Once again, for the geekier side of Ice Cream Man. While Ice Cream Man was busy hanging out with rock stars in Chicago for Pitchfork Music Fest and Lollapalooza, I went down to Comic-Con in San Diego with the Ice Cream B Team for the comic relief portion of the Ice Cream Man adventures (pun only half intended).
Comic-Con is my most anticipated event of the year. You can have your hanging out backstage with rock stars and talking to the “cool” people. Give me people dressed up as storm troopers and selling 20 sided dice.
Phil and I started Thursday morning and had to first head up to Arya ice cream in L.A. to pick up our assortment of treats that were being donated by Blue Bunny for the trip. Unfortunately, they didn’t give us any TMNT pops, which a ton of people ended up asking for. We did get tons of other stuff though and actually had to leave behind six boxes of Champ! cones. Once we got loaded up, we made our trek down. On the way, we saw a sign saying that there was an accident in 57 miles. “Ha! I sure hope they got it cleaned up by the time we get there.” I said, rather derisively. Ah, the joke was on me. We got to San Juan Capistrano and the freeway was at a standstill. Being the intrepid person that I am, I decided to get off the freeway and take PCH. Of course, I couldn’t find PCH and ended up getting stuck in traffic on El Camino Real. The good news was that we ended up giving away six cones from the truck while we were stuck in traffic. Not a bad start. For brevity’s sake, lets just say it took us five and a half hours to get from Los Angeles to San Diego.
As soon as we arrived, we headed to the Convention Center to get our badges and then to the motel to prepare for the night. That night we decided we weren’t going to sling and instead were going to show the town how you party. We drank beers and waited in the motel room for Matthias to arrive to complete our crew for the night.
The only thing on our agenda that night was the G4 & StrangeCo party. Since G4 was making a huge publicity push this year I thought the party would be packed. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that full. Maybe people were calling it an early night. I was surprisingly impressed by the “nerdcore” rappers performing. MC Frontalot, YTCracker and MC Lars had raps about playing video games over remixes of the Super Mario Bros. underworld theme, and made it actually good. The bad news was there were no Olivia Munn sightings. Maybe next year.
After we decided the party had run its course (after a shot of whiskey and a few beers) we decided it’d be a great idea to get even more drunk. Not really knowing where to go, we just dropped in a few bars. The highlight was maybe getting shots of tequila. Phil asked the bartender for three good shots. The bartender came back with offers of $15 shots.
“For all three?”
“No. Each.”
“How about $9 each?”
And… scene!
We had to wake up early the next day because we were intent on seeing the Watchmen panel. This was as hard to do as you might expect. Arriving an hour and a half before the panel was set to start, we were sure there was no way we were getting in. In our favor though was that there were other big panels before, so we walked right in. They played some new footage, which was what everybody was waiting for, and it looks amazing. I had really low hopes for this movie when I first heard about it, but I am really excited now. It’s looking like against all odds, Zack Snyder is going to make a good Watchmen movie.
The rest of the day was spent walking around checking out booths. I felt tired and hungover, so being bombarded by the sensory overload of the main exhibition hall was too much. We eventually left and headed to the truck to begin the ice cream portion of the fun. Bessie was parked further away than I thought, and the prospect of pushing the push cart into the throng of nerds seemed daunting, so we set up shop across the street from Petco Park and got people as they were walking back to their cars. It ended up that there was an open spot and so I ran back to the truck and pulled her in. Success! We got the push cart cleaned out plus a few more boxes of stuff and decided that the mission was accomplished.
After resting up for a bit and grabbing a bite to eat we went to Subtext gallery for an art opening. Compared to our other events of the weekend, this was really low key. We stopped by last year and made people really happy, so since we had nothing else going on that night, we dropped by again. All went well, except for one poor girl who got a bomb pop stuck to her lip and was dripping blood. I’ll say it again people, be careful with your ice cream, it is dangerous! Hopefully she’s ok.
Matti I called it an early night at 11 o’clock, meanwhile, Phil went out to the truck to read an Usagi Yojimbo book he bought and ended up getting swarmed by a bunch of people in the motel and had an impromptu party in the parking lot.
Saturday we were just as intent to see the Heroes panel in the morning as we were for Watchmen. Last year we got to it an hour and a half early and still had no chance of getting in. This year, despite our best efforts, we showed up an hour before it was set to start. Being the first panel of the day, we thought it’d be easier to get in, like it was the day before. Oh, we were so wrong. Here is my estimation of the line to get in. It may be a conservative estimate.
So, we didn’t get in to that, but the show starts in two months, so I think I can live with it. We decided to hit the main floor again and it was way more manageable not hungover. Camino met up with us in the afternoon and we soon headed out to give out some more ice cream. Outside, we ran into the Eureka ice cream truck. To promote the show, they had a branded ice cream truck heading around giving away free ice cream. Hmm… that sounds awfully familiar, I can’t exactly place why…
After another successful round of slinging outside Petco, we headed to the Local for the anniversary of Dr. Sketchy’s San Diego. Since it was downtown, there was no place for us to park. I had Phil run in a couple boxes of stuff, but the bar’s owner said they couldn’t give it out inside. With no other options (I was busy trying to find parking blocks away) Phil just left the boxes with them. Hopefully they were able to take a break and get some.
Next on the agenda was the Jeepers party, sponsored by Yelp. We got there early, so the turnout was pretty low at the time. Some lucky partygoers were able to get some cream though, and the ones that did were pretty excited about the experience. I’m just glad the girl dressed as a lobster got some. I would’ve never forgiven myself if she didn’t.
The last event we had was the biggest. X-Sanguin is the biggest party in San Diego during Comic-Con (aside from the con’s own masquerade ball). Hundreds of people head out and dress up in their best latex to celebrate the ever evolving vampire themed extravaganza. I tell you, there is nothing like rolling up to a party full of people dressed in vampire gear dressed normally and driving a big white ice cream truck. Naturally, we got the most pictures out of that. And had a blast. I mean, Chewbacca himself was there! We got him to check out an Off the Wookie which he pointed out was spelled wrong, something being a huge nerd, I already knew and had to apologize for. I used the cop out that it was to throw Lucas off the scent. Shenanigans abounded that night. A girl hit me with a riding crop! It hurt! I really can’t wait to hit the party again next year. It’s a surprisingly good combination.
There was so much more going on, but I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story. Keep an eye out for the steampunk Ghostbusters. Seriously.
Thanks again to Blue Bunny for the ice cream and Comic-Con for the press badges. See you again next year, maybe we’ll have girls dressed as sexy ice cream cones.
