Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2013: Friday

I'm posting this after two days at the expo and I'm exhausted, so I'll have to see how much I remember. I went to the con alone at first, mostly just to do some shopping on my own while people still had merch and because I didn't want to drag around people (or worry about losing them which is EXTREMELY easy with is many people). Unfortunately most of my photos are terrible quality because a) I have poor quality cameras, b) I couldn't stop long a lot of the time due to the amount of people and the level of patience of those I was taking the pictures of and c) because I'm an awful photographer. That and the flash was off for the benefit of the people I was taking the pictures of (seriously, I'll come back to this later in the Saturday post).

Walk into the con and the first thing I see is good old Gollum at a promotional booth for The Hobbit where they were carrying replica movie props. I ended up getting a picture (today actually) with Gandalf's staff...though I need to track down the picture as I have no idea whose camera it ended up on....

After my close encounter with Gollum, I head through the autograph and media room, grinning like a fool because I had been looking forward to this weekend for many months. I noted, with a great deal of thanks, that the con was a lot more open, less crowded and a lot more organized this year, which is a HUGE improvement off of last year. I could actually breathe and move my arms in the aisles at the expo! Last year was awful, especially with the number of people stuffed into the autograph, photo op, food court, media room (yes, all of those were in the same room). ANYWAY. Much better this year. I can say a lot about the organization of the con, especially after some unfortunate experiences in previous years involving a missed photo op, holding a sign for an hour and being bored out of my mind volunteering (after being given a shirt three times too big for me even though I ordered a small) and nearly suffocating in the throngs of people. But I digress.

The swords you see above, which I was intending to mention before I launched into a mini rant, was from one of the first booths I visited. I love swords and weapons. Especially ones from games and shows that I can drool over. Top is the swords Kratos uses in God of War, bottom is a mix of Altair's Sword from Assassin's Creed, a Halo sword, one of those Klingon swords and two weapons I can't really remember or make out from the picture. And I'm sure I'm wrong or being dumb about something in that picture.

I turned around and continued looking at booths until I ran into this fellow with a Portal Gun. I was mostly excited about the Portal gun (which they were selling at another booth for a ridiculous amount of money though I considered it for a moment before I realized I wasn't spending too much money this time and walked sadly away and continued to see people carrying them around all day tearing bits of my soul out with every encounter). Props to the costume though. This isn't the first time I wished I had better costume design and construction skills. 

I wandered a bit and spotted my first Altair. Poor guy was buying a lemonade so I left him be for the moment. He stopped by a booth for awhile nearby a display I was looking at so I figured I'd try to snap a picture. He didn't seem too happy about putting his drink down for a snapshot, so I tried to take it as fast as possible, which resulted in me taking the photo faster than he was ready. I also think he was part of a group doing professional photos so I felt even worse. So after I took this I was so embarrassed that I slipped back into the crowd blending in with the rest of the nerds to become incognito again. I tried to avoid him the rest of the day. Shouldn't mess with an assassin.

Wandered around for a long time afterwards and picked up some of the graphic novels and t-shirts that I wanted. Met some of the creators of webcomics that I like and oggled the booth with leather cuffs, leg and waist belts/pouches and a beautiful vest. As I returned to the other side of the room I spotted Barf and Dark Helmet and took a horrible, blurry picture of them. Wasn't the last I'd see of them as they entered the costume contest with us the next day. They were a pretty wicked duo.

Yay Lego. Also pieces of it moved.

Found two Ezios who were less grumpy about their picture being taken. Maybe this is because they were not trying to enjoy lemonade. Or maybe....they were all just acting in character....HMMMM.

One of quite a few Iron Mans (Iron Men?) that I saw wandering around. This was one of the two better ones that I saw over the past two days. One was a man, one was a woman. I THINK this was the man, but I cannot be 100% certain. I only say that because I think the woman Iron Man arrived later and I think she had a triangle glowy part, not a circle glowy part (see the technical jargon I used there?). These sections of the centre were some of the best to take pictures with plain backgrounds and a little extra room away from the crowded aisles. Only problem is that the staff and volunteers were shooing us away from the doors and edges of the building as they created fire safety hazards. We all thought this was extremely dumb until I heard from one of the workers there that after last year the fire department was not happy with the organization and concentration of people in the buildings. This year, if they did not ensure the safety requirements were met, the con would not be allowed to be held on the grounds next year. So I was a little more sympathetic after that. I'm just glad I got away with sitting and eating my sandwiches in front of one of these areas so I could rest my feet and process my spotpasses on my 3DS in peace (and I felt like an evil genius raking in the spotpasses until I realized everyone else in the room with a 3DS was probably an evil genius as well). Well relative peace. About halfway through a bunch of cosplayers happened to be in my corner and all began lining up to get their pictures taken right in front of me. As I was stuffing my face with jam, peanut butter and bread. Playing my DS. So I photobombed about six pictures there. You're welcome.

More excellent cosplay to be seen after lunch. Funny story with this one. Involves me being fairly braindead, but in my defence I had a reasonable excuse. Woman on the left is a friend of the person I cosplayed with this year. Last year she went to the Calgary con as a demon hunter from Diablo III. She won the contest in her category. I see her both Friday and today, but don't clue in on Friday that I have met her before, complimented her on her last year's costume and five-finger shoes and that she knew my close friend. Then on Saturday (still today I suppose) I see her again and don't clue in until a few minutes later that I had seen her Friday, taken her picture, and had thus looked like an idiot. On the bright side, I was in costume today so she probably had no idea I was being an idiot. Yay.

Took this picture three times and the best one is STILL BLURRY. Maybe I was just nervous to be in the presence of such dastardly looking villains. 

Tee hee hee it's a blurry furry. There were only two booths focused on furries this year. And I only saw one. Maybe it's finally a dying trend. Doubtful. Though...the horse head trend appears to be on the rise. I swear they were multiplying. I spotted two of them at first. Then suddenly there was around five. Then I came across a bench of about twelve of them. I wandered around puzzling and puzzling the strange occurance until I passed a unicorn horse head person hopped up on top of a regular horse head person in the artist's alley. Suddenly everything became clear.

 Point of the story is there were less furries this year.

I come across this handsome little group every year I go to the con. Always a pleasure to see such good costumes.

My favourite costume of the day. I saw him again today in line to get a picture with Misha Collins, Mark Sheppard and Mitch Pileggi (=D), but I am glad that I got such a good, clear picture the first time. At any rate, it's my shot of the day.

Last cosplay picture of the day. Katara from Avatar was rockin' the water bending. I am super upset that I missed getting a picture of Toph today. Unfortunately the need to re-hydrate myself slightly overpowered my need to wait for a break in the crowd to run over and ask for a picture. More on that later though.

And of course there's all the merch, merch, merch. There is a reason why I'm significantly poorer after this event. I just found these particular pieces amusing yesterday. I just love that Sonic's drink says "speed" on the outside and that a face hugger is getting a little friendly with him in the final photo. As for the middle...well I know a couple people that might appreciate it. 

To end the day I had the opportunity to attend the Weird Al Yankovic concert. The above photo is the opening band, "Kirby Krackle," a self-styled "nerd band." The music was decent, though I couldn't figure out why all the tunes sounded so familiar. I came to the conclusion that this was also a parody band, though I still can't be sure....I think they lyrics about "cosy pants time" and "grandma's house" kind of threw me off. They were fun though, and I really enjoyed the lead singer's voice. They're a fairly talented group of musicians...even if their lyrics did confuse me some.

Then of course was the concert. It was amazing. I was laughing almost all the time with the parody songs and little comedy videos in between. Weird Al seems like a cool guy, and while I liked him before, he forever has my respect and admiration for poking fun at Michael Bay, Meghan Fox and the Transformer movies. After that little bit, I wished I could just run up, tip my hat and say "kudos to you sir." I also appreciated "Smells like Nirvana" where Weird Al spit water all over the place and threw the bottle into the audience. Brings back some hilarious memories of a metal concert I went to some years ago. Also, some poor sod almost got in deep trouble when Weird Al was singing one of his songs around the audience. Guy ran over to get a picture and then suddenly there were six bodyguards and security surrounding him. He took one look at them and scurried back into the audience. Friend of mine got to see Weird Al up close as he was singing cheesy pick up lines in that same song on the floor. Though I'm not sure what he thought of the tiger-print suit and hip gyrations. Regardless, was a two hour show with four encore songs. I must say it was one of the best concerts I've been to.

All in all, a fantastic day. My feet were very sore afterwards. I would write about Saturday, but I'm already pretty exhausted and I have one more day of comic con left. I will write more tomorrow.