Monday, August 27, 2012

Fan Expo 2012, or, I forgot I had a Blog

Hey! Remember that I had a blog? I didn't. Hey, I was busy over the last little while, so I have an excuse. But I was reminded, and so I figure, hey, why not get back on the horse or off the wagon or whatever it is, and do up a good ol' fashioned long-winded recap of the biggest event yet this year, the Fan Expo.

As I said at the end of my last blog on the subject, my costume this year was to be Cthulhu for President. And while maybe I coulda spent the last year recounting the great amount of work that went into making the mask itself [which might have been... two entries on here], you'll just have to trust me that it was a lot of thought combined with a few minutes of work. But the mask isn't until Saturday, and this is a four day affair. So we have to pace ourselves.

Despite what I just said, I'm not gonna go over things day by day. Instead, I will discuss things in chapters and headings, using charts and graphs. Or perhaps instead of that, I'll use unflattering pictures of minor celebrities taken at a sub-convention last February.

John Connor is waiting for the actual content of this blog to begin.

LINES AND SUCH
Traditionally, and not that I really know, but the FanExpo has been the worst-organized event probably anywhere and possibly ever. But this year, I gotta say, the ingress and egress and such and so forth was very smooth and not problematic. So congratulations to them. Saturday is still ass-to-elbows, and maybe my standards are still so low because of 2010 that I'd accept anything, but seeing as how this has traditionally been BitchCon [on account of all the bitching], I was pleased the entire time. So hey, pat yourselves on the back, HobbyStar. Although I didn't wait in lines for signatures or photos, because I'm not payin' for that junk, so that coulda sucked. But I didn't do it, so it doesn't exist.



I'm pretty sure Booger is giving me the finger in this picture.


GUESTS AND STUFF
I attended less panels that I'd have preferred to. But that's always the case. We did see Stan Lee, who was for some reason given the virtually unattended Thursday night slot, but it was sorta worth the whole trip. Stan is sprightly for an old dude, and was extremely entertaining. No other guest talks, though. I'm in a conflicted place about those, because I can't help but feel embarrassed listening to goofy yahoos ask stupid questions. So while I could have seen Gillian Anderson speak, I didn't. I was happy enough to have hung around stalker-like a few feet from her table. As I also did with Lou Ferrigno, Cancer Man, John Carpenter, Tom Noonan [who personally begged me for cash, true story], Christopher Lloyd [who looked very bored riding on the escalator behind me not once, but twice] and Stan Lee himself, who sorta pushed me out of the way so he could hug the very chipper Dr. Pepper Girls on his way off the show floor.  I didn't take any pictures, though, so I guess you'll just have to believe me.

As for non-celebrity events, we attended a History of Canadian Horror micro-seminar, which was interesting in what it promised to teach me, should I choose to attend full classes at another time.  And we also went to the horror shorts fest, which I enjoyed despite an excess of pee-pee and poo-poo humour in this year's program, and were supposed to attend the "world" premiere of Bad Kids Go To Hell, except someone forgot to tell the writer/director/producer[s] that FanExpo can't actually show movies, so we instead heard them apologize for an hour and a half. Which, hey, wasn't so bad really. 'Cause there was also one of the kids from Degrassi there.

Cassandra is pleased!
COSTUMES AND WHATEVER
And so on Saturday we did wear costumes. I was Cthulhu for President, Joel was Hastur, the Unspeakable Running-Mate, and Dree was lady Raphael, the Ninja Turtle. I didn't get any decent photos, so more will have to come up later, once I get them off of Joel's camera or I find them by scouring the internet. There have to be some, though... somewhere. The costumes were good, damnit. Damn good.

Really very nice and good.
STUFF AND SUCH
And then there's the things I bought and got given to me, 'cause the FanExpo really is just a very focused mall. The giveaways were few and far-between, I gotta say. Gone are the days when you walk home with a bag full of three or four t-shirts and a few books and stuff. I think what I got for free was, like, an eye-glass cleaner thing and a pen that looks like a syringe, which is cool 'cause I've always wanted one, but still. Oh, and a bag from EB Games, which is a fine bag but it's also very branded, which I hate. But there was other stuff I bought too [and some choice free stuff] which I'll now get to.

OTHER QUALITY THINGS
I bought and/or was given these things:

Comic books for reading.

It being a comic convention, I had to get some comic books. All are signed by the appropriate parties. The one on the right I'm very eager to read, and the one on the left is by the dudes who couldn't show their movie, as recounted earlier in this post.
Get off my land!




So I know MegaBloks is a dirty word, but their booth was pretty decent. They had a whole thing where you build whatever you want and you can keep it, and they'll give you a dude. So I made this... uh, shack thing. I also made a laser blaster for Anabel on Sunday, which led to all the kids there also making guns, to their mothers' chagrin.
There's also some Heroclix, but you don't need to know what they are.


Oroku Saki and Danny the Ninja.



As part of my quiet TMNT revival, I had to get some bad guys for the Turtles to hang out with. And hell, they were cheaper than if I got 'em at Walmart, so that's a good thing.






Free hugs!




 And I also got a set of these, which are chopsticks. Nerdy and functional!








Hulk smash spider!



LEGO had a booth, which was cool. It was tiny and jammed in a corner, but they were there at all. They had some cool big ol' LEGO sculptures which are always nice to see, my favourite being the Gandalf and Bilbo, or the really big Hulk. They were also giving stuff out!






Thursday morning they were giving out Darth Ballz [the red dude] which is apparently rare or something. I opened it anyways. Friday they did a Superhero thing, which was a massive line so we skipped it [something about getting a hundred little pieces to build the Batman symbol, which didn't seem like a good plan, personally]. Saturday was LOTR day, and they gave out cool posters. And Sunday they gave some props to the dwindling horror aspect of the con by focussing on Monster Fighters, by giving out the Vampire dude in the morning, and a weird little Halloween polybag of a spider and web and skeleton and bat and stickers later in the day. Whatever it was, it was good. I also got that Avengers LEGO set from a dude, after he gave me almost a hundred bucks for a handful of Heroclix I no longer wanted. Goin' to this thing and making money is rad! Except I then spent it, but still.

So anyway, this is quite long now and pretty self-serving, so I'll cap it. I'll do a follow-up with better pictures should I find any. I wanted to announce next years costume as well, but frankly, I have no idea. I'll accept suggestions for the next three months.

Anyway, I leave you with the best part of the weekend, which is this piece of badass:

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for the pin, it's wonderful! http://dessertforlunch.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/my-lord-and-master/

    ReplyDelete