While the rest of lj-land was off to Chi-town hanging with nsyncers and their celebrity friends, I was down south hanging with stormtroopers and their geeky friends. :)

An entry filled with hotel tales, pictures and a lot of walking.

With luck on our side, we were able to get into the Omni Hotel in San Diego. Directly across from the Convention Center. Park the car once and that's it, people! I've never actually stayed in a hotel with like bellhops, room service, valet parking service, concierge. Felt a little weird handing my bags over to someone else to take up to my room. I kinda felt like I should be asking where the cement pond was or something. Initial awkwardness aside, we had a real nice room on the 16th floor, with a view of Petco Park...


Out of one window, where the San Diego Padres were nice enough to have a game each night we were there and, I'm sure for our benefit, on our last night provided a fireworks show. Too cool.

Our other window had a beautiful view of the downtown San Diego skyline...

You should see it at night. I'd very much like to show you that shot, but it came out like shit, so you'll just have to imagine the above only much darker with lots of pretty lights. :)

And just to finish up the room talk....

The beds were very comfy, although the pillows were just a tad too soft.

There was no LotR panels this year, much to my dismay, so we had a lot of walking around time on our hands. Got to visit quite a few booths on the convention floor, but we'll get to those in a bit. Let's move on to the couple of panels we did attend, shall we?

Attended the Warner Bros. panel where we got to see snippets of V for Vendetta with Natalie Portman - who is now growing her hair back - and Hugo Weaving. It looks interesting, although I know nothing about the comic/story is was adapted from. We were all given freebies when we walked in the door and one was a mask that the lead character wears in the movie. Kinda creepy, man. The next snippet was from the new Harry Potter movie coming out in November (we got a free poster for that one). It looks good. Man, those kids are growing up. I don't know if they're planning on adapting all of the books, but they better start thinking of filming them back to back if they want these kids to still look like...kids. ;)

We then got to see a couple of scenes from the Tim Burton movie Corpse Bride. I really can't wait to see this. I'll admit I didn't like Nightmare Before Christmas when it first came out...don't know why, but there ya go. Now it's one of my favorites and this new one certainly looks like it's going to blow the other out of the water! On the floor there was a booth set up with sets from the movie....




Sis' favorite character, Mr. Bone Jangles. hee


The set was amazing and so was the scene we got to see. They were giving away free flip-books at the booth as well.

The last snippet we got to see was from The Fountain. Our freebie for that was a little pin. I think this was the movie we weren't allowed to talk about - not that I really could say anything, the clip left me totally confuzzled. lol Hugh Jackman is in this and it does look interesting. Will have to seek it out when it's released.

The other big panel we sat in on was, of course, the Lost panel. Hoo doggy was that place packed! They showed us a couple of deleted scenes that will be included on the DVD when it's released in September and then out came the panel...



Mr. Josh Holloway was in rare form and seemed to have a gay ol' time, which most of it he spent giggling. Most of the convos about Sawyer seemed to revolve around skinny dipping, walking around shirtless and Sawyer figuring out how to make a beer still, so that meant he was going to have a potbelly. At one point Javi (a writer), who was sitting on Josh's left mentioned something about writing his own fan fiction. Evidentially, Josh has never heard of fanfic for he leaned back a bit and asked javi what it was. That was cute.

Of course, we also had Miss Maggie Grace as well...

She was also enjoying herself and practically went all girly when on the fans in the audience commented on her earrings. That was cute. One question asked of her was if she was anything like her character, Shannon. She said she didn't think so and turned to Josh to get his opinion. Josh just sat there with a grin on his face. The whole place just roared.

We also got a sneak peeks of a couple new shows. One was Invasion brought to us by a Hardy Boy, Shaun Cassidy! <---- I totally just dated myself, didn't I? To dig the hole deeper, I so remember his cover of Da Do Run Run. In fact, I've got it on 45 somewhere.

Also included in this panel was another new show from an ex-X Files producer, Nightstalker, a remake of the old 70's show. I didn't realize that Stuart Townsend was in this until I saw him up on the screen. How cool is that?



He wouldn't be bad to look at week after week. *waggles eyebrows*

We weren't able to get into the autograph session for Lost, unfortunately. It seems that I have no problem with driving hundreds of miles for a fandom, standing in lines for hours for a fandom or even plunk down too much money for tickets for a fandom, but I do draw the line at getting up before the sun rises to stand in line for tickets for a fandom. Fandom is a funny thing, huh? lol To console myself I did stop by the Inkworks booth and snagged a handful of promo posters for the DVD release in September. If anyone is interested in one, just let me know. :)

We now have reached to point where I share links to some of the booths I visited:

::While at the Inkworks booth, I also snagged a flyer on the new The X-Files Connections cards.

::The sis almost bought one of these little guys.

::August 27th-28th here I come!

::This booth had the funniest shirts and stickers. In fact, little Oliver in the icon spot came from this booth. Isn't he cute?

::This just seems so right and so wrong at the same time. It's great.

::And I bought a couple of comics - And Then One Day. What can I say, the paper was real cool - suede, baby - and the guy was kinda cute. I got sucked in. hee

That about sums up this year. We also ate a whole hell a lot of food. Discovered a couple of restaurants we will certainly visit next year. Sis' friend discovered a new fandom that involves a killer pink teddy bear - don't ask - and realized I can walk for just about three days straight without my legs falling off. A good weekend all around, I think. :)

Oh, yeah and then there's this...


Fandom rules, man!