That's me with one of my favorite people on the planet, the lovely/talented Laraine Newman. Laraine agreed to spend her Saturday driving down to San Diego, appearing on our Quick Draw! panel and one of my Cartoon Voices panel…and then after being sensational at both, she drove back to L.A. Consider this a special thank you to her for doing that.
There won't be a lot of coherence or order to my reports on Comic-Con. It's always an exhausting (but fun) experience but this year's left me more fatigued than any of its predecessors. Some of that was because this was San Diego Con #50 and as someone who has now attended all fifty, I was tapped for a lot of press interviews and special historical panels. I probably answered the "How has it changed?" question fifty times.
Comic-Con starts with a three-hour Preview Night on Wednesday and then it officially ends at 5 PM on Sunday. But really, it starts when you do your prepping and packing, and it ends when you're home and unpacked and settling into your non-conventional life style. So for me, it's more like ten days. Today, I didn't even dress or venture outside, and when I did anything, it was unpacking. I don't truly feel "home" until the suitcases are emptied.
Photo by Bruce Guthrie
It's not so much that I needed to sleep. I needed to not use my body for most of what I used it for in San Diego — scurrying from a panel to a meeting to an interview and to another panel and so on.
Still, apart from the part where the world's stupidest cosplayer knocked me down, I loved every second of it. I couldn't live at that pace for long but I could manage those few days a year. It's fun to never be bored for a second.
I'll write more throughout the week. I'm just too weary at the moment…but I do want to thank the couple I ran into last night. While driving home, I suddenly felt the need to stop, stretch my legs and find a men's room. Since I needed to get some groceries for home, I got off the 5 in Fountain Valley and went to the Ralphs Market on Brookhurst Street there. It was in the bread aisle when a man and a woman spotted me and said, "We really enjoyed Quick Draw! and Cartoon Voices yesterday." I was very pleased by that, though being a humble guy, I gave all the credit to Laraine.