Geek Rush

(Standard view for most sessions – yep, this is what it looked like from my pov for three days…)

-Friday afternoon rolled into San Diego. Didn’t even unpack the luggage – walked straight from the hotel valet to the Con

-Went into a panel we didn’t care about in order to secure seats in the room for a later panel that we did care about. You do a lot of that at the Con.

An author, in defending how thick the book he wrote was, said, “I spent an entire month writing that novel. How small do you expect it to be?” I alone in the room laughed. Apparently he wasn’t joking.

-Heard the best response to the question: “How do you get your ideas?” To which an author asked back, “I’m trying to figure out how you turn your ideas off?”

-Heard Stephan Pastis (PEARLS BEFORE SWINE comic strip) give his hilarious lecture, complete with cartoons and stories from the trenches of syndication.

Best take-away – Stephan claims his writing did not become good until he stopped trying so hard. He would draw and write as fast as he could, preventing himself from over-editing his initial ideas; he just let it flow.

-Walked the exhibition hall floor. Couldn’t get within six feet of the booths sponsored by the studios. If you want to punish a claustrophobe, make them stand in the middle of the exhibition hall at the Con.

-Saw all kinds of costumes. A full family of Jedi knights, including a lightsaber holding infant in a stroller. A squadron of Predators. A full on transformer – Bumblebee. The entire Superman and Batman family of characters. A number of anime characters, a Patrick from Spongebob and a gaggle of girls wearing red cat hoods. You see a lot of stuff like that at the Con.

-Skipped out early that day, instead seeing the movie MOON. Well worth it.

-Spent Saturday morning taking an extended breakfast with friends who live in SD. Doing the Con casual this year, no need to rush.

-Stood an hour in line for a SteamPunk event. Didn’t get in despite the wait. You do a lot of that at the Con.

-Random line overheard while pushing past a mob swarming for a freebie: “I don’t know what that is – but I want one!”

-Two sessions that you can usually get into that never disappoint: Quick Draw (think improv for artists) and voice over panels.

-Got into the Ray Bradbury session. The moderator spent the first 20 minutes of the one hour session ignoring the fact that Ray was sitting next to him, instead schilling for his own projects, which had nothing to do with Bradbury.

The only entertainment was watching him scramble to come up with connections to justify using up this session for the hawking. One book was a remake of a project that was inspired by an artist that had once met Ray Bradbury. Another was a movie project that might consider casting minor roles with actors that may have at one time been in a play written by Bradbury. Sad.

-The highlight of Ray’s session: showing a clip of an interview with Mike Wallace on the night of the moon landing. The lowlight: seeing how feeble and a bit crazy the sci-fi master has become.

-Passed a lady wearing a baseball jersey and lacy panties that were a tad too small to fulfill their proper function. If it was meant to be a costume, I couldn’t tell you what character. As we passed, heard her complain to her male companion, “People keep staring at my butt. I don’t know why.”

Catherine prevented me from stopping to explain to her why.

-Watched the pilot for HUMAN TARGET. I was a fan of the comic back in the seventies; the tv series isn’t much like the comic. But I liked it a lot anyway.

-Skipped the three hour line for evening screenings, opting instead for the one and a half hour line at Spaghetti Factory. If you are going to be in a long line, there might as well be food at the end of it.

- Stood in line with a lawyer, who happened to also have sold four screenplays, and has a sister who writes on a television series. You do a lot of that at the Con.

-Witnessed a security guard stopping an actual robot replica of R2D2 from rolling into a restricted area. Apparently that was the droid he was looking for.

-Sat with 2,000 of my closest friends watching a DOCTOR WHO panel including showrunner Russel T. Davies and star David Tennant. My wife swooned over the star, which really was as it should be. Responding to a shout of “We love you!” Tennant looked over the massive audience and replied, “And we love you. Each of you in a slightly different, individual way.”

-Left the Con, headed back to LA and sat in traffic for several hours. You do a lot of that at the Con.

Just my thoughts,

Sean