This morning began bright and early once again, but sadly there were no more boat times (remember the boat times?). Since I was meeting Chris Moore for breakfast at his hotel on Coronado Island, I had to pack up and check out. I made my way down to the historic Hotel Del Coronado, which is a gorgeous Victorian seaside resort. Really, just about everything here is very pretty - it's not hard to see why people like it here so much. Chris and I had an excellent - and long - meeting, and then around midday I made my way over to the convention center to spend the remainder of my day in San Diego at Comic-Con. I was ready to go in my CMU "Beam Me Up Scotty" shirt, and had scoped the place out enough yesterday that I knew what was ahead of me. Or so I thought...
Honestly, Comic-Con is a labyrinth of more stuff crammed into an admittedly enormous space than you might people possible. After spending a total of 8 hours on the floor this weekend, I barely scratched the surface of seeing all of the booths, and I didn't even attend any panels except for The
Chair! I can easily see how being here for the full 4 days would only just barely be enough time to see everything you wanted (and even that feat would require careful planning). Since I had no real agenda, I meandered, I browsed, I people-watched, and snapped pictures of as many interesting things as I could manage (crowds did not always make it possible to catch an interesting-looking shot). Naturally, there were some purchases I wanted to make, particularly at the Weta Workshop booth. Got some free give-aways, including an Outlander paperback (which is funny since I got bounced from the Outlander premiere last night - at least it's funny to me).
Even without seeking it out, I still managed to snag some pretty great celebrity sightings. Yesterday while strolling through the floor with Chris Moore, I saw the backs of most of the Game of Thrones notables, including George R. R. Martin, on the elevated Warner Bros. booth. Today, while waiting in line at Weta, Andy Serkis walked right in front of me, posed for a bit with a life-sized sculpture of Gollum, and then walked past me again. I got a smile and a nod out of it from it. Will Poulter was escorted by a security group through the crowd of people waiting for food, and then another large group of (presumably) celebrities and their pals were escorted past me, but I didn't recognize anyone. Later on I saw Paul Rudd signing at the Marvel booth with the Ant-Man cast, and then saw Tyler Posey, Linden Ashby, and Melissa Ponzio of Teen Wolf signing autographs at the MTV booth. The celebrity hightlight, I must say, is when I happened to be at the next urinal over to Dr. Who star Matt Smith. We shared a nod and a manly silence.
By around 6:30pm, I was dog-tired, had spent too much money, and had no more room to bring anything home with me, free or not, so I left the Con with nothing but fondness. Having a little time to kill before needing to leave for the airport, I walked a few blocks over to the USS Midway, to get my naval aficionado fix. A quick drive (I really got the hang of navigating the city) to the airport to return my Zipcar, and here I am at the gate, about to head back east. It was one hell of a 48 hours, and I'm so incredibly thankful for the opportunity I had to come here and experience what I did. It was a real blast, and I hope to make it a traditional annual (or semi-annual [by which I mean every year or two, not tiwce a year]). It would be fun if you joined me!
Thanks for reading and following along! Pictures will be up on facebook tomorrow!
Keep calm and Con on.
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