Comic-Con Thirty-Three and a Half

(I got bored of the original title of my trilogy.)

Hawk and I determined that on Sunday, we'd get up bright and early because there was no fucking way I was missing the panel at noon.

Why the strong language, Red Panda?  You'd better have a dang good reason for that kind of nonsense!

Sunday's noon panel was Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, and Michael Dorn.

That is a very good reason.  Please continue.

Comic-Con opened at 10:00 so we were planning on being there around nine-thirty or ten or so, give or take. We determined an 8:00 start time would allow for showers, Hawk's hair-do, breakfast, and travel-time.

Naturally, neither of us wanted to get up at 8:00.  Two five-minute snoozes later, we determined it would be most appropriate to reset the alarm for 8:30. So we did that. Then, I made Hawk get up first because my legs weighed 800,000 kg each.

Yes, that's right folks, on the most important day of Comic-Con yet, I awoke to a fibromyalgia attack.  I don't need to bore you with the TMI details, but among my symptoms are legs that feel like cement pillars and a feeling like a transporter accident left a feral cat partially materialised in my gut. The longer I stayed in bed, the longer I could put off knowing just how bad it would be.

It actually wasn't too bad. Usually, it gets worse as I wake up. Today, it stayed as an even stiffness throughout my body. Perhaps—just perhaps—today was going to go my way.*

Anyway we made it to the convention a little after ten, despite Twitter's dire warnings that we better start lining up by 8:30.

Yeah right.

Today, the line up was outside. There were rumours that, perhaps, they hadn't oversold, that the fire marshal thing was all because they had let all the people into the lobbies of the BMO Centre Place Thingygummy and couldn't process them into the hall fast enough. That problem was easy to solve by having us all line up in the gorgeous spring morning.

Hard to be a hater on a day like this!

Hawk and I were in the line. Plenty of people were milling about. I don't know what they were up to. At one point, a wee boy in a Star Trek uniform said to his dad,

"Dad! Did you see the stormtrooper? Dad! A stormtrooper!" and his dad tried to pull him in the direction the dad was trying to mill.

"Dad! The stormtrooper! Dad! Dad! Dad! Do you see him!" and the dad just pulled him along, the poor kid walking backward, trying to get a better look at the stormtrooper.

I think I saw that happen at least three times, with three different small children, and three different adults in costume those poor kids probably thought were their stories come to life.

IT WAS SO CUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay but how's this for cute? The line was actually moving pretty quickly. We probably went fifty metres in ten minutes. However, I wasn't bored. There was so much to see. Like, this adorable mouse!

He had a friend, too, but he kept darting in and out of the bushes too quickly
for me to photograph him!  ADORBS

Okay I know, you don't care about the mice or the cute kiddies. You want Riker.

We made it in well before 11:00, but inside was more disorganisation of the kind that had plagued Comic-Con the day before. The guy at the door told us to go one way, but the signs pointed the other way, so we followed the signs first. At the end of the signs was a very angry volunteer yelling at people (who were yelling at him) saying to go the other way. So we went the other way, all the way around inside the building, with sign after sign indicating we (we being passholders) should go the other direction.

At the end of it, we discovered we'd arrived at the place where you went if your intent was to buy tickets. There, a VERY angry man told a volunteer to fuck herself. I felt bad for both of them. It wasn't the volunteer's fault that she didn't know what was going on, but she was representing an organisation that didn't bother organising anything. I understand why he blew his gasket.

Hawk and I found a way past these people and suddenly, we were at our destination, a mysterious place called The Corral. (Everything in this place had horsey names. The room for the horror film panel on Saturday was Palomino Room F.) The Corral was a stadium, and in The Corral would be the presentation by Jonathan Frakes et al.

Hawk and I wasted no time in gaining good seats and we hunkered down. Before Jonathan Frakes et al. was a panel with two voice actors and a writer from Futurama, a show Hawk enjoys, so we were good to just sit.

The Futurama panel was hiliarious, mostly because the voice actors were riotously funny dudes. I've seen maybe five or ten episodes of the show ever, maybe five years ago, and I still enjoyed the panel.

But now for the main event.

Frakes and Dorn take pictures of their fans. I start drooling.

They check out their pictures.  My camera almost shorts.

Marina Sirtis ran (literally ran) onto the stage late because, she claimed,
they took her to the wrong stage.

Several times during this very silly presentation, all three burst out into loud "OOOOOHHH CAAAANADAAAAAAAAAA"s. Frakes starts. They admit that's the only part of the song they know.

I kind of forget mostly what they talked about because it was too awesome. Mostly about hijinks on set. At one point, Frakes did his Commander Riker sideways walk for us, highly exaggerated. I swooned.

I'm such a psycho fan. This is embarrassing.

After that, Hawk and I hit the convention some more, eating some food, seeing the sites, killing time before the other panel we wanted to see: Sir Patrick Stewart at 4:00.

I saw the best costume.

I saw this, but I don't know what's going on. Imposters? Optical illusion?

Maybe because I don't read comic books I don't know about Spider-Man's children?

What's that? You want more Riker?

Well I guess I did meet him. Autographs cost $30 fricking dollars, but that was a small price to pay to meet my first crush! I had to get Hawk to check my teeth and stuff before I got to the front of the line and I was SO CLOSE to applying lip gloss, but I didn't want to make Hawk feel insecure. I don't think I've worn lip gloss just for him since our second date. Actually, the only reason I even had lipgloss was because my chapstick was missing.

OH MY GOD THAT'S COMMANDER RIKER TALKING TO ME

He thought it was weird that he was my first crush.  He said "Really?" and seemed surprised. I said "Well after the beard."

I am SO SUAVE. I can't believe he didn't sweep me up and run away with me right there.

After that we wandered around some more, me in an unbelieving haze, Hawk, well, I don't know how he felt but I imagine he was a bit concerned, especially when I looked at the hand Commander Riker Jonathan Frakes (I just keep doing that don't I) had shaken and said "I will never wash this hand again".

Poor Hawk.

I bought this:

Then we decided we'd better head back to The Corral to get seats for Patrick Stewart while seats could still be found. I mean, not only is he SIR PATRICK STEWART he is also CAPTAIN PICARD. Pretty big deal.

We got to The Corral about halfway through James Marster's presentation. James Marsters is another amazingly rad dude. I got a picture of him pouting, but we were pretty far away so it isn't exactly in focus.

I'm Spike, you wanna make something of it?

So that was pretty sweet. Then, it was Patrick Stewart time ... and that man is amazing. End of story.

I said, END OF STORY

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*When the fibro attack is non-crippling and I don't have a migraine, especially on a weekend where I hadn't packed any underwear and almost got trapped by a fire marshal, yes, that is a shiny shiny silver lining.