A Full Day

But first I went down to the hotel salon.

See, yesterday I picked at my fingernails. I picked all the fingernail polish off my growing fingernails. I have ripped my fingernails off for years, and the only times I've been able to stop it have been when I've worn fingernail polish and maintained the polish: no chips, no cracks, no peeling.

The particular fingernail polish I've had the most success with, provided I maintain it, is called Nailtiques. I don't know what Nailtiques is -- it calls itself nail protein. It makes my nails hard and I don't find excuses to rip at them. It's $18 for half a fluid ounce (14.8 ml) and totally worth it.

I forgot to bring my bottle of Nailtiques to San Diego, and I ripped my nail polish off. Once the nail polish is gone, the nails are next. So I went to the salon.

Yes, they had Nailtiques; no, they didn't have any bottles in my formulations.

The beautician asked what I needed it for and then when I was going home. "Aw, you don't have to buy a whole bottle, I'll put a coat on you. You just come down here every morning and I'll add a coat." And she put one on me, no charge.

Who says Californians aren't nice?

The reason we'd started at this impossible hour was, yes, the first Babylon 5 presentation of the day. Darin was sitting very close up front, which made it easy to find him. He was talking to a couple of other fans. I brought a New York Times to amuse us while we waited.

JMS did a great presentation: he told stories, he showed the gag reel for Season 4, he showed a scene from the next episode of the season, he showed a scene from each of the two movies that will be aired next year...Whee! I got into the spirit of being a big fan of the show who doesn't know what's going to happen next.

During the gag reel, there's a whole section featuring outtakes of Bruce Boxleitner -- look up the word "flub" in the dictionary and there's a picture of Bruce -- set to the song "Flash" by Queen. All day long we would crack one another up with "Flash! A-ah! Savior of the universe!"

JMS also talked some about Claudia Christian's annoying and abrupt departure from the show. While he was in general quite pleasant in tone about it, he did mention Shelley Long. 'Nuff said. (Someone else shouted, "David Caruso!")

During the presentation he mentioned a t-shirt the cast and crew put together for the end of Season 4 (when they didn't know if they were going to be renewed) that reads on the front "Shhh! The Great Maker is directing" and on the back "...and on the seventh day, we wrapped -- JMS 4:22". I, of course, got this t-shirt while I was there. That happened to be the t-shirt Darin was wearing for this presentation.

This made Darin very popular the rest of the day. People kept accosting him. I'm convinced one guy followed him into the next presentation, Warner Bros. Presents, just to talk to him because of it.

I went up and shook his hand. He barely recognized me. Maybe he'll recognize me more next time he sees me in the office.

We went to the Warner Bros. Presents panel. Most of the hour was spent discussing Warners animation projects, such as the Batman and Superman shows, the new Batman animated feature (direct-to-video) called SubZero that has (yes!) Mr. Freeze as the villain, and a promo for Quest for Camelot, the first full-length animated feature "that's not Disneyesque, really."

They also showed promos for Steel, Sphere, and The Devil's Advocate. (I write a little about these promos in my Saturday entry.)

Then, they had giveaways. They set up the giveaway boxes at the exits. Both exits.

Chaos.

Darin, well-known for his building-hacking at UT, spotted a door on the other side of the room that clearly wasn't an exit, but might get us out of this room before the rioting started. Darin and Lance headed that way, and I soon followed. The door led us into another panel that was still in progress.

We broke up once we got outside. I walked around the entire convention center meeting room floor to get back to the outside of the Warner Bros. room. I pushed my way through the crowd waiting to get in and the crowd waiting to get out and got to the giveaway guy. "I just walked around the entire floor to get out of that room," I told him. He handed me a Conspiracy Theory t-shirt.

I then went to a panel on vampire lore. Bad idea. Never go to any panel that deal with a)"writing" or b)any type of lore. People who don't read, let alone write, go to panels on writing and ask questions about how to get an agent before they have even thought about getting a damn story together. And lore...well, let me just say, there are some people who don't know this is make-believe.

I left when a strong argument broke out about what constitutes "true vampirism."

I left the panel thinking about comics and writing. Mostly I see dorky writers up there and I think, I can write better than that! Maybe I can, but I don't let anyone know about it.

Enough wallowing.

Anyhow, every year we come here and I get really excited about comics and I think about projects that would make good comic books. Then I leave and I forget about it. I keep telling myself that I can't do that any more, I have to pursue these projects, but then I let them drop...I don't want to let things drop any more.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

I know my talents, and they are not in the artistic field. I have to write. Okay. How do you write a comic book? It's kind of like a screenplay, I guessed...but I wasn't sure. I'd never seen a comic book script.

I know about writing, I know about description...I needed format information.

I went down to the floor (where there are 10 million booths and artist tables and every sort of paraphernalia on display, and comic fans are in paradise) and headed to the DC booth, where I happened to bump into an editor from Vertigo whose name escapes me and writer Steven T. Seagle, who writes House of Secrets, among others. I asked Steven if I could look at one of his comic book scripts, and he might have been surprised by the question, I couldn't tell. He told me to go find his artist table (where he was sitting with some other artists to do autographs, sell stuff, etc.) and go under the tablecloth to find a couple of scripts on top of a box.

When I finally found it, I discovered that comic book scripts are rather simple: not quite as formalized as movie scripts. Describe the scene, describe who's there, give everyone's dialogue. Let the artist run wild. You break up the actions into sections, and the artist can break those up into separate panels...or not. If there's a certain way that a panel has to look, you are very clear with instructions as to how it looks.

Cool.

"Why?"

"Because...you'll get all out of sync with your sleep tonight."

"Why?"

Oh, hey, good point: I decided to just let him sleep. Then the phone RANG.

Damn loud phones in this hotel.

I answered it and immediately realized how incoherent I was, especially as compared with the other person on the phone.

It was Sheila Brady, who was visiting the Convention with her sister and brother-in-law. Jerry had just published a comic book and had come to the convention with it. Sheila, of course, used to work at Apple, and she was the project lead on a little project named System 7, the same project on which Darin was tech lead. Sheila and Darin were named Most Vile Couple at the end of the project, an award of which Darin is still incredibly proud.

I made Darin get up and talk to her (even comatose he's more coherent than I am at my most awake). We made arrangements for the 5 of us (everyone but Lance, who'd gone to see Dr. Benderfax) to have dinner at Palenque, the restaurant we always go to when we're in San Diego. I happened to know the name of the restaurant immediately when Darin asked where we should go because I'd just had to deal with digging through our receipts of the past couple of years. Palenque is at 1630 Garnet, near Ingraham, in Pacific Beach. Whenever we go there I have the camarones en chipotle, but everything they have is good.

Anyhow, it was a lot of fun (not to mention severely bracing) to see Sheila again -- where does she get all this energy? -- and to meet her sister and brother-in-law, who told a hysterical story about their wedding night (which involved overflowing toilets and water skunks and no sex).