San Diego Part 2: manufactured Flimsy weaponry

Woke up 8:30. Couldn't help it. That's the way it works. Nothing really to get to, but I'm up. Get showered, head over to the Con. One main objective for the day besides the DVD producers panel (which was kind of a clusterfuck) and that's the David Cronenberg signing. With me: Dead Ringers CC and Videodrome CC. Do some wandering, get to the panel, and it kind of sucks, but due to some stuff I know some of the guys on the panel, so I end up at lunch with the DVD gang, and some guy who writes for the Digital Bits when the editor can take it. It's Thursday, but the service at the Sushi bar is horrid, and we sit for almost three hours as I wait for my Udon, and I'm stuck with a total douche who thinks he's involved with things he's got no connection to, while others take off to go to their respective panels. I think we got there around one and left around four, enough time to run into Kristi Turnquist and my friend Q the Winged Serpent right before the Cronenberg thing. I play catch up with Kristi (hell, she may quote me in her piece for The Oregonian) and we sit down for the thing, but Cronenberg is being interviewed by David Poland, who doesn't know how to to talk about the movie without spoiling the film or talking about Cronenberg's ouvre. Sorry, Poland, you fucked it up. My friend Q spent a couple minutes with David C. and got a good interview, so Poland must not know Cronenberg as well as Q.

Sitting there, I realized the Cronenberg signing is gonna be a clusterfuck, so I figure instead of sitting through the nonsense, I should head over. Which was smart, Cronenberg had to take off at 6:30, and I got my stuff signed at 6:26. I've done some interviews with people I think are pretty cool/bad ass/whatever, but standing there waiting for Cronenberg, I mean seriously, I had to tell him how much I respected him, and how happy I was he was making movies. I got psyched out. I love his films, and meeting him... was hard.

I hit the floor, and ran into Dylan, a guy I used to work at a video store with. It was great, we play catch up, and cover much of the last couple years of our lives as we drank vodka at his hotel and relaxed to find that little has changed between us, we still hit our rhythms, and so he joined up with me when I returned to the Blarney Stone to hook up with more friends, some of whom went to the New Line function where Cronenberg was at (why he had to leave). And then I called another friend who showed up, and then also had another group of friends at another location. Most of moved outside the BS cause a couple of our party liked smoking, so there we were, outside, when even more people we knew walked by. I felt spread out, and then we headed to another bar, where I knew even more people; in some ways it's the closest I've come to throwing a party since I left Portland. I felt sort of embarrassed, but some of my friends got along with other autonomous groups, and there was way too much "Shit, not this Marriott, the other Marriott" (three within walking distance) but eventually we all got together, and I think I got home by around 2 am - after missing some of our group watching the Superman trailer pre-con screening. (BTW, I missed the Superman panel, so I still haven't seen the trailer). I felt thin, but I had a fucking great time. True drunken immorality would be reserved for Friday....