and let me not overlook sailor scot.
The quotes of the day:
"I think it's the strange imaginings of lonely people."
"Thank you, insect lovers!"
"Spiders aren't insects."
"What inspired you to act in Body Bags?"
"Money."
Darin took off to get Mike at Allison and Adam's and I went to Ralph's (the grocery store, not a friend's house) to get supplies for our campsite. I bought two sandwiches (roast beef and chicken), a package of sushi, a box of cookies, and a couple liters of water. I saw lots of convention-goers stocking up--clearly, I wasn't the only one tired of paying convention prices for food.
I couldn't get into the Main Room at 10 because they were still doing rehearsal for the Masquerade, which would be held at the Convention Center for the first time. So Darin and Mike found me in the hallway, instead of having to find me in the big room, which was great, because once the room was opened, Darin and Mike found what were essentially the best seats in the room. They were the seats between the wheelchair area and the cameras, so we had no one in front of us or behind us. We were close to the stage and were right in front of a screen. Totally perfect.
Right up until the first session--X-Men: The Movie--was cancelled. It was okay by me, but Mike got restless and went down to the Dealer Room. I whipped out my Vanity Fair (magazine, not the book), which I had made easy to handle by vanityfairing it. "To vanityfair" is to rip out all of the double-sided ads out of the magazine. This reduces the thickness of the magazine by at least half, making it wieldy.
The current issue--it has the cover with Gretchen Mol, she with the nipples on full alert--is pretty good, especially the article on Stephen Glass. The article about Princess Diana was particularly sad, mostly because she sounded like such a moron during her life. The games she and Charles played with one another, and with the monarchy, were totally stupid.
At noon was the Babylon 5 panel. JMS wasn't able to make it to San Diego either, because of his pneumonia, but I thought they might have put together some kind of dog-and-pony show, even if it was with the same audiovisual aids shown at Baltimore.
No such luck.
What we got was Robin Atkin-Downes (the guy who played Byron, the telepath with the long flowing hair), Joshua Cox (Corwin, the whipped puppy CNC staffer), Patricia Tallman (Lyta, the world's most annoying telepath), and...Jeffrey Willerth, the guy I used to work for, who was also the guy who wore the Kosh suit.
And they proceeded to yuk it up on stage. Annoying in-jokes. Backslapping. The annoying antics of Patricia's 3-year-old (very cute, but shouldn't have been on-stage).
What they were not able to do was answer one of the questions posed to them by the audience. There's no excuse for Jeffrey not to be able to do this--he's John Copeland's assistant, he knows what's what in the office...or he should. I know that Jeffrey has big ambitions for the future, and showing an ability to respond to questions and keep the crowd happy would have helped. Instead, he just looked like a dork.
Midway through, Patricia and Jeffrey left, leaving the other two to carry the can for a while until Maggie Egan--the anchor for ISN--showed up and proceeded to make Robin and Joshua look suave and knowledgeable (given that they're bit players and probably haven't been on the set for 5 months or more). Maggie did share the Christopher Walken anecdote quoted above, but every single other thing she said was dopey.
A waste of an hour, sadly. I was happy they didn't try to drag it out for the full hour and a half.
Then came the Blade presentation. When I first saw the trailer for Blade last year, I thought it looked cool. It still looks cool; I'll go see it.
The presentation consisted of the showing of the Making Of video (pretty cool, though loud and filled with lots of incoherent action), a tour of the Blade website (showing a website on overhead screens: not a good idea), and a live panel.
The panel had two actors from the movie, Udo Kier and Arly Jover, neither of whom spoke English particularly well; the writer, David Goyer; and last and definitely worst, Stan Lee.
Stan the Man. One of the founders of Marvel Comics, who's probably equally as famous for coming up with some of their major characters as he is for kicking the other founder of Marvel Comics, Jack Kirby, out of the company. Stan Lee has a major following in the comics community and probably has for 40 or 50 years.
Which may give you some idea of how out of it Stan Lee is these days.
The guy is a living cartoon now. An annoying living cartoon. To someone like me, who's not a fan of his, I wanted him off the stage and shut up. He just kept interjecting, talking on questions he knew nothing about. Saying nonsense crap. Someone would ask about plans for other movies about Marvel characters and Stan would say, "We're going to make that!" no matter what it was. He kept misprouncing James Cameron's name, for crying out loud.
It was pretty painful.
The writer, Goyer, seemed to have a clue. And the moderator, a guy working for Marvel, asked a few questions of the actors so that they'd have something to do. But Stan Lee was just appalling.
The next panel was for John Carpenter's Vampires, which I am totally looking forward to. It's based on John Steakley's Vampire$, the story of a gang of vampire hunting mercenaries run by the Vatican. We saw several clips for this in Baltimore, and we'd heard that there would be a showing of the movie during Comic-con.
Of course, we found out during John Carpenter's presentation the showing had been Friday night. Yuck.
Well, lots of John Carpenter's die-hardest showed up to swear fealty to this crazed, crotchety white-haired man in his 50s who sat on stage, smoking and plainly unhappy to be there. Someone would say, "Big Trouble In Little China is my all-time favorite film, it's the best movie ever made, thank you!" and Carpenter would say, "Thanks. Christ, is it time to go yet?"
Most annoying was how audience members would ask the same question over and over again. Would there be another sequel to Escape from New York? "No, the first one didn't make any money." Would there be another Snake Plissken movie? "No. I already answered that." Would he make another movie with Kurt Russell? "Absolutely. If we found a project."
After about 40 minutes, Carpenter said, "Okay, one more, then let's get out of here, okay?" He wouldn't even let the convention show all 5 of the clips from the movie that we got to see in Baltimore.
It was good that Carpenter left early, because the Buffy wave started early.
Now remember: last year, there was a Buffy panel that shared its time with Alien Resurrection. Nicholas Brandon (Xander) and Alyson Hannigan (Willow) accompanied Joss Whedon, and they were appropriately cute and cuddly. If I remember correctly the room--also the large room, admittedly--was less than half full. After the show, I was able to corner Joss Whedon and talk to him.
This year, a Buffy only panel filled the entire room. We are talking 5000 seats. There would be no quiet chats with Joss Whedon this year.
Mike was off wandering the floor again. Several people asked me for his seat. Darin finally told me to put something on his seat, so I did. This did not stop one guy from asking for the seat, and, when told the seat was taken, said, "Well, there's no one in it."
Yeah, there's been someone in it since 10 this morning. It was now 4:30.
The introduction of the guests produced hysteria in the audience. The schedule had said that Alyson Hannigan and David Boreanaz (Angel) would be here this year. This was wrong. The entire cast of Buffy showed up, save Sarah Michelle Gellar. Xander, Willow, Angel, Cordelia, Oz, and Giles accompanied Joss Whedon this year, and the stage was white with the flashes of cameras.
When David Boreanaz was announced, there was pandemonium from the audience. Security guards kept pushing people back, and announcing that people had to stay in their seats or be escorted from the auditorium. This didn't stop hordes--and I do mean, hordes--of camera-toting girls from creeping along the aisles and camping out by Darin's chair to take pictures.
The lowdown: everyone is like their characters, except Charisma Carpenter is nice and David Boreanaz is overwhelmed by the attention. Seth Green (Oz) and Nicholas Brandon (Xander) are the class clowns--they had a wiseacre response for everything...even stuff they weren't supposed to answer. Brandon appears to be more intelligent than his character. Anthony Stewart Head didn't say two words the entire time, but he and Joss Whedon laughed hysterically from their end of the podium at everything.
Mike, who'd never seen Charisma Carpenter before, fell in love. He says he's going to start watching the show now.
The line for questions extended down the length of the auditorium. One woman had to ask the question for her daughter, who was too overwhelmed to be in the presence of her heroes. Then she asked David Boreanaz for a hug for her daughter, and he graciously gave one. Once again, the front of the auditorium turned white under flashbulbs.
Nicholas Brandon said, "That's it for the hugs, 'kay?"
Several people asked if one or another of the actors was single. Or if Joss was single. (He isn't.) Someone even asked if Sarah Michelle Gellar was single and Joss Whedon cut him off with a protective, "We're not answering that."
The only things Whedon gave up: we will get to meet the mayor, Angel's coming back (of course--he has his own show now), and Willow and Oz will continue. I don't remember if anyone asked about Xander and Cordelia.
I wished I'd pushed Joss Whedon harder last year for something, anything--an internship, a PAship. I won't get anywhere near him ever again, if this keeps up.
At 6 we stumbled out of the convention center--aaaahhh!! sunlight!! aahh!!--and headed into town to eat at The Star of India in the Gaslamp Quarter, which I am pleased to report is easily the best Indian food I've had in a very long time, and definitely since The Empress of India in the Bay Area. Everything was wonderful--perfectly seasoned and tasty. We ate ourselves silly.
Then we headed back to the hotel to drop everything off. Then we got ice cream at Ben & Jerry's and walked back to the convention center to get in line for the Masquerade. The annual Oh My GOD Freak Show.
This year: no exception.
Phil and Kaya Foglio hosted again. They're good enough, I suppose, considering how amateurish (in all senses of the word) the Masquerade is.
Best costume: At every Masquerade I've been to--and during each day at every Comic-con--there have been tons of girls in Sailor Something (Moon, Jupiter, Mars, Venus...) costumes. The audience tends to groan when another Sailor Anybody comes out because yes, the costumes are good, and yes, the girls are cute, but enough's enough.
This year, a guy in a kilt and holding a shield over himself came out on stage in shadow, while the MC gave the narration transporting us back to 12th Century Scotland and the fight for freedom... Mike said, "What is this, Braveheart?"
The guy on stage stood upright in the spotlight and his sailor's shirt with big bowtie became visible: "It's Sailor Scot!"
Hysteria. This bearded guy in a Scotsman-meets-Sailor-Moon getup, doing a little jig. The audience applauded him for that.
Most excruciating exhibition: It did take me longer than usual--at least 30 costumes this time--to turn to Darin and utter my usual incantation: "There are no depths to which people will not sink." A woman dressed as Delenn from Babylon 5 lip-synched to a tape she'd made of B5 babble that included Delenn imploring the Great Maker. (Um...oops?) She was booed off-stage for being uninteresting and long-winded.
Funniest moment: A girl dressed as Sailor Saturn came out on stage and stood stock-still as she lip-synched to her song. 20 seconds of this is extremely boring and annoying for the audience, and this girl was clearly going to stand there for the full 3 minutes or however long the song lasted.
So one guy, near us, took out a lighter and held it up, a la a rock concert, producing gales of laughter.
Within seconds, several aisles of the auditorium had their hands up in the air and were rocking back and forth.
Soon, the entire auditorium was doing the arm-waving bit. Then the MCs jumped in and waved their arms.
The entire audience was in hysterics by the time this girl finally left the stage. I felt sorry for her, but she'd better learn about entertaining a crowd if she wants to be on stage.
Most synchronistic moment: Two girls came on stage dressed in Renaissance garb. They went to the front of the stage, bent over so their breasts lunged forward, and waved energetically so that they jiggled up and down. Then they flounced off stage.
I leaned over to Darin and Mike and said, "Somebody lost a bet."
Seconds later, Phil Foglio said, "Looks like someone lost a bet."
Best cross-over: There are always one or two skits in the Masquerade, and both skits this year were crossovers. We had the Bug Hunter Bar and Grill (the Colonial Marines from Aliens meet the Infantry from Starship Troopers to discuss bug hunting techniques) and South Park Wars (three of the boys from South Park invade Cartman the Hut's lair to free Chef Solo). I gave the latter group props for "Cartman the Hut," which seemed very silly.
Then Darin drove Mike back to Allison and Adam's, while I headed to bed early. Yes, I know it would have been decent of me to go with Darin, but that's what 6 years of togetherness will do to you, I guess.
|
|
|
|
Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com