Comi-comi-comi con. The great wonder of all wonders where 125,000 people total attend a fantabulous four-day adventure through media, art, and some distracting attractions. The largest gathering of nerds in one place, a community where all is accepted as cool, where everyone is related, unless you’re a Star Wars or Star Trek fan, then you guys are natural born enemies, but other than that everyone either knows or should know each other. I said last year that Comic-Con attendees are my best friends. As John Green once or twice said, “Being a nerd is like saying, ‘you like stuff.’” Yeah. That’s why we all know it’s not an insult – we know we’re cool, walking around dressed as Mario or Naruto or Captain Hammer. Insta-friends.

We (Mike [] and I off the coaster) start out in the enormous ridiculous line for the WB panel in the infamous Hall H, participants of said room started lining up YESTERDAY. So luckily, so we don’t have to go to the back of the line, which happens to snake 10 ways around outside the convention center, across the street, down around the parameter of the convention center, past the bay bathrooms and back right down to the boats by the San Diego bay. Fortunately for us, Cooking Mama ()is across the street in the middle of the giant snakeline, and Mike and I sneakily avoid the all-watching, anti-cutting security all over the place and skip over about 5 of the caution tape warnings between sections of the snake. There we meet Josh and Jeff, both of whom are labeled Jeff. The one true Jeff is the most laid back guy in the world, an artistic personality with trimmed beard and droopy eyes from Santee who loves Final Fantasy. His North Carolinian friend Josh looks a little younger, clad in braces, polite, nice looking. We sit with them in the illustrious and inglorious Hall H. Yes, we actually make it in, and get pretty OK seats… about 100 feet back in the first quarter of the hall. We make friends with the Avatar fans in front of us, and I give them some of my Snackwell’s I bought at the coaster kiosk because I knew snacks would be the only way to get me through today alive with the food pricing in mind. Then the celebrities line up to greet us like in a pageant. The first huge surprise was the Denzel. They show the first two chapters of The Book of Eli which is kinda really scary, then it turns out they are making a live action movie as well. They bring out the producers, a set of bald twins, then Mila Kunis who we all know as Jackie from That 70’s Show who is awful nice, then Gary Oldman, Commissssssioner Gordon. He starts speaking, and I find out for the first time that he’s actually from the UK… from out of the Scott Hopkins looking mustache and goatee comes the English dialect.

Then he freaking comes out of nowhere. Denzel freaking Washington. He hardly says anything in the panel, but he is quite jovial and it is really funny when he jokes with Gary Oldman, because they are like the most unlikely looking friends ever. Ol’ Gary is like the proper Englishman and the Denzel likes to have a good time, you can tell.
Then The Box panel is up. It sounds and looks like a really interesting movie, then Richard Kelly turns out to be the director. Figures. Cameron Diaz is in the movie, and James Marsters plays her husband in it. Mike and Chris cannot figure out what he’s been in.
“Who is that guy?”
“What has he been in? He looks so familiar.”
Luckily, someone asks him a question that regards a wisp of a hint.
“Well, I think that Cyclops…” Marsters begins.
All three of us go, “OHHHH YEAHH.”

Then there is an epic showing of Where the Wild Things Are clips.

Jonah Hex is up next, the director of which says he’s going to “keep this short.” I’m relieved… I have no idea what this is about. He shows the trailer. It actually looks like a really good westerny-actiony movie, and I get really excited. Then Megan Fox appears… if you heard the question-and-answer session for Jonah Hex, you’re puking right now.

Brolin is entertaining. Apparently John Malkovich has a small part in the movie too, but he’s not here. It’s about noon.

We’re sitting there waiting for the next panel, which they have no program or anything for, so there’s no telling who’s coming and who’s not for sure. Then a guy in a brown suit walks briskly in the middle of the stage and we can’t quite make out who he is from where we are sitting and then we realize that it’s Robert Downey Jr! Everyone gets on their feet… the entirety of Hall H pulls out their phones to take pictures over the whole room. Then the front row paparazzi break out in a storm of flash lightning, and Chris dies a little. It’s a real spectacle, but RDJ walks up there like he’s a high schooler trying to get his speech over with for the communication final. He walks right up to the podium, unlike any other actor so far and begins to give a history of Sherlock Holmes. He continuously touches his ear as an anxious tick and tries to concentrate, but after about three or four sentences into Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s background, he has to stop because the cheering is still dying down. Then the infamous Downey Jr. grin lights up nervously and the crow’s feet under his eyes show themselves.

“This is so much fun,” he looks down and says, a little sarcastically in a kind of uncharacteristic apprehension. It’s his first appearance this year at Comic Con, and he’s got Iron Man 2 to promote tomorrow.
I wouldn't be surprised if he’s dreading doing all the press afterwards in the ominous white tents outside of Hall H we passed as we overlooked the scores of colored costumes already in line.

Then, of course, Susan Downey makes her way out as a producer. Susan is way cool, and I love her and RDJ together. Chris and I show her some love vocally, but nobody hears us.

Rachel McAdams pops up from the back, she is just so cute. I wish I had her style.

The questions are the most intelligent ones of the entire event, my favorite happened to be from Bob Stencil, a frequent question asker, who Cameron Diaz earlier asked if he was doing a Johnny Depp from Fear and Loathing. “This question is for Robert… love your name, by the way.”
“Well, thank you.”
“What was it like working with Jude Law…’s mustache?”
After the laughter dies down, Downey looks at him very serious, and he eases into a dry sense of humor.
“Well, Robert… you know…….. we really didn’t get along...” and he continues to answer like he’s in a futon in a psychologist’s office.
After the Sherlock Holmes panel, as a few before them had, RDJ and Rachel stay behind for press photos, and Chris and I, clearly being press, run up there and take photos. Unfortunately, my camera I have at the time is crappy and old, so the fact that I was about 10 feet away from flipping Robert Downey Jr. may not be apparent, but that’s detracting from the point that I WAS 10 feet away from flipping Robert Downey Jr. and about 6 from Rachel McAdams.

And then the Hall H WB panel is over.

Then we meet up with Annie, Theo () and Jen and waltz around the convention center a bit. This is short-lived, however, as Annie and Theo must attend the new Tim Burton panel for 9, and we haven’t eaten yet. Since the food at Comic Con has been dubbed a “highway robbery”, we march around the Gaslamp and eat gelato, then return to the convention center and walk around for the remainder of the time we have until the last coasters leave. It’s fantastic. The manga, the anime, the Star Wars figures, the Lego masterpieces, the new games, the artists, the art, Chewbacca, the T-shirt shacks, and not to mention the panoramic spectrum of crazy costumes everywhere. Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance walks right in front of us as we are sitting down, and I’m the only one that sees him minus one person on the other side who says, “Gerard Way!” I’m stupidly holding my camera in my hand already, and I watch him walk by for about five seconds but for some odd reason don’t take a picture. I should have just gone with my first instinct that it was him. He’s surrounded by maybe-security that try to mingle around him. He’s completely normal looking in his leather jacket, but apparently Gerard Way is a secret nerd, because he walks fast to get wherever he’s going. The saddest part is that Theo is the closest to him but he has his back toward him.
I'm not even mentioning how awesome it was hanging out with friends too, let’s do it again next year every day, minus being delirious.