San Diego Comic-Con ended a week ago so that sucks. It flew by waaay too fast but I guess that just means we were having a fun. We got the bad little annoyances out of the way a few '4list's' ago so we can officially touch on the GOOD stuff. If you've never been to SDCC we highly recommend you go. Getting badges and hotels might be tough as shit, but it's worth it. Even if you can't get badges, there's hundreds upon hundreds of things to do OUTSIDE SDCC as well, like play cards with homeless people or just drink for 12 hours. So a trip to SDCC with no badges is still an amazing time.
Here's just a little 4list round up of my personal favs..
4. Cafe 21 and Basic Pizza
I got my 'eat on' in San Diego...words.
Two places I HIGHLY recommend are Cafe 21 and Basic Pizza. Both located near Gaslamp. Cafe 21 is terrific for brunch. We went on Wednesday morning since we don't have to be anywhere yet. Try their 'Cast Iron Omelets'. If you took a great omelet and crossed it with an even better omelet made by Brad Pitt in his very own kitchen while all his kids ran around screaming all while Angelina read a newspaper you'd be close to Cafe 21's omelets. They also have infused table water. I'm not sure what it's infused with, possibly stem cells, but it's good. Maybe San Diego water just tastes better. I'm used to New England tap water that tastes like someone's mustache. Ask them about their infused water if you're in there and let me know.
Cafe 21, 802 Fifth ave. San Diego, CA
Secondly go to 'Basic'. Part bar, part pizza place, part dance club. We just ordered take-out, but you could stay and dance with some locals, or get drunk and throw up in their bathroom. Their large pizza feeds about 40. Their small pizza is the size of a normal 'large' anywhere else, and feeds 2-3.. or just me after a long day at SDCC. . I ate one in about 8 minutes and was still craving another one (take that Kobayashi). If you like pizza, or eating or being cool, check out Basic
Basic, 410 10th ave, San Diego, CA
Damn I ate good... and no gas! Badges not required.
3. Paramount (Hall H- Thursday review)
This may seem like a joke, but I actually enjoyed Thursday's Paramount panel in Hall H.
Yes I was in Hall H Friday, Yes I left early to catch other panels because I didn't have faith in 20th Century Fox and from what I was told I was 100% right to skip it, and YES I couldn't get into Hall H Saturday by camping for 10 hours. But again, I was kept in the loop on everything in Hall H. Saturday sounded good, with some highlight but a lot of duds. WB and Marvel being the only two stand outs.
Well, I got to see Paramount and was PLEASANTLY surprised. I assumed a Thursday panel would be light and boring but it was fairly dopetasticalrific. (coined)
It kicked off with 'Sponge Bob Square Pants'...you know, that cartoon from 1997. I'll admit it, I wasn't paying attention to this one... Sorry Paramount, but then came TMNT, which actually looks decent. Ill watch anything with Megan Fox in it. No idea why she gets a bad wrap. She's actually a good actress and by good actress I mean I want to lick her face without getting arrested for being a creepy pervert. Will Arnett was there too I guess.
Seeing as I grew up with the Eastman and Laird comics, I'm looking forward to this movie. I'd rather it follow close to the comic, not the kiddie cartoon but oh well. But the panel was great. Seeing Fox and Arnett work the crowd was a treat seeing as the Q&A wasn't so kind to the TMNT panel.
This was followed by two big surprises.. First 'the Rock' popped out into the crowd all 'the Rock' like (crowd erupted) for a small 'Hercules' panel type thing where he invited everyone for a free screenings of his movie in Gaslamp then left. (I could smell what the Rock was cooking and it smelled like B.O. coming from the guy in front of me).
The Rock amplified the crowd. It felt like I was at a WWF wrestling match.. Yes, I know its WWE now but WWE is stupid. WWF was a better name and the wildlife sucks for making them change it after all those years.. F you wolves and whales and birds.
Next on stage was the first trailer for 'Hot Tub Time Machine 2' presented by that guy who's in everything but nobody knows his name, whoever he is. At first I was super excited because I had no idea they were making a part 2. The trailer looked hilarious.... until I noticed one thing.... NO JOHN CUSACK. This felt to me like Van Wilder 2, the Rise of Taj... or Caddyshack 2..You take out the main star and it just feels weird.. but hey, what they showed was good. Maybe its a better movie without Cusack. He has been going on political rants on Twitter lately, so that's annoying.
The last panel was the best surprise of all. 'Academy Award winner' Matthew McConaughey appeared with Matthew McConaughey's v-neck t shirt for 'Interstellar'. While the place went crazy, it wasn't until what happened next that surprised everyone... Christopher Nolan made his FIRST appearance at SDCC!! Introduced by McConaughey's mouth, Nolan came out to talk about 'Interstellar' and from there, McConaughey's face was an after thought. Nolan took the lead, was asked questions by the audience and nobody even heard from McConaughey or McConaughey's hair from then on. (Do you realize how hard it is to spell McConaughey?). It's very strange having a huge celeb like McConaughey and McConaughey's leather jacket on stage being completely ignored. Understandable though considering he hasn't done much in terms of nerd or comic culture.
We caught an extended look at the film and I STILL have no idea what its about, but I have a better understanding now than I did before. Life on earth has changed or something, its a dry boring, joyless place or something. McConaughey takes on the challenge of flying off to some other planets or moons or New Zealand for some reason with Anne Hathaway or something. More than I knew before, RIGHT?! Over all the Paramount panel was pretty 'high-fivey' and full of surprises. It's this type of panel you'd expect to see on a Saturday morning or Friday night but was quietly hidden on Thursday. Not bad for a panel you can just walk in to see. Not bad for a panel you can't!
2. Cosplay
Here's a crapload (basically only 0.001%) of Cosplayers at SDCC for you to look at instead of reading. Reading can be overrated
1. Saturday life without Hall H
I spent a Saturday far from Hall H.... not by choice, but I rather enjoyed it....Really. This one is gonna sound bitchy, but I assure you, IT WAS GREAT. It was pretty much a let down because I'm at SDCC to try and cover and review all the big panels in Hall H for our 4LIST reader's. We know most of you can't be there so were hoping to give you a breakdown of what you missed. Well..we missed Saturday too, but its not a total loss. Here, we will review and recap what we did 'instead'. We hope it makes up for the lack of reviews.
Our Saturday began on Friday night. We left to get into the Hall H line at 11:30 p.m. and didn't find the end of the line until about midnight. We slowly crawled for a while until being put into a grass park by Joe's Crab Shack around 1 or 2 am. While most people tried to sleep and have silly dreams, I was awake listening to some SDCC line guard say that 'sprinklers will come on at 3:30 or 4' and they'll 'move us soon' as well as some really loud snoring. After about an hour they did move us into the basketball courts that were oddly being used at 2 a.m. by late night hoopsters or hooligans, I'm still not sure which. I finally hunkered down and got a 3 hour nap.
We were then woken at 6 a.m. in a make shift YMCA by SDCC staff, and told "Hey misters and ladies, we ran out of wristbands days ago, why are you still here you fat idiots' or something like that, and we had to find something to do. I was awake now.......plus I soon realized the sprinklers never came on. Everyone in line saw that coming.
We ended up trying to find the Hasbro line. We were shut out on Preview night (you can read all about it in the 'Worst of' post) so figured we'd give it a shot on Saturday since we were already up early. First we found the end of the line to get into the Convention center. We asked Joe Shmoe line guard "Hey, how do we get into line for Hasbro?" He said "You have to go down to Hall A, that-a-way, the line for that is over there" as he points with his gothy emo finger down the back side of the convention center. We headed all the way around to the line at Hall A where we are told "This is the line for badges, you need to go see Joe Shmoe, he's the guy with the gothy emo like fingers" Luckily my friend was already packed for a trek, so we headed all the way back to Hall H to yell at Joe Shmoe. The line we COULD HAVE originally gotten in was exponentially longer now so we just hunkered down far from Joe, ate some 'chorizo burritos' from the cart outside the Hilton and waited.
We finally got into the convention center, made a B line (whatever that is) to the sails pavilion and were amazed to see NO Hasbro line, just a guy handing out 'tickets' (tickets???...KAAAAAHHHHNNNN). We snagged two that said "after 12pm" and headed to the line to get INTO the convention center. Here you're packed in like sardines into little queues. I literally had to stand still and not turn in any direction for an hour and a half. I think that made it more special. I got to smell a lot of people.
After finally being let in, we headed to Hasbro. They had a line set up against the wall. We asked "we have tickets for "after 12pm" do we get in line now?" and were told "Um..................................................................ok, yeah" . Game On.
After an hour or so we were sent to the Hasbro booth for some exclusives. Upon reaching it we are stopped by Hasbro personnel saying "YOU CANT BE HERE, YOUR TICKET SAYS 'AFTER 12 PM' GET THE HELL OUT'. After some negotiating (basically arguing that the first women said it was ok) we were let in and got some much sought after crap we were shut out of getting on Preview night. Ill be perfectly honest, this entire day so far has been a great ride!
From there it was back to the room to drop off our bounty, take a much needed shower, change our smelly clothes and head to Fulfillment. Fulfillment is where you pick up all your shwag from Panels if they handed out tickets. The fulfillment room was moved to the Manchester Grand Hyatt this year, a good hike from the convention center. Upon entering we were directed to the fourth floor, We find the fulfillment station and its very very entertaining and interesting line. They hand placed serpentine lines on the floor on one side. Even though there weren't many people there, we were forced to take part in this 'Bank line'. Around and around we went, never stopping, just snaking our way to the goodies. Slow down and you're immediately told to "KEEP MOVING". It was wild seeing a good 75% of this line all with their phones and video cameras held up high documenting this maze. We finally got the the front and from there figured out the color coded arithmetic. Each fulfillment ticket was simply a raffle type ticket you'd get anywhere. Small tiny and they were all identical except for their color. I originally thought I'd be screwed, not remembering which ticket was for what panel, but above each station was a blown up image of the raffle ticket. It made it sooooo easy. Last year saw pieces of paper with the Panel written on it. I will admit, at first I was hesitant of this new system but it worked beautifully! While most of the goodies were nothing to write home about, there are some standouts. Game of Thrones always giving a huge bag fully of GOT shwag including one of the GOT books and a T-shirt along with a ton of other promotional items. We're not complaining.
The rest of the day was spent walking the floor, grabbing lunch and drinks, hitting the 'Geek and Sundry' panel (which was terrific), grabbing drinks, waiting in line for Masquerade tickets, grabbing drinks, waiting in line to get into the Masquerade, and eventually falling asleep in the Masquerade. I thought my Saturday at SDCC would be ruined without Hall H but honestly It was a pretty enjoyable endeavor. If you can't get into Hall H, DO NOT PANIC. There's so much to do, you can really have some great experiences without having to pay for it.