Well, I didn't come home totally broke
Aug. 5th, 2006 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
whiski_sourAh, the adventure at Wizard World is over for another year and I'm dragging some serious ass. But it was a good time, to be sure. I did, in fact, get one autograph and stood with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
winged_fire as she got several (she's going to have the weirdest autograph collection ever). I also bought several things and once again came home without a comic book. I also lost a pinback which gave me some woe and indulged in room service for the first time in my life.
It was a very successful two days, I think.
Details are behind the cut because I'm sure not everyone cares that Phe and I had to follow the Ghostbusters half way to our hotel.
Phe picked me up about nine. We strapped down our luggage in the back of the truck and made the three hour drive up north. This year we did not get lost and end up in Russia, but we did stop at a gas station in which the lock on the bathroom door did not work and there was something unidentifiable and dead on the sidewalk. I did not piss there.
We went to our hotel, checked in, ditched our crap in the room, had a bathroom break, and walked down to the convention center (it wasn't too terribly far from the hotel). We picked up our tickets since some kind of snafu prevented them from being mailed to us and headed onto the floor.
We wandered around looking at things, however Phe was the only one who bought anything (she bought a signed photo of Billy Corgin). Well, that's not entirely true. I bought an ice cream cone.
Last year we were stalked by a jedi, this year it was a stormtrooper. We also saw Michael Myers, a gay pirate, a power ranger, several Batmans (Batmen?), Captain Jack Sparrow (the guy's impression was dead on), Supergirl, Princess Leia with a sparkly purse, and a giant Pikachu that I think wanted to eat my soul.
Phe got two of her autographs (Raven and Ron Killings in the SpikeTV booth) and we decided to call it a day after a few hours.
We began walking back to the hotel and ended up following three guys who dressed up as the Ghostbusters as far as the blue line. Apparently, they took the bus to the con.
At a little after four, we made it back to the hotel.
When we got back to the hotel, I realized that the toilet was still running. Four star hotel and their toilet has issues. So I fixed it (as I am a redneck MacGuyver and have jimmy rigged a toilet with a paper clip and a keyring before). A little jiggle and it righted itself.
Phe and I spent the evening relaxing, watching tv, and ordered room service for dinner (potstickers, chicken panini and fries, and cheesecake).
At about eleven, we shut off the tv, nested up in the nice soft beds, and tried to go to sleep.
Now, we are spoiled children. I sleep with a fan on and she sleeps with a fan and a radio on. In short, it was too quiet to sleep. So we turned on the clock radio ("I wonder if we can find the Spanish polka station" "I am not sleeping to Spanish polka!"), found a suitable station, and tried for sleep again.
I dozed off and on for a few hours. At three AM I woke up feeling like I was trying to sleep in a disco. Somehow the radio had gotten louder. And not only that, but above the music, I could hear something dripping.
I laid there for awhile, trying to go back to sleep, but the music was too loud and the dripping noise was driving me crazy. Flopping out of bed, I trudged in the dark to the bathroom (without tripping or banging into anything...better than I do in the house I've lived in nearly all my life), thinking that maybe it was the shower since Phe had taken one earlier.
Oh no. It was the TOILET. Something inside the tank was dripping. I messed with a minute before figuring out that I was doomed to toilet water dripping torture for the rest of the night. I went back to bed, shut off the radio, and tried to block out the musical dripping of the possessed toilet.
Eventually, I went back to sleep.
Upon waking up around eight, Phe confirmed that she had also heard the dripping noise and that we both didn't sleep that great.
We packed up, checked out, stopped at Mickey D's for breakfast, and then headed back to the con.
Sometime the night before I decided to get Dirk Benedict's autograph. This writing your name on a picture thing is never going to make sense to me, it's never going to stop being weird and awkward, I might as well just stop trying to analyze it and just do it.
Besides, it's FACE! A-Team obsession, ho!
So after picking up some buttons at a booth I had seen the day before and confirming that Doug Jones (Abe from Hellboy) wasn't there, Phe and I went over to Dirk's table. He had a small line going (and at one point, looked over from who he was talking to and said, "Do I have a line?" like he was kinda surprised). I picked out the picture I wanted him to sign and gave my money to his handler, a very nice lady with a southern accent who was pretty funny and joked with me and Phe.
When it got to be my turn, I said hi and gave him my picture. He asked me what my name was and I was too tired to make his day interesting, so I just gave him my real name and told him how to spell it. He writes it down and then looks behind him at a poster of Kristen Bell (who was also supposed to be signing autographs this weekend) and looks back at me and then my name.
Dirk: Another Christin. I've never seen it spelled that way. There are so many ways to spell it. But I've never seen it spelled "Christ-In" before.
Me: Yeah, my mom hates me. She said she spelled it phonetically, but it doesn't work.
Dirk: I like it. *points to an impossible foreign name scrawled on the paper covering the table* That's my real last name.
Me: Wow. I'm glad my last name only has four letters. That's good enough for me.
Dirk: What's your last name?
Me: *tells him my last name and spells it*
Dirk: Nice. Sounds like a lady mudwrestler.
Me: Well, on the weekends...
I stuck around while he autographed Phe's picture. He asked us where we were from and we told him we live about three hours south of there in a small town in the middle of a cornfield. He told us about how he grew up in Montana and he lives there now and how much he likes the small town life. He likes the "slower pace".
Amen. There are too many people around here.
Dirk is a very nice man in a genuine kind of way, not the nice because you're paying him kind of way. In short, a tough act to follow, but Phe decided to try with a few more people.
We went over and she got Ray Park's autograph (Toad in X-Men, Darth Maul in Phantom Menace). There were too many people and I couldn't go up with her, but she said he was also nice. I looked at the inscription on her picture (which I can't remember now) and determined that he wanted her bod.
Then we went hardcore shopping.
I bought two t-shirts that I didn't need (one says "Camp Crystal Lake" and the other has a picture of the Enterprise and says "I do it at warp speed"), three beanie babies (I never collected them, but they had a cow and an owl with the year I graduated high school on it and a pelican I named Corky Duke because it didn't have a nametag and they only cost me eight bucks...I can't leave that con without buying something plushy, it's a rule), and a book of horror movie poster art. Phe bought some Star Trek trading cards, a picture signed by Alan Cumming, a trading card signed by William Mapother, and couple of beanie babies of her own.
We also got ice cream again and wandered over to where other people were signing autographs.
Doug Jones had cancelled and so had Al Snow. But Brian Christopher was there so Phe decided to get his autograph. As she was rearranging her stuff some lady walked by and said that Brian was very nice and she should ask to feel his muscles. So, Phe did. And he let her. He also had technical difficulties with a sharpie. He was very amusing.
As I am not a fast eater, I was still eating ice cream when we moved on for her to get Virgil's autograph again. We both got his autograph last year, but she wanted a different picture. As I stood next to her eating ice cream, he very blatantly hit on her and then complimented my shoes (I was wearing my black Chuck Taylors with the black and white checkerboard shoelaces...snazzy doesn't begin to cover it, even if they do have holes in the sides of them).
From there, we walked back across the floor so she could get Matthew Wood's? (General Grievous in one of the Star Wars prequels) autograph. Another very nice guy who used four exclaimation points in his inscription on her pic. That's boarderline madness, that is.
After that, we decided to head home.
Today we saw another Princess Leia, two more stormtroopers (one was a speederbike trooper from Return of the Jedi and everytime I saw him I kept thinking, "Where is your speederbike? Did you fall off?"), Beast from X-men, a transformer, some anime characters, that thing that I had seen the day before that I didn't know what it was and still don't know what it was, a pretty convincing Han Solo, and other characters that I can't remember right now. The drive was pretty long and I'm pretty tired.
I kept expecting to see JG, but I never did. And he never called me to see if I was going like I thought he would. In short, he sucks.
However, the Acme Comics van (Comic Book Jim's shop) was parked on the same level we were today, so I'm sure JG had to be there.
I don't care if he is probably in the process of moving to Chicago, he's too big of a dork to pass up the con.
Oh man, I'm gonna sleep soooooo good tonight.
winged_fire as she got several (she's going to have the weirdest autograph collection ever). I also bought several things and once again came home without a comic book. I also lost a pinback which gave me some woe and indulged in room service for the first time in my life.It was a very successful two days, I think.
Details are behind the cut because I'm sure not everyone cares that Phe and I had to follow the Ghostbusters half way to our hotel.
Phe picked me up about nine. We strapped down our luggage in the back of the truck and made the three hour drive up north. This year we did not get lost and end up in Russia, but we did stop at a gas station in which the lock on the bathroom door did not work and there was something unidentifiable and dead on the sidewalk. I did not piss there.
We went to our hotel, checked in, ditched our crap in the room, had a bathroom break, and walked down to the convention center (it wasn't too terribly far from the hotel). We picked up our tickets since some kind of snafu prevented them from being mailed to us and headed onto the floor.
We wandered around looking at things, however Phe was the only one who bought anything (she bought a signed photo of Billy Corgin). Well, that's not entirely true. I bought an ice cream cone.
Last year we were stalked by a jedi, this year it was a stormtrooper. We also saw Michael Myers, a gay pirate, a power ranger, several Batmans (Batmen?), Captain Jack Sparrow (the guy's impression was dead on), Supergirl, Princess Leia with a sparkly purse, and a giant Pikachu that I think wanted to eat my soul.
Phe got two of her autographs (Raven and Ron Killings in the SpikeTV booth) and we decided to call it a day after a few hours.
We began walking back to the hotel and ended up following three guys who dressed up as the Ghostbusters as far as the blue line. Apparently, they took the bus to the con.
At a little after four, we made it back to the hotel.
When we got back to the hotel, I realized that the toilet was still running. Four star hotel and their toilet has issues. So I fixed it (as I am a redneck MacGuyver and have jimmy rigged a toilet with a paper clip and a keyring before). A little jiggle and it righted itself.
Phe and I spent the evening relaxing, watching tv, and ordered room service for dinner (potstickers, chicken panini and fries, and cheesecake).
At about eleven, we shut off the tv, nested up in the nice soft beds, and tried to go to sleep.
Now, we are spoiled children. I sleep with a fan on and she sleeps with a fan and a radio on. In short, it was too quiet to sleep. So we turned on the clock radio ("I wonder if we can find the Spanish polka station" "I am not sleeping to Spanish polka!"), found a suitable station, and tried for sleep again.
I dozed off and on for a few hours. At three AM I woke up feeling like I was trying to sleep in a disco. Somehow the radio had gotten louder. And not only that, but above the music, I could hear something dripping.
I laid there for awhile, trying to go back to sleep, but the music was too loud and the dripping noise was driving me crazy. Flopping out of bed, I trudged in the dark to the bathroom (without tripping or banging into anything...better than I do in the house I've lived in nearly all my life), thinking that maybe it was the shower since Phe had taken one earlier.
Oh no. It was the TOILET. Something inside the tank was dripping. I messed with a minute before figuring out that I was doomed to toilet water dripping torture for the rest of the night. I went back to bed, shut off the radio, and tried to block out the musical dripping of the possessed toilet.
Eventually, I went back to sleep.
Upon waking up around eight, Phe confirmed that she had also heard the dripping noise and that we both didn't sleep that great.
We packed up, checked out, stopped at Mickey D's for breakfast, and then headed back to the con.
Sometime the night before I decided to get Dirk Benedict's autograph. This writing your name on a picture thing is never going to make sense to me, it's never going to stop being weird and awkward, I might as well just stop trying to analyze it and just do it.
Besides, it's FACE! A-Team obsession, ho!
So after picking up some buttons at a booth I had seen the day before and confirming that Doug Jones (Abe from Hellboy) wasn't there, Phe and I went over to Dirk's table. He had a small line going (and at one point, looked over from who he was talking to and said, "Do I have a line?" like he was kinda surprised). I picked out the picture I wanted him to sign and gave my money to his handler, a very nice lady with a southern accent who was pretty funny and joked with me and Phe.
When it got to be my turn, I said hi and gave him my picture. He asked me what my name was and I was too tired to make his day interesting, so I just gave him my real name and told him how to spell it. He writes it down and then looks behind him at a poster of Kristen Bell (who was also supposed to be signing autographs this weekend) and looks back at me and then my name.
Dirk: Another Christin. I've never seen it spelled that way. There are so many ways to spell it. But I've never seen it spelled "Christ-In" before.
Me: Yeah, my mom hates me. She said she spelled it phonetically, but it doesn't work.
Dirk: I like it. *points to an impossible foreign name scrawled on the paper covering the table* That's my real last name.
Me: Wow. I'm glad my last name only has four letters. That's good enough for me.
Dirk: What's your last name?
Me: *tells him my last name and spells it*
Dirk: Nice. Sounds like a lady mudwrestler.
Me: Well, on the weekends...
I stuck around while he autographed Phe's picture. He asked us where we were from and we told him we live about three hours south of there in a small town in the middle of a cornfield. He told us about how he grew up in Montana and he lives there now and how much he likes the small town life. He likes the "slower pace".
Amen. There are too many people around here.
Dirk is a very nice man in a genuine kind of way, not the nice because you're paying him kind of way. In short, a tough act to follow, but Phe decided to try with a few more people.
We went over and she got Ray Park's autograph (Toad in X-Men, Darth Maul in Phantom Menace). There were too many people and I couldn't go up with her, but she said he was also nice. I looked at the inscription on her picture (which I can't remember now) and determined that he wanted her bod.
Then we went hardcore shopping.
I bought two t-shirts that I didn't need (one says "Camp Crystal Lake" and the other has a picture of the Enterprise and says "I do it at warp speed"), three beanie babies (I never collected them, but they had a cow and an owl with the year I graduated high school on it and a pelican I named Corky Duke because it didn't have a nametag and they only cost me eight bucks...I can't leave that con without buying something plushy, it's a rule), and a book of horror movie poster art. Phe bought some Star Trek trading cards, a picture signed by Alan Cumming, a trading card signed by William Mapother, and couple of beanie babies of her own.
We also got ice cream again and wandered over to where other people were signing autographs.
Doug Jones had cancelled and so had Al Snow. But Brian Christopher was there so Phe decided to get his autograph. As she was rearranging her stuff some lady walked by and said that Brian was very nice and she should ask to feel his muscles. So, Phe did. And he let her. He also had technical difficulties with a sharpie. He was very amusing.
As I am not a fast eater, I was still eating ice cream when we moved on for her to get Virgil's autograph again. We both got his autograph last year, but she wanted a different picture. As I stood next to her eating ice cream, he very blatantly hit on her and then complimented my shoes (I was wearing my black Chuck Taylors with the black and white checkerboard shoelaces...snazzy doesn't begin to cover it, even if they do have holes in the sides of them).
From there, we walked back across the floor so she could get Matthew Wood's? (General Grievous in one of the Star Wars prequels) autograph. Another very nice guy who used four exclaimation points in his inscription on her pic. That's boarderline madness, that is.
After that, we decided to head home.
Today we saw another Princess Leia, two more stormtroopers (one was a speederbike trooper from Return of the Jedi and everytime I saw him I kept thinking, "Where is your speederbike? Did you fall off?"), Beast from X-men, a transformer, some anime characters, that thing that I had seen the day before that I didn't know what it was and still don't know what it was, a pretty convincing Han Solo, and other characters that I can't remember right now. The drive was pretty long and I'm pretty tired.
I kept expecting to see JG, but I never did. And he never called me to see if I was going like I thought he would. In short, he sucks.
However, the Acme Comics van (Comic Book Jim's shop) was parked on the same level we were today, so I'm sure JG had to be there.
I don't care if he is probably in the process of moving to Chicago, he's too big of a dork to pass up the con.
Oh man, I'm gonna sleep soooooo good tonight.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 04:58 am (UTC)Dirk: Nice. Sounds like a lady mudwrestler.
I always though it sounded more like a country singer *waits for Chesh to strike me with hatchet*
Aww, Raven - Mandy and Gin are gonna be jealous ;-)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 09:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-08 06:50 pm (UTC)Sounds like you had a good time Kitten.
Now, I feel the need to dig around and attempt to find my pic of me and the Ravemeister.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-08 07:06 pm (UTC)You met him at IHOP, didn't you? See, that's way cooler than meeting him at a con.