| COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON IV: The Journey to the Hotel |
[Jul. 20th, 2005|09:08 pm] |
Saturday:
Crowded. Nerds packed in eyeball to unwashed eyeball and that was pretty much just on the trolley. One stop before the convention center, Mitsugi (Alex) and I ran into Aeire (Aeire). Turns out we were all headed to the same place (along with nearly everybody else) at the con, Hall H. Hall H featured Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon and the cast of Firefly and Tenacious D as a final attraction. I wanted to go to all of those, but I had decided to skip the Firefly panel in order to go support Sid at The Devil’s Rejects panel. When we got to the con, it was overflowing with nerds of every description, I contacted my man on the inside (of Hall H), Interociter (Ben) and asked him to save us seats. Aeire needed to meet some of her fellow Keenspotters at their booth, so I tagged along for a bit. Glancing over at the Dumbrella booth, I noticed Jon Rosenberg and decided to get some stuff for my friend Matt. Matt has, over the years, given me some really hard to find stuff. Most of the original Dragonlance modules, Death Duel with the Destroyers (something Bill Willingham isn’t particularly proud of, apparently), a ton of Hellblazer comics and some limited edition Arkham House books. I made a start on reciprocity by getting him the first 3 Goats trades personalized by Jon Rosenberg. At about 11 we started to get antsy and headed over to Hall H to meet Interociter. Unfortunately, due to some miscommunication, he was not in fact in Hall H at the time. We did get in, and we even got seats, but in order to do so we had to sit through the Aeon Flux panel. Charlize Theron was cool, and Skyeknight (I don’t know that we actually met) from the Forums knows the director (?) of the film, but I just wasn’t interested in the movie. Aeire, however, was kind enough to draw me a sketch even though I’d run out of sammitches.
Kevin Smith was just as funny as he is in the An Evening with Kevin Smith DVD and tied with Bruce Campbell for my favorite panel at the con. During Q&A, one of the audience members asked him about the flack he was getting from some Christian groups because his next film is subtitled The Passion of the Clerk. He responded that the movie has nothing to do with Jesus; he just liked the sound of the subtitle. He went on to say that if he was going to do a parody, it would have gone a little something like this-
Kevin: “I’d start off with Jesus getting crucified, right? And the Roman soldiers would be playing dice for his stuff, like the bible says. Then, two ninjas appear! They run down to the cross, one of ‘em cuts Jesus down and the other one fights off the Romans. (pause for laughs). Then the ninjas take off their hood and its Jay and Silent Bob. (pause for laughs). That’ll be from the Book of Kev.”
I had to leave during the tail end of his panel in order to cross the length of the con for The Devil’s Rejects, but I did hear that he’ll be in Southland Tales directed by the guy that did Donnie Darko. I got to room 5AB slightly early and caught the last few minutes of the speed drawing panel. Sergio Aragones is almost superhumanly fast when it comes to sketching. The Devil’s Rejects panel was something of a disappointment, they were crowded for time and just did Q&A. Most of the questions had nothing to do with the movie and instead focused on aspects of Rob Zombie’s career. Many of the questions were asked by disturbingly young people. Rob even asked one how it was that she knew about the movie. I asked about the link to Groucho Marx (Captain Spaulding and S. Quentin Quayle are in House of 1000 Corpses) and was told that it was explained in The Devil’s Rejects.
I had just enough time to get to Webcomics 102, again hosted by Kurtz (Kurtz) and Airsick Moth (Kristopher). This was another informative and entertaining panel, thankfully with less of the crazy (although Morrigan [Athena] did call Kurtz a hack). I learned that the best way to build my audience is to strip up controversy with another, more popular webcomic; hopefully the other webcomic will then link to my site and I’ll gain readership. Moth is slightly reticent about pimping his stuff, so I’ll do it for him. Starshift Crisis and Checkerboard Nightmare are both found at www.blanklablecomics.com. Afterwards I wandered around looking for pocky and waiting for Interociter, Ralph and Dylan to come out of the Tenacious D concert. Aformist (Kas) and a number of others went to go get sushi, that sounded good, but I had to wait until seven. I asked Logan (Jason) if he wanted some sushi, and he did, but he’d gotten invited to eat with a bunch of other webcartoonists (he checked with Kurtz to see if I could come, but they were talking business). Right about then I noticed that he’d gotten a Jeph Jacques sketch. Jeph is the guy that does Questionable Content; Logan and I are both fans and we’d looked for him, unsuccessfully, earlier in the week. So I went over to get something and while I was trying to decide on a t-shirt (I got Bron a baby tee that has “Irony” on it, possibly saving my marriage by not getting the “These tits are more indy than yours” t-shirt), Jeph offered to draw me a sketch, which I thought was pretty damn cool.
I headed over to the sushi place, and read Ultra by the Yuna Brothers. It’s a good book; pick it up if you have the chance. Dylan showed up and we went to meet most everybody else at Hennessey’s. We spent some time there relaxing until Ralph and Lenny caught up; Dylan, Interociter, myself and the other two tried to keep the party going, but we were falling asleep at the next bar we went to. Ben agreed to give me a ride home and to stop in to say hi to any other Forumites at the Homestead.
Originally, Aeire had planned a party at her place, but she got tickets to a screening of Serenity (btw, Ben Edlund, the man behind The Tick was an executive producer on Firefly.), and wouldn’t be home until midnight. She graciously left the invitation to her house open, but most of us declined because we felt a little weird about being at her place when she wasn’t there. Then when I met Aformist at The Octopus Garden, he told me that a couple of people had gone back to the Homestead to watch a movie. Cubby (Travis) posted in the main Comic-Con thread about the super secret party; well, it was in my room and I didn’t know about it until I got there. There were maybe 15-20 people in my room watching Higher Functions, the zombie flick that the Texas crew made awhile back. And Logan broke my toilet.
To be fair, we’d been having problems all week. The toilet was on perma-flush and at first you could get it to stop by lifting up the floater, you’d feel a click and then the terrible flushing would stop. As the week progressed, however, the joint weakened until I had unscrewed the floater partially in order to jam it against the side of the toilet tank at a level that stopped the flushing. Logan went in to do his bidness and asked one of the guys how to stop the flushing afterwards. They told him and when he went back to lift up the floater, the plastic joint, already weakened by my efforts at jury-rigging, broke off in his hand. The toilet was unfixable without new parts at that point, but since it was Sunday morning, I let it go. |
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