San Diego Comic Con: Saturday

Well, first Friday: We had fun and went to a baseball game. It looked like this:

The neatest part was the Justice League Unlimited panel (um, that was at the con, not at the baseball game), where we saw a scene from the next season. It looks great!

Okay, now Saturday.

We started the day by going to Wahrenbrock's, my favorite used book store in San Diego. Incidentally, Wahrenbrock's was also the cause of my first entry here. Neat! I didn't get as many books this time, but I found a few interesting items.

Then we stopped by Horton Plaza for some food, and I picked up Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I haven't started it yet, because I'm still reading Moby Dick. I think I'll be done in the next couple of days, possibly during the flight home tomorrow.

Incidentally, if you thought the "Biff! Wham! Pow! Comics aren't just for kids anymore!" headlines were gone, you were incorrect.

Then, we went down to the convention. In case you haven't been paying attention, that's The San Diego Comic Convention, which is actually called "Comic Con International" these days, possibly so that they can occasionally threaten to move to a different city. Personally, I don't know if Anaheim's convention center is big enough, because the convention has gotten absolutely unimaginably large. In fact, it's a bit too big for me; Rhias and I were getting a little snippy at each other while we took a pass through the dealer's room (during which I picked up a bunch of terrible unreleased geeky movies, including the Roger Corman Fantastic Four, Captain America, the legendary Turkish Star Wars, and the Star Wars Holiday Special). We wanted to go to the panel for Serenity (the Firefly movie), and then also see the Teen Titans Live! panel (in which the voice actors for Teen Titans recreate a show live on stage), the King Kong panel (for the upcoming movie) and then Tenacious D (they have a movie coming out called The Pick of Destiny and they were going to play live) and maybe the masquerade.

The line for Hall H wasn't as long as it was on Friday (when there was a big Disneyland-style line with hidden sections curling back outside the building), but it was still pretty packed, especially since the day had started with Charlize Theron appearing to promote Aeon Flux. We decided to get into the hall early, so we got in line and managed to get in about halfway through the panel before Serenity, which turned out to be Kevin Smith. He was taking questions and was being reasonably amusing on subjects ranging from Clerks to Degrassi Junior High (he and Jason Mewes guested on three episodes and he'll be directing the movie). The hall is supposed to hold 6,500 people and there were at least 6,450 there. This made it hard to find seats, but we managed to end up just a row apart.

After Smith finished, some of the people in the hall left, and Rhias and I were able to move forward a bit and get seats next to each other. At one point, I was two feet from my friend Carisa, but I didn't realize that until I was too far away to say hello. The Serenity panel started with a panel for a different movie: Slither, written and directed by James Gunn (who did The Specials) and featuring Nathan Fillion.

It was at this point that I began freaking out. The combination of the stress of the convention and, well, I don't know what, gave me some sort of panic attack and I basically fled the convention. I got back to the hotel room and had some sort of small breakdown. It was quite disturbing, frankly.

Rhias was, quite naturally, freaked out by my reaction and took awhile to come back to the room. We calmed down and gave the rest of the convention a pass, choosing instead to go up to Balboa Park, home of many happy memories for me. We strolled around while I pointed out sites of interest ("That's a shot they used for Xanadu in Citizen Kane") and not-so-interest ("That's where a juggler used to work with a really tall unicycle"). And complete non-interest except to me ("We called this the Magic Wall because, um, there's a vent under it"). It was enormously calming, even though some of my favorite places were annoyingly full of a wedding of some sort.

And now, some pictures of Balboa Park, one of my favorite places in the world!

The Casa Del Prado, where I spent many happy hours in my youth.

I'm pleased to see that these statues are just as worn as they were when I was around here some 25 years ago. I was worried they'd be restored or something.

Rhias poses below one of the many random plaster facades.

Walking out the back of the Prado, you can turn around and see the spires of the Casa Del Prado Theater. It's not really that scenic, but it's a view I like a lot. So there!

This is the reflecting pool in front of the botanical gardens (as seen in Citizen Kane!). It's full of large goldfish.

There was also a turtle who swam up and hung out with us a little. Hello, turtle!

We didn't really stay until dark; the spire of the Museum of Man is just dark because the sun was behind it. It looked cool, though.

We walked back to the hotel, which took too long and tired us out again. But at least we passed a parade of beagles!

Then we had a delicious steak dinner and went to bed. The end!