Off to see the Wizard...Part 2

While we (Joe, Molyneaux and I) were roaming the Great Dork Plains of Wizard World, we had the opportunities to rub elbows with some FAMOUS celebrities, as well as some people who only we (and others of our ilk) would think are cool. I took some (possibly unauthorized) photos of those people:

Lou Ferrigno, the guy who played The Hulk in the TV series, was there. None of us talked to him, but I stood pretty much next to him while I waited for Joe to rejoin Molyneaux and me at one point during the day.



Here's Joe talking to Marv Wolfman. This guy's a pretty big deal in the DC Universe...click the link or check him out on wikipedia for more info. He has written a ton of comics, so Joe was pretty stoked to get to chat with him for a few minutes.



We also wandered by the table where the guy who created The Oblongs was chillin' in his clown makeup. When Molyneaux went to snap a pic of him (much like I had done a moment before), the dude looked straight up and gave one hell of a creepy clown face. I don't think we really stopped to talk to him and I'm not sure Molyneaux has posted that particular picture yet, but maybe this mention of it on The Blaug will spur him to do so. Here's mine in the meantime:



Then there was Richard Kiel, the guy who played "Jaws" in a couple of Bond flicks. He is also known for being the really large Happy Gilmore fan in that Adam Sandler movie. None of us talked to him either.



Joe went over to catch a word with Burt Ward, the guy who played Robin on the original Batman TV series. I clicked this picture from a distance, and way before Joe went over. Then, while Joe was at the table I motioned for a picture, and Big Burt motioned back "no pictures, please". Little did he know...



The most currently famous person who was there, however was Hayden Panetierre, or Claire Bennett the Indestructibe Cheerleader from Heroes. Molyneaux and I were totally stoked to see her cuz we both followed Heroes through Season 1 and are big fans. Joe was excited to see her because she did the voice of Kairi in Kingdom Hearts. We arrived a tad early to get decent seats, and then we sat and waited. Like so:



When she showed up, it was just her and the guy who was running the panel, and he decided to stand at the center podium, and she took her seat on the side opposite from us. This was our view for the first 5 minutes or so.



We could hear her because she had a mic, but all I could see was some of her hair once in a while. And I was on the end with the best view! So nobody said anything like "Sit down and let Hayden stand at the podium!" Then I decided to get some video of one of her answers:



And there she stayed. I got this shot, which sadly turned out to be my best shot of her:



She was cheerful and young and sweet and stuff. She staved off the requests for Season 2 spoiler info, which she claimed she didn't have, fielded a question about voice acting for Kingdom Hearts (NOT from Joe) and talked about how she once pulled over her "Por--my car" to help an injured dog in the road. It was a classic moment. She bailed out of saying Porsche when she realized that she was in a room full of people who will never ever own a Porsche, and didn't want to sound stuck up and spoiled. Cute and funny.

Then somebody asked her more about her singing career, which she had mentioned already. They asked her to sing. She didn't know what to sing and she's "shy". Then this happened:



Yeah. She didn't know Freebird. And yeah. I yelled that about Guitar Hero.

Then I stupidly tilted my camera and filmed the first part of her song:



Not too bad, eh? Meh. Whatever. So that was pretty much it for her.

Next up I'll show you some (more) not-famous people that were dressed up like not-real people. Like these guys!



These guys were amateurs. If I had shown up in my full Monarch regalia, I would have so schooled them. Look! The guy in the ORANGE is supposed to be The Monarch! Bah! I didn't even realize that's who he was trying to be until I looked at the pictures later. And it was also then that Joe figured out that the jerk with the curly wig on is trying to be Brock Samson!

I forced them into a half-hearted "Go Team Venture" pose with me...and I muttered that I knew that none of us were dressed like members of Team Venture, but they didn't seem to mind too much about the details. They didn't seem to want to be near me, actually. They just seem more confused by my utter enthusiasm at meeting other Venture Fans...I think they thought I was mentally disabled or something because they said like 3 words to me the whole time I was waylaying them with my jackassery. After this awkward exchange, they effectively avoided me for the rest of the day.



At one point we had accidentally left the main convention hall and had to circle around again to get back in. On our accidental way out, however, we caught PaRappa on his way to the main hall with TWO helpers patiently guiding him along. This was quite possibly the saddest thing we saw all day...at that point, at least. Not because it was PaRappa, but because of the ludicrously slow speed he was moving. The costume was so restrictive that it took him five minutes to move from here:



...to here (about five feet). PaRappa was rappin' BAD that day.



It should be illegal to put someone in that suit. They should just put it on wheels and cart it around and put some robotics in it and that way nobody has to suffer inside of PaRappa the Horriblly Immobile Suit.

On our way out of the convention, we saw THE saddest sight of the day. The magic was officially dead upon seeing this:



That's right, folks! PaRappa's head in a bag. And note that it takes TWO people to carry that thing. And yet they have ONE person inside the suit, attempting to carry it ON HIS/HER HEAD. Wow. The lengths people will go to for entertainment. I blame video games for this extremist attitude.

Anyways... we also saw this guy...



So he shows up to a comicon in full cos-play gear, and then has the nerve to get pissed when a metric ton of people want him to pose for pictures? What a dumbass. He damn near ran me over when I was getting that picture of him, just cuz he was "done" with pictures.

Right around the same time Iron Jerk showed up, so did this thing. It was almost as unwieldy as poor ol' PaRappa, but way more evil looking. Nobody seemed to know what the hell he was supposed to be from, but we were all marveling and snapping photos of him...



So yeah. There's still a lot more to get to about my day at WizardWorld Comicon... but it's so late right now that the birds are chirping outside.

I'll get to the rest as soon as I can... And I also wrote a Spoilerific Transformers the Movie Review that I will hold off on publishing until next week or so, for the sake of those among The Tauz Blaug Faithful who would shoot me if I didn't.