Home Again, but Not for Long

We're home again for a little while. Comicon was exhausting, as always, but we had a fine time. The reaction to the Human Target pilot was enthusiastic and I've been catching press notices about it thanks to Google Alerts. I'm hoping it will be a huge success so I can buy the house I want and hold grand parties in it while Ace grazes in the back yard in a happy retirement.

We got together with James Moran, a British writer who has worked on Dr. Who, Torchwood, and Crusoe, and his wife Jodie Kearns, an opera singer, for dinner last night. We never saw them at Comicon, and they came back to L.A. for a few days before heading back to London. Because of Twitter and Facebook, we knew they were around but it's purely by chance that you run into friends in a crowd of 150,000. Even when you plan a meeting, it's hard to find people. James and Jodie are staying in Santa Monica, so we took them out to El Cholo, an L.A. restaurant that dates back to the 1920s, which has a location close to their hotel. We introduced them to margaritas, table-side-made guacamole, and green corn tamales, which is just about my favorite combination of traditional L.A. cuisine. They were duly impressed, so I suggested they might try The Border Grill before they leave town. That restaurant is walking-distance from their hotel. It was a relaxing dinner with excellent conversation, something that can be lacking in the Comicon environment.

While it was doubtful it would happen until yesterday, I'm taking a quick trip back East to head to the western foothills of the Catskill Mountains for my high school reunion. I'd rather not say how many years, but I have great fondness for that particular year and its place in history.

As I've mentioned before, I haven't gotten on a plane since September 7, 2001, when we flew back from New York. I haven't seen the edited skyline of the city in person. I'm arriving on a red-eye, so that should be interesting.

I'm planning on taking "Talkie Tina," our Magellan GPS unit along with me. She and I don't get along very well, but it will be easier than following a map without a navigator. I'm pretty sure that my automatic pilot will turn on once I get off Long Island (where I attended college) and out of the greater New York City environs. I would be hard pressed to count the number of times I've made the trip by car between New York and Delaware County, but it has been a long stretch since the last time. I doubt there will be enough hours to do all of the things I'd like to cram in the 5 days I'll be there, but I'm going to do as many as I can. I've got my fingers crossed for some good estate sales on Saturday morning, and the county fair should at least be set up before I head back down state on Sunday (it will be open if I wait until Monday, but I'm not sure about doing that.) I hope that my small home town has an Internet cafe or wifi at the library, because I guarantee my mother isn't going to have any kind of a hook-up at home. OMG. What will I do?

Comicon 2009: Friday

Today's the day I actually braved the crowds and went over to the convention center to catch The Big Bang Theory panel. I did cheat a little bit by imposing on my friendship with Bill Prady to ask for guest passes, so we could have decent seats without having to sit in line for hours. I met up with Bill's assistant and got our passes and one for actress Chase Masterson.
The cast, along with co-creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady put on an hysterical panel. It was preceded by a clip reel of scenes which relate to Comicon attendees. A huge favorite is "Rock, Paper, Sissors, Lizard, Spock" which JimParsons was asked to do live. He can't. Apparently, every one of the 12 or so takes will be available on the Season 2 DVD set, due out in September.

Jim did a great job answering the question about how Sheldon would respond to being nominated for an Emmy Award (as Jim was last week) and what he'd do for an acceptance speech when he wins. Here's the response:



And now, it is time for me to walk over to the Hilton for the Warner Bros. Television reception where I'll see the folks from TBBT and meet the folks who are bringing Len's baby The Human Target to the small screen this winter.

Home Again

We're back from San Diego, exhausted, but in a good way. There's little that can top what happened on Thursday and Friday, but Len said that Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance came up to him on Saturday and told Len that the coat he wore to the Eisners was the coolest ever. Imagine a rock star saying that to an old guy of 60. (Gerard Way took home a couple of Eisners on Friday, so he is no stranger to the comics world.)

Tonight I plan to get the digital images processed (if you shoot RAW, you actually do "process" the images) so I can get some pictures up tomorrow. I hear there is video with Len and Hugh Jackman on YouTube, but I haven't found it yet. My friend Kim has gone to New York for a week, so I don't expect to see the pictures of me with Hugh before then, but I do have Len with Hugh. The handshake shot, which I was not in a position to get, was caught in both directions by others and I've seen that all over the Internet. Here's a link to one on Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood.

Here's the version of the photograph from the Los Angeles Times by Spencer Weiner, from the opposite direction. That's my hand on the chair and my blond hair behind Len's back. You can see why I wasn't in a good position to take a photograph of the two of them. I did much better back stage.
It took us more than two hours to pack out of the hotel on Monday morning. Let me correct that. It took me about half an hour. It took my son two hours. He's the one who did all of the shopping and had a small fortune in anime-related statues to bring home. He also did a great job scavaging the floor for swag--free stuff--and had an amazing number of these monster bags advertising different television shows and movies.

Ace greeted me when I got to the barn last night for my lesson. He was also not eating--there was a mass of hay in the stall. Gayle and I figure he doesn't like the taste of the new batch or he missed me. There was nothing wrong with the hay, so I sprinkled some vinegar over it and he was eating it when I left. My concerns about colic were relieved by the way he took carrots from me and that there was fresh poop around. Plus his gut sounds were just fine.

He looked very nice in his new saddle pad from Mary's Tack and Feed and I'll put the braided reins on his western bridle tonight, so I can move the black ones back to his dressage bridle. Yes, I spent most of my money in San Diego at the tack shop, not the convention or even Nordstrom's.

I did get a nice little statue of Wolverine on a business card or post-it holder base on Sunday, but it's not like the years I ordered the Sideshow statue of Aragorn on Brego charging the Black Gates or the replica of Eowyn's Sword that now hangs in the living room. My biggest shopping regret from past years at the convention is that I couldn't afford the statue of Sam Gamgee with Bill the Pony that Sideshow did the first year they had Lord of the Rings pieces. It almost immediately sold out. What would have cost me $125 goes now for thousands of dollars on eBay. Lesson learned: if you really love it, buy it. The grocery money will show up.