I take my title from something I actually did this weekend in San Diego (about 600 miles from home) while attending Comic Con. I say attending like I was there the whole weekend, but I really only was there for a day and a half. I went down specifically to see Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright from the new film Shaun of the Dead (go see it, it comes out in September) and their panel was on Sunday – so arriving late on Saturday was no big deal. I went with a friend who had business purpose to being there, so I kept to her need of pounding the pavement of the dealers exhibit hall. Let me say one thing about the exhibit hall – HUGE. I’ve been to some conventions, and you could probably put two of them in this one space. That’s how huge it was. We tooled about the dealers for about an hour or so before it closed. Then we took a walk – outside! This was to dinner. First stop: The Old Spaghetti Factory. We were hungry, and it was a 90-minute wait to be seated (plus it seemed odd to go nearly 600 miles and eat somewhere I could bike to…) So when the going gets tough, the geeks go to a pub and all have fish and chips!
Now fuelled up, we headed back to the convention – specifically an off site event at a neighboring hotel. We had some time to kill before hand – so we did as my title suggests: We sat on the balcony of the fourth floor of the Hyatt, overlooking the harbor, while waiting for the movie Monty Python’s Meaning of Life to start. At around 9:50 fireworks started to go off. It was a pleasant surprise (especially since we were indoors on the Fourth of July…) The film started late, but was fun to see again – especially with people who haven’t seen it (it seemed that there were a few in the audience who hadn’t…) After the film we went back to our motel room.
Day two had us setting off early to beat the lines into the function space that we planned to inhabit for a big chunk of the day. We watched a series of trailers, then a panel on the new films Ride the Bullet, Seed of Chuckie, and – the reason I went to the convention in the first place – Shaun of the Dead.
After the Shaun… panel, I went off for lunch with another friend who came down separately – while I left my companions behind as they enjoyed the Serenity panel. After eating we then headed over to the autograph area so that we could talk with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright from Shaun…, and connect with some of the people from Rogue Pictures (the people who are distributing the film.)
Then it was back to the dealer’s hall, where I set off in search of my traveling companions. This was a daunting task (did I mention how big it is?), but after several failed phone calls I managed to do the “cellular Marco-Polo.” Unfortunately, I lost my non-traveling companion. We pounded the dealer’s hall until it closed at 5:00 PM, and then sat in the hallway for a while before setting off back to Los Angeles.
That was my Comic Con experience…