fubar with postwar miracles

Voila.



We had a fine time, but boy, was it crowded this year...almost 140,000 people according to some accounts. We couldn't get into either one of the Galactica panels for the crowds, but that was okay, because we met Edward James Olmos, Michael Hogan and James Callis!! They were at the autographed photo booth/tables right next to the Star Wars Pavilion. The boy and I were poking around looking at Star Wars stuff, and I saw James Callis and Michael Hogan sitting there signing and talking with fans, and after a minute of "omg...no way" I looked at who was sitting on the other side of Michael Hogan, and there was Edward James Olmos. !!! He was standing there at his table, and there was about a 5-foot radius of empty space in a semi-circle around him, and beyond that empty space a throng of fans standing there staring at him in a mixture of shock and respectful silence. Kind of surreal for Comic-Con. And he says something along the lines of, "Don't just stand there - come over and say hello." Well. The Admiral has spoken. The crowd started to wake up out of it's spell, and one by one, people start going up and shaking his hand. He was so awesome - he listened to me fangirl all over him about how much I loved BSG and how it broke my little heart every week, and then he made a big deal over the boy and shook his hand too. Then we said hello to Michael Hogan and James Callis too, and the boy got the singular thrill of watching his mom dissolve into squee in public. Ahahaha...aha.

Panels we did see:
- Burn Notice and Psych, which filled Ballroom 20, much to my surprise. I knew Psych had a fandom, but I didn't know it was big enough to fill the second biggest panel room in the joint. The Burn Notice panel had Bruce Campbell, and it was pretty clear that many of the folks in the room at least started watching because of him. Somebody asked if his character was going to get to kick anyone's ass next season, and he got up, walked to the front of the stage, and gave the guy a dollar. XD But again, they filled the room, so I guess neither of those shows has to worry about being canceled due to lack of interest any time soon.

- Mythbusters, with all of them except Kari, who Adam said had her baby just recently. We got in line almost two hours ahead of time for that one, and I'm glad we did, even though we did end up having to sit through a lot of the Vampire Diaries panel that was on before...which showed the pilot episode...so, the boy and I sat through well over half of a teenage vampire soap opera to see the Mythbusters. That's dedication, is what that is. They didn't give away too much about next season, but it's fun to listen to them talk about what they do on the show and how they draw the line between hard science and scientific method.
p.s. - Vampire Diaries was terrible. I'm just sayin'.

- Part of The Simpsons, during which some nice man from The Guinness Book gave Matt Groening an award for breaking, like, every teevee-related world record ever set. We missed the Futurama part of the panel, though, which was quite a bummer. Long line for Ballroom 20 is long, in a spectacularly crazy way.

- V, a panel that also showed the pilot episode. But this one was actually pretty good. Not spectacular, but not bad, either. It could have allowed the plot to develop a little more slowly and it wasn't as "omfrakkin'g" as the Battlestar miniseries, but it showed a decent amount of potential. I liked it. Of course, I may be predisposed, because I loved the original series like crazy when I was a kid, and odds were that I was going to watch it anyway, but I was glad to see that it wouldn't be a total "omg they raped my childhood" type of thing.

- Clone Wars, where the director talked a lot about the visual process for the show. Interesting.

- Star Wars Fan Film Awards, one of the boy's perennial favorites. Could have happily done without the obnoxious chick from G4, though.

- Star Wars Spectacular, which...wasn't. Maybe some of you caught the live feed on G4. It was disappointing. Mostly because of the obnoxious chick from G4 and her dork-ass boytoy. I heard one of the guys on the Force-Cast compare the two of them to one of those awkward and unfunny 'comedy' bits that they do at the Oscars that drag on for uncomfortably interminable minutes and never generate a laugh. Only it went on for an hour and a half. And for all the two of them claimed to be omghuge Star Wars fans, they knew frakkin' nothing. Dave Filoni, the director of the Clone Wars series, dropped about a thousand hints that the next season would feature both Mandalorians AND young Boba Fett, and neither one of these two intrepid fans/reporters picked up on any of them. Oi and d'oh. The other bummer about this panel was that I was hoping that the rumored announcement about the location and date of Celebration V would be made, and really all they announced was that there would be a Celebration V. :/ However, they did make an oblique "maybe it will be here, maybe it will be there" comment, and among the cities listed were Chicago, which I'd heard rumored before, Anaheim, and Orlando. Now, the Anaheim mention made me buh at first, because the last one here in the States was in L.A., and the pattern so far has been to not have it in the same general geographic locale as the last one. But then I thought about what Anaheim and Orlando have in common, and maybe the rumors I heard about Star Tours finally getting an upgrade are true, so maybe THAT's why they'd even have Anaheim on the list. Maybe. Or not. Anyway, it'd be super-convenient for me, so, Anaheim's a fine pick in my book. :D

Aside from the panels, we spent most of our time either walking about the Exhibit Hall, which was pretty much always crowded (seriously, I would have spent waaay more money of there had been fewer people in the Exhibit Hall), or finding a spot to sit and cosplayer-watch. The Sci-Fi Channel didn't set up a booth in the Exhibit Hall - instead, they rented a restaurant a couple of blocks down the street and outfitted it to look like Cafe Diem from Eureka. It was very cute - we didn't eat there, but we did poke our noses in and get a big purple gumball.

In spite of the crowds and the fact that my feet were sore up to my knees by Saturday afternoon, I only felt the need to cut a bitch three times, and resisted that urge every time:

1. The teenage girl with the cardboard "Free Hugs" sign who was screaming "Hug me! Hug ME! HUG ME!!!!!!" at me as we walked by. Oh honey, no. Please go get some help for that crippling need for affection before you find yourself married to a cult leader and popping out fifteen Babies for the New Dawn of Zod or something.

2. The guy walking around with a cardboard sign (the problem here may be the cardboard signs, and the fact that I am sick unto death of seeing them at cons) that said "Scream if you think Twilight ruined Comic-Con". What. Now, I am not a fan of the Twilight, but for the love of Pete. Boy, I've been coming to this con since you were in Pull-Ups, and there isn't a nerd here who doesn't think one thing or another "ruined" Comic-Con, and a fat percentage of them are going to include YOU in that category, Mr. Will-Yaoi-For-Glomps. Quit yer bitchen, punk, or get the frak out.

3. The college girl handing out "Cook Vegan" fliers on the corner in fromt of the Hard Rock Hotel who, when I politely said no thank you to her flier, snarked "You must not like animals very much, then." Well. Thank you for your hilariously erroneous assumption, but the truth is that I just happen to know people who are better vegan cooks than you are, and if I want a recipe, I'll bloody well ask them. And judging by the number of your fliers that are flowing out of yonder trash can, you must not like trees very much.



I should go to bed now... >.>;;