TV Lovers Take Comicon

My cohort and I are obsessed with television. Movies. Books. Celebrity gossip rags. Anything that requires very little finger lifting and unlimited entertainment. Bucket list, shmucket list. Attending even one day of Comicon is an experience for having, an overwhelming, crowded and kind convention for lost boys and girls. The comic book turned everything-that-sparkles-on-paper-and-in-the-blue-light-of-film event draws well over 100,000 people into the San Diego Gaslamp Quarter each year. Flanked by stormtroopers and Ugly Dolls, Lara Croft and Alice out of Wunderland, beneath True Blood banners and surrounded by session rooms that seat 5,000 and exhibits that are surprisingly sparse on the freebies, we flew.

The day began in an elevator in which I'd like to call home, unroll my knapsack and catnap dream with frenemies. For a convention birthed from the mind grapes of comic nerds, the most marketed and signage dedicated agenda items were surprisingly for the HBO vampire and Showtime anti-hero following. Us nerds took camaraderie in the long lines and need to attend sessions before the sessions we really wanted to go to in order to gain entry let alone a good seat.

A seat neighbor from Portugal missed Charlaine Harris, the author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels and thus the mind grape behind the True Blood HBO series, on her visit to Lisbon--so we chatted him up about his thoughts on why glamouring can't be used to coerce for entry into a home and why lemon juice and iron are dangerous to sharp-toothed faires. Very few questions were asked of Ms. Harris in the author's inkpot award session that we all didn't want to know the answers to ourselves. And a few were thrown in there that fell to our amusement. Hint: Don't confuse the books with the show and ask the novelist about a script she's not involved in since rights payday. Though if I was in her shoes ... Well, I'd just be high on Alexander Skarsgard acting out my prose. Sign my Comicon program, Ms. Harris, this here True Blood cast spread.

We also met fellow Dexter fans while wishing and hoping to get into a session room 100 times the size of my condo, for a panel that was at once fascinating and funny. I can't imagine what the Tron and Megamind gathering held. Oh yeah. Lines quindoopling the size of Dexter's that make me question my free time. But the whole trip fast became worth every sore foot muscle and penny and panic. And the trickery involved to get a limited autograph signing ticket helped too. And the swag bags the size of people's bodies. And the vampires who reside in the elevator.