It’s 9:30. After a 45 minutes walk in x% (where x > 50) and with the sun rising, sweating like whores in church, we arrive at the Philadelphia Convention Center.
The ticket booths are pretty dead – even if someone wanted to purchase tickets on the spot, there are no lines. The truly dedicated have already planted themselves for walk-on privileges since about 9am, and the line ‘to get in’ was about 500 people long. Not awesome. To illustrate:
There were a LOT of people ahead of us.
Once 10am rolled around, though, it was pretty much smooth sailing to get in.
“Hold your wrist up, lemme see your wristbands, please!”
A free bag of swag later, we were in. For reasons unknown, I personally homed in on the Booth of James Marsters, knowing that Christina really wanted to meet him.
Lacking a price for autographs, but promising an arrival time of 1030, we decided fourth in line would be best than last in line, so we waited.
We waited until 1049. In the 30 minutes of waiting, we met a group of our friends, who decided not to share in my misery, and left us posthaste.
Christina felt awkward because “just walking up” to a celeb was weird, but she stuck it out, with me in tow. 1049, the man shows up. A little bit of prep work, photo piles organized, his assistant let us know the prices per photo, and that it would be perfectly okay to take pictures of James, so long as the rhythm wasn’t broken. Mainly, the rhythm was “say hi, shake hands, and walk away.” Pictures were to be taken DURING the dialogue, not ‘after’ the dialogue, to facilitate a smoother experience for everyone.
I told Christina I’d be pissed if he wasn’t bleach blonde.
Lo and behold.
James Marsters after first sitting down.
He’s definitely without the hair! Then, this happened (my jaw dropped when I saw her first.)
James Marsters talking to Clare Kramer.
Then it was showtime for my Christina. This is the only picture of that meeting:
Holy Crap, they meet!
After a pleasant 2 minutes of conversation, I, too, shook his hand, and, to my surprise, leave starstruck.
Meandering about the floor, I first notice Brent Spiner. Then I notice a significant commotion (lotta photocameras) by Brent Spiner. Then I notice, the really FAT guy that cut in line (with his friend that arrived later) was ALSO taking pictures! WHAT IN GODS NAME!
HOLY CRAP!
Holy Crap!
And the Delorean made an appearance as well.
1.21 Jigowatts.
Overall, I enjoyed this convention more than the last one, and by a long shot. It seemed like more people that I wanted to see there were in attendance. It also seemed like there were more people in attendance, but also more room to hold them in.
I met up with Brandon DiCamillo, whose facial dummy mask I helped create with Dave Deneen for the movie “Minghags“. True to what I remember him being like, he was really cool.
Bought a $5 picture to round off the day (along with chinese food, which rounded off my belly).
Stay tuned for part II – Germany / Australia – a 4:0 game.
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