bother my trigger thumb at all. The idea is that you’re supposed to let the string completely retract before you fire again. I found this happened very quickly, though, and learned that I could fire rather quickly. Each time I exited the ride, I was huffing and puffing from exertion.


I could have done without the whirling of the cart, however. I guess it’s necessary to get to the targets. What comes out of the cannon (as Dawn asked me later)? It depends on the game. Sometimes it’s a small pellet. Sometimes a large ball. Once it was rings, three-dimensional rings coming out of a red cannon as I tried to wrestle aliens with them. It was amazing.

Every target has a score on it, and you obviously shoot for the larger-scored targets. Forget 500. Wait for the 1,000 and sometimes even 2,000. And sometimes the items float above. My projectile might graze them but not explode them.

The most fun was hitting the dishes and breaking them. I think that’s the one where the game squirts water at us. It didn’t deter me.

Oh, the young woman who rode in my cart told me there’s a singles line. I found it, and for the next two times, that line cut my wait time in half. And she had the highest score, so she’s feasting on a churro tonight.

I would have held out for a sundae, personally.

Henry Robinson Lunches - One Last Time

This time went a lot better, a lot faster, a lot more stream-lined. Using Ruth's long table really helped a lot, and the issue we thought we had re: loading the lunches into the cars wasn't that much of a problem.

The table took 8 columns of 15 rows of bread quite well. We then loaded the turkey, topped the sandwiches with another slice of bread, then loaded them into plastic bags. Then we started putting the cardboard boxes/trays on the table and putting the paper bags in those. That little aforethought really saved some effort, I think; having the trays there made everything else so easy: loading, counting, loading them into the cars.

And using clementines (tangerines) rather than plums meant I didn't have to wash them. And the bags weren't as fragile. Then, one bag of chips, one bag of fruit snack, topped with a napkin after I checked to see if every bag had everything in it. There were no mistakes (not like last time).

Ruth arrived a good 10 minutes after I did, timing which actually worked well. I took my lunches in and waited for her. I used the loading zone, and she parked 2 cars back from me. We had no one to take the lunches into the center this time, so I took all 14, one by one.

We treated ourselves by having a nice, slow dinner at The Fat Lady a mile over on Washington. The irony wasn't lost on us.