San Diego Comic Con

First off for any Brits reading this... Think BOTH London Expos. Add 'London Film and Comic Con'. Imagine the WHOLE of the building housing London Expo as one enormous Dealers' room. Then ramp that up to 11. That's how big SDCC is, with added ballrooms, meeting rooms and the now infamous Hall H.

THURSDAY 22

Arrived at the new age space port....San Diego Convention Center [sic] at about 9 a.m. Got through registration quite quickly. Gold star, SDCC peeps. My big swag bag had the SDCC logo on one side and the main cast in suits from 'The Big Bang Theory' on the other. Located the California Browncoat booth in one corner of the humongous Dealers Room and handed over my Jayne hats. Mooched about quite a bit, finding out where everything is.  Got into Stan Freberg's panel [with his lovely wife Hunter].  They share an identical sense of humour. They have a new CD out; 'Songs in the key of life'.  They talked about Stan's impressive and extensive back catalogue and showed two of his vintage adverts. These two :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiC9IBNlrGw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE-NdrzfFOo

I found Mr Freberg's desk later and he kindly autographed his CD for me. I also got my Buffy and Angel books signed  by Camden Toy [one of the creepy 'Gentlemen' in 'Buffy']. In the late afternoon, I went back to my hostel changed and rested before setting out for the CSTS screening of 'Serenity' down town. Sadly none of the BDHs turned up :-(, but we had fun and raised a lot of $$$ for charity.

FRIDAY

Got to the EE desk for a FREE signing with Seth Green. After that, made a flying visit to the rest room and the long, LONG line to see Joss Whedon on stage. Writing process = fun, hunger, porn, depression, fun [GG]. Other people have better and more fulsome reports, I'm sure, but the panel was enlivened by a certain Mr Fillion [in fairly heavy disguise] crashing it at the end [GGG]. I went downstairs for the signing, just to see Joss up close and personal. Helen [Cappy #2!] was there with a couple of others from Browncoats: Redemption. They spotted ME and we went for a juice and a natter after they'd got their autos. Michael Docherty had his 'Joss gives his blessing' letter autographed by Joss [GG].  Joss said he was looking forward to seeing it.

Friday evening was the 'Chuck' Tweetup. I met a whole bunch pf people I'd only 'spoken to' on line :::waves::: At 10 p.m., a number of the cast arrived: Zac, Joshua, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Ryan McPartlin and Sarah Lancaster. The bar went crazy!!! My personal thanks to them for turning out for us.

Second part soon....