caithream | tl;dr - Comic Con style. Also, will break your dialup and quite possibly even hi-speed HAHA YAY.

HOWDY.

Okay, okay, I have to start with the boring stuff, I KNOW, I'll get to Mr. Hotass shortly, but I have to write this for, you know. Posterity, or something.

FRIDAY. Woke up too damn early and made it to the airport and to my connecting flight in Houston just fine, and found of that the flight Sarah (

logicandchaos) was on got canceled and she'd be flying in a little bit later than I would into San Diego. No big. So I waited and YAY! There she was. We met up and flailed a little bit and then decided to tackle the San Diego transportation system.

Haha. HA HA.

The bus drivers were nice enough, sure, but they had no idea WHAT the hell they were telling us. We got so turned around it took us about three hours just to get from the airport to La Jolla, the UCSD campus where we'd be staying with Mina (

tinted_glass). With luggage. All around the city. It SUCKED. I was nervous and jittery and we were trying not to freak out being on our own in a strange city with no idea where nothing was and letting complete strangers give us directions to God knows where. BUT, finally, we made it, and dropped off our stuff at Mina's and went YAY and then got back on the bus to head down to Comic Con. We did, eventually, totally PWN the transportation system. WE RULE YOU WITH AN IRON FIST, SAN DIEGO.

So, yes, from bus to trolley to CONVENTION CENTER OMFG. Okay, raise your hand if you've ever been to Disney World. The crowds there? Multiply that by FIVE MILLION BILLION. Wow. Lots of people. All migrating to this huge ass convention center, and the second we stepped inside it was like, freaking GEEKDOM. Quite possibly the greatest thing of all time. It was like a homecoming, ahaha, just... all these people who are SO enthusastic about fandom as you are. I've never been to or seen anything like it, so it was just amazing. Unfortunately, though, because of spending three freaking hours wandering around San Diego, we missed Neil Gaiman, which made me very very sad. :((

We got our Friday passes and our bag o' swag (program details, pamphlets, etc.) and walked over to where the autograph signings were gonna be because we were SUPER ECSTATIC about meeting Mike Nelson from one of the greatest television shows of all time, Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you have never heard of said show, please, please for the love of God, educate yourselves. I grew up with it, and it is quite possibly the most hilarious show ever. Sarah is an even bigger fan than I am, so yeah, we were a little excited. So when we stepped up to where the autograph signings would be, we were nearly put into cardiac arrest not only because Mike Nelson was sitting RIGHT THERE, but so were Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbette!! DUDE. After nearly flipping out and doing the whole, "Omg what are you gonna say?" "OMG I DUNNO WHAT ARE YOU GONNA SAY." "OMG I DUNNO EITHER," we just decided to go up there together and yeah, can we say greatest thing EVER??

Signing at Tom Servo!

Getting closer!

I just like Mike's face in this picture, ahaha!

HEEEEEE OMG. I have no idea what's going on with my shirt there, ignore it.

SO YES, I had to get an autograph and picture of the Rifftrax they're going to do of 300 OMG, and it is also, the greatest thing EVER:

:D!!!!!!!!

We discussed the awesomeness of said shirt, as they quite liked the partying communists ("Karl Marx was my favorite Marx brother!" said Bill, HEE.) Bill wrote on his signature, "I'll have a light snack... IN HELL!" so OF COURSE, I said, "Well, what about second breakfast?" AND THEN AND THEN Kevin goes, "Oh yes, and afternoon tea! Luncheon! Dinner! We're going to have those in hell, aren't we?" AND IT WAS JUST TOO MUCH AND I NEARLY DIED. Just the fact that they're LotR nerds on top of it all is too awesome for words. ALSO OMG I told them that my favorite MST3K was The Final Sacrifice with ROWSDOWER, duh, and they all started doing the lispy Troy "Rowsdower"!! AHAHAHAHA OMG. My life is now COMPLETE.

Needless to say, we were a bit keyed up after that, but we wandered around the art gallery (kinda geeky weird) and then we went down to the Expo center, which, WOW. Absolutely freaking huge. Dealers selling EVERYTHING that you could imagine in geekdom. And uhhh I kind of had to buy the season 1 trading cards for Supernatural. For, you know. POSTERITY. Again. Shut up.

This is the entrance to the place, where you got your badges and where the autograph sessions were:

Yeah. Huge.

So before we go for the day (we got there kind of late anyway, thanks to PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION) I bought a pretzel and munched while we looked through the program schedule. And then, huh, we spotted this page:

And oh, huh, it says signing doesn't it. They were gonna do a SIGNING and I nearly choked on my PRETZEL because HOLY SHIT no one said anything about that before! Now COMPLETELY WIRED and ready to PUKE because of the next day, we headed back to the trolley, which took us back to the bus, which finally took us back to Mina's. SLEEP.

SATURDAY I woke up at 5 freaking 30 because I was so stupidly nervous/excited about, YOU KNOW, certain events that were to transpire, and everytime I pictured myself in the middle of a Padackles sandwich I nearly had a fit, which was often. I wore my Metallicar shirt.

The walk to the bus stop was NICE, and I like taking pictures, and I am in Florida and this was California, so I mean, GEEZ, what do you expect?

There are Eucalyptis trees around the campus! Dude.

(I have to mention that it gets freaking COLD in San Diego. It was 65 degrees on Saturday night! WTF. I needed a huge sweater, or something.)

So yes, bus to trolley to convention center and GOOD GOD, cue the mass exodus of nerds. I, being one of them, flailed kind of a lot and tried to keep my inside voice on when being stupidly excited for Those Guys, but I think I might have failed.

Same process as Friday, getting our Saturday badges and all, and we wandered around a bit and checked out to see if people were indeed already lined up for the Supernatural panel at 10:30 in the morning (it was going to be at 2:45), but no, no one there. Sarah and I were kind of shocked, however, to discover that the panel would be in the biggest convention room at the place. I mean, don't get me wrong guys, I loveloveLOVE any and all support the show gets, but I really wasn't expecting there to be that many people here for Supernatural. I mean, geez, there was everything there from Family Guy to Battlestar Galactica to anime to Lost to Star Wars, so, yeah, lots of geekery in one short span of time, and I had kind of just hoped that we'd fill of that huge room half way, at least, to show our support.

To kill time we went back down to the Expo hall and Sarah bought a Firefly jacket (yay!), and then we noticed that on the faaaar other side of the hall (more like a full mile down the way, I'm not even joking) there were the more offical stands, like for Transformers, Star Wars, The Golden Compass, and YEAH, the WB. So we had a little bit of a freak out then because that was where everyone was going to be for the signings. And, ha, well, the problem was that the WB stand was about smack dab in the middle of the floor, which meant it was getting so much damn traffic, not to mention that they were handing out these huge, HUGE Smallville bags, and I mean seriously, who still likes Smallville? My point is, it was very crowded around the stand, and I wondered how in the hell they were going to get there and do the signings without being mauled to death.

A few pictures of around that end of the Expo hall:

Thingy for the new Indiana Jones, wee!

OPTIMUS PRIME, BITCHES.

HELLS YES. And some random person.

Voldemort will cut a bitch.

Pirates!

HO SHIT. (I like that they're next to Harry Potter, ahaha!)

HAWT. The guy at the bottom of the picture apparently thinks so as well AHAHAHA.

Back up to the convention hall where the panel would be, then. Serious problem: the Family Guy panel was right before the Supernatural panel, and everyone and their mother loves Family Guy (myself included, I ain't gonna lie, Supernatural just ranks higher; waaaaay higher). The line to get into the room wrapped around the room itself, down the hall, and then back up, and it took nearly half an hour to get everyone in there that they could. I applaud Comic Con for all the organization that they had, really, but this aspect was absolutely terrible. People were so confused as to what line went into what room, if they were still allowing people inside the room, etc. They cut off the remaining people in the line to get into the Family Guy, and then there were people already lined up in that line to get into Supernatural, and it was just a mess. We somehow jumped in line to a pretty decent spot and hoped for the best.

While in line we met a fellow LJer,

scary_lullabies (*WAVES HI*), and she's also going to

winchestercon as well, so omg! That was awesome. So we waited and waited and tried not to completely spaz out (as I was close to doing, GOD, OKAY, what would you expect), and we watched as the line to get into Supernatural kind of freaking EXPLODED. It just kept getting bigger and bigger and I was more and more thrilled because dude! All this support! Which was so utterly FANTASTIC but I did feel terrible for the people who got cut off because they had reached the limit to get into the room. BUT ALL THOSE PEOPLE OMG. It warms my heart. :D

And then, AND THEN, FINALLY, the line started moving and we made our way into the room, trying not to knock people over in trying to find a good seat. We found two pretty close to the front, but way off to the left side, BUT IT WAS NEAR THE CURTAIN WHERE THEY WERE BEHIND F;LAKSJF;LSJD and I tried not to have a panic attack while we waited, yet again. However, we noticed that the cards up on the table that indicated who sat where did not include Jared (the whole room groaned when Jensen's card was put in between Sera and the Mod, heh), and I had this really horrible sinking feeling, but being the optimist that I am, I hoped.

And then, of course, one of the show's publicists, or something, came out and said, "We're really sorry, and Jared really really wanted to be here, but he was filming until six in the morning for the new season and missed his flight down." And, well, fuck. One of the whole reasons I wanted to come was because I think it would have been the first time that both Jensen and Jared would be doing something like this and God, how amazing would that have been? Not to mention that it's fucking Jared, and God love him, but I think he does this to Jensen on purpose, ahaha. Like, HEY BUD, I know you're kind of terrified of fangirls, but I think you need some more experience on not, you know, totally freaking out, so I'm just gonna bail and hope for the best, KTNXBAI. And then probably laughs his ass off before sleeping twelve hours in the hotel. So yeah, I was disappointed like hell, but I didn't want to dwell on it, because there is JENSEN, and we all know how I feel about him, SO. ALSO OMG since we were right next to the curtain, Kripke came around to peek out and omg ;alsdkjfa;lsdjkfa;lsj I SHOULD HAVE WAVED HI OR SOMETHING BECAUSE HE WAS RIGHT THERE NEXT TO US. Amazing.

The Mod came on then, and told us that before they introduced the guests, they were going to show two videos. The first is going to be featured on the S2 DVD, the making of AHBL part 2, and WOW. They had a bit of trouble doing so, apparently. It's a very cool and in depth look at everything that went into making just the finale, and even storylines that were cut (like originally the pentagram at the cemetary was going to be five churches on those points, with holy relics that Jake was going to go around and destroy to open up the gates of hell, and Sam was supposed to have a huge fight with him and everything... the studio was like, yeah, we can't do that, so Kripke finally got the idea with the railroad, which in his and my opinion is WAY cooler), and blue screen scenes that they were forced to do and whatnot. The second video was an AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME montage of scenes from both seasons put to the music of Robert Rodriguez's "Once Upon a Time In Mexico" and oh God, it was so good it gave me chills. I doubt they're going to put it on the DVD, but I would be fantastic if they did.

AND THEN IT WAS THAT TIME OMFGGGG.

SERA GAMBLE AND TEH KRIP A;LSKDJF;ALSDJKFA;SLDJK.

Ben Edlund, TEH KRIP, Mod, JENSEN, and Sera EEEEEEE!!

God, my camera is a piece of crap, BUT YAY, OKAY.

Hee, I think this was when Sera said something about never in her life having as many pictures took at her after Jensen came out and sat down, ahaha. He was like, "Oh yeah, sorry about that!" A;Lkjfa;lsdkjfasljdf.

You can easily see the hotness even through the blurry.

Is that... could it be... CAMERA FLARE??

I love those damn bracelets.

GAH SO DARK. I am officially getting a new camera.

Oh my God, YOU GUYS, this was seriously the greatest hour of my life. AHAHA. I honestly thought I couldn't love Kripke any more, but he is just SO AWESOME and HILARIOUS and snarky and I wonder why I don't have that shrine built to him done yet. GOD. And Sera is the cutest thing ever and Ben is kind of a genius and is pretty funny as well. And JENSEN. Jesus Christ. I couldn't even believe I was in the same room with him, which really, makes me sound like a freaking twelve-year-old Backstreet Boys fangirl crier, but, actually, well, it's kind of close to it. I DON'T NEED TO EXPLAIN MYSELF OKAY. FJ;lgkahg;lekajs;ldfj.

Alright, I wrote down as much as I could remember about the panel, which went something like this (and WILL CONTAIN SOME VAGUE SPOILERS FOR SEASON THREE):

- after being asked how he was, Jensen said he was just waiting for the butterflies in his stomach to go away because he was so NERVOUS, N'AW.

- yes, the YED is gone gone gone completely, as well as Sam's visions and all other "psychic kids." Kripke jokingly said he was just tired of all the psychic kids and wanted to kill them off, heh. This is the only thing I really do have a problem with. We never learned why Sam had that brief burst of TK in "Nightmare," we don't know why the YED picked Sam and all the others, if Sam has some inherent power about him or whatnot, and a whole slew of other things. I know that it's never good to draw out a storyline forever, but I would have liked to learn a bit more about everything the YED did before completely tossing him.

- BUT, we will learn a secret about Mary in 3x02, presumably the "It's you!" from Sam's nursery that we saw.

- during the Q&A someone asked if they had plans to do a soundtrack. Not like a score, an actual soundtrack of all the rock songs played throughout the episodes. Kripke said they had actually asked... whoever they need to ask to do something like that, and they said that there were so many other "rock compilation" soundtracks out there, that one more just wouldn't sell. To which we all BOOED. LOUDLY. And Kripke was like, "I KNOW, RIGHT." He said this music is his passion, and he loves it a lot, but he said he'd see what they could do about getting a soundtrack out there.

- Ben Edlund was the dude who wrote "Nightshifter," and the song "Renegade" for the end was his idea. I LOVE HIS BRAIN.

- oh God OH GOD. Someone asked if anyone on the panel knew what size engine "you guys have" for the Impala(s) had, and AHAHA, Kripek goes, "Uh, is that some kind of entendre?" Ahaha omg I love him. SO THEN, Jensen takes over and the only thing I heard was that their suped-up Impala has a 454 engine, because after that? He went on and on describing the engine and the whole car and holy SHIT if that wasn't the hottest thing I have ever heard. Seriously. The mechanical wordiness coming out of his mouth literally made every girl in the place start squirming and he is so much Dean that it kind of kills me. Good God.

- SO, apprently,

anteka, the lady who does Plastic Winchester Theater was there, and I think she was the one who asked about the soundtrack, and then the lady behind her said, "She's embarrassed and won't tell you but she does the Plastic Winchester Theater, and she brought the dolls along with and was wondering if you guys could take a picture with them." AND JENSEN. Jensen goes, "Oh, no way!" LIKE HE KNEW WHAT IT WAS AND WAS EXCITED ABOUT IT!! Aha;lfkja;ldakjsd;lf!!! Greatest thing EVER, swear to God.

- someone asked if they had any plans to do the Winchesters as kids again, like in "Something Wicked," and Kripke said right now they're up to 10 episodes planned for season three, and nothing like that on the horizon, no. They have to coordinate with JDM to do stuff like that, so that get's pretty hard. And just the fact that both Kripke and Jensen used the words "little Winchesters" made my heart nearly explode with glee. OH MAN.

- Jensen still pitches the "demon surfer" episode so the Winchesters can go on vacation ahaha. I'm pitching it because I want to see Sam and Dean in nothing but swim trunks, HELLO. All burnt and tanned and manly and Sam with his nose all red and sunburnt and Dean with all the freckles standing out more because of his tan and holy God someone stop me now.

- someone asked what Jensen's favorite one-liner's of Dean's was (hers was "Hope your apple pie was freaking worth it!" and... ack, I can't remember the other!), and he said that there've been so many good ones he just couldn't pick. And then someone in the audience shouted out, "Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole!" and he's like, "YES. That one!" Heeeee.

- Jensen was asked what he thought Dean would do with only one year left to live, and his response was, "Oh well, you know. What do you think he would do?" all smug and cheeky, damn him, to which all the girls melted into little puddles in their seats and quickly planned on somehow landing guest star roles for the upcoming season.

- OH NO WAIT, I was wrong.

anteka asked about why Sam didn't get to drive the Impala at all in S2, to which Jensen immediately replies, "BECAUSE IT'S MY CAR!" AL;KSDJ;ALSKFJA;SLDKJFA;LSKJ AHAHAHAAA. Kripke also said that he'd be upset everytime it was written for Sam to drive the car for the same reason Jensen gave ahaha. God I love Jensen.

- the Hollywood Babylon episode was a lot of fun to write, they said, because the dude Gary Cole played was supposed to be the embodiment of the studio with whom they've had problems with. Kripke said that every single thing that came out of Gary Cole's mouth was something that the network exec's had told them. "The picture's too dark," and all that. So when they hanged him? Yeah. It was supposed to be a sign to the exec's, but they were all, "LOL WE LOVE IT." Heh.

- we WILL have a backstory on Bobby! YAY!!!!

Oh man. I'll try and see if I can remember more, but that was about it, I think. What was REALLY awesome was the fact that there were so many guys there! The first couple of people who went up and asked questions were guys, and they all stated that they loved Supernatural a lot, so yes! Awesome! All of us are not just crazy fangirls! We need to get these boys on LJ, seriously.

The rest are in my VIDEOS THAT I TOOK YAY. One or two of them are blurry, I think, I don't know WHY other than the fact that my camera is a piece of crap. The audio, however, is awesome.

Watch on YouTube

Jensen talking about the pranks on the show. Omg ignore my laughing and WOOing and the camera shaking SORRY.

Watch on YouTube

Talking about the gigantasaurus that is Jared. HILARIOUS OMG. "Jared's orbit" AHAHAHA.

Watch on YouTube

Discussing of new characters and general S3 facts. Oh my GOD, how much do I love that Jensen says, "We've had Dad on for a while," and all that before about "Because it's my car!" I DON'T KNOW. It just. You know. Makes my insides feel funny.

Everyone discussing their favorite episodes. Ahahah OF COURSE Jensen said "Dead in the Water," I was EXPECTING him to, ahaha, but at least he tacked on something else! If only we could have had that damn bee story. But OH GOD, what he says about filming AHBL. Please for the love of God ignore the stupid noises I was making while he was discussing said episode because, um, well. And Ben says, "the genie episode," meaning WIAWSNB.

Sadly, the hour went by way too fast, and seeing as how the signings started at 4:00 and it was 3:45 when the panel ended, Sarah and I RUSHED downstairs into the crazy crazy mob of people. We got there only to learn that they had given out a very select number of tickets earlier in the day, and only those people with tickets could get the signings. I'll admit, I was a little bit frantic and pretty depressed about that, because I was SO looking forward to it and had no idea there were tickets involved. I have to apologize to Sarah because I was kind of going around and looking for any way possible to see then while they were signing. And that, my friends, is when Jensen Ackles (and others) walked right by me to make his way into the booth. Uh. Yeah.

Imagine yourself in a mosh pit. Now imagine yourself in a mosh pit with Comic Con people YELLING AT YOU CONSTANTLY to keep moving, all while trying to take an innocent bunch of pictures of the man who fires your loins, gives you reason to live, etc, all while being about 10 feet from him.

It was hard. ~~That's what she said.~~ But so, so well worth it.

Kripke and Jensen and Sera EEEEE OH MY GOD.

Holy crap, more camera flare. HE REALLY IS A MANDROID, I KNEW IT.

!!!! NOSE. So cute omg. :(((

OH.

EYELASHES. Jesus.

Ahahah omg Kripke's face.

I love how he's the one standing up because I'm sure he begrudgingly acknowledges that he's the one people are here to see. THANK YOU FOR CATERING TO FANGIRLS, JENSEN.

Um uh well. I might have kept this one in here for the back of his neck fja;lkdfja;dlfkjs. Hi I'm kind of a stalker??

EEE EEEEE YES. Oh God. I took out my camera to just look at this picture multiple times for the rest of the trip, mostly to calm my stress AHAHA. And oh, there was stress.

SIIIGH.

Seeing as how there was no chance I was going to be able to get a signing we finally decided to call it quits (or more like Sarah had to drag me away, heh) because at 5:45 was the panel for MST3K EEEEE!!

The Two Sarah's Who Are Most Definitely Made of Awesome.

And I, well, um, yeah.

So then THIS DUDE walks by and I'm like, oh, we've GOT to take a picture with him, especially with Sarah wearing her Serenity shirt. MAL OMFG.

The panel was AWESOME and so so SO hilarious, I was seriously crying. We watched a few clips from three of their newest Film Crew movies, which was awesome. They make fun of 300 something awful, and I've got a couple of videos from their panel as well, but youtube isn't working for me right now, GAH, so those'll have to be for later. But yeah. I adore them so much.

And then it was a sad sad time, as we had to get going. We had a loooong night ahead of us.

Yay downtown San Diego.

The very front of the convention center while waiting for the trolley.

Huge. Huuuuuuge.

Omg bye Comic Con. :((((

So basically, this is how it went. We took a ten minute trolley ride back to the American Plaza, where we took another trolley that went to Old Town. From Old Town we took an hour and fifteen minute bus ride back to USCD to pack up our stuff and head back to the airport. It was about 9:45 when we left Mina's, and we waiting a long while for another bus to come and go back down that same hour and fifteen minute route. I was already extremely tired as it was, seeing as how I'd been up since 5:30 that morning and had about 4 and a half hours of sleep the night before.

So, bus to trolley, to yet another bus that took us finally to the airport. We evaded the creepy people hanging out there late at night and also this dude who wouldn't stop talking to me in the trolley, waxing poetic about transportation systems in general and hating on San Diego. We finally arrived at the airport at about 12:30, completely dead on our feet, and saw that the ticket offices were closed and wouldn't open until 4:00am. So, fine. We curled up as best we could on the chairs, and tried to sleep some, though really, it was hardly anything.

SUNDAY I woke up around 4:30am after dozing on and off, and we blearily made our way to the check in counter and got our tickets, went through security, all that. I got wanded, or whatever, ahaha. Because I had BATTERIES in my pocket, gosh. I think I looked high, though, because my eyes were so red from lack of sleep, heh.

We get to our gate and see that our flight is delayed half an hour. Well, huh. That's not good, because both Sarah and I had about a half hour layover in Phoenix, and if we were late for that, we'd miss our flights out to Minnasota and Tampa, respectively. We asked the guy at the counter if this was going to be a problem. He booked Sarah for a flight at 12:00 out of Phoenix if she missed hers, and he told me that the flight to Tampa would hold since our flight would be running late. So, okay, good.

We get on the plane and arrive in Phoenix, and I haul ass to my gate hoping like crazy it hadn't taken off yet. I was only fifteen minutes late, and it had already taken off. Unbelievable. There was a girl already at the desk asking what the heck she was supposed to do since she missed her flight to Tampa, and I said I had the same problem, so we both went up to the US Airways desk to hopefully book another flight.

At this point I was so utterly exhausted, hungry, thirsty, whatever, that I was near tears and just wanted to go home, tired of being at airports et al. But when we were in line me and the other girl, Dawn, met two other guys, Matt and I think Pete who were in our same predicament, and we kept each other's spirits up for the next hour and a half that we were waiting in line to hopefully get out of Phoenix. Kinda, you know. Makes me put faith back in humanity, to find such nice people out there whom you can meet only once in your life but help you through hard times. I was the last of the four to go up to the counter, and the others in front of me weren't having hardly any luck. The lady told me I could either fly out of Phoenix at 6:00, arrive in Las Vegas, and fly out of there at 11:00pm and arrive in Tampa at 6:00am, or spend the night at a hotel in Phoenix and fly out to Tampa at 6:00am the next day. So I called my parents while the lady waited and was literally choking back tears because I was so damn tired and had no idea what to do, when the lady said, "Wait a minute," and checked my reservation and... a flight for Tampa at 12:30, direct. I was so utterly dumbfounded I took my ticket and stepped out of line, and yeah, okay, I might have cried a bit on the phone with my parents. It was an honest to God miracle, because there was nothing, and several other people had tried before me. So yeah. That was nice.

Finally home and finally unpacked and finally slept eleven hours at one time, and now I just MISS IT, and even with all that went on, with the transportation and whatnot, it was still worth it. Being with friends and investing yourself in what you love is never NOT worth it. I have the pictures to prove it. :D

I've yet to read any of my flist, so if there's overlapping in storytelling or whatnot, TOO BAD. Oh man. I'm going to look at these pictures now and NEVER EVER STOP.