July 23, 2009

• Recapping Day 1, July 22, 2009 of the San Diego Comic-Con International

  As I’ve started to do since my blog post of The Warped Tour in Pomona, I am going to use my Twitter / Facebook status updates as my template for the recap. I’ll add whatever needs to be added to elaborate.

  4:29AM – bleah. Still awake. Plans to wake up in two hours still. Too excited for Comic-Con perhaps? ah well, going to try and sleep again…. zzzzzz -
  I needed to do some chores before I left home and drove 200 miles away, so lack of sleep was probably going to be a problem. I told my friend that I was going to pick him up around 11:30AM-12PM, but because I took longer with my chores, I was running late.

  12:01PM – Now on my way driving for the San Diego Comic-Con. Woot! –
  I picked up my friend by about 12:55PM, and from that point on, it was straight to San Diego non-stop. For quite a long time now, I’ve always driven to the Comic-Con by myself, but this year I had a passenger with me. The almost two hours trip went by smoothly and did not feel long at all, because we were having some good discussions.

  3:39PM – Finally got my hotel room in San Diego, now I’m off to the convention center for Comic-Con Day 1 –
  We did wait thirty minutes before the room was ready for us, but at least we got a room.

  4:19PM – Damnit. Forgot to bring my ethernet cable for my laptop. May have to use the hotel’s free WiFi… –
  On our way to the Comic-Con, we swung by Horton Plaza to see if I can buy an ethernet cable, but unfortunately no store seemed to have it. I then went and called the hotel, and they told me that they can provide me one. I decided to eat some pasta and drink some tea before getting to the Convention Center.

  4:52PM – Got my Comic-con badge. Waiting for doors to open. I swear, the San Diego Convention Center is like my summer vacation home. –
  Picking up my badge was a breeze, and I did not have to wait much at all. Part of the advantage of doing “preview night.” Upon arriving at the Convention Center, it really did feel like I knew the place front to back. I’ve been here so many years now, that I really felt comfortable being there.

  5:34PM – LoL I just pre-registered for Comic-Con 2010 (7/21-7/25). $100 for a multi-day pass though! That’s a HUGE increase from this year. –
  Usually they don’t allow us to pre-register early until the start of Thursday, so the price increase wasn’t the only thing that was different this year. Wow at that price though. Is that their way of trying to minimize the fact that Comic-Con has become much too crowded in recent years?

  5:53PM – HaHa me and my friend snucked in the exhibit hall and shamelessly cut passed the whole line to get in. I know. We’re bad bad men. =P –
  Normally we are forced to stand is this long line outside the convention floors, before being able to enter. Security wasn’t that hard to get past though, and we were able to hang out inside, next to the Starbucks, before the doors officially opened to the public (exhibitors and pros were already inside at the time). Since we weren’t suppose to be there as it is, we were sorta avoiding security, just in cased they kicked us out for skipping the whole line (tens of thousands of people). We eventually were able to get inside the exhibit hall before the rest were suppose to go in, by about fifteen minutes.

  6:39PM – Yes! Got myself a pass for a free early screening of District 9 for Thursday night –
  One of the first things I wanted to get was a pass for a free movie screening. “District 9″ was the one we definitely wanted to see, so I skipped one line for free t-shirts and went straight to this one booth that was handing out District 9 posters. When I went up to the counter, they still handed the posters to me, and nothing else. Until I asked them about getting a pass for District 9, and then they reached under the counter and pulled up a pass for me (+1). Afterwards, I went to the Warner Bros booth, and got one of those big bags to carry around with (has a slot just for posters now – cool).

  7:02PM – Walking through a crowd of tens of thousands of people while doing a status update, isn’t exactly the wisest thing to do. –
  There were times I really wasn’t doing much sightseeing, because my head was looking at my Blackberry. But speaking of sightseeing… Once again it looks like the exhibit hall has diminished the presence of comic books on the show floor. A lot of the “regular” booths that you tend to see at Comic-Con have returned, but I noticed that some that I figured I would see didn’t come back. By far the most popular booth that I noticed was The Warner Bros booth, just because of the cool bags that they hand out (which I have one of them), but because the main LEGO Rock Band stage is right over there as well. Actually, it’s not just Warner Bros that is getting all the action, it’s that one section of the floor that’s filled with the popular studios (Sony, MGM, FOX, etc…) that’s causing all the foot traffic.

  

  7:39PM – The girl working the “JayCompanyComics” booth at aisle 400 is GORGEOUS. –
  I kinda wished she was a “booth girl” so it wouldn’t be so odd asking for a photo. Since she wasn’t dressed in a costume or anything that stood out like that, I could not find a reason to walk up to her and ask for a picture…. I’ll come up with something, somehow. Some have asked me to “prove it” already.

  8:34PM – Ow, I bruised my right index finger. Starting to bother me. –
  Remember the chores that I mentioned from the beginning of the day? Well, I was carrying this one item the wrong way, and it caused some pain to my right index finger. It wasn’t until hours pass that I started  feeling the bruises on that finger. It still hurts a little bit, as I type this.

  9:09PM – Got to play LEGO Rock Band. We did “Breakout” by Foo Fighters. –
  The game feels a little different than the standard Rock Band game, besides the fact that everything is LEGO in the game. Afterwards, I asked for that t-shirt that I won via Twitter, but then i found out that they are out of the exclusive t-shirt that I was suppose to have at the time. I was told to come back the next day.

  9:28PM – Comic-Con day 1, officially over. Swinging by Hooters, then I’ll head back to the hotel. -
  Another thing that was different this year, was on closing time, they dim the lights of the exhibit hall. Pretty much giving everybody the hint to “get out already, and come back tomorrow!”

  9:49PM – B52 + Malibu Coconut Rum with Pepsi = Wifey, don’t worry I’m not driving. -
  Standard visit to Hooters. “Ashley. My team.”

  10:53PM – Back at the hotel. Time to rest. -
  The hotel loaned me an ethernet cable, but it looks like I’m connected to the Wi-Fi anyway. I don’t know how I would have managed, if I couldn’t get on the internet with my lap top AT ALL. Kinda slow speeds though, which means the mass youtube uploads for Saturday night / Sunday morning is going to take a while.

  11:05PM – Favorite from SDCC day 1. Levitating a small ball using only my mind… and via a device called a “mind flex” propped on my head. -
  That was a pretty cool experience, and it almost seemed unbelievable that I was able to levitate the ball with my mind. It’s weird though. because I felt detached of the whole experience and kinda treated it like a video game. It wasn’t until after wards that I got to reflect on it and thought “how cool was that?!”
  You can watch me using the “mind flex,” levitating a small ball with my mind in this video…
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wXKnvCyP4

  I did not take as much photos as I figured I would, but it is still the first day of Comic-Con. Since it was preview night, I bought most of what I wanted to actually buy, as I hate dragging bags of SWAG (Stuff We All Get) around. Figured three hours of holding a big bag shouldn’t be a problem though. There was one more trade paper back that I was looking to purchase, but the booths I went to did not have it. I joke that it’s ironic that I couldn’t find a particular comic book in a comic book convention (sign of the times). I by the way did accidentally get a discount on one of the books I bought, because the guy behind the register used the wrong (cheaper) price for the book. I’m evil for not telling him his mistake….
  
  It’s now become a regular thing for me to not be able to walk through the whole exhibit hall on preview night now, and there’s still a bunch of “must visit” booths that I need to go to. Kinda disappointing, because I’m not going to be able to walk around much in the next days because I’ll be focusing on going to panels. Oh well, I’ll see what I can pull off. I do still want that official comic-con t-shirt, which I’m going to try and buy before it sells out. Plus I still got to get that Lego Rock Band t-shirt that is owed to me.
  
  

  My Photos will be found here…
  http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i14/patrick005/San%20Diego%20Comic-Con/SDCC%202009/

  and my Videos will be found here…
  http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=057A4483694DD8AE

  follow my Comic-Con updates as it happens via Twitter…
  https://twitter.com/optimum5

  • 11:04 am
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