The Day of the Actors

Continuing in my ongoing saga of relating my Comic-Con vacation...

After being denied access to the Watchmen preview, my friend and I decided to take no chances on being kept out of Heroes and Lost the next day. We set the alarm for 5:30 a.m. and we got to the convention center around 6:30. We took our positions in a line that already had roughly 1500 people in it. We learned that some people apparently had camped out overnight.

Luckily, the people in line around us were pretty friendly, and we were able to while the time away (the Heroes panel didn't begin until 10:00, and they didn't start letting us into the room until around 9:30) chatting with them. Not too far from us in the line was a pretty hot girl dressed as Lara Croft The Tomb Raider. She had some nice guns.

They finally let us in the doors, and we got pretty nice seats, right around the center of the ginormous hall. The entire cast of Heroes came into the room where they were of course met with thundering applause. My little cheerleader looked awesome, and some other favorites were there in person like Milo Ventimiglia, Greg Grunberg, and Ali Larter.

Then the director came in, with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. He pulled a DVD out of the case and said, "I have episode one of season three here -- we're going to watch it right now!"

If you are a fan of Heroes, you might want to skip this paragraph, as there are a few spoilers. The first of all, the episode was fantastic. Not a dull moment in it. Just a few highlights -- Future Peter travels back in time! Syler attacks Claire and gets her power! Hiro meets his arch nemesis, a girl with superspeed! Suresh has a power! Ando has a power! Nathan and Jessica/Nikki are alive! So is Linderman!

By comparison, the Lost panel was very disappointing. Carlton Cuse and Damon Linderman, the producers, were there, and Matthew Fox showed up towards the very end of the hour, but they wasted a bunch of time on silly stuff and didn't devote enough time to audience questions. I say that because I went and got in line to ask a question myself. I was actually in the "batter's circle" ready to ask my question, when somebody broke in for a prearranged skit, and after that, the session was over. I was mere seconds away from being a part of Lost, and instead, I wound up feeling like Paolo.

After Lost, my friend and I went upstairs to get in line for some of the other panels in smaller rooms. There was a discussion with the cast of Battlestar Galactica, led by Kevin Smith, and that was pretty cool.

Then there was the cast of Chuck, which is really a great show.

We finally went back to the hotel exhausted, and ready for the final day.