COMIC-CON. THURSDAY.

Spoilers Abound. Some fuck ruined my favorite Wesley for us, and for no good reason, disclosure without comment even, so you can all take your chances from here on out. Lost, too.


So, we got up at the crack of dawn and I powered the Indian food that was left from the night before, a spicy way to start the day, and we were off to the airport. On the flight, we read all five issues of Buffy’s Season 8*, having knocked out the series finale the night before, as well as the excellent Angel 4 finale# and I was also drastically impressed with Warren’s DOKTOR SLEEPLESS, as well as Morrison’s Satanic Batman issue on the re-read, such a great trick. At any rate, we landed, got our luggage. Paul picked us up and drove us past boats and a warship right into the heart of downtown where he lives. We left our luggage in his and Lane’s swanky 3rd floor loft and walked ten minutes down Fifth Avenue straight to the Convention Center. Paul lives on the same street as the place where Comic-Con is held. I think that’s pretty cool.

Right away, we could see that there were lots of people lining up to be let in. People who had logged onto Teh Intrawub (as Warren has it) and paid their hard-earned $ for badges. The Pre-Registration line, it’s called. Well, that got funnier and funnier. We turned left and followed the line down, walked around the Convention Center, kept going, turned a corner and another corner and it was sad and then got funny because we soon realized that what we should have done as soon as we saw the mob was veer right and run as fast as our little feets would carry us and we would have beat a few hundred people for their place. Because the line yawed all the way back to the Harbor on the far side. Over yonder.

Didn’t look too good to get into that Battlestar Galactica panel at 12:15 (we finally found the end of the line at 11:30 after all that walking)(landed at 10:20, left Paul’s at 11:00 if you’re keeping score). The JJ Abrams at 1:30 also seemed dubious. I was frankly just hoping we cleared LOST at 5:30, that’s how ugly the line was.

Long story short, finally got let in at 2:15, hauled ass to the Paramount booth so we could get a pass to Gaiman’s STARDUST sneak-preview, were told to come back at 4:30, hauled ass to the Line to get into the massive Hall H (which come to think it, we never actually witnessed, for all of its mythical glory), stood in said line for I think half an hour, the hall has a capacity of 6,000, they packed it and, shit ya not, doyekennit, they closed the doors with 10 people between [Catherine and I] and entrance. So we had to miss the Indiana Jones teaser. And Neil Gaiman talking about and previewing Beowulf and Stardust. And JJ Abrams bringing out facking Sylar and announcing that he’s going to play young Spock, and here’s Leonard Nimoy for good measure. Missed all of that. But I can still hear the sound of the lady cop closing the door.

So, there was a Darwyn Cooke Spotlight, but at that point, all I cared about was getting in to see Lindelof & Cuse talk about my favorite TV show. But we still figured we had a second to check out the Floor, the Exhibit Hall, so we did so and boy was it insane. Like the way too much sugar will create diabetes, too much time down there will create agoraphobia.^ Too many people, we hit the ripcord, lined up for the L O S T. They let us in at 3:45, we got seats on the 7th row, a drag I know, but there weren’t any good ones on the row behind us. I ran and got us those Stardust passes before 4:30 and even got Catherine to come get some too so Paul and Lane could join us. Then, LOST.

So great. The pair walked out with tabletop bells and announced that this was their own failsafe, they would be chiming them if the other was getting too close to spoiling anything, since the plot was in such a very delicate place after Jack's “We’ve got to go back!” horrified 15 million people by seeming to occur in at least ’07 if not later. Good talks about the writer’s room. I wanted so much to ask them a question but couldn’t think of a single one that I don’t want answered in the course of the show. Until. Someone asked whether Ben got captured in Rousseau’s net on purpose in 2.14 and it hit me that I had seen those chinos he wore in 2.23 walking by as the fourth man (Cheers, Mr. Snow!) that Eko and Jin glimpsed in 2.5 and so I ran back to ask them that.@

But then (turn back! Season 4 spoiler!)

they brought out &#&$&HaroldPerrineau&&&& and said he was definitely returning, though they quite happily declined to specify when or how. And, what else, Lindelof said they were drunk and that they hadn’t forgotten about Libby and they were so happy to know the end date, they were waiting on that to drop the flashforward bridge, which they’ve had planned since late first season . . . then they closed with an orientation clip of Edwin Halliwax (who looked just like Marvin Candle and Mark Wickman) explaining that surely you’ve understood that Station 6 – The Orchid is not a botanical research facility, he mentioned a kasimir effect and then it seemed like an Incident took place, an assistant ran in and said that the levels were at –20 and this shouldn’t be happening, Marvin said “What the fuck?!?” which was pretty funny and great, then he snarled at the camera to Turn that thing off! and that was it.



Also at some point, there was film spliced in that had the text GOD LOVED YOU AS HE LOVED JACOB and later on, very brief upside-down footage of someone riding a bicycle through the Others’ pre-crash of 815 Village.

So yeah, that two minutes made it all worthwhile.

Made it back to Paul and Lane’s at 6:30. Met Boba Fett on the way. His voice-speaker was perfect.



Lane had fixed lasagna. We drank wine. Great downtime. I hauled everybody out of there before 8 so we could make the Stardust sneak. Of course, it was long-gone. Probably had been since we were walking back. No matter. We found a piano bar that served alcohol. Unfortunately the special that we partook of was something called a Lunchbox shot which is actually about the worst thing I've ever heard of. You drop a shot of Amaretto into half a pint of Miller Lite and orange juice. It was heinous but the girls got them so we had to man up. Quite a shame, felt like they should've paid us $2 to drink them. But the piano guys were rocking. The second song they played was by Journey.

And it goes on and on and on and on . . .

Doooooon’t stop



_____________

*favorite Buffy finale moment: well, a tie: the 4-Point Core one by one walking away down the hall from each other, first losing Giles, then Willow, then Buffy holding Xander’s hand and squeezing it goodbye/slash/the look on Spike’s face “I want to see how it all ends”, so much more the vampyre rock star in ways that Lestat and Anne Rice never even imagined.

# the Wolfram/Hart twist, who saw that coming?

^if it even is real, ya-hah

@and as it turned out, it would have been the most microscopic potentially EP-flattening question of the afternoon, but the question-line had already swelled past the point of contention by then. Alas.