Love always begins with a preference and a passion. (That actually has nothing to do with the rest of the entry, but it was a thought in my head this morning, so I thought I would capture it here and save it.)
I dreamed of Tarseem Singh last night. He is the director of the upcoming "The Immortals" and his past work includes the Jennifer Lopez vehicle "The Cell". He is amazingly visual director and since I am a visual person, I am dazzled by his work. Yesterday we had gone to presentation for "The Immortals" and saw more footage of the film. (We'd also seen his presentation at Wondercon in San Francisco earlier in the year.)
So, last night, while I was sleeping, I dreamed that he directed a documentary of the life of an ordinary housewife in the fifties, yet it was entirely in the visually kinetic and dramatically staged style of "The Cell" or "The Immortals". Lots of billowing and flowing colors, lots of stylistic action, lots of wonderful music, and lots of dynamic posing. It was an amusing dream.
Today is the last day of Comic Con. As usual, its been nothing but fun. I have not got a ticket for next year yet - I am going to get it online rather than pre-register, in part because the changed the method for pre-registration - basically, you have to get up extra early in the morning and than go stand in line at another hotel for hours to get a ticket to buy a ticket. I am doing enough standing in line as it is and something in me rebelled at standing-in-line to get a ticket so I could stand-in-line to stand-in-line next year. I am still planning on coming next year, but I'll take my chances with online purchase. (Most of the people I know who went online last year were able to get their tickets without too much difficulty.)
They've changed the way they sell the tickets - pre-registration does not give you a price break any more, which pushes the total package up to $175 (with preview night) or $150 (without preview night).
Now, you combine that with something else that I've observed - it seems to me that attendance is down this year here. With the exception of Hall 20 (where most of the big TV show panels displayed), we've pretty much been able to get into everything we wanted to see. We even spent a couple of hours on Friday and Saturday in Hall H, in both cases dealing with truly minimal lines. That was actually awesome. From a matter of personal preference, I would like to see Comic Con drop in size to back around or under 100,000 people. That would be a good and vibrant crowd, without the significant over-crowding. (One of the signs of the off attendance has been the lines at Starbucks and the ATM's. Normally, on Saturday, give up all hope of success at either of the things. The lines were, in fact, reasonable. Also, the ability to move about the convention and the ability to move about the vendor halls were rather reasonable.)
But, all that said, it has been a great little vacation and once the convention ends today, we've got two days of vacation left. My poor foot has taken a battering, due to all the walking and line standing, but it has recovered each night fairly nicely.
Today will be a nice and relaxed day - there are a couple of panels that I would like to see, but other than that, my main plan has been to spend the day people watching and to walk the vendor. I've ventured onto the floor a couple of times, but I really haven't spent any time there. I like to get into the small press and independent sections and just wander around, maybe pick up a few pieces for enjoyment and a few pieces for the collection.
