Wizard World - Chicago

[moyer777]

How awesome.  Gee whiz, have fun!

[Bryancd]

You know, besides the Shat, Walter scored with a bevy of hotties on TOS. Ask him about that!  :ohbaby

[RickPeete]

In Las Vegas, someone mentioned his son and offer their condolences.  The audience gave rousing applause.  He was very gracious and thanked everyone.  And that was the extent of it.  Clearly, he is not interested in going into that experience (and who would blame him).

[RickPeete]

I was there Thursday and Friday night.  This is definitely a larger Con than last year's event.  The floor has exploded with many more comic book vendors, action figure booths, and gaming stations.  I picked up a perfect replica of Hiro Nakamura's Katana Sword, complete with the DNA symbol from the Heroes series.  I also picked up several autographed photographs for Richard Dean Anderson (Stargate SG-1), Anthony Montgomery (Enterprise), and Robert Picardo (Voyager).

The coolest thing I did Friday was meet Lindsay Wagner.  She is very sweet, is still a beauty, and signed an autographed photo for me.  We talked for about five minutes.  I was wearing a Green Lantern t-shirt and she asked me about it.  Then she told me that her son is in the upcoming Green Lantern movie.

I also met Richard Roundtree and Linda Hamilton walking out of the Hyatt Hotel -- they were just sitting outside the hotel entrace on a bench talking and shooting the breeze (their autograph session must have recently ended at the Convention Center).  She said "Oh, I am just not that stuck up." when asked about talking with her without her 'handlers'.  I am going to have to get her autograph tomorrow now that we have talked.

See you tomorrow, Rico!  My son and I will be there at 10AM when the convention hall opens.

[Rico]

Man, I like that katana Rick!  You need to show me where you bought it.  ;)

[RickPeete]

Will do!

[Rico]

Well, about to get on the road to get down to the con.  Talk to everyone later on.

- Rick, I should be getting there about 10:30.  Depending on the wonderful Chicago area traffic.  ;)

[Rico]

Well, had a really good time at the con.  A bit crazy at times with people and congestion inside, but survived.  Found Rick Peete and his son and hung out.  Lots of cool pics to show everyone (Rick has some real good ones of the celebs I think).  Got to do a quick interview with Walter Koenig.  Hopefully the audio is ok.  Took a lot of video of the actors speaking too.  Planning on editing that up some and using it for a vidcast tomorrow.  Anyway, here are some pics to start (the blond with Rick Peete and his son is Ashley Eckstein who voices Ahsoka on 'Clone Wars'.  I'll talk more about it tomorrow.

[RickPeete]

Whew!  Today was pretty intense! After waiting an hour to drive the last 3/4 mile from the offramp to the parking garage, my son and I finally got to the Convention Center.  We immediately hooked up with Rico and the fun began in earnest.  The first thing we did was hook up with the voice actress for Ashoka Tanno (Ashley Eckstein).  Ryan and I really enjoy the Clone Wars so he was excited to meet her.  Of course once she started talking to him, he got shy and couldn't say anything!  She was very nice and we got a photo of her with Ryan.

After that, we just cruised the vendor hall, scoped out all the celeb tables, and eventually ended up at the Hall A where the panels were being held.  We got in to hear several celebs, including:

- James Marsters (Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer).  He was quite entertaining and spoke about his most recent work as well as his memories about working on Buffy.  He said Spike has been the best role so far.

- Linda Hamilton & Michael Beihn (Terminator).  They were pretty funny together.  It was evident that neither one of them liked the third or fourth Terminator movies (they feel that only James Cameron can write a sequel to a James Cameron movie).  Linda said it took her 3 months working for 3 hours a day, six days a week to get into shape for T2.  She had just had a baby a few months prior.  Plus, she had weapons training on top of that.  Michael must be on those drugs from TNG because he has not aged at all since the movie (or so it seems). LOL

- Adam West & Burt Ward (Batman & Robin).  These guys were awesome.  Adam did most of the talking, and most of the humor, but the two of them seemed to enjoy each other's presence and answered lots of questions from the audience.  Didn't know that there were 280 different "Holy ____, Batman" quotes in the series and Burt got to invent several of his own.  They shared a lot of anecdotes from the show that Rico might have recorded.

- Brent Spiner (Data).  Brent did not disappoint.  He was in good form and really worked the audience.  His first action was to heckle someone in the first row who was videotaping his panel (something we were told not to do).  Then he said it was 'fine' but  throughout the panel kept whispering 'Security!'.  He did a lot of fun stuff with the audience and those who were asking questions.  At one point someone yelled out "Do Data!".  He said "I don't DO Data unless I get paid (tongue in cheek)".  Later, he said "Okay I am going to give you a bit of Data."  Then he stood still and then did a quick head tilt like Data does often.  The audience went crazy.  It was a good panel!

- William Shatner (Kirk).  I thought Bill did a pretty good job of keeping us engaged with his panel.  He talked a lot about his two twos "Aftermath" and "Sh*t my Dad says" and shared his experience of the recent Olympics and its technical difficulties with the fourth pylon and his own technical difficulties before his closing remarks.  It was cool.  My only small complaint was that when answering questions, he tended to ramble so the responses were longer than they needed to be, thereby limiting the number of questions that could be asked.

- Battlestar Galactica "Final Four". Kate Vernon, Michael Trucco, Tekha Sharma, and Michael Hogan were a lot of fun in their panel.  They discussed how it was revealed to them that they were the final five and how they felt about that.  Michael Trucco and Tekha talked about their one-time 'hook up'.  Kate and Michael H talked about their chemistry.  The whole group was very comfortable with each other.  Aaron Douglas was not in attendance -- he comes on Sunday.

I did some live tweeting during the panels above so check those out if you so desire.  I had great seats -- Row D, Seat 34-35 -- so I got some good photos of the celebs. I have uploaded some of them to the FTP site tonight.  And the lighting was brighter than it was at Las Vegas.  My only complaint was that they made a point of saying that we could not take photos during the Batman panel so I have no photos of Adam West or Burt Ward.  I was being a good citizen and followed the rules....

Other than the panels, of course I bought a few goodies from the Vendor Hall today for Ryan.  We also got two more autographs -- Linda Hamilton and Walter Koenig.  Ryan really wanted Walter's sig so that was awesome.  We got it right after Rico's interview with him.  Linda Hamilton is just so NICE!  She was a class act so I just had to get her sig.

Well, enjoy the pics and listen for the upcoming podcast.  I am sure that Rico will have good audio (maybe some video) for everyone to geek out on!
 

[Rico]

Great recap Rick.  It was nice to see you and your son today.  The con was pretty intense and busy.  I think they need to have a bigger dealers room or setup a better place for the celeb's autograph tables.  I really enjoyed the talks.  I'll say more tomorrow on the vidcast too.  It was quite a day.

[RickPeete]

I have uploaded my Chicago Comic Con 2010 photos on my FaceBook page:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=478020&id=510150362&l=654822112b

[Rico]

Rick P. had some great seats up front in the panel room.  Here are some of his pics.

[sheldor]

neat pics

[moyer777]

so fun! Thanks for sharing!

[Rico]

Encoding the vidcast now.  Going to be a little more than an hour and a pretty big file - as usual.  Still had to cut quite a bit out.