kippurbird | Entries tagged with wonder con

I went to WonderCon this weekend with a friend. It was a pretty good convention though it felt like the start of a joke in a way. There was a cheerleading and girl's volleyball competition being held at the same time as the comic book/ geek convention. There were some pretty skimpy costumes on both sides of the complex. I felt really sorry for a lot of the girls because it was COLD this weekend. With cold WINDS. And these girls (both conventions) were wearing clothing with less fabric total than my tee-shirt.

BRR!!

Saturday it rained even.

Yeah.

I managed to get to see some good panels. One was about the Science in Science fiction and talked about how close real world science was to the stuff we see in the movies, comics, etc. The best thing thing about it was how they kept on qualifying it with a "yet". And they admitted it, too. They said that all their answers would likely be something along the lines of "We can't do it, yet" which is why their jobs were so much fun. They were actual scientists. One of them was dressed as the eleventh Doctor.

I caught the end of a Max Brooks panel where he was talking about WWZ and the Zombie Survival Guide. Someone in the audience wanted to know if the book - WWZ - was appropriate for children, like if there was any sex or nudity in it. Max went on to say something like, "I never understood why violence was okay for kids but not sex or nudity. But you know what? WWZ is great for kids! There's a scene where these parents and their kids are holed up in a church surrounded by zombies and the parents decide to kill their kids so that they don't become zombies. And not a SINGLE boobie is shown. So it's perfect for them."

There was also a fun panel on using Los Angeles as a character in books. And the two authors really loved LA and were constantly riffing off of each other building on what they did or would do in books about Los Angeles and how magical it was. They just bounced off each other, asking each other questions. There was a great mutual respect and energy between them.

Purchase wise I only bought one thing.

It's a lightsaber. This one to be exact with an orange blade. It's great! It's light, and the blade is short so I can carry it holding down without having to worry about tripping over it or anything. My friend bought four lightsabers, one for her, her husband, and two little kids.

I didn't see anything else I really wanted but that. So! Yeah. Totally worth it.

(I also got my mom a Cinderella thing, but that doesn't really count.)

After the con my friend and I went to Disneyland (as her husband works there, she gets in free.) We hit some rides that she couldn't normally do because the kids are too little to go on them, like the Haunted House and Space Mountain. We also did Pirates of the Caribbean and a few others. She'd NEVER been on the monorail before, so we went on that. Admittedly it's not the most exciting of rides out there, but it's still fun seeing Disneyland from a bird's eye view. Plus you can see into some of the back areas if you're looking carefully.

So, my legs are sort of sore, my shoulders are definitely sore.

I'm also feeling a bit better emotionally. A little lighter in heart, and hopefully that'll translate well into writing and stuffs.

Current Mood: calm

For some reason my AIM has decided to randomly shut itself off and poof. It's been doing this for the past couple of weeks and I can't figure out why. It's made chatting with people a bit difficult. And it's just annoying. -_-

So, I never did say what happened on my trip to Wondercon.

It wasn't a bad day. It wasn't a great day.

My brother and I got on our flight okay, though he was a little upset about the gate being number thirteen. He has Triskaidekaphobia. Fortunately nothing bad happened. We got into San Fransisco easily enough. It was a bit cold and it started to drizzle when we got off the BART, but I didn't think too much of it, even though I was just wearing a long sleeve shirt and vest.

Getting inside the convention took a bit of "go to this booth" but I eventually got our passes and we went into the dealer's room. There we wandered about for a while and I got some shiny dice. After a bit we decided to find the room where the panel would be and upon getting there we called up my contact. He was supposed to bring lunch, however there was a mix-up of emails and he did not. We had some hazeriah though which we ate.

Finally, it came time for the panel. There were seven people on the panel including myself. My job was to be the discussant. After the others gave their introductions I was to ask intelligent questions for them to discuss. Not so hard, not so easy. The first person who introduced themselves was a rabbi.

This did not bode well.

Rabbis, you see, are contractually obligated to ramble on for an excessive amount of time never getting to the point. And indeed, this did happen. He started off talking about the difference between barbers/surgeons and physicians. And then about how Jews weren't allowed to be physicians but they could become surgeons... or something like that. He had a huge stack of paper in front of him, complete with highlighted sections. After about fifteen minutes he started getting towards a point. Unfortunately we only have a one hour time slot. Which meant that he had to stop.

He was stopped.

The next person to speak was a little old Jewish women. They too are contractually obligated to ramble on for an excessive amount of time never getting the point. She started talking about this girl who after Kristalnacht in Germany was part of the Kindertransport to England and her life story. The point, which she eventually got to when she got the two minute warning, was that this girl ended up drawing comics about Superheros beating up Nazis and that was ironic.

... okay then.

She went on for about ten minutes, I think.

Next person was a crusty Jewish Old Man, who while not obligated to go on for a long ramble like the little old Jewish woman and the Rabbi, he was supposed to be forceful in his opinions. Which were that Superman wasn't the first/real Jewish Superhero and instead it was someone called Funny Man created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. He's got a book coming out soon and so rambled on about that. His writing partner tried to stay on topic, but didn't get very long to talk.

The next two panelists were about my age and had some comic books written about their Jewish experiences. They were a bit 'well we're not scholars' sort of looks on their faces when they tried to talk.

When it came time for my turn to speak, I only had ten minutes left. I managed to come up with one question. Which was not at all answered and was instead taken as an opportunity to ramble more by the little old Jewish woman.

Finally, the panel ended. The only thing I got out of it was my name on an official Wondercon panel card, which I saved, of course, and a credit to my name.

Afterward my brother and I wandered around the dealer's room some more. We saw these gameing tables that were just... wow. Really nice furniture that can have the top taken off so you can have your maps and minis on the inside. They had slots for dice and little desks to keep track of everything. It was just amazing. And it also could function as a regular kitchen or dinning room table. Clearly an "I want" object. I almost bought a really nice leather steam punk jacket too.

Tired, my brother and I engaged in a session of 'do you want to go to the airport? Only if you want to go?' for about ten minutes. We decided to go and see about getting an earlier flight. This turned out to be a good thing. The Earthquake in San Diego and the inclement weather at the airport had made all the flights late. We got the 4:15 flight that left at 7:30. It was a full flight, but I didn't care.

We got home, my mom made meatloaf for dinner. Which was nice, especially since she and my dad waited for us to have dinner. Then, home, feed the cranky kitty and bed.

Thus ends the Wondercon Saga.

Good news!

Finished another short story.

Bad news.

No idea what to call it.

Wondercon News

The panel is on Sunday at one thirty. I don't remember what it's called but there is the words Jews and comic books in it, I'm sure. It's also a Comic's Arts conference panel.