- We arrived in LA at about 10 o'clock on Thursday night and then jumped in a chauffeured town car at 3am for the drive to San Diego.
- We got to San Diego an hour and 15 minutes earlier than expected, which made me mad. We paid through the nose for this stupid car and I could have slept for another hour?
- Nothing but Subway is open in San Diego at 5 o'clock in the morning, thankfully it's now Macaroni's favorite place to eat. The veggie patties are pretty good (had one today for lunch)
- We got in line for Comic Con at about 6 o'clock and tried really hard not to die of boredom.
- At about 8 o'clock we got to move inside the convention center - just to wait in another line for about an hour and a half.
- We rushed to the Dark Horse booth to get tickets to the Dr. Horrible Sing Along Blog (DHSAB) autograph session. Unfortunately they were raffle tickets and people who had been at Comic Con for two days had been picking up tickets like crazy. Seriously, I saw one woman with about thirty tickets. That bitter you hear? That's me not winning an autograph session.
- We then rushed to Ballroom 20 where Joss and Friends would be appearing about three and a half hours later, at 1:30. The idea was that we would sit through all the other panels and move up towards the front of the room after each one let out. Unfortunately about 3,000 other people also had that bright idea. We were stuck in the middle of the room the whole time.
- So it's about 10 or 11 o'clock and we're sitting through a bunch of Stargate panels. We've never seen the shows so were pretty bored, until Richard Dean Anderson started talking about his frozen poo. Macaroni loved that.
- Jewel "Kaylee" Staite is now on one of the Stargate shows so it was fun to see her. And to listen to the audience questions, many of which were about Firefly.
- Finally, Scott from Dark Horse comes out to introduce Joss. It's embarrassing to say that sitting in a room of thousands listening to Joss was a lot like sitting in a room of thousands listening to the Dalai Lama, but it really was. They both make me insanely happy and inspire me to try to be a better person. And they are both so cute! Thankfully Joss didn't give his speech in Tibetan.
- Joss introduced his brothers Zach and Jed and Jed's fiancee Maurissa Tancharoen, who co-wrote DHSAB with Joss, and then the cast: Felicia Day, Simon Helberg, Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris. The crowd totally lost their shit. Yes, I was part of that crowd.
- I'm going to try to find the links to videos of the panel rather than attempt at getting close to all the hilarity of the panel. Let's just say I love Felicia, Nate, Simon and NPH in an only slightly twisted way...but damn, those Brothers Whedon are hot! Maurissa is lucky. And you know, gorgeous.
- The panel was over way too fast and I was so sleepy that I really wanted to take a nap. Instead we walked around for hours looking at lots of awesome art and fun people watching. Macaroni went on a mad hunt for Shonen Jump stuff.
- We walked by the Dark Horse booth just as Joss was leaving but managed to get a photo of Felicia signing autographs. Autographs for lucky bastards!
- We went to the Browncoat booth to get a copy of The Guild on DVD, and managed to get it autographed by Clara, Bladezzz, Vork and Zaboo. Sadly no Felicia, I mean Codex.
- We ran into Brian, who I met on the Browncoat Cruise last December and then shared the rock star tour of San Fran with last January.
- Macaroni decided he couldn't hold out for the 10:30 screening of DHSAB. I really wanted to stay but in retrospect am glad we didn't. We got on a train at 8:30pm and didn't make it back to the hotel until midnight. Plus, the room they had for the screening held only a fraction of the crowd. They were able to get additional rooms but I'd guess there was a delay in the screening times. We would've been up for more than 24 hours if we had stayed. I'm way too old for that.
- Saturday morning we got to Universal Studios around 10 o'clock and went straight to the Simpson's Ride. After that we also hit the Jurassic Park ride, the backlot tour (we got to see the Mule from Serenity, the spot where they filmed the van heist for DHSAB and the Desperate Housewives set. Lots of Joss/Nathan goodies), Shrek 4D and a Waterworld (hey, Joss goodie!) stunt show. And then the Simpson ride about another hundred times.
- When the park closed we went to City Walk for a 9:30 showing of Hellboy 2. I only slept through a few minutes of it. Again, back to the hotel after midnight
- Sunday morning we got to the La Brea Tar Pits around 10am. All kinds of awesome. Macaroni loved this, and with the exception of The Joss Hour, it was my favorite part too.
- Lunch at Subway. Sadly no Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf or Pinkberry this trip. I was so craving some frozen yogurt...and another DHSAB treat.
- We took a bus to Hollywood and Highland to see Grauman's Chinese Theater and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was super hot, we had only two hours before we had to be to the airport and, go figure, ten year old boys aren't interested in a bunch of dead actors. He did let me take a few photos of him; with his feet in Christopher Walken's footprint, his hand in George Lucas's freakishly small handprint and with Kermit the Frog's star. Fun way to finish off the trip.
- We got home just before midnight and I was only two hours late for work on Monday.
I'm too lazy to link right now...so you can check out flickr for our photos.
