Posts Tagged ‘fx con’

Just announced at the FX Show site, Nathan Fillion will be appearing at the 2008 FX con January 25-27 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. I don't generally mention all the con appearances of our BDHs but this is one of the rare ones I go to every year, so this is pretty much all about me.

UPDATED, AGAIN: As was pointed out in the comments, Nathan was already scheduled to appear at the Phoenix ComicCon the same weekend. Ninja MALi posted this at Whedonesque:

It is true that Nathan will not be attending the Phoenix Comicon. Due to a mix-up of dates, Nathan was double-booked for both cons. It is important to note that Nathan offered to keep the gentleman’s agreement he made with PJ Haarsma and Matt Solberg when he discovered the conflicting dates, but PJ refused to put his good friend in the position of breaking his signed contract with the FX Show. Everyone involved is deeply disappointed and we apologize for letting the convention attendees down.

PJ Haarsma and Kids Need to Read will still be attending the convention and we hope to meet all of you who are going. We’ll have auctions, give away free buttons and we’ll still have our panel without our star. We may not have an overflow audience, but we’ll have fun all the same. Please stop by to learn more about our organization’s efforts to help foster a love for reading among young children.

FX is a good con that has been very Firefly-friendly in previous years. You can read my review of the 2007 FX con here (with Adam Baldwin, Ron Glass, and Christina Hendricks) and the 2006 FX con review here with Alan Tudyk and Summer Glau.

Other guests include Greg Grunberg, Stephen Tobolowsky and George Takei ("Heroes"); Laura Vandervoort and Helen Slater ("Smallville"); Jake Lloyd, Ray Park and Orli Shoshan ("Star Wars") and many more, including personal favorites Nicholas Brendon ("Buffy"), Elisabeth Rohm ("Angel"), Jeremy London (T.S. from "Mallrats"), Marilyn Ghigliotti (Veronica from "Clerks"), and William B. Davis (The Smoking Man from "X-Files"), and those are just the ones from shows I like. FX do get the celebs…

Also a few zillion comic writers and artists, lots of models, and if part history is any indication, maybe half the room to fit 'em all.

See you there!

And please support Kids Need to Read by going to their site, checking their autographed books, or just donating.

Just got back from a long day at the 18th annual Florida eXtravanganza in Orlando, Florda. FX is always a busy con since they manage to take 10 conventions — sci-fi, comics, cards, horror, dolls and bears, anime, sports, rock 'n' roll, etc — and cram 'em all into one big room. 

But the reason I went is because FX packs in the stars, and this year they had three Big Damn Heroes (or, possibly, two BDHs and a Big Damn Hottie): Adam Baldwin, Ron Glass, and Christina Hendricks. There were also a few other notables that other people seemed to find popular, like Hayden Panettiere and Zachary Quinto (Heroes), Andy Hallett and Bianca Lawson (Angel and Buffy, respectively), Colin Ferguson and Jordan Hinson (Eureka), Ray Park (Star Wars, X-Men), Lance Henriksen and Michael Biehn (Aliens), Kenny Baker (Star Wars), Feliz Silla (Star Wars, The Addams Family), the entire cast of Fanboys including Kristen Bell, Chris Marquette, Jay Baruchel, Dan Fogler, Sam Huntington, William Katt, Peter Graves, and more.

But I went for the crew, and I went to show them their dopplegangers.

Teres' dolls went over well, I'd say. Adam played with his a bit, after being reassured that it was formerly a soldier doll and not a Barbie "since Kens aren't very manly. Got to be manly." Christina kept taking pictures of the little Saffron with her cell phone, and told Ron "she had to add to the boobs to make me. To a Barbie! That's scary!" And Ron just laughed and laughed.

Lines weren't nearly as long for the BDHs as last year — good for me, a trifle worrying otherwise — but apparently they were properly thronged Friday and today the photo ops were pretty busy. I missed a Firefly panel, apparently. There was time to chat briefly with everybody and, as usual, they seemed sincerely happy to be there and took time to talk to everybody that came out. Adam solemnly congratulated my son James on his choice of attire (Jayne hat and Little Damn Hero Jayne tee shirt). I got a straight-forward handshake until I thanked him for what he and the crew did for the Flanvention and he went all noble and modestlike and said "Just wanted to make sure they had a good time… probably a better time than they would have had, which was great." Christina loved my "YoSaffBridge Husband's Club" tee and wrote down where I got it so she can go get one herself (BlackMarketBeagles.com, hi Adam!) and we talked about a possible future project. And Ron was clearly delighted anybody wanted to meet him. At one point his phone rang, whereupon he bellowed to the room at large that "my phone is ringing!" I wondered aloud if he always answered the phone that way; Christina said she hoped so.

I saw the occasional celebrity here and there who looked impatient or grumpy but not our heroes. (Or most of the rest, I should say, and the people from "Heroes" and "Eureka" especially looked pleasantly stunned at the attention) Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend I stood surrounded by the relentless demons that have haunted and hounded me my whole life, and I was unmoved. It was a personal breakthrough that has made me a stronger, calmer person.

I went to a science fiction convention and came back with money left over.

Imagine dropping a heroin addict into a barrel of the stuff only to see him fidget and ask to be let out and you'll get the general idea. Everywhere I looked I saw rows and shelves and bins of items that I once coveted with a white-hot burning desire, and I felt nothing.

The place was the Central Florida Fairgrounds in Orlando, the setting was the Florida eXtravaganza convention. There were movie stars and TV stars signing autographs, with vendors hawking comics and aged G.I. Joes and models and magazines and Barbies (collectible, vintage, and custom) and prop replicas and cards and anything else a collector could want. There was a booth devoted to nothing but Pez dispensers. I recognized everything I saw because at one point or another in my life I probably owned it.

When I was very young I collected baseball cards. Not because I loved baseball — I'm still uncertain about all the rules, and where the spitting comes in — but because all my friends were collecting them. Suddenly it became vitally important to have every card it was possible to own. It was probably left over from my distant caveman ancestors. The hunting urge was strong within my blood, the need to roam over the veldt and chase down the succulent rookie card so I could return to my cave and rub it in the face of Davey Jackson.

When I discovered comic books I was lost forever. These things had stories in them, and cool artwork, and they weren't easy to find. You had to bike to the grocery store and dig through the spinner rack, hoping the latest issue of Detective Comics was there and not too crumpled (subscriptions were cheating). Keeping them stored wasn't a big deal, you kept 'em in a pile in your closet. If you were picky you could pile them by company. But you had to have every one of them or you'd miss what happened and your collection would be (gasp!) incomplete. To have an incomplete collection was to truly know shame.

Obsessed as we were, we never even suspected that comics had to be kept in specially made mylar bags, with acid-proof boards, in acid-proof boxes, or you were just throwing your money away. We bought them and read them with our bare hands, which shows how stupid we were. Fortunately in the 80s came specialty comic book stores that told us how to protect our investments and thus was born the comics snob.

With interest in super heroes came interest in super hero toys, and super hero action figures, and a driving need to haunt toy stores and tear apart their racks looking for the chase Catwoman figure. A multitude of Star Wars figures began eating my meager allowance and I entered into a brief life of crime involving parental wallet heists that ended, abruptly and painfully, when my misdeeds were discovered.

I was also buying books. I discovered the joys of reading at an early age but the uncontrollable need to track down everything a favored author ever wrote, up to and including shopping lists, that was pure collector frenzy. There was a singular joy in digging for hours in a dank and disorganized bookstore that's one bribe away from being condemned and finding the last book you've been needing to fulfill your life. I had a lot of those books.

I shudder to think how much money I've spent on my various collections, but I'm sure if I'd kept it all I could easily buy one of the smaller continents. But each and every purchase was vital, and triumphant, and a Great Deal.

Then the bottom dropped out of the comics market after the exaggerated value of independent comics collapsed and the big comics companies had to scale back on their holographic variant collector's item one-of-a-kind covers and crossovers because the $1 bins at the comics stores could hold only so much. Since then they've been trying new and untested methods to attract readers such as, say, quality.

Due to various emergencies over the years I've sold most of my older comics. I still buy them to read but I don't bag anything. There are action figures around my desk but only the ones that amuse me or discomfort my co-workers. I still seek out books, but Amazon.com and Alibris.com have made it almost too easy. No excitement, no thrill of the chase. Click, click. Gradually I just … lost interest.

In the crowded convention, with hunter pheromones hanging heavy over the merchant stalls, I breathed easily and felt not the slightest urge to prowl or spend the mortgage. It felt good.

Then I spent a couple hundred dollars on autographs.

Just got back from a very, very crowded Saturday. The FX Sci-Fi Convention is still going on this weekend at the Central Florida Fairgrounds in Orlando. Quick review: crowded as hell, tons of stuff to buy, Summer Glau and Alan Tudyk are there signing autographs, some other stars are there too, and that's about it. For a somewhat lengthier description (and pics), read on. Read the rest of this entry »