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jainaOnward we go with Comic-Con 2009!
Saturday
We packed up both cars and caravanned downtown—me with Dad and Sean with Rogue, since we were taking a different (and hopefully less crowded) route to get around to the loading dock at the back of the convention center. We were able to pull in with no problems, but we couldn’t leave the cars there while we took stuff upstairs. So Dad and Rogue went to park the cars, and Sean and I took the first load up to the Masq rehearsal/storage room through the freight elevators. Apparently we passed…Jimmy Fallon? while we were walking through the backstage hall upstairs, but I had no idea it was him. We dropped off our stuff in the room and found Cordelia and a few others already there, since Orientation had started. We recruited Kent to come down and help us with the second load.
When we got back up, I sat down with Corli to finish our paperwork and documentation—she was super on-the-ball and already had a good start. We noticed that people were starting to line up to sign up for slots on the official rehearsal stage, so we hurried over and got in line too. We snagged the 4:45 slot, right before dressing-room check-in officially opened; that way we could have our own rehearsal for an hour beforehand and work out any remaining issues, run through the skit as many times as possible during our 15 minutes on the stage, and then go straight to the dressing room to start getting ready.
After turning in our paperwork to Martin, Corli and I sat down with her camera to watch the video from the previous night’s practice and make notes on anything we needed to tell people at rehearsal that afternoon—any spacing issues, synchronization problems, and whatnot. There really wasn’t that much stuff; everyone was doing really well! We finished up in time to find Rogue and head over to the Hilton in hopes of getting into the Glee panel. I had no idea how long the line was or what our chances were, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. As it turned out, the line was really short! We sat in line until the panel beforehand finished up (I worked on my agenda for that afternoon’s rehearsal), and when they let us in, we easily got seats together in the back of the room.
OH MY GOSH the Glee panel was so awesome you guys!!! First off, we spent the first 45 minutes watching the second episode, “Showmance.” This show is going to be SO GOOD. EEEEEE. And there was EVEN MORE music in this episode than in the Pilot. They sang “Golddigger” (yes, as in Kanye) and I could NOT get it out of my head for weeks. And now it is available for download on iTunes! (Thanks![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rawles!) Then for the second half of the panel, they brought out the two showrunners, along with the actors who play Rachel, Finn, Quinn, and Will. Among the things we learned:
- If you ask a non-Broadway actor to sing, they’ll squirm uncomfortably and say they have a cold.
- If you ask a Broadway actor to sing, they’ll immediately burst into song and almost overwhelm their microphone.
- Apparently it was a requirement for all fan questions to start with, “Hi Lea, you’re awesome…”
- Glee won’t move at a typical TV-show pace, where things get dragged out across whole season. In episode 2, they dive right into dealing with the relationship stuff introduced in the pilot. (Yay!)
- There will be 4 or 5 songs in every episode. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
- There will be a soundtrack.
- Everyone on the panel seemed so genuinely appreciative and grateful for the response they’ve been getting from fans. The room was definitely roaring for them!
So that was pretty much AWESOMESAUCE. :D The panel ended at 3 pm, which gave us just enough time to get back over to the Masq rooms and find somewhere to rehearse. We ended up sharing an empty room with the Macha Four Seasons group, where they were assembling their backdrops with power tools. We asked if we could practice in there, and they were like, “As long as you don’t mind the loud noise” and I replied, “Well, as long as you don’t mind *our* loud noise…” Our rehearsal went really well; I outlined how the rest of the day would go, assigned point people for any questions that might arise (hair, makeup, choreography, costumes, etc), gave notes, and then we did a few more run-throughs and straightened out another traffic jam or two.
By 4:30, we were finished and ready to go back over to the rehearsal room for our practice slot. That also went really well (we had to move the CD player off the stage because our choreo made it skip!) and we got some applause from the people who were in the room, although there were some people sitting in the chairs watching us who were totally stone-faced the whole time, which was not terrifically comforting. When we finished, one of the stage managers asked me if we would like the Masq ninjas to clear our outer costumes from the wings after we stripped them off, and I was like, “Um, yes? Thank you and I love you forever?” I freaking love it when competent people run masquerades! We try to be as self-sufficient as possible with our entries, and we had planned to just clear the costumes ourselves as we exited the stage, but they offered, so I gladly accepted. :)
And then it was time to get ready! I checked us in and they gave us a dressing room, although they later moved us to the big one in the middle of the room, because the first one was just too small. Rogue had gotten subs for me, Dad, and Sean, and I tried to eat but I just didn’t feel very hungry. There’s this curious temporal phenomenon that happens when you’re getting ready for Masquerade, where the closer you get to the time you have to be ready, the faster time goes. I asked everyone to be stage-ready by 7 pm, so that when we inevitably took longer than that, we’d still be ready by 7:30 (which is the official deadline). Everyone was really great about being self-sufficient and asking the various point people for help when they needed it,aviendiora was super super helpful and steamed mine and Rogue’s costumes, and Nicole was awesome and waxed down my eyebrows for me. And of course it ended up being me who was the last one to finish getting dressed! Note to self, next time practice applying green makeup beforehand. :P Actually the green wasn’t so bad, although it took a long time to apply, it was the purple eyeshadow I’d bought that just didn’t work the way I needed it to. It looked fine from far away, but up close…yecch. Sean sprayed my hands and face with hairspray about a zillion times to try and seal the makeup (a Kimmerie suggestion) which sort of worked, but my hands still left faint green traces when I touched things (like my costume), so I need to figure something else out for next time. Here's some more pics of us prepping. They're funny.
But we were all ready on time, so that was good! We got our picture taken for the judges’ reference, and then we got workmanship judged. This was definitely an area where I hadn’t prepared well enough; we had a lot of costumes, and I should’ve orchestrated things better so that the judge spent more time looking at the really really impressive stuff (MICKEY!) instead of just a cursory glance over everything. You’d think I’d know this after seven years, but then, I’ve never done an entry this big before. And some years we didn’t bother with workmanship judging. There was an interview with this year’s judges on io9 where they talk about some of their judging criteria, and they specifically mention that an entry with great performance but less workmanship wouldn’t be as impressive for them. :-/ I suppose I should’ve said, HERE IS MICKEY, LOOK HE IS AMAZING. ALSO HERE IS MY DAD, HE MADE THE HEAD. (We joked about making my dad a T-shirt identifying him as the maker of the Mickey head. We really should’ve done it.)
And then all there was left to do was find a space to sit down and try not to have a panic attack as we waited for our turn. Well okay, I wasn’t as freaked out as I was in 2006 when we did Pirates, but I started obsessing about whether people were going to fall off the front or back of the stage, or knock into lights—our ninjas had gone to move Melissa closer to the actual stage, and Dad noticed that a) there were boxy light fixtures along the back of the stage, and 2) the back of the stage was a sheer drop-off to the floor. In rehearsal, we had been using the entire stage front to back, and we had people running behind the flag to get to the opposite side of the stage, so yeah, I was kind of worried that we would either lose a castmember or break a very expensive piece of lighting equipment. Or both.
But! I was still able to hang out with my Masquerade friends who were doing entries this year--laragoth and her Looking Glass Wars entry (OMG, pretty pretty so pretty), sparklepipsi and her Dr. Horrible group (aka Greasy Potter in 2007 and Eternal Sonata last year), kagomechan and the rest of the Batman entry (aka Kyoshi warriors last year and evil Wizard of Oz at Costume-Con), and phavorianne and babysnowleopard and the GI Joe entry (I think they were Nintendon’ts in prior years?). Also I hadn’t had time to paint my nails red, so Cordelia volunteered. I think someone got pictures of Cruella painting Maleficent’s nails, but I don’t have any. Sean fed me cookies so I would at least eat something. We discovered that the other Disney entry was doing It’s A Small World—Rachel had found out earlier from Kim and Cris that they were doing a Disney entry too, but we hadn't known what their theme was. I knew some of the people in that entry and I meant to spend more time with them than I did. :-/ You know, you spend so much time backstage, but it never seems to be enough to do everything you want to do.
We were number 41, which was second from the end. I thought this would mean we’d get to see most of the entries before we had to line up, since usually they take entries backstage in groups of 10. But they flipped the orientation of Ballroom 20 this year, so we had a much longer walk to the stage, and instead of being taken back around entry 30, we got taken back around entry 20. :( Thus, we missed almost all of our friends’ entries. Boo erns. There’s a TV monitor on the stage left side of backstage, but I entered stage right, so all we could see was the very back of everyone’s skits. And you couldn’t really hear very well. Alas. It was pretty funny though, watching…it was either the GI Joe skit or the Cobra skit, I forget which. Their poor ninjas (stage ninjas, not Storm Shadow or Snake Eyes) were constantly running from one side of the stage to the other, then back around, throwing stuff on, catching stuff thrown at them—that was a *lot* of props! But when we watched it at playback the next day, from the audience, it came off *really* well and you had no idea that the ninjas were frantically zipping around backstage. Oh, that was the other funny thing—the audience chants this year were “Rainbow Brite!” (oddly, from a Batman skit) and “Go ninja, go ninja, go!” which the audience had been yelling all night, and then it ended up getting used in the GI Joe skit audio! That was AWESOME.
When it was almost our turn, I had everyone stretch again to warm back up, and passed the word to the other side of the stage so they could stretch too. Then, finally, after a really, really, really long wait backstage (much longer than I’ve waited before), it was time! Hallelujah! Dad, Sean, Bryan, and Jen started walking onstage with Melissa, and the Disney castle flag got its own applause! Then there was a terrible moment when some signals got crossed, and the MC thought he had to stall for time and started to tell a joke. (Bad jokes. Terrible jokes. Same bad terrible *long* jokes every year. *shudders*) We were literally *screaming* in the wings, “No! No! No jokes! No jokes! We’re ready!!!” Thankfully they started the music before he was able to start telling the joke.
My first thought on entering the stage was, “Oh, this is huge! Much bigger than we’ve been practicing on! No one’s going to fall off this!” And after that, I knew it was all going to be okay. The audience was pretty quiet for the first part, then a nice laugh when we started the cheerleading bit, a bigger laugh when we did the costume strip, and then an absolute ROAR when the flag was raised to reveal Mickey. Just as we’d planned, mwa ha ha. ;-) I felt awesome while we were doing the skit; I hit all my marks and scowled and smiled in the right places and managed to clamp down on the urge to check that all our lines were straight and everyone else was in the right place. I totally didn’t want to get off the stage when we were done! But they brought the lights down so I pretty much had to. :) We were all on a total adrenaline high as we scooped up our discarded costumes and practically pelted toward the photo area. Apparently we passed Nichelle Nichols and her entourage as we went, but once again I was oblivious.
In line for the photos, we returned everyone’s costume bits to their respective owners and got back into full costume. I just kept repeating, “I can’t believe it’s over. Two and a half minutes. I can’t believe it’s over.” My mind couldn’t quite process that we had reached the culmination of all that work and effort. Phew. We did a little group cheer in a circle and I tried to convey my extreme gratitude for the TOTAL AWESOMENESS of everyone in our skit. I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! :D :D :D Photos were pretty easy; we’d worked out poses ahead of time, both in full costume and in cheerleader costumes. After photos we got interviewed by some guy with a fake British accent; this year, as the director, I had to answer the questions. In retrospect, I maybe should’ve tried to modulate my voice a little so I didn’t sound so squeaky-perky Maleficent. :P
After photos it was back to the green room, and people actually applauded when we entered! That was pretty freaking awesome. :D Then we just sat and waited for the awards list. It took foreeeeeevvvverrrr this year. I got massages from Mike *and* Nichoel, which, AWESOME. Have I mentioned how great our castmembers were? We gave and returned compliments from various groups; it’s always a lovefest backstage. :) We took random pictures. They came with the first awards list; our number wasn’t called. I laid down flat on the floor while we waited for the second list and tried not to throw up. My heart was attempting to claw its way up past my throat as they read off the numbers on the second list. Finally, I heard “Forty-one” and I just sort of went limp and kept repeating, “Oh thank god we won something.”
Usually I do not freak out this much about awards. Seriously, you can ask Rogue or Cordelia. I mean I love getting awards, don’t get me wrong, but the reason we do this, and the reason we do the type of entries we do, is a) to have ridiculous amounts of fun onstage, and b) to entertain the audience. This year was kind of a special case, what with the number of people involved and the amount of work and time and money they’d all put in. We’d gotten the response we were hoping for from the audience, and we’d had an awesome time performing, but this year I guess I saw the awards as a thank-you for the cast, more than anything else. Like, “See, it *was* awesome, and here is our concrete proof. It was all worth it, and you guys made it possible.”
Anyway. We grabbed our pom-poms and ran out to the hallway, where they were lining us up to receive our awards. Kent and Cordelia and I spent the whole time analyzing the other entries around us, trying to figure out what everyone had won, since they don’t actually tell you until you get on the stage. We were pretty confused at first—there was a point where we thought we might be Most Humorous—but when they brought the Small World people back into line after they’d gotten their second company award, we were pretty sure they were Humorous and we were Presentation. And we were right! I accepted our trophy and we ran off to the photo stage again to be re-photographed and re-interviewed with our award. (The trophies this year, btw, are bigger than usual, I guess cause it’s the 40th anniversary of SDCC. It doesn’t fit on the shelf I use to store that kind of stuff!)
And then—that was it! From there, it was all a sea of mutual congratulations to other entries and packing up our stuff to go home. Dad and Rogue went to get the cars, and Sean and I (with help from some other castmembers) got our suitcases, Mickey, and Melissa downstairs to the curb to wait for them. We came home, I posted to my LJ, and we collapsed into bed. Looooooong day...
Sunday
...and too-short night. Rogue and I were supposed to be on-shift at the LFL booth at 9:30, but we didn’t manage to make it until 10:30. This turned out to be great timing, though, as we caught Mary just as she was heading up to “You Can Draw Star Wars” with all the drawing supplies. She gave them to us instead, so we brought them upstairs and then handed out paper, pencils, and coloring pages to the attendees as they entered. Since people kept coming in throughout the session, we stayed the whole time to make sure everyone had drawing supplies.
It was a fun panel—it was basically “Katie Cook draws Star Wars while Bonnie Burton does stand-up comedy.” It took me awhile to realize that the reason Katie looked so familiar was because we’d inducted her as an Honorary Rebel Cheerleader on Thursday! Her drawings were super cute and I even had enough time to try and draw Chewbacca and Boba Fett. They turned out…sort of recognizable. ;-) Afterwards, we took the supplies back downstairs, then handed out more free stuff until our shift ended at 1:30. I wanted to walk the floor at least a little before Masquerade Playback, since the only bit of the floor I’d seen was on the walk to Artists’ Alley on Thursday. So Rogue changed into his Jafar costume (I elected to just stay in my Maleficent cheerleader, sans bodysuit, long-sleeved top, headpiece, and makeup…so basically I just looked like an evil cheerleader) and we set off. We got snared pretty quickly by the Sideshow booth, though, because they were doing a raffle and there were some awesome prizes. I came SO CLOSE to winning a Dr. Henry Jones Sr. action figure for my dad, but in the end we left empty-handed. Boo. Rogue decided to keep going around the floor (and got his picture taken with the Red vs Blue guys, while I took off to find Sean and Dad, who’d brought the Mickey costume and therefore had to stay basically stationary.
I found them out in the lobby, taking a constant stream of pictures with con attendees. Sean decided to stay in the costume as we made our way upstairs to Playback, which meant we made very slow progress. The look on all those kids’ faces was totally worth it though (at least IMO!). There was a really scary moment in the lobby between B20 and the Sails Pavilion, where a mob (and I do mean a mob, not just a couple) of fanbrats saw Mickey and started running toward him with their arms out, with apparently no intention of stopping before they reached him. I stepped out in front and yelled “STOP! NO! Sorry guys, but Mickey is very fragile,” and they pulled up just in front of me, thankfully. I don’t want to think about the damage they could’ve caused to the head. Parents, this is why you don’t drop your young teenagers off at conventions unchaperoned. CON MANNERS, people, it’s not that hard a concept. Once we got across the Sails Pavilion and into the smaller hallway, Sean took off the head. He was really careful about not removing it where kids could see. He’s so considerate. :)
They had actually closed the room because it was full (!) when we got to Playback, but a few people left and we were able to get in. I was really happy to see all the entries we’d missed the night before, like Dr. Horrible, Batman, LGW, the GI Joe/Cobra skits, etc. We were excited to see our skit too, though as always, there were weird close-ups and parts where they focused on people who weren’t actually doing anything. :P Cordelia showed me the video from her camera that Dawn and David had taken, though, and it looked awesome. (That’s the version I linked earlier.) Here are all the videos of us I currently know of:
Full stage, no close-ups
The "official" video, lots of weird close-ups
Another video from the audience, slightly closer to the stage
The ACParadise video
After Playback, we went and thanked Martin for running a great Masquerade, I gave out the rest of my thank-you notes to our cast and ninjas, and then I ran down to the floor to see as much of it as I could before it closed in 20 minutes! I think I saw most of the major studio stuff in the middle, but I didn’t get to either end of the floor. I did pick up some Avatar posters from the Nickelodeon booth for Rogue (he redecorates his work cube with new con stuff every year) and for Kelly and the LGBs. Then they made the announcement that the floor was closed, the vendors cheered, and that was it!
Then it was time for the traditional Sunday night "Decompressing from Comic-Con" dinner, so we called around to various Club Jade people to see if we could get a group together-- we hadn't been able to see each other hardly at all! Cindi and Aaron were up for it, and James and Whitney said they'd join us after they stopped off home. Steph and Mike had already gone back to the McFortunes', and Dad and Sean had left for our apartment after playback and elected to just stay there. So the six of us had dinner at On The Border in Mission Valley, and it was lovely and relaxing and an absolutely perfect capper to the weekend.
Phew! That...was a very great deal of typing. For all that I didn't do much of the the actual con this time around, I had an awful lot to say about it. ;-)
Saturday
We packed up both cars and caravanned downtown—me with Dad and Sean with Rogue, since we were taking a different (and hopefully less crowded) route to get around to the loading dock at the back of the convention center. We were able to pull in with no problems, but we couldn’t leave the cars there while we took stuff upstairs. So Dad and Rogue went to park the cars, and Sean and I took the first load up to the Masq rehearsal/storage room through the freight elevators. Apparently we passed…Jimmy Fallon? while we were walking through the backstage hall upstairs, but I had no idea it was him. We dropped off our stuff in the room and found Cordelia and a few others already there, since Orientation had started. We recruited Kent to come down and help us with the second load.
When we got back up, I sat down with Corli to finish our paperwork and documentation—she was super on-the-ball and already had a good start. We noticed that people were starting to line up to sign up for slots on the official rehearsal stage, so we hurried over and got in line too. We snagged the 4:45 slot, right before dressing-room check-in officially opened; that way we could have our own rehearsal for an hour beforehand and work out any remaining issues, run through the skit as many times as possible during our 15 minutes on the stage, and then go straight to the dressing room to start getting ready.
After turning in our paperwork to Martin, Corli and I sat down with her camera to watch the video from the previous night’s practice and make notes on anything we needed to tell people at rehearsal that afternoon—any spacing issues, synchronization problems, and whatnot. There really wasn’t that much stuff; everyone was doing really well! We finished up in time to find Rogue and head over to the Hilton in hopes of getting into the Glee panel. I had no idea how long the line was or what our chances were, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. As it turned out, the line was really short! We sat in line until the panel beforehand finished up (I worked on my agenda for that afternoon’s rehearsal), and when they let us in, we easily got seats together in the back of the room.
OH MY GOSH the Glee panel was so awesome you guys!!! First off, we spent the first 45 minutes watching the second episode, “Showmance.” This show is going to be SO GOOD. EEEEEE. And there was EVEN MORE music in this episode than in the Pilot. They sang “Golddigger” (yes, as in Kanye) and I could NOT get it out of my head for weeks. And now it is available for download on iTunes! (Thanks
rawles!) Then for the second half of the panel, they brought out the two showrunners, along with the actors who play Rachel, Finn, Quinn, and Will. Among the things we learned:- If you ask a non-Broadway actor to sing, they’ll squirm uncomfortably and say they have a cold.
- If you ask a Broadway actor to sing, they’ll immediately burst into song and almost overwhelm their microphone.
- Apparently it was a requirement for all fan questions to start with, “Hi Lea, you’re awesome…”
- Glee won’t move at a typical TV-show pace, where things get dragged out across whole season. In episode 2, they dive right into dealing with the relationship stuff introduced in the pilot. (Yay!)
- There will be 4 or 5 songs in every episode. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
- There will be a soundtrack.
- Everyone on the panel seemed so genuinely appreciative and grateful for the response they’ve been getting from fans. The room was definitely roaring for them!
So that was pretty much AWESOMESAUCE. :D The panel ended at 3 pm, which gave us just enough time to get back over to the Masq rooms and find somewhere to rehearse. We ended up sharing an empty room with the Macha Four Seasons group, where they were assembling their backdrops with power tools. We asked if we could practice in there, and they were like, “As long as you don’t mind the loud noise” and I replied, “Well, as long as you don’t mind *our* loud noise…” Our rehearsal went really well; I outlined how the rest of the day would go, assigned point people for any questions that might arise (hair, makeup, choreography, costumes, etc), gave notes, and then we did a few more run-throughs and straightened out another traffic jam or two.
By 4:30, we were finished and ready to go back over to the rehearsal room for our practice slot. That also went really well (we had to move the CD player off the stage because our choreo made it skip!) and we got some applause from the people who were in the room, although there were some people sitting in the chairs watching us who were totally stone-faced the whole time, which was not terrifically comforting. When we finished, one of the stage managers asked me if we would like the Masq ninjas to clear our outer costumes from the wings after we stripped them off, and I was like, “Um, yes? Thank you and I love you forever?” I freaking love it when competent people run masquerades! We try to be as self-sufficient as possible with our entries, and we had planned to just clear the costumes ourselves as we exited the stage, but they offered, so I gladly accepted. :)
And then it was time to get ready! I checked us in and they gave us a dressing room, although they later moved us to the big one in the middle of the room, because the first one was just too small. Rogue had gotten subs for me, Dad, and Sean, and I tried to eat but I just didn’t feel very hungry. There’s this curious temporal phenomenon that happens when you’re getting ready for Masquerade, where the closer you get to the time you have to be ready, the faster time goes. I asked everyone to be stage-ready by 7 pm, so that when we inevitably took longer than that, we’d still be ready by 7:30 (which is the official deadline). Everyone was really great about being self-sufficient and asking the various point people for help when they needed it,
aviendiora was super super helpful and steamed mine and Rogue’s costumes, and Nicole was awesome and waxed down my eyebrows for me. And of course it ended up being me who was the last one to finish getting dressed! Note to self, next time practice applying green makeup beforehand. :P Actually the green wasn’t so bad, although it took a long time to apply, it was the purple eyeshadow I’d bought that just didn’t work the way I needed it to. It looked fine from far away, but up close…yecch. Sean sprayed my hands and face with hairspray about a zillion times to try and seal the makeup (a Kimmerie suggestion) which sort of worked, but my hands still left faint green traces when I touched things (like my costume), so I need to figure something else out for next time. Here's some more pics of us prepping. They're funny.But we were all ready on time, so that was good! We got our picture taken for the judges’ reference, and then we got workmanship judged. This was definitely an area where I hadn’t prepared well enough; we had a lot of costumes, and I should’ve orchestrated things better so that the judge spent more time looking at the really really impressive stuff (MICKEY!) instead of just a cursory glance over everything. You’d think I’d know this after seven years, but then, I’ve never done an entry this big before. And some years we didn’t bother with workmanship judging. There was an interview with this year’s judges on io9 where they talk about some of their judging criteria, and they specifically mention that an entry with great performance but less workmanship wouldn’t be as impressive for them. :-/ I suppose I should’ve said, HERE IS MICKEY, LOOK HE IS AMAZING. ALSO HERE IS MY DAD, HE MADE THE HEAD. (We joked about making my dad a T-shirt identifying him as the maker of the Mickey head. We really should’ve done it.)
And then all there was left to do was find a space to sit down and try not to have a panic attack as we waited for our turn. Well okay, I wasn’t as freaked out as I was in 2006 when we did Pirates, but I started obsessing about whether people were going to fall off the front or back of the stage, or knock into lights—our ninjas had gone to move Melissa closer to the actual stage, and Dad noticed that a) there were boxy light fixtures along the back of the stage, and 2) the back of the stage was a sheer drop-off to the floor. In rehearsal, we had been using the entire stage front to back, and we had people running behind the flag to get to the opposite side of the stage, so yeah, I was kind of worried that we would either lose a castmember or break a very expensive piece of lighting equipment. Or both.
But! I was still able to hang out with my Masquerade friends who were doing entries this year--
laragoth and her Looking Glass Wars entry (OMG, pretty pretty so pretty), sparklepipsi and her Dr. Horrible group (aka Greasy Potter in 2007 and Eternal Sonata last year), kagomechan and the rest of the Batman entry (aka Kyoshi warriors last year and evil Wizard of Oz at Costume-Con), and phavorianne and babysnowleopard and the GI Joe entry (I think they were Nintendon’ts in prior years?). Also I hadn’t had time to paint my nails red, so Cordelia volunteered. I think someone got pictures of Cruella painting Maleficent’s nails, but I don’t have any. Sean fed me cookies so I would at least eat something. We discovered that the other Disney entry was doing It’s A Small World—Rachel had found out earlier from Kim and Cris that they were doing a Disney entry too, but we hadn't known what their theme was. I knew some of the people in that entry and I meant to spend more time with them than I did. :-/ You know, you spend so much time backstage, but it never seems to be enough to do everything you want to do.We were number 41, which was second from the end. I thought this would mean we’d get to see most of the entries before we had to line up, since usually they take entries backstage in groups of 10. But they flipped the orientation of Ballroom 20 this year, so we had a much longer walk to the stage, and instead of being taken back around entry 30, we got taken back around entry 20. :( Thus, we missed almost all of our friends’ entries. Boo erns. There’s a TV monitor on the stage left side of backstage, but I entered stage right, so all we could see was the very back of everyone’s skits. And you couldn’t really hear very well. Alas. It was pretty funny though, watching…it was either the GI Joe skit or the Cobra skit, I forget which. Their poor ninjas (stage ninjas, not Storm Shadow or Snake Eyes) were constantly running from one side of the stage to the other, then back around, throwing stuff on, catching stuff thrown at them—that was a *lot* of props! But when we watched it at playback the next day, from the audience, it came off *really* well and you had no idea that the ninjas were frantically zipping around backstage. Oh, that was the other funny thing—the audience chants this year were “Rainbow Brite!” (oddly, from a Batman skit) and “Go ninja, go ninja, go!” which the audience had been yelling all night, and then it ended up getting used in the GI Joe skit audio! That was AWESOME.
When it was almost our turn, I had everyone stretch again to warm back up, and passed the word to the other side of the stage so they could stretch too. Then, finally, after a really, really, really long wait backstage (much longer than I’ve waited before), it was time! Hallelujah! Dad, Sean, Bryan, and Jen started walking onstage with Melissa, and the Disney castle flag got its own applause! Then there was a terrible moment when some signals got crossed, and the MC thought he had to stall for time and started to tell a joke. (Bad jokes. Terrible jokes. Same bad terrible *long* jokes every year. *shudders*) We were literally *screaming* in the wings, “No! No! No jokes! No jokes! We’re ready!!!” Thankfully they started the music before he was able to start telling the joke.
My first thought on entering the stage was, “Oh, this is huge! Much bigger than we’ve been practicing on! No one’s going to fall off this!” And after that, I knew it was all going to be okay. The audience was pretty quiet for the first part, then a nice laugh when we started the cheerleading bit, a bigger laugh when we did the costume strip, and then an absolute ROAR when the flag was raised to reveal Mickey. Just as we’d planned, mwa ha ha. ;-) I felt awesome while we were doing the skit; I hit all my marks and scowled and smiled in the right places and managed to clamp down on the urge to check that all our lines were straight and everyone else was in the right place. I totally didn’t want to get off the stage when we were done! But they brought the lights down so I pretty much had to. :) We were all on a total adrenaline high as we scooped up our discarded costumes and practically pelted toward the photo area. Apparently we passed Nichelle Nichols and her entourage as we went, but once again I was oblivious.
In line for the photos, we returned everyone’s costume bits to their respective owners and got back into full costume. I just kept repeating, “I can’t believe it’s over. Two and a half minutes. I can’t believe it’s over.” My mind couldn’t quite process that we had reached the culmination of all that work and effort. Phew. We did a little group cheer in a circle and I tried to convey my extreme gratitude for the TOTAL AWESOMENESS of everyone in our skit. I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! :D :D :D Photos were pretty easy; we’d worked out poses ahead of time, both in full costume and in cheerleader costumes. After photos we got interviewed by some guy with a fake British accent; this year, as the director, I had to answer the questions. In retrospect, I maybe should’ve tried to modulate my voice a little so I didn’t sound so squeaky-perky Maleficent. :P
After photos it was back to the green room, and people actually applauded when we entered! That was pretty freaking awesome. :D Then we just sat and waited for the awards list. It took foreeeeeevvvverrrr this year. I got massages from Mike *and* Nichoel, which, AWESOME. Have I mentioned how great our castmembers were? We gave and returned compliments from various groups; it’s always a lovefest backstage. :) We took random pictures. They came with the first awards list; our number wasn’t called. I laid down flat on the floor while we waited for the second list and tried not to throw up. My heart was attempting to claw its way up past my throat as they read off the numbers on the second list. Finally, I heard “Forty-one” and I just sort of went limp and kept repeating, “Oh thank god we won something.”
Usually I do not freak out this much about awards. Seriously, you can ask Rogue or Cordelia. I mean I love getting awards, don’t get me wrong, but the reason we do this, and the reason we do the type of entries we do, is a) to have ridiculous amounts of fun onstage, and b) to entertain the audience. This year was kind of a special case, what with the number of people involved and the amount of work and time and money they’d all put in. We’d gotten the response we were hoping for from the audience, and we’d had an awesome time performing, but this year I guess I saw the awards as a thank-you for the cast, more than anything else. Like, “See, it *was* awesome, and here is our concrete proof. It was all worth it, and you guys made it possible.”
Anyway. We grabbed our pom-poms and ran out to the hallway, where they were lining us up to receive our awards. Kent and Cordelia and I spent the whole time analyzing the other entries around us, trying to figure out what everyone had won, since they don’t actually tell you until you get on the stage. We were pretty confused at first—there was a point where we thought we might be Most Humorous—but when they brought the Small World people back into line after they’d gotten their second company award, we were pretty sure they were Humorous and we were Presentation. And we were right! I accepted our trophy and we ran off to the photo stage again to be re-photographed and re-interviewed with our award. (The trophies this year, btw, are bigger than usual, I guess cause it’s the 40th anniversary of SDCC. It doesn’t fit on the shelf I use to store that kind of stuff!)
And then—that was it! From there, it was all a sea of mutual congratulations to other entries and packing up our stuff to go home. Dad and Rogue went to get the cars, and Sean and I (with help from some other castmembers) got our suitcases, Mickey, and Melissa downstairs to the curb to wait for them. We came home, I posted to my LJ, and we collapsed into bed. Looooooong day...
Sunday
...and too-short night. Rogue and I were supposed to be on-shift at the LFL booth at 9:30, but we didn’t manage to make it until 10:30. This turned out to be great timing, though, as we caught Mary just as she was heading up to “You Can Draw Star Wars” with all the drawing supplies. She gave them to us instead, so we brought them upstairs and then handed out paper, pencils, and coloring pages to the attendees as they entered. Since people kept coming in throughout the session, we stayed the whole time to make sure everyone had drawing supplies.
It was a fun panel—it was basically “Katie Cook draws Star Wars while Bonnie Burton does stand-up comedy.” It took me awhile to realize that the reason Katie looked so familiar was because we’d inducted her as an Honorary Rebel Cheerleader on Thursday! Her drawings were super cute and I even had enough time to try and draw Chewbacca and Boba Fett. They turned out…sort of recognizable. ;-) Afterwards, we took the supplies back downstairs, then handed out more free stuff until our shift ended at 1:30. I wanted to walk the floor at least a little before Masquerade Playback, since the only bit of the floor I’d seen was on the walk to Artists’ Alley on Thursday. So Rogue changed into his Jafar costume (I elected to just stay in my Maleficent cheerleader, sans bodysuit, long-sleeved top, headpiece, and makeup…so basically I just looked like an evil cheerleader) and we set off. We got snared pretty quickly by the Sideshow booth, though, because they were doing a raffle and there were some awesome prizes. I came SO CLOSE to winning a Dr. Henry Jones Sr. action figure for my dad, but in the end we left empty-handed. Boo. Rogue decided to keep going around the floor (and got his picture taken with the Red vs Blue guys, while I took off to find Sean and Dad, who’d brought the Mickey costume and therefore had to stay basically stationary.
I found them out in the lobby, taking a constant stream of pictures with con attendees. Sean decided to stay in the costume as we made our way upstairs to Playback, which meant we made very slow progress. The look on all those kids’ faces was totally worth it though (at least IMO!). There was a really scary moment in the lobby between B20 and the Sails Pavilion, where a mob (and I do mean a mob, not just a couple) of fanbrats saw Mickey and started running toward him with their arms out, with apparently no intention of stopping before they reached him. I stepped out in front and yelled “STOP! NO! Sorry guys, but Mickey is very fragile,” and they pulled up just in front of me, thankfully. I don’t want to think about the damage they could’ve caused to the head. Parents, this is why you don’t drop your young teenagers off at conventions unchaperoned. CON MANNERS, people, it’s not that hard a concept. Once we got across the Sails Pavilion and into the smaller hallway, Sean took off the head. He was really careful about not removing it where kids could see. He’s so considerate. :)
They had actually closed the room because it was full (!) when we got to Playback, but a few people left and we were able to get in. I was really happy to see all the entries we’d missed the night before, like Dr. Horrible, Batman, LGW, the GI Joe/Cobra skits, etc. We were excited to see our skit too, though as always, there were weird close-ups and parts where they focused on people who weren’t actually doing anything. :P Cordelia showed me the video from her camera that Dawn and David had taken, though, and it looked awesome. (That’s the version I linked earlier.) Here are all the videos of us I currently know of:
Full stage, no close-ups
The "official" video, lots of weird close-ups
Another video from the audience, slightly closer to the stage
The ACParadise video
After Playback, we went and thanked Martin for running a great Masquerade, I gave out the rest of my thank-you notes to our cast and ninjas, and then I ran down to the floor to see as much of it as I could before it closed in 20 minutes! I think I saw most of the major studio stuff in the middle, but I didn’t get to either end of the floor. I did pick up some Avatar posters from the Nickelodeon booth for Rogue (he redecorates his work cube with new con stuff every year) and for Kelly and the LGBs. Then they made the announcement that the floor was closed, the vendors cheered, and that was it!
Then it was time for the traditional Sunday night "Decompressing from Comic-Con" dinner, so we called around to various Club Jade people to see if we could get a group together-- we hadn't been able to see each other hardly at all! Cindi and Aaron were up for it, and James and Whitney said they'd join us after they stopped off home. Steph and Mike had already gone back to the McFortunes', and Dad and Sean had left for our apartment after playback and elected to just stay there. So the six of us had dinner at On The Border in Mission Valley, and it was lovely and relaxing and an absolutely perfect capper to the weekend.
Phew! That...was a very great deal of typing. For all that I didn't do much of the the actual con this time around, I had an awful lot to say about it. ;-)
