August 24, 2008
I went to Comic-Con and blogged about it a month later.
About a week and a half before Comic-Con, I and about thirty other people got an email telling us that our movies were in finalists in the Star Wars Fan Movie Awards which were to be held at San Diego Comic-Con. I didn't even know there were awards, so this came as a surprise to me. They also gave us all a free pass plus a guest for Comic-Con. So I figured, why not? I'd soon find out the answer to that question, which was expensive plane tickets and the fact that hotels in San Diego are booked solid months in advance of Comic-Con. Fortunately, my cousin Jacy had gotten a hotel room, and invited me to stay on the extra bed in it.
So it was settled. I was going. The day I left, the flight was delayed about four hours and when I finally got on the plane, and it was delayed another four hours. In those four hours, I came to the realization that I was in the worst seat on the whole plane. I was in the middle seat in the front row, which means I didn't have a seat in front of me that I could stick my legs under, just a wall. Technically, I was tied for worst, because there was another seat just like mine across the aisle, but enough complaining about air travel, there'll be plenty of time for that on the trip back.
I got there before Jacy, so I had most of Thursday to myself. I got onto the main floor, and it was all pretty overwhelming. Shoulder to shoulder people (and this was on Thursday, it was only going to get worse) and a lot of noisy booths about stuff I either didn't know about or care about.
There may be some small thing in that picture that I was trying to take a picture of, but that works as a general illustration of what the floor was like. I visited the Atom booth (the people responsible for the awards). They seemed busy, so I didn't stick around for too long. Not caring much for the floor, I thought I'd give the panels a try. I went to one about DIY animation, but it wasn't that interesting and when the speaker started giving tips about backing up your files regularly, I decided that I had better things to do than listen to some guy tell me how to use a computer.
I then wandered around in a bad mood, taking pictures of random things that I thought were stupid to prove how stupid Comic-Con was. I'll spare you most of those, but here's a guy in an Aqualad costume:
Later that day, my cousin Jacy showed up, who had been to Comic-Con before, and had a better handle on what to do, and put me in a better mood in general. I went to two panels hosted by Mark Evanier, whose blog I had been reading for a long time, so it was nice to see him in person and find out how his name is pronounced. (It's e-van-eer', not e-vahn'-ee-ay, like I thought, if you were wondering.) Those two panels were the ones I enjoyed the most, one interviewing golden age comic book artists and another with 1970's animators. The fact that those panels had about a tenth of the attendance of a panel about, say, that TV show Chuck, says a lot about what I disliked about Comic-Con.
Then the award ceremony came. I was shocked at how many people showed up for this thing. I mean, with all due respect for fan films, a lot of them are kind of on the bad side. But people were psyched and packed into a huge room.
I was sitting next to Tina, who works at Atom and was presenting an award. She was rehearsing her speech, and at the end of the speech, it said the name of the movie that won. There wasn't a sealed envelope or anything.
"Wait, you know who won already?" I asked her.
"Yeah," she replied.
"Did I win anything?"
"No."
I had been talking all day how I was sure I wasn't going to win anything. I was purposely doing this so I wouldn't get my hopes up, because I always get my hopes up, even when I'm positive I won't win anything. But it was kind of crushing to hear that I had come all the way out here just to smile and clap as other movies won awards. But as it turns out, the next award was best comedy, which as you already know, went to me.
You can watch it all go down here, best comedy comes in at around 2:30:
Apparently Tina didn't know who won every award, although other people did, and they had kept it to themselves. Here's a picture of me, Jacy, and the award in question.
Later that night I ended up at a small hotel bar, where I saw Jonathan Frakes (Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation) and Avery Brooks (Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) hanging out together. The very idea of two guys from two different Star Treks hanging out in a hotel bar threw the nerd in me for a loop, but I decided not to say anything to them. A few minutes later, a group of guys recognized Frakes as he got up to go to the bathroom, and then pointed and yelled "Riker!" along with some unintelligible squeals. Frakes, who I imagine gets this all the time, handled it pretty well, pointing and yelling back at them, then quickly ducking into the bathroom. The guys then huddled up and decided to follow him in there. All of which made me feel a lot better about keeping my mouth shut when I saw them.
Anyway, that was Comic-Con. All and all, a fun trip, although I don't think I'd ever go back were I not enticed by the possibility of winning an award. On the way back, the award broke in half when the TSA decided it looked dangerous (keep in mind, this is a statue of C-3P0 and R2-D2) and rifled through my bag and pulled it out. That, or it had already broken. It was pretty delicate, but I like to blame the TSA. My flight got delayed six hours and I caught a cold that put me out of commission for about a week, which seems to be what usually happens when I go anywhere outside of the city.
Oh, and at some point or another I got my picture taken with Batman, Wonder Woman, and Pikachu.
Posted by Will at 7:08 PM | Comments (2) digg delicious reddit
August 12, 2008
The cussiness of diogenes club is...
And as soon as I remember to bring my pictures home, I'll tell you more about how Comic-Con went down, although I've probably forgotten half of what happened already.
Posted by Will at 8:14 PM | Comments (3) digg delicious reddit
July 26, 2008
Here I am at Comic-Con
First off, I'm happy to announce that Paraphrase Theater won the award for best comedy. You can read about it at the official site. I was so surprised, that all I could muster for an acceptance speech was, "Thanks," and when the presenter encouraged me to say more, I replied, "That's all I got."
I bet you'd like some photos of the event, and I'd like to give them to you, but all I have is a disposable camera I bought at the airport, so you'll have to wait until I get it developed. I'm kind of surprised they still sell those things. You could probably buy a cheap digital camera for the price of two of them. But who am I to judge, I'm the one who bought it.
Comic-Con is a bit overwhelming, that's why I'm here in the hotel, blogging on what I'm told is the busiest day of the event. It was too busy for me on Thursday, the least busy day of the event, so I'm not in a big rush to get down there. Which isn't to say I'm not having a good time, of course. There's just a limit to how many people in anime outfits that I don't recognize bumping into me I can take.
But I got to see some neat panels, got my picture taken with Pikachu, and all kinds of stuff. I'll tell you all about it when I get back and have pictures to go along with it. Now, back to the convention center.
Update: It'll be a while before I can upload my own photos, but until then, this picture of me awkwardly accepting the award was uploaded by the official Star Wars blog:
The rest of the album is here
Posted by Will at 1:46 PM | Comments (7) digg delicious reddit
July 23, 2008
I'm off to Comic-Con!
See, Star Wars Paraphrase Theater is playing in the Atom Star Wars fan film festival there. I've always been curious about these kinds of things, but I've never had a good reason to go to one. Now I do. It's hard to imagine there'll be enough stuff there to keep me busy all weekend, but who knows. I'm here at the airport now, which is where I've been for the past four hours or so. If I spent four hours a day at an airport, I'd probably blog a lot more. Although I'd probably just blog about how much I hate spending so much time at the airport.
But anyway, if you're going too, drop me a line, or if you want me to pick up a copy of Detective Comics #27 for you or anything, leave a comment.
Posted by Will at 9:57 PM | Comments (1) digg delicious reddit
July 15, 2008
The Spirit trailer is the most mind-blowingly awful thing I've seen this year
The studio has been doing its best to delete it off youtube since it was leaked, so I feel a personal responsiblity to share it with you, so you too can revel in its badness.
Behold, the truly terrible trailer for The Spirit.
Posted by Will at 3:23 PM | Comments (0) digg delicious reddit
June 23, 2008
Pictures from a work trip to Northern CA
Meetup (that's where I work, for those of you who don't know) sent me to San Francisco and Sacramento last weekend to meet with organizers, and my friend Rick documented it all (well, most of it anyway) in flickr form. So check it out.
PS If you click the 'i' in the middle of the photos, you get captions too.
Posted by Will at 1:09 AM | Comments (0) digg delicious reddit
June 17, 2008
Carlough Bros. Return!
Readers may remember a live show I do called Carlough Bros: Live! and how I always say the next one will be the last one. Well, here's two more last shows, including a brand new Carlough Bros. adventure. If you're in New York and free, come by and check us out.
The Original Carlough Bros
Part of Atom.com Live!
Wednesday, June 18th at 7:30pm
UCB Theater
307 W. 26th Street
And it's free, too.
And then...
The World Premiere of Carlough Bros. in... Same' Ol!
Part of The Debate Society's Fundraiser and Gala
Thursday, June 19th at 7pm
The Ukrainian Cultural Center
136 2nd Ave.
35 Dollars in advance, 40 at the door
More info here: http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/144853
Posted by Will at 10:40 AM | Comments (2) digg delicious reddit
June 4, 2008
The Further Absolutely True Adventures of George Lucas
I stopped writing my own Absolutely True Adventures of George Lucas a long time ago (don't forget you can still make your own), but I came across this link randomly today, and I'm officially passing off the torch to whoever made it.
Posted by Will at 4:24 PM | Comments (0) digg delicious reddit
May 30, 2008
Spooning
My friend Califia has just started a new food and cooking web site called Spooning. If you ever need to know how to make a bread sandwich, come to me, but for anything else culinarily related, go to her.
Posted by Will at 2:03 PM | Comments (0) digg delicious reddit
May 12, 2008
Always, courtesy of the Hazzards
Posted by Will at 11:55 AM | Comments (3) digg delicious reddit
