San Diego Nerdicon 2006

San Diego Nerdicon 2006
Originally uploaded by macslost.

For years I have been reading about the nerd-fest that is the San Diego Comic-con and all the glory it brings. The costumes, panels, movies & trailers, yadda, yadda. This year I was hellbent on going, then no one wanted to go and then at the last minute my friend Alf decided 'why the hell not' and we drove down at the ass-crack of dawn to enjoy the Saturday bit of the four-day event.

We got down there without a lick of traffic, got parking right across the street and popped into the Hilton's bar for a breakfast buffet and Bloody Marys. A few Bloody Marys, to be exact. It was pretty lucky we went there, as well, since we ran into a couple of my coworkers, who hooked us up with free passes to walk right in when it opened. And a good thing, too, because this place is a madhouse.

We waltzed in right after it opened and took a quick wander through the exhibitor hall, where every movie studio, home video, TV and comic book studio was pimping their new stuff. And unless you are a big fan of mini posters, there's not a lot of cool stuff to collect, unless you want to overpay for knick-knacks and artwork.

After walking around for about an hour, we decided to pop upstairs to check out the panels. There were a lot of panels and they were either empty or had 1000 people waiting in line for them, and we all know how I feel about lines. @&#*$^# that.

The really sad part was the autograph pen that had people like Marc Singer (of whom I was a big fan of in 'V' and 'Beastmaster') but no one was talking to him and he looked haggard. I just felt bad. And he was probably the biggest star in there. It was really sad.

We popped into the Greg The Bunny panel, but once the fans started the Q&A it became painful, so we decided to stop into the 'VIP' area. Yeah, they had bad coffee and nothing else. Woo VIP!

So the panels were out (lame or crowded) so we decided to pop back down and do a more thorough run through the exhibitor hall. By now the place is PACKED and it's 112 degrees outside and heating up in here as well. So we decided the best option at this point is to take as many lame pictures as possible and get out before we cracked under the pressure of the crowd and the heat.

So I got retarded with Frankenberry...



Alf picked a fight with Batman...



and I copped a feel on Supertran...er...Supergirl. He/She was very tall.



We didn't get a whole lot of other costume photos because they were all either Jedi or fat/lazy Indiana Jones costumes. It was very disappointing.

So in the end, we were enjoying Endless Summer beer at the bar across the street less than four hours after going in. I read more info online Sunday morning in 15 minutes than I got from four hours of actually being there. Soooo, I don't think I need to be hitting that Con up anytime soon.