So Comic-Con rules. I'm saving the detailed write-ups for GiR, but I can honestly say that today was the most fun I've had here since maybe forever.
There is more beautiful artwork from more awesome indie artists than I remember ever seeing before, the costumed nerds are out in glorious force, and though everything feels just as huge and overwhelming as possible, the main convention floor is organized in a logical way that facilitates avoiding the crap you don't care about while making the crap you do care about easy to find. The con organizers win 5d20 awesome points for that.
I'm taking tons of pictures with my POS-4000 cell phone, and posting them to my buzznet account, so if you want to play What's Wil lookng at? (the game that's sweeping the nation), now you know where to go look.
For example, you can see this picture of plush bacon toys that I took for John Scalzi, who as you may know is a man who loves his bacon.
My panel this afternoon was great; I was lucky enough to share the stage with some very talented and accomplished writers, and for the first time since I started writing seriously, I felt like I deserved to be around and could hold my own with other "real" writers.
I spent the rest of the day wandering around, resisting the urge to buy everything I saw,
The best moment of the entire day for me? Finally meeting Warren Ellis face to face, and thanking him for all the guidance and kindness he's given me in the last year.
The second best moment of the day? Walking up to Gabe from Penny Arcade and saying, "Hi there, I'll be delivering the keynote at your convention this year."
Maybe you had to be there, but it was pretty funny to all of us at the time.
The only less-than-awesome moment came when a kid (I put him at about 15, because he reminded me of Nolan) tried to give me an unsolicited hug. Everything about his demeanor told me he and his friends were having a big old laugh at my expense, so I said, "Uh, how about we don't do that?" And they all grumbled at me and walked away. I turned to the guy next to me and said, "You know what's going onto MySpace as we speak? 'Wil Wheaton is a dick.'"
Oh well, it wouldn't be the first time.
Tomorrow will be even more fun, because I don't have any real commitments, and I can take all the time I want to wander the floor, gettin' my geek on.
Excelsior!
