Earlier I posted the first half of our day at Fandomfest in Louisville (that you can read here), and now I'll fill you in on what we got to see and do in the second half. As usual, feel free to share you Fandomfest stories in the comments. Or make fun of me. Or both!
-- After some TGIFriday's for lunch (the California club was, well, edible), we went back through "The Hall of Champions" to visit some other booths and watch Kolton take a dozen more pictures with people. We had bought a 93-page program and had looked at it while we ate, so we realized there was more to the fest than just this one room. It was time to explore. We found another, slightly smaller room on the floor under this one where there were more cool booths, and also where most of the cast of The Walking Dead were signing autographs. Seriously.
-- When we first walked into the room, Chandler Riggs, who plays Carl on The Walking Dead, was sitting at a table with either a parent, or, more than likely, a handler who was taking him where he needed to be, when he needed to be there. And nobody was talking to him or getting his autograph. I kind of felt bad for him until I witnessed this interaction.
GIRL: (walks up to Carl's table as he is obviously into some game on his Ipod) Aww, that's Carl! Can I give him a hug?
HANDLER: (Looks at Carl)
CARL: (Never looks up, even though there's no way he didn't hear her)
HANDLER: (Looks straight into GIRL's soul and smugly shakes his head "no")
Good luck with that, Chandler.
-- There was a booth set up in this room that, for one thing, there was no possible way it was legal. And, for
- Hershel! You can't see them, but he had both his legs!
another thing, was incredibly awesome. Some guy had any possible relevant television series or obscure-but-cool movie that you could think of, inside of cases that had cover art he had obviously printed on a printer from the 80's, filled with CD-R's that he had burnt them onto. Wow. I'm not going to say I made any purchases here, but I'm not going to say I didn't. And, naturally, he was also selling swords...
-- On the way out, we walked right by Scott Wilson, who plays Hershel on the show. He, contrarily to his cast mate, was very smiley, gracious, and receptive, and he also had two legs, which was weird to see as a fan of the show. Also, the line to see Norman Reedus, who plays Darryl, was as long as Stan Lee's. And he hadn't gotten there yet either. People love them some Darryl.
-- After leaving this room, we decided to go down 4th street and see what was happening at the Galt house, since they were also hosting some events according to our programs. On the way there, we nearly ran head on into Michael Rooker, who plays Merle on The Walking Dead. By his outfit, he looked like he was attempting to cosplay as Heisneberg, Bryan Cranston's alter-ego from the show Breaking Bad. On the show, Merle is kind of a turd. Mike may have been typecast for the role. After realizing who he was, Aram asked him for a picture. Merle never broke stride and said, "If
- Thanks for stopping for five seconds, Rooker. Or not really.
you can get one while we're walking, but I'm not stopping. I'm hungry." This picture was the result. Thanks, Mike. You're teaching Chandler well.
-- We walk into the Galt house, and Kolton, dressed as Dr. Who, of course, is bombarded by a group that is apparently dressed as other members of the Dr. Who cast, and the most elaborate, three minute improv went down that I wasn't sure whether to be impressed with or troubled by. Either way, I understood none of it, and when it was over, those involved were killing themselves laughing and back slapping while the rest of us were just kind of glad it was over. As the great Michael Scott once famously said, "I love inside jokes. I hope I'm a part of one some day."
-- We had been on our feet practically all day, so we were looking for a place to take a load off. What better place to do this than in a huge ballroom filled with Playstation 3's, Xbox 360's, and Wii's, where three major video game tournaments were taking place on massive screens. We found some seats in front of the Street Fighter tournament, and took it in for a few minutes. These guys weren't playing. All but one of them brought their own controllers, and I don't mean normal controllers that come with the game system. They had these huge boxes as big as coffee tables with massive joysticks on them, and what looked like 238 buttons. And, the one guy that used the normal controller got his brains beat in.
-- On our way into the video game room, we noticed another set of booths set up across the hall, so after we rested our dogs a minute, we ventured over there. Turns out, this was the horror room. Booths with masks, make-up, fake blood, movies, and whatever else you could think of horror related was in this room. At the far end of the room,
- Bloodsucka Jones and myself. Just, awesome.
Zach Gilligan from the movie Gremlins and Butch Patrick who played Eddie Munster were selling their autographs. For like $45. Their tables had no lines. On our way out, I had an incredible interaction with one of the stars of this room. So, I was walking out, and walking in was a black guy dressed in an awesome denim jump suit, white shoes, a huge belt buckle that had "BSJ" emblazoned on it, an 8" afro, and a fu manchu. I walked past him, but slowed to a stop as I processed what I had just seen, and turned around to get a second look. He was about 10 feet away, facing us with his hands on his hips, and he said, "You know you want to." And he was right: I did. So this picture happened. You can catch the Bloodsucka Jones trailer here.
-- After we left this room we made a decision that would ultimately consume us for the rest of the day and well into the night. We found a free-to-play Dungeons and Dragons room where they were encouraging folks with little or no experience (us) to jump in and play. So, for the next few hours, we fought off dragons, giant worms, hordes of monsters, and minions to team up together and save the good people of the city of El Torrel, which we did, but we had to sacrifice ourselves to do so, and we ended up trapped in a pocket realm by ourselves until we can be rescued. NERD UP!!!
-- After our D&D successes, we, of course, were starving, so a late night trip to Wick's Pizza was in order before heading home. As much as Dale Earnhardt, Jr. loves the taste of Diet Dew, I love the taste of a Wick's za.
Next year, a three-day pass is in order, and if there's any way we can get anything into the Fandomfest film festival that takes place on Friday night, I feel we must do this. We didn't get to do everything we wanted, and we stayed busy the entire time. How about you guys? Anybody else have some fun in downtown Louisville last weekend? Share in the comments!
