Thursday, July 21, 2011

Comic-Con 2011: Preview Night

While the rest of the country is being scorched with a massive heatwave, San Diego proved to be the best place to be. The weather today was absolutely gorgeous...sunny and warm with just enough onshore breeze that the wafts of the occasional hygienically challenged Comic-Con attendee was never unbearable.

My day started with my usual Wednesday meeting at the Casbah with the Tims. After, Pyles and I ran a few errands and made our way downtown, where we quickly found unmetered and time-limit free parking. (It's good to be a local) We popped into Mission Brewery for a couple beers and after Pyles consumed that 9.25% Shipwrecked Double IPA, he was like a kid at Disneyland. His excitement was contagious and we quickly walked over the footbridge by the ballpark and made our way to the convention center.

I stopped to take the photo above, and when I was done, Tim had already wandered off. I saw his bald head in the crowd, but as we hit the swarms of people in line, I lost him. After a couple calls and texts, I realized he'd blazed off and had already acquired his badge. I thought I could be sneaky like last year and skip the lengthy "Professional and Press" line and just go to the sail plaza, but they scanned my registration and after telling me it had already been scanned (panic!), realized it was press and sent me back downstairs. The line was huge, but all in all it only took 15 minutes, so I rejoined Pyles and somehow we maneuvered through some back doors on the deck and quickly got into Con.





Preview night was much less insane than last year, but it was still swarms of people, long lines, and general insanity as collector's waited to get all of their Con exclusive collectables. I'm not much for toys (I still have that Tron lightcycle from last year at the bottom of a drawer) but Tim had big eyes and if he could, I think he would've bought one of everything. I let him lead the way as we wandered the crowded floor.


Today wasn't a big celebrity day, though we did see Andrew WK and while we were visiting Randall at his Kleeman & Mike booth, I saw Brian Posehn (again...I ran into him at 4th & B a couple years ago for the Gwar show).






I was excited to once again see The Walking Dead booth...this year you can take a photo with a prosthetic/wax doll of "Merle Dixon" (played by Michael Rooker) with a set from the scene when he was handcuffed to the roof. It looked very creepily real.





As preview night wound down, we were starving...other than our liquid lunch, neither of us had eaten anything all day (breaking all of my survival tips)... so it was nice that Lolita's was on the way to the car, and that we somehow arrived before a massive rush of people came in. We swung by the Casbah to say hi to friends and caught part of Junior's DJ set and watched some of The Hood Internet before it was time to head home. I suppose I should be asleep since I'm not exactly sure what time we're heading down in the morning, but tomorrow should be fun with a lot more off-site activities including the Wired Insider party, a media preview of the South Park "Year of the Fan" compound, and hordes more people and photo-ops. Night night, y'all.

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