the Tommy|Zor era

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: its been over a year since my last post. Moving on.

Comic-con. The 4 day event that brings together nerds from all walks of life in the city of San Diego, California. v2 and I knew this was going to as amazing as our first California trip. Hell, we set the bar so damned high last time we’re still talking about it.

Zor’s Tip: When booking a flight and hotel, make sure you book it for the correct dates. Otherwise, travelocity will have you eating from soup cans for a month just to pay off the “transfer fees.” Assholes.

The trip started with no sleep and trying to cross the border at 5am. For whatever reason, we really like flying from Detroit. Maybe it’s the thrill of getting shot on the way to the plane; who knows? Props to the border guard of the US who let us through without a second thought after we told him our destination is a comic book convention. I think he let us through out of pity. Thank god he didn’t check the trunk.

I fly a fair share in my life. This flight ranks number 1 as the worst! I’m on no sleep, there’s a kid beside me suffering from vertigo and can’t stop rocking back and forth, plus a baby behind me crying the entire time. Ughh.

Zor’s Tip: Don’t forget your headphones. Ever.

Touch down San Diego. We grab our bags and run outside to the California sun… only to be shocked by the cold! What the hell!? We can’t breathe in Canada because it’s so damn hot and humid, yet we’re shivering in California. I was not expecting it. In all fairness, by the end of the week I climatized and would gladly take San Diego’s weather over any other in North America.

Check-in at the hotel. First order of business: Google Maps –> Search Nearby –> Beer.
20 minutes later: 2 Canadian boys and 3 brown paper bags. At the sound of tsssssst, our trip officialy begins.

Zor’s Tip: If you don’t have a bottle opener and the hotel refuses to give you one, the arm of a chair works extremely well.

Two more friends join us and off we went for badges. Comic-Con was generous enough to supply Shuttle buses that stop at all the big hotels in the city. No cost for transportation and the badges were given to us as a gift: we rule! It appears the biggest expense on this trip is beer. And travelocity’s “transfer” fees. Fuckers.

Day 1
Holy shit! A gillion people everywhere, just as nerdy as us. Being first-timers to the Con, we decided to spend the day exploring. The sheer amount of shit to see is uncanny. Booths lined the entire convention centre from wall to wall. It starts with regular joes selling their wares (toys, comics, shirts) and transitions to major companies with their behemoth display booths.

Nerds of all shapes and sizes

Highlights of the Day: Hulk Hogan at the Saints Row booth, followed by Sasha Grey.
Also – Meeting Hideo Kojima and Mike and Gerry from Penny Arcade.

Asian perfection in an American shirt.

A word about costumes, then I’ll just stick to pictures. In-fucking-credible. That’s all.

Back at the hotel: tsssst. God bless Americans and their cheap beer. We also discover Dominoes delivers to our hotel. Tomorrow we go check out the panels.

Day 2
6:30am – tsssssst. v2 is officially on vacation.

At least he’s not hiding it IN the toilet

The convention centre has two major rooms for the “big” panels: Hall H and Ballroom 20. To stand a shot at getting in, you have to camp in line for 4-6 hours with no gaurantees. We decide to try for Ballroom 20 to get into an 11:30 panel. We get there at 8am to discover the line is already this long:

Our response? GTFO

We did sit through a ton of panels. Writing in video games, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, and our personal highlight: Uncharted Panel. More exhibits. More costumes.

Back at the hotel: tssssst. We also discover a flyer for a nearby pizza place offering a great deal. We also discover that after an hour of waiting for it, Celena’s pizza tastes about as good as hemorrhoids in your mouth.

Day 3
7:30am – tsssssst.
We slept in. The amazing thing about Comic-Con is having 100,000+ people in one area and no issues. People find the back of a line and wait patiently. As long as there was *some* indication of where the line is, people were cool. Our friend Dave drags us to the Nintendo gaming lounge in the nearby hotel. Next door is something called the “Games” room. Being beside the Nintendo lounge, I assumed it would be video games. Wrong. Magic: The Gathering. A fate worse than sitting beside a fat person in a crowded movie theater – people traveled to Comic-Con to play Magic.

Highlight of the day: Resident Evil Panel. And this costume

Fucking A! Errr… I mean D!

Back at the hotel: Tragedy strikes: no beers left. A wind sprint to the store to stock-up. Then we order Dominoes out of safety. We even go for the EXTRA large pizzas this time.

Day 4
The day started with Dave dumping a full beer on v2′s head. Youtube video coming soon.
And that was about the highlight. On Sunday, the crowds are slim and many of the booths are packing up. We decide to do our shopping this day to see what kind of ‘crazy’ deals we can get. Not as exciting as we thought.

Highlight of the day: v2 bartering with the Penny-Arcade booth for 20 minutes to get a deal, then walking away. Also, Dave dumping beer on v2′s head.

After exploring some of the city, we head back to the hotel, crack open our last beers and order one more time from Dominoes. Comic-Con is officially done for the year.

As are these classy shots from v2.

Day 5
Canadian border guard, “Where are you guys coming from?”
Us: “San Diego.”
Border guard, “Comic-con!?”
Us: “Yeah man!”
Border guard, “Oh man, I really wanted to go. I couldn’t get it off work. Was it good?”
Us: “Amazing. You have to go next year.”
Border guard, “I will, I will. Have a good night boys.”

And he didn’t even check the trunk.