PA system: “Thank you for shopping JC Penney, and have a pleasant evening.”
Cynical teenage girl: “Must we?”
Tag: overheard
New Year’s Eve & Avatar
- 10 years ago I had just started working at an Internet provider and was very glad they didn’t want me in the server room at midnight for Y2K.
- I just ordered tickets to Avatar in IMAX 3D. It actually *was* cheaper to see Xanadu on stage, even including parking!
- Made it into Avatar. Got surprisingly decent seats considering how long the line was. We’ll miss midnight, so Happy New Year!
- Overheard waiting for the movie: “If you lost an eye, would you get a glass eye or an eye patch?” “I’d get an eye patch and grow a beard!”
Skull Pumpkin & Vampire Halloween
Katie carved this incredible anatomically-correct skull Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween today. Update: Check the comments for her writeup on how she carved it.
It seems to have worked as a “yes, we’re handing out candy” signal. Last year we didn’t get any trick-or-treaters. (We also didn’t put up any decorations that year, either.) This year, they started arriving while I was taking photos of the pumpkin…and while Katie was opening the bags of candy!
She dressed up in her vampire costume, which got some great responses. One trick-or-treater asked about the fangs. She overheard another walking away from the door and wondering, “Do you think she was a real vampire?”
By 8:50 we were down to only three Starbursts left to hand out, so we brought the pumpkin inside and called it a night.
Earlier this afternoon, I ran some errands and deliberately went to the Spectrum so that I’d have a chance of spotting the Great Park Balloon in the air while it still had the Jack-O-Lantern face on. I thought this view made for a nice image of the Great Pumpkin, rising up over the trees.
Wednesday Night in San Diego
“Preview Night” is about as accurate as “Comic-Con” these days. They might as well call it a 4½-day convention. Wednesday night was surprisingly crowded (though it’ll get a lot worse by Saturday), and it started from the moment we arrived at the convention center.
It took an hour and a half on the freeway to come within sight of the buildings of Downtown San Diego, and possibly another half hour to make it to our hotel. Once we checked in, we set about unpacking for our 4-day stay, then headed over to Dussini for dinner. Afterward, we went straight to the convention.
This is the first year we’ve stayed somewhere close enough to the convention center to walk, and it was very nice not to have to wait for a shuttle or a trolley — either going to the con or coming back to the hotel. Of course, since you can only cross the tracks at either end of the convention center, that means you need to walk at least half the length.
Our first hint of con culture came on the walk from the hotel to the restaurant. Someone dressed as a giant donut in a sombrero was walking the streets as part of a promotion for some movie. [Edit: apparently the movie was Sex Drive.] A little boy of around 5 or so turned to his mother and said, “I don’t like him.” Kid, you’ve got the right idea.
We arrived at the convention center around 7:45 and discovered two disturbing things:
- The line to get in and pick up badges went all the way down to the end of the center, then looped around in the sculpture garden. (At least it moved fast.)
- People were camping out for Hall H. Which doesn’t open until tomorrow.
The big usable promo items this year seem to be the giant Wonder Woman bags (following up on the Superman: Doomsday/Smallville bags from last year, which makes me wonder how long it’ll be before we see them converted into aprons, dresses, etc.) and the giant “Big Frakkin Bag” — which is a big purple bag with the words “Big Frakkin Bag” on the side.
Katie noticed that it seems to be all about buying stuff today — being the first to get some item, etc. Partly because everything’s discounted, and partly because there’s essentially nothing else to do until programming starts tomorrow.
I went straight to the Image booth to see what I could find out about the Tori Amos signing — it turns out there was a snafu with getting the books, and the organizer of the event was really annoyed that several boxes had gone missing. The first however-many people in line, after the one box ran out, got vouchers instead.
I also went over to Colleen Doran’s table, talked with her briefly, and bought a set of Reign of the Zodiac, which she signed for me. I’d brought Orbiter and A Distant Soil, vol.1, but managed to leave them in the hotel.
I didn’t spot the DC booth until right before closing, but I noticed something interesting: all the staff were wearing Flash symbol T-shirts. (This probably doesn’t mean anything — they’ll probably all be in GL shirts tomorrow, Wonder Woman on Friday, Superman on Saturday, and Batman on Sunday. But I found it interesting.) I also spotted Ethan van Sciver as he drew a sketch for the last person in the line.
Overheard through the window just now: “Don’t get run over, people!” Always good advice!
Edit: In the time it took me to write this, Katie crocheted herself a lanyard for her badge.
Comic-Con: Filling in the Gaps
Some random thoughts and anecdotes about Comic-Con that didn’t make it into other posts:
It’s amazing that out of (reportedly) 140,000 people, you’re virtually guaranteed to run into people you know. For instance, I knew in person 8 people besides the two of us who were definitely going to the convention. Without planning, I ran into 6 of them, as well as 2 people who I didn’t know were attending. Katie and I even accidentally ran into each other once. I’m sure I ran into people I’ve met online, but just didn’t recognize them on sight.
Overheard near a coffee shop one morning in San Diego:
20ish man #1: I’m so wasted. I can’t work like this.
20ish man #2: Dude, you make coffee!
Nothing as drastic as Aeire’s story of nearly getting trampled, but I sustained a number of minor injuries over the course of the event:
- Left knee, bruised while walking into a traffic barrier concealed by the flow of people (Wednesday).
- Right forearm, bruised twice catching a backpack strap (Thursday).
- Left hand, bruised (unknown).
- Also, Katie: Left thumbnail pulled back and bleeding, catching a backpack strap (Friday).
Conclusion: Backpacks are dangerous 😉
I walked out onto this balcony Friday afternoon and took some pictures looking out across the street. At the time, there were some teenage girls sitting on that ledge off to the left. It’s maybe 4 feet deep, and some of them had scooted out past the balcony, one of them standing up. When I came back later to get a picture of the ledge (how creepy would I have looked taking a picture of a group of teenage girls?), the door to the balcony was locked. I’m guessing security wasn’t happy.
When eating out at a restaurant, ask about the portion sizes before you order. The food at Bandar was very good, but we were each served enough food for three people. With no refrigerator or microwave in our hotel room, we couldn’t save the leftovers. The waste was saddening.
Panels I attended:
Thursday: TwoMorrows, Paramount Pictures, Lost.
Friday: Spider-Man cartoon (2nd half) and Neil Gaiman Spotlight. Babylon 5: The Lost Tales.
Saturday: Quick Draw, Buffy 10th Anniversary Screening. (edit: fixed link)
Sunday: My Dad Makes Comics (2nd half), Fables.
Panels Katie attended:
Thursday: Making Fiends, Paramount Pictures, Lost.
Friday: The Mist/Halloween, Jim Henson, Babylon 5: The Lost Tales.
Saturday: Pushing Daisies, tried to get into Heroes but got locked out, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy screening.
Sunday: Cages Talk Comics, Right at Your Door/Dragon Wars, Pathology.
*whew!* Almost done. I just need to post quotes and oddities. Well, and finish labeling the photo gallery.
Where do you keep the euphemism?
Someone walked into the restroom talking on a cell phone, explaining, “it’s going to sound really bad now, because I’m in the executive washroom.”
Executive washroom?
Sure, if by “executive washroom” you mean first-floor lobby restroom that’s available to anyone who walks into the building.
I couldn’t tell whether he was joking, or trying to impress the person on the other end of the call.
Only in San Diego? Volume 3, Part 2
Friday afternoon I was walking down Fifth with a couple of Subway sandwiches in my backpack. This section of the Gaslamp Quarter is almost entirely restaurants, and most of them have dining areas out on the street, with the host or hostess’ podium right there on the sidewalk. I had spotted something odd ahead of me, but I’ll let this overheard exchange speak for itself:
Hostess: “Come quick, or you’ll miss something really cool! There’s a sandwich in the street!”
Voice from inside: “Oh, I already saw him.”
For the record, it turned out to be part of a big promotion for the movie, Accepted.
The convention clearly strains resources to the limit. These traffic cones, used for creating lanes for the shuttles and whatever traffic was allowed in front of the convention center, include such messages as “Reserved,” “No Parking,” and “Stop”—none of which applied to their current use!
Now, I have yet to figure out the connection between Playboy models and comic books, except that these days they do seem to have the same target audience. There were several models doing signings and photo ops around the hall. On Thursday morning, though, this model hadn’t set up her booth yet. The bag on the table looked disturbingly like a body bag.
This last one actually has no connection to the con, but I forgot to post it on Monday. It’s probably only funny if you’re familiar with the BSD operating systems. (It took me a while, but I eventually realized BSD in this case meant Broadway San Diego.)
