We decided to drive to Chicago, leaving on Thursday evening for our ~12 hour drive and arriving on Friday morning. I was exhausted, had only about 2 hours of uncomfortable, back-seat-of-the-van sleep in the past 24 hours. But I was there, and excitement trumped exhaustion.
Day 1: Spike
The only panel that I really wanted to see was James Marsters'. I keep missing him at the other cons! In Philly, I was less than an hour late for the Buffy panel that he did with Charisma Carpenter. In New York, I was only there on Sunday, and his panel was on Friday. So this time, I really had to be there! His panel was actually the reason why I decided to drive through the night.Before James arrived, the moderator told the audience to shout "Bite me!" when he came in the doors. We did, on her cue, but we sucked so he didn't actually hear us. He then asked her what we said and it made him laugh. James started his Q&A session by telling us to ask him anything and try to embarrass him; because it has never been done before. The whole panel was a lot of fun, mainly because James loves telling stories and has many interesting ones. Someone asked about the John Barrowman kiss on Torchwood and his story was a bit different than his last one, and completely different than Barrowman's. Another question that stuck with me was about which is better, Buffy or Angel. He said, as a viewer he prefers Buffy, but as an actor he prefers Angel because Spike was held back to be a nicer guy in Buffy but was allowed to let himself go against Angel. I'm currently watching season 5 of Angel and I absolutely love the Angel-Spike scenes.
Wil Wheaton's panel was on at the same time as James', and as much as I adore Wil, I've been to a few of his panels and I've never been to James' so James won. Plus, the fact that I'm currently watching Buffy and Angel made me lean more towards James.
Afterwards, we went to Stan Lee's panel. The host/moderator, Jarrett Crippen, became my favorite host/moderator throughout the con. Stan Lee is 90 years old, as Crippen mentioned a few times, so he had to take his time walking to the room where the panel was. Crippen had wonderful stories to fill the time. And he has the voice. That great, deep announcer voice. He was great, and Stan Lee was great. The last "question" of the session came from a man and his son; the man has a prosthetic leg that was a unique Marvel design, and he'd like to show it to Stan. At first, Crippen said no and that the man should go to Stan's table, but "the boss says okay" and the man walked up to the stage. The leg has images of Marvel characters -- it's quite impressive -- and Stan ended up autographing it. It was a great way to end the panel.
Day 2: Firefly
Day 2 was supposed to start "early" with John Barrowman's panel at 11:30. Hey, that's early for us! Especially with the exhaustion of the previous day's con. Anyways, we woke up with barely enough time, but we needed food before going to the con. There's a McDonald's 5 minutes away and we thought we had enough time, since it's fast food and all. We made it back to the car a few minutes before the panel started, and guess what? Traffic! I stupidly didn't think that there would be traffic in late morning, on a Saturday of the con, towards the con. So yeah, I missed a John Barrowman panel (which I've also never been to) because I decided to eat McDonald's instead. I fail as a fan.By the time we got to the con, we've also missed the beginning of my "backup panel" "The Pitfalls of Writing." I learned recently that my cousins also like writing; I think they actually want to be writers, unlike me who just writes because I feel like I should. They actually went to more writing panels, whilst I was more interested in celebrities. The writers on the panel were funny and interesting. The main thing that I learned is that I need structure. If I wanted to be a better writer, I need to start thinking about structure before writing. The way I write now is to have an idea and just run with it; start from the beginning and let it develop while I write. That's not good writing. And, they said, that if you don't know your ending, you don't know your story at all. This ties in with the structure issue, I think. But I always have this issue with my writing. Because I just start writing off of an idea or a character, most of the time I wouldn't know what the ending would be. And then the story would become stretched out just to avoid writing and ending. There are a few other points that I learned from the panel, and I should really start working on them if I want to be a better writer.
That was the only writing panel that I went to; we went to Zachary Quinto's next. I was pretty excited, even though I've only seen him in Heroes and the Star Trek movies. Unfortunately, the panel ended up to be quite disappointing. I don't know if it was because the fan questions were generic ("What was it like to work with <insert name>?" or "What was your experience like on <insert show>?") or if it was because his answers were also generic. But then again, what else could he say but good things? He doesn't seem like the controversial type. But hey, Sylar is cool, and I'm due for a Heroes rewatch.
We then moved to the room Ralph Macchio was going to be in. We came in when Michael Rosenbaum was at the end of his panel. He was amazing and hilarious! He didn't have a moderator, and just freely interacted with his fans. He also had his son there, who just sat at the edge of the stage amusing himself. Rosenbaum's hilarity, and the fact that James Marsters would be there, made me think about going to the Smallville panel even though I don't watch the show.
Ralph Macchio himself was very pleasant and seemed grateful of his fans. He seemed open and honest, which the fans appreciated. The talk was mostly about Karate Kid, as expected, but he also mentioned his guest-starring roles on Psych and How I Met Your Mother. He revealed that he shot another episode of Psych for its upcoming final season; the episode consists of "all star" guest stars, said Macchio, and I'm quite excited about it. For HIMYM, he mentioned that he was reluctant to do it because he had recently played himself as the guy famous for being Daniel Larusso, but his son made him do it because HIMYM is his favorite show.
I decided to walk around a bit after Macchio's panel because the room was chilly. It was 2 hours before the Firefly panel, so we figured we had an hour to walk around the floor, and then we could wait in line. We went to the autographing area to see the celebrities that are there. I was about to walk past James Marsters' table when I noticed that he was leaving. So I joined the little crowd that gathered by the table. Apparently, Marsters wasn't leaving -- he was receiving early birthday gifts from a group of fans. I have a video of this, but I still need to see if it's worth uploading.
I was already freaking happy being *that* close to him (although I couldn't even catch anything he said). And then we moved to John Barrowman's booth to get his autograph for a friend. The line didn't seem too long (way shorter than Zachary Quinto's), but it took us about an hour. While I was in line, I saw Wil Wheaton casually walking hand-in-hand with his wife towards his booth. It's pretty cool to see them so relaxed and, apart from having a few people following them with phone cameras pointed at them, they looked like con attendees instead of celebrities; they didn't have body guards ushering people out of the way for them. Anyways, back to Barrowman...
Once we got to the front of the line, Anne Wheaton came over to the booth and asked John's permission to put googly eyes on his banner! It was quite entertaining to watch. I believe I have video(s) of this somewhere, but I haven't found it.
This day has been awesome already, but we hadn't even gotten to the event we were most excited to see: the Firefly panel. I'm particularly excited for this one (even though I've been to a few others), because Alan Tudyk was going to be there. He's always so awesome and funny in all the panel videos I've watched, but I had never been fortunate enough to actually be there. There was a long line for the panel. Even being there an hour before the panel started, we couldn't get seats in the front half of the room. Granted, a significant portion of the seating were reserved for VIPs. The best part about this was that my cousins who I went with are all as big Firefly fans as I am.
Day 3: Autographs
As I mentioned above, I contemplated going to the Smallville panel, mostly just to see more James Marsters, partially because Michael Rosenbaum was hilarious in the few minutes I saw him. But that would mean I had to wake up "early" to make it. Well, none of us did. Two of us wanted to go to a panel at noon, and they barely made it.Sunday, being the last day of the con, means that the place was emptier. We walked around the autographing area again because we had to wait for Summer Glau to come back. And I saw James Marsters coming back to his booth. I walked over and saw that the line was pretty short. I thought about it a little, and then I went on line.
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