14 Jul Cali Blog #12: Batmobiles, History Channel, and Steam Punk

I started off the day with a few goals.

1.)  Find and meet the Wongfu Productions team

2.)  Find the batmobiles

3.)  Meet up with my friend Kelly Huddleston

4.)  Go out

I must say that I am very proud to have accomplished everything. It took some teamwork with Chris to do number 1 and 2, but I did it!

Anyway, the day started off with long lines. I learned very quickly that if you have an early morning shift like 10:30 am, they make you wait until 10:30 am to get your badge. As a result, if you arrive at 9 AM, you will only be standing in line for a good hour and a half. However, if you have a shift at 1 pm, they give you your badge early so that you can enjoy Comic-Con before the shift. In my opinion, working an afternoon shift or a super early shift (ike 7:00AM) are the best deals in terms of avoiding lines.

Today I was given Fulfillment Room duties. The Fulfillment Room is where people come to redeem their raffle ticket prizes. I was surprised by how small these prizes were, buttons and posters. Anyway, I did not enjoy this job at all. I stood in one place for 3 hours with a sign directing people to the Fulfillment Room. I am not sure why they could not have just taped a sign on the wall. It would have served the same purpose. Not only was it 3 hours, but also the 2^nd crew that would replace us came late. No bueno.  Luckily, I must naturally have a “talk to me” sign on my face because people stopped by just to chat so that definitely helped mitigate the boredom. My first group of people said something on the lines of “Hey, you are too cute to be holding a sign, maybe you should give him your number so we can hang out afterwards….” Getting hit on by super nerds… oh so fun.

After my shift, I ended up roaming around the Exhibit area looking for the Wongfu Productions team and the WWE booth (where my friend Kelly was working at). Let me say, I swear I walked down every aisle and STILL could not find either destinations. So instead, per Vivi’s request, I took a lot of pictures of Steam Punk outfits and of course people in cool costumes.

Chris eventually came to help me find the WongFu booth because he had met them the day before. It was neat meeting the WongFu Productions team. These guys started about 3 years ago and now have over a million YouTube views. I admire what they have accomplished and hope that one day Moth to Flame will also be in the same boat. I plan to go visit them every day for the rest of Comic-Con.

After meeting Wongfu and finding my friend’s WWE booth, Chris and I set off in search for the Batmobiles. We found them and they were beautiful.

Several million pictures later, we headed back to our hostel and along the way stopped by the YouTube lounge to see what shenanigans they were up to. After finding nothing of particular interest, Chris and I headed back to our hostel where we chilled until Chris had to go to his 6:00 pm volunteer shift.

As Chris headed off to his shift, I received a text from him to step out and take a look at the line that was forming along the streets. When I eventually made it back outside, I quickly discovered what the buzz was about. A large line of zombies slowly creeped its way down the sidewalk towards the Convention Center. Super awesome. I wish my zombie loving friends were there to see it.

After fighting my way through the zombies to get back to the Convention Center, I went to find Kelly to see what she was up to. I know Kelly from a previous project that we worked on together. She is an actress, a very talented one, and you may recognize her from a particular TV commercial for Education Connection that played all the time at night. She dislikes being known for that commercial, but I find it pretty funny.

Kelly wanted to meet up at the Hennessey on 4^th where the Mattel group would be celebrating some famous celebrity’s (He Man?) birthday party. I had a few hours to kill so I wandered around and somehow ended up at the Grillmaster booth behind the convention center. I guess the terminology “booth” is not really the correct description. The History Channel had a huge area fenced off for their event. This is the event where a big grilling throw down happens between several grillers from around the United States. They were giving away free food so I stepped in line.

Not only did I get free awesome food, one lady, Elsa impressed the guys on the show with her sassiness that they became quick friends. They gave her the good stuff (smoked pork) that they only gave to specific people, and she ended up sharing it with me and I thus made a friend for the rest of the night. Elsa and I were invited onto the History Channel Grillmaster truck and given a full tour and invited out to party with the chefs. Then afterwards, Elsa and I wandered to the Mattel party that Kelly had invited us to and we ate (and drank) more on the company tab with an awesome 80s ba,d called Past Action Heroes. The lead singer had a fallac unicorn hat!

Time and time again people stress that it is who knows you or whom you know that will be a huge factor in one’s success. I could not agree more.

See more photos here: