I will try to post some more images and stuff when I finally get home, but right now I can offer a few stray thoughts from the road.
Before I get into anything else, I want to express, on behalf of Brian and myself, our sincere gratitude to all the cast members for their cordiality and solicitude in granting us access to areas where they were relaxing between press interviews, etc. Second, we’re not sure it’s possible to express enough gratitude to the Shout! Factory staff, who were, to a man and woman, impossibly helpful and sweet and generally awesome. These are people who GET this show, folks. We are delighted they have it. And of course we are also incredibly thankful to the RiffTrax/Legend Films crew, who bent over backwards to accommodate us. It was so great to finally meet guys like Eric and Conor and the rest of the team.
I was the guy who used the phrase “live-blogging,” and that was, perhaps, wishful thinking on my part. We really didn’t have the equipment or the resources to really be “live-blogging.” It turned out to be sort of “intermittent blogging, whenever we could find an electrical outlet and find the wifi signal.” I apologize if any hopes were raised for more non-stop coverage. We will try to make it up in the next day or so with some retrospective info.
Comic-Con is HUGE. I’ve been to Dragon-Con a couple of times, and that’s massive, but this is like three or four Dragon-Cons. It’s outrageous, and frankly it’s really gotten too big. And, well, I hope this doesn’t come off as too uncharitable, but the cumulative B.O. of 150,000 geeks jammed into a relatively small exhibit space gets old pretty fast. Not that any of you I met individually were anything other than fragrant! It’s just the sort of ambient background funk I’m referring to. To which I should add that, as always, the MSTies I met were funny and fun and great to talk to.
The management of the Comic-Con pretty much fumbled the 20th Anniversary panel. We heard from a number of people who could not get in because the line (which began forming in the early afternoon, and also included would-be attendees to the Kevin Smith panel in an adjacent room) stretched down the hallway and down another hallway and at some point the organizers began turning people away. But ultimately there were empty seats in the back. Once again, as has happened at so many conventions, the organizers greatly underestimated the interest there would be in MST3K and put it in only a medium-sized room, then turned people away unnecessarily. I was really a mess.
One thought I wanted to pass along: It was, to me, startling to see this sea of pop culture vultures, most of whom, if you stopped them and asked, would say that they loved MST3K, brush by Mike or Joel without a second look. The rest of the cast, well, they might not be so recognizable (and I suspect they were just as glad of that) but it still was an amazing thing to see. One exception, however, seemed to be Frank. With that shock of familiar white hair, he, the others told us, was pretty much the only one being stopped in the hallways for autographs and photos. Story Trace told us: They were all headed somewhere and a lady sees Frank and cries out his name and asks if she can get a picture with him. Frank says yes, of course. Delighted, the lady gets out her camera and…hands it to Joel, completely failing to recognize him. True story. We were standing in the hallway with Joel right before the panel (and thereby hangs a tale as well) and I noted to him that I was a bit surprised that his presence wasn’t causing a scene. Nobody was even looking at him twice. Joel smiled and said “No, I walk freely among them.” At the end of a autograph session, Mike had stepped a few paces away from the RiffTrax booth and people were just brushing by him. I said something to the effect of: “I’m surprised you guys aren’t getting recognized more.” He just shrugged and said “Yeah, I don’t really care.”
We had the pleasure of at last meeting the mighty Tom Noel of the incredibly awesome MST3K Temple and it was great to chat with him for a while. We then repaired to a nearby restaurant to enjoy tasty edibles and chat some more before heading off to the live show. If for some insane reason you do not know of Tom’s amazing site (all the cast members do and said nice things to him about it), you must visit. Trust me.
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Sampo, Erhardt, and the mega-awesome Tom Noel
The live show was achingly funny. I walked out with a bad case of “laugh-stomach.” It’s a quantum jump from Mike’s already-hilarious solo DVD effort. I hope they release it at some point.
More tonight, or tomorrow.
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No offense dangerface I just meant it’s no fun being stuck at any airport, I’m in Northeast Tenn.(but I’m a proud Michigander by birth) so I’ve got no reason to razz on where anybody lives and what the heck are hot browns ?
None taken, Fred. I definitely agree with you where airports are concerned; the most consistently boring and confusing places in any town. And a hot brown is basically a slightly baked, open-faced turkey sandwich with bacon, cheese, tomatoes, and mornay sauce. It’s a delicacy of sorts around the Louisville area.
“Frank looks like he was rode hard and put away wet sometimes. Guess i underestimated how iconic that white hair is…”
I do agree with you there, but I understand how TV’s Frank is the one with the most street recognization. As a fan of the female variety, I admit there is something about Frank that just, you know, keeps the pilot light glowing.