We went, we saw, we were exhausted.
Actually, we did pretty well this year. Having had several years' experience to learn what is and is not possible at Comic-Con, my boyfriend and I managed to maintain some Zen over the weekend. Which is to say I freaked out over non-essentials only three times, my boyfriend only expressed the wish to kill about ten people with his bare hands, and we managed to settle our one major quarrel with a solution acceptable to all of us (he stayed in room 6CDEF to watch Mutant Wars, and I trekked up Fifth Street to meet our friends at an Irish pub; everyone was happier that way).
As usual, the Convention Center was filled to capacity; walking from room to room was often the most frustrating part, unless you tried to walk around on the exhibition floor, which was worse. I still got into every panel I actually stood in line for, though I did give up on Heroes before I even got to the Convention Center that morning, and we skipped the screening of Doctor Horrible's Singalong Blog when we heard that they'd closed the line for it three hours before it started (in retrospect, I'm not sure that was true, but we'd already seen it anyway and we were tired after watching The Next Avengers movie, so we headed back to the hotel).
Of the panels I did see, the Dr. Horrible one - featuring Joss Whedon, Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, Simon Helberg, Jed and Zach Whedon, and Melissa Tancharoen - was definitely the highlight of the convention. It was pretty much a "you had to be there" kind of thing, although I will say that NPH and Nathan Fillion were unremittingly hilarious. I laughed almost the entire time. I think somebody posted the whole thing on YouTube if you want to look for it, but really - you had to be there. And I will never think about Twittering the same way again.
The lowlight would have to be the Twilight panel. I admit that I haven't read the books, but several of my friends enjoyed them, and the excerpt I read on Amazon seemed intriguing. Also, the movie has been getting a decent amount of buzz in geek circles, and I wanted to get in on the ground floor. So I got in line about an hour before the panel started, with a few thousand fans. Honestly, I wasn't sure I'd make it in, but it didn't turn out to be a problem. Once in, I found myself surrounded by tween girls and middle-aged women, all of whom seemed to labor under the misapprehension that this was the first time anyone had ever been so devoted a fan of anything. (Harry Potter, anyone? Lord of the Rings? The original fandom - Trekkies? Wearing a "Team Edward" t-shirt does not require the same level of commitment as joining Vader's Fist, little girl. I don't care how much you loved the books.) Sadly, the fans were not the low point. That honor belonged to the panelists. Catherine Hardwicke, erstwhile director of such hard-edged fare as Thirteen, giggled nearly as much as her cast. Kristen Stewart, playing Bella, was more interested in speaking sotto voce to her castmates than in answering questions into the microphone. Robert Pattinson, playing Edward, appeared tongue-tied for most of it, stalling for time by running his hand through his absurdly cut, longish hair. Every time he did this (ten at least), eighty percent of the room screamed and swooned. When there was a brief lull in audience questions, the moderator said "Any more questions?" and a woman in the row behind me muttered, "Yes. Are you all drunk?" It was the wittiest sentence spoken in the panel. They showed footage (the climactic vampire battle in a dance studio, a fourteen-year-old girl told me later); it was slow and uninspired. All in all - thumbs down. I know the tweens will vilify me (the fourteen-year-old did; I placated her with my free double-sided Twilight poster), but honestly, it looked like schlock. And I hear that the final book, which came out a week later, has disappointed many with its decidedly unfeminist conclusion. I hate to appear (openly) prejudiced, but I have to say I always had my doubts about a vampire series written by a Mormon housewife. Go watch some Buffy, little girls. Or at least read Interview with a Vampire. It may be schlock, but at least it's intricate, philosophical schlock.
I also saw the panel for Dollhouse panel, in which Eliza Dushku flirted shamelessly with Tahmoh Penikett and talked about hunting. Funny, but not as funny as Dr. Horrible. Battlestar Galactica showed some kickass footage and also boasted a good-natured, intelligent cast (best line, James Callis: "I had to think, is it possible for someone to be a deeply spiritual person and at the same time a raging nymphomaniac? And the answer is, yes.") Sadly, Jamie Bamber is the only man I've ever seen made LESS sexy by an English accent. Weird, huh? The Watchmen panel was thoughtful and interesting, with each of the actors talking expressively about the motivations for their characters - I have high hopes. The Spirit panel managed to be informative and intelligent without actually telling me what the plot is, which was confusing. Although Samuel L. Jackson was unsurprisingly brilliant (best line: "When I was growing up, Nick Fury was a white guy. It just goes to show that in America you CAN be anything you want to be. You too can grow up to be a black man").
And there was more. We missed the Masquerade (third year in a row. Damnit, I am going to that next year!), but I caught most of the replay the next day. More on that in a later post. We managed not to eat dinner in the convention hall at all - turns out there's a restaurant in the Marriott next door. Only a couple of bucks more expensive, and way better food. I donated blood as usual, and was excited to find out my blood type (weirdly, none of my doctors ever mentioned it). I am the deeply rare AB negative, which I think is cool, although I can't really explain why. I guess I just like feeling special. I got swag and more swag. (I've now consolidated it to one small corner of my bedroom. Anyone desperate for a limited-edition Chief Tyrol BSG action figure that looks uncannily like Forrest DeWitt should make me an offer.)
And then we returned to our non-insane real lives. I want to go back now. Two weeks of living in the real world (and attending my real job) have depressed me. But I forge on nonetheless.
Next task: finding a hotel for next year!
(All quotes are from the best of my memory and should not be considered verbatim. I took a notebook, but I mostly doodled in it. So sue me. You want news, try CNN.)
Showing posts with label BSG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BSG. Show all posts
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
SemiGeekGirl's Guide to Comic-Con, Part III
Down the Rabbit-Hole
Ah, Comic-Con: the coolest place on Earth to get the migraine of your life. Don't get me wrong - the Con is one of my favorite times of year. But the exhibit floor alone is 575,701 square feet of insanity. That's about ten football fields. And that's not even counting the upstairs areas where the panels are held. Do yourself a favor and save yourself at least a little stress.
Tip #3: The Programming schedule is your Bible.
As usual, the Con schedule for this year went up barely two weeks before the event, leaving precious little time to plan - especially if you could only manage to attend for one day. (In that case, you were screwed, because all passes for Friday and Saturday - the most glittering, celeb-friendly, panel-heavy days - were already sold out.) It used to be that you could look up the schedule a couple of days in advance, figure out what you felt like attending, and wander in fifteen or twenty minutes before the panel started. As recently as 2003, I drove down to San Diego around eleven, stood in line for an hour, hour and a half max, to get a badge, then meandered upstairs to get a seat for Joss Whedon's post-Buffy panel (which was awesome, by the way). By contrast, last year I got in line for Ballroom 20 an hour before the Heroes panel, didn't make it in, stayed in line to catch the Battlestar panel and then stayed through the intervening two panels before Joss Whedon because I was afraid I wouldn't get back in if I left.
You don't necessarily have to plan where you'll be every moment - chances are it won't go exactly as you plan anyway - but you should look through the schedule and mark anything you'd be absolutely heartbroken about missing. If it's in Ballroom 20 or Hall H, plan on being there two hours early. At least. The good news is that the San Diego Convention Center reached fire-code capacity (125,000 people) last year, so it literally can't get any more crowded. The bad news is that 125,000 people is still pretty damn crowded.
A lot of the smaller panels will be less well-attended, so you might be able to just walk in a couple of minutes before they start. But in any case, know what you want to see, and - almost as importantly - know where it is. It takes a lot longer to walk from one end of the Convention Center than you think it does, and for crowd-control purposes some hallways will be one-way. There are maps posted on the Comic-Con website - they'll pass them out in the hall too, but I suggest at least scanning it before you get to San Diego.
Also, know where and when you'll meet the people you're going with. You probably won't all be in the same panels - and DON'T count on being able to save seats - but you'll want to be able to find each other afterwards, and if you don't plan ahead it could be very difficult. Don't plan to meet on the exhibit floor if you can help it - it's huge and crowded and almost impossible to navigate quickly. Better spots to meet are upstairs in the Sails Pavilion, where there are tables to sit and eat and compare swag, or upstairs on the patios/smoking areas. They have benches and usually aren't that crowded. If you do lose track of your party, make sure everyone has a phone that can send and receive text messages - cell phone calls are a huge no-no in panels, but a discreet text (with your phone on vibrate, obviously) can usually pass unnoticed.
Tip #4: The Convention is an Endurance Sport - For Spectators
It seems obvious, but I'll take a moment to go over the basics. Wear comfortable shoes. The convention floor is (as I've mentioned) huge. Your feet will hurt by the end of the convention, but you can decide how much. (Incidentally, this is one piece of advice I never follow; costumes rarely lend themselves to comfy footwear. Ah, what I sacrifice for my passionate yet useless hobby!) Other than that, you can wear pretty much anything and still not be guaranteed not to be unique. If you're not in costume, dress casually and maybe bring a jacket; the Convention Center is ferociously well air-conditioned.
Bring some water. It's always good to have some, and you can take it everywhere in the Convention Center. You might also want to carry some food. The food in the exhibit hall is basic (pizza, hamburgers, chips, and Starbucks), expensive, and not that great. It's not bad, certainly, and I always end up eating there at least once, but you might as well save your money for souvenirs. Bring things that travel well - jerky, granola bars, fruit, candy. You don't want to bring too much to carry - the swag will take care of that, but it's good to have a snack for when you're waiting in yet another line.
Bring a book or a portable video game system. There will be lines, and more lines, and while it's fun to strike up a conversation and get to know your fellow geeks, it's also nice to have something surefire to amuse yourself with.
Well, that's all for now. I am, of course, currently running around like a madwoman, finishing the last touches of costumes, doing laundry, baking brownies (not that kind), and finding all my confirmation numbers. Speaking of which, one last tip: bring your registration barcode. You do not want to get stuck in the line of people who don't have theirs and need to be looked up by hand. And pick up your badge on Wednesday (4-day passes only) if you can. There's nothing more frustrating than starting your convention experience with a two-hour wait in the hot sun (the line starts inside, but where it ends, nobody knows...), missing the first panel you wanted to see.
Good luck, fellow geeks. See you on the floor!
Ah, Comic-Con: the coolest place on Earth to get the migraine of your life. Don't get me wrong - the Con is one of my favorite times of year. But the exhibit floor alone is 575,701 square feet of insanity. That's about ten football fields. And that's not even counting the upstairs areas where the panels are held. Do yourself a favor and save yourself at least a little stress.
Tip #3: The Programming schedule is your Bible.
As usual, the Con schedule for this year went up barely two weeks before the event, leaving precious little time to plan - especially if you could only manage to attend for one day. (In that case, you were screwed, because all passes for Friday and Saturday - the most glittering, celeb-friendly, panel-heavy days - were already sold out.) It used to be that you could look up the schedule a couple of days in advance, figure out what you felt like attending, and wander in fifteen or twenty minutes before the panel started. As recently as 2003, I drove down to San Diego around eleven, stood in line for an hour, hour and a half max, to get a badge, then meandered upstairs to get a seat for Joss Whedon's post-Buffy panel (which was awesome, by the way). By contrast, last year I got in line for Ballroom 20 an hour before the Heroes panel, didn't make it in, stayed in line to catch the Battlestar panel and then stayed through the intervening two panels before Joss Whedon because I was afraid I wouldn't get back in if I left.
You don't necessarily have to plan where you'll be every moment - chances are it won't go exactly as you plan anyway - but you should look through the schedule and mark anything you'd be absolutely heartbroken about missing. If it's in Ballroom 20 or Hall H, plan on being there two hours early. At least. The good news is that the San Diego Convention Center reached fire-code capacity (125,000 people) last year, so it literally can't get any more crowded. The bad news is that 125,000 people is still pretty damn crowded.
A lot of the smaller panels will be less well-attended, so you might be able to just walk in a couple of minutes before they start. But in any case, know what you want to see, and - almost as importantly - know where it is. It takes a lot longer to walk from one end of the Convention Center than you think it does, and for crowd-control purposes some hallways will be one-way. There are maps posted on the Comic-Con website - they'll pass them out in the hall too, but I suggest at least scanning it before you get to San Diego.
Also, know where and when you'll meet the people you're going with. You probably won't all be in the same panels - and DON'T count on being able to save seats - but you'll want to be able to find each other afterwards, and if you don't plan ahead it could be very difficult. Don't plan to meet on the exhibit floor if you can help it - it's huge and crowded and almost impossible to navigate quickly. Better spots to meet are upstairs in the Sails Pavilion, where there are tables to sit and eat and compare swag, or upstairs on the patios/smoking areas. They have benches and usually aren't that crowded. If you do lose track of your party, make sure everyone has a phone that can send and receive text messages - cell phone calls are a huge no-no in panels, but a discreet text (with your phone on vibrate, obviously) can usually pass unnoticed.
Tip #4: The Convention is an Endurance Sport - For Spectators
It seems obvious, but I'll take a moment to go over the basics. Wear comfortable shoes. The convention floor is (as I've mentioned) huge. Your feet will hurt by the end of the convention, but you can decide how much. (Incidentally, this is one piece of advice I never follow; costumes rarely lend themselves to comfy footwear. Ah, what I sacrifice for my passionate yet useless hobby!) Other than that, you can wear pretty much anything and still not be guaranteed not to be unique. If you're not in costume, dress casually and maybe bring a jacket; the Convention Center is ferociously well air-conditioned.
Bring some water. It's always good to have some, and you can take it everywhere in the Convention Center. You might also want to carry some food. The food in the exhibit hall is basic (pizza, hamburgers, chips, and Starbucks), expensive, and not that great. It's not bad, certainly, and I always end up eating there at least once, but you might as well save your money for souvenirs. Bring things that travel well - jerky, granola bars, fruit, candy. You don't want to bring too much to carry - the swag will take care of that, but it's good to have a snack for when you're waiting in yet another line.
Bring a book or a portable video game system. There will be lines, and more lines, and while it's fun to strike up a conversation and get to know your fellow geeks, it's also nice to have something surefire to amuse yourself with.
Well, that's all for now. I am, of course, currently running around like a madwoman, finishing the last touches of costumes, doing laundry, baking brownies (not that kind), and finding all my confirmation numbers. Speaking of which, one last tip: bring your registration barcode. You do not want to get stuck in the line of people who don't have theirs and need to be looked up by hand. And pick up your badge on Wednesday (4-day passes only) if you can. There's nothing more frustrating than starting your convention experience with a two-hour wait in the hot sun (the line starts inside, but where it ends, nobody knows...), missing the first panel you wanted to see.
Good luck, fellow geeks. See you on the floor!
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Why BSG is (currently) the best show on television
So I've just watched the last episode of the first half of the final Battlestar Galactica season, and it was amazing. For anyone who hasn't seen it yet (4:10, Revelations), I won't include any spoilers here. I just want to take a moment to appreciate the many wonderful things about this intelligent, superlative show.
For the many people who mistakenly believe that a "genre" show is somehow lesser than a reality-based narrative, I'd like to point out that this show is built around a series of core questions that are deeper and more insoluble than any brought up by Law and Order or ER. The nature of humanity - always a slippery definition - becomes even more so when faced with a species that looks, feels, and bleeds as we do, yet is somehow separate. The Cylons, in their endless struggle to understand humans, force the humans to try to understand themselves. And while the first question is seemingly obvious: what constitutes humanity? The second question is definitely not: can you choose to be human? And the third is even more unsettling: can you choose NOT to be?
The answer to the latter questions seems, so far, to be in the affirmative. Cylon characters have made sacrifices as wrenching as any of the humans; humans have betrayed their own as they have been doing for centuries, in times and places when literally everything was at stake. Many of the characters have acknowledged this, while others refuse to face it, clinging to their own in the face of all evidence and opposition. The parallels with America's current situation in the global community are obvious, but the implications go beyond that. If peace broke out everywhere tomorrow, it wouldn't last precisely because we haven't answered these questions.
It's true that Battlestar Galactica is set far in the future, in a time of routine faster-than-light space travel and ship-mounted energy weapons. But nowadays that seems hardly more fanciful than The West Wing's benevolent, responsible Bartlet Administration. The people of the Colonial Fleet may live in more extreme conditions than the average American, but they have the same range of choices. Violence vs. peace. Trust vs. betrayal. Self-interest vs. the greater good. The choices they make are sometimes right, and sometimes not, but perhaps that, too, is an indicator of humanity.
I'll reserve my accolades for the acting and specific accomplishments in writing for another post, but I will say that I have more in common with Dee or Cally or Tory any day of the week than I ever had with Carrie Bradshaw or Meadow Soprano. And I'm proud of that, not just as a Geek Girl, but as a human being.
I think that the main reason most people dismiss "genre" shows is a failure of imagination. After all, anyone who thinks Farmer Needs A Wife and The Bachelorette are reality-based is clearly incapable of separating fantasy and reality. And we should all feel sorry for them.
For the many people who mistakenly believe that a "genre" show is somehow lesser than a reality-based narrative, I'd like to point out that this show is built around a series of core questions that are deeper and more insoluble than any brought up by Law and Order or ER. The nature of humanity - always a slippery definition - becomes even more so when faced with a species that looks, feels, and bleeds as we do, yet is somehow separate. The Cylons, in their endless struggle to understand humans, force the humans to try to understand themselves. And while the first question is seemingly obvious: what constitutes humanity? The second question is definitely not: can you choose to be human? And the third is even more unsettling: can you choose NOT to be?
The answer to the latter questions seems, so far, to be in the affirmative. Cylon characters have made sacrifices as wrenching as any of the humans; humans have betrayed their own as they have been doing for centuries, in times and places when literally everything was at stake. Many of the characters have acknowledged this, while others refuse to face it, clinging to their own in the face of all evidence and opposition. The parallels with America's current situation in the global community are obvious, but the implications go beyond that. If peace broke out everywhere tomorrow, it wouldn't last precisely because we haven't answered these questions.
It's true that Battlestar Galactica is set far in the future, in a time of routine faster-than-light space travel and ship-mounted energy weapons. But nowadays that seems hardly more fanciful than The West Wing's benevolent, responsible Bartlet Administration. The people of the Colonial Fleet may live in more extreme conditions than the average American, but they have the same range of choices. Violence vs. peace. Trust vs. betrayal. Self-interest vs. the greater good. The choices they make are sometimes right, and sometimes not, but perhaps that, too, is an indicator of humanity.
I'll reserve my accolades for the acting and specific accomplishments in writing for another post, but I will say that I have more in common with Dee or Cally or Tory any day of the week than I ever had with Carrie Bradshaw or Meadow Soprano. And I'm proud of that, not just as a Geek Girl, but as a human being.
I think that the main reason most people dismiss "genre" shows is a failure of imagination. After all, anyone who thinks Farmer Needs A Wife and The Bachelorette are reality-based is clearly incapable of separating fantasy and reality. And we should all feel sorry for them.
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