Comic Con: Where I became a HERO!

Salt Lake City Comic Con

September 5-6, 2014

My sister Melanie is an actress.  She was in a couple of movies that were being featured at the Salt Lake City Comic Con.  So we went up to cheer her on in her panels and in the sneak peak preview of her upcoming movie, Mythica. 

This was my first exposure to this Comic Con.  So let me share what I learned.  Comic Con is short for Comic Conference.  It's basically this huge event for all things fantasy/sci-fi/nerdy.  We are fans of all three, so it was fun for us to check it out.  There are booths set up from tons of different movies, and props and replicas of characters for photo ops.  There are panels with actors and filmmakers and set builders.  There are people promoting upcoming movies and video games and there are vendor's booths everywhere too.

The people who come to this sort of thing are varied.  You get everybody from the actors and filmmakers and special effects people themselves, to the regular Joe's like our family who are your average fans of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars and Harry Potter, to people who are a little more enthusiastic and come dressed as their favorite character.  And I'm telling you, some of those people are over the top with their costumes.  They did not mess around.  

   I didn't get any great pics of some of the really amazing costumes, but here's a pic of some of the average dressed-up people you might find wandering around comic con.  

Then you get people who are a little confused about where reality ends and fantasy begins, like the 40-year-old, overweight guy who dressed up like Super Mario and during Melanie's mythic panel asked, "What kind of magic system is used in Mythica, and can it be found online?"  Amusing and sad at the same time.  I feel sorry for that guy.

trolls from the Hobbit

Tatooine Star Wars Photo Op

Gandolf

Hans Solo frozen in carbonite  (or kryptonite?  wait--is that Super Man?)

Gollum

And who is this????

THE MELANIE STONE

as "Marek" in Mythica

I'm related to a famous lady. :)  Well, almost famous.

The other movie that Melanie is in that is coming out on DVD soon is called

The Christmas Dragon

We got to take pictures with some of the props and costumes from Christmas Dragon.  

This is the throne and costume used by Father Christmas in the movie.  

And here is the first panel that Mel did with Jake Stormoen and Adam Johnson (I think? These three were in Mythica and Christmas Dragon together. ) 

My kids asked some pretty great questions at this panel they did in the "Kidcon" section, like "How do you become a film actor?" and "What's are some differences between film acting and stage acting?" and "What's your favorite thing about acting?"  If we weren't at that panel, there would not have been very many good questions, so it's a good thing we were there.

The next day, was Melanie's big Mythica panel with a bunch of folks who worked on Mythica including Kevin Sorbo (who arrived a little bit late, so he's not in this picture.  But he sat right next to Melanie.)

Hopefully this wasn't embarrassing to her, but here we are with our signs to cheer her on.

Reed drove down from Rexburg to be there for Mel too.

And now a little story about how I became a hero at Comic Con:

After the panel, we got outta there as fast as we could.  It was so PaCkEd on Saturday--like body to body--and took forever to walk anywhere.  It was stressful staying together and keeping track of all our kids, so we decided to leave Comic Con and walk over to the Gateway Theater where the Mythica Sneak Peak would be shown and get some ice cream while we were waiting.  

On our way out, we made a couple of bathroom stops.  The first one was for everyone without a diaper (because there was no changing station for Bennett) and the second one was for Bennett since we finally found a bathroom with a changing station.  (You would think that any building in Utah would be fully equipped with changing stations in EVERY bathroom.  But apparently not.)

Why am I telling you about our bathroom stop, you may be wondering?  Well, something happened during the bathroom stop that was tragic.  In all the stress and chaos of navigating a party of 12 (6 of them kids) through hoards of people, Melanie accidentally left her newly acquired replica of Thorin's Map in her stall.  After we'd gotten Bennett a new diaper, away we all went to get some ice cream.  We left the Salt Palace and had walked several city blocks before Melanie realized she wasn't carrying her map and had left it in the bathroom.

She was so flustered and upset, especially because now there wasn't enough time for her to get back to the Salt Palace to retrieve it (if it was still there) and back in time for her the Mythica Sneak Peak.  As we were walking along, Arthur said, "You should go back and get it."  I said, "yeah" but in my mind I was worried about getting lost or accosted by a scary homeless beggar, or missing the preview myself after we drove all this way to be there for it.  So I just kept walking and then Arthur said again, "Are you gonna go get it?  I would but I can't go in the women's bathroom."

He was right.  I was the only person in our group who could do it.  Suddenly, epic hero music started playing in my head, and I said, "You're right.  I'll go.  Text me directions to the theater so I can find you when I get back."  And I just turned around and started running back up to the Salt Palace.  It took me a good 15 minutes to get back to the entrance, and when I got there, they were turning people away at the door because there were so many people in the building that it was a violation of fire code and the fire marshall had ordered no more admittance into Comic Con!  

But the hero music in my mind suddenly switched to James Bond music, and like a spy, I waited until the guard's head had turned the other way, and sneakily slipped in and mixed into the throngs of people.  HahaHa! (triumphant laugh) That is the first time in my life I have ever "slipped past a guard."  It felt epic.  But it still remained to get to the opposite side of the building to where the bathrooms were, and there was nothing quick about it.  The picture below is probably half the amount of people that were walking around the upper level where I was trying to get to the bathroom, and my face was seriously pressed into someone else's back nearly the entire time.  (Everyone trying to get to that darned Hobbit panel.)  

Finally I made it through the thickest part of the crowd, and got to the bathroom.  There was suspenseful music playing in my mind as I walked into the bathroom and located the stall Melanie had told me she'd used.  And there it was, sitting in the corner of said stall.  The cardboard tube that held her Thorin's Map.  At that point, I think it was the Hallelujah Chorus that was going through my head.  I was so relieved it was still there, and thankful for the good, honest, non-stealing people of Utah!  

I grabbed it and got out of the building as quick as I could where I began retracing our steps to the theater.  I hadn't gotten very far when I got a call from Stelios who said he was in his car by the Radisson and could give me a ride back to the theater!  Would you believe that I was walking right by the Radisson and just couldn't see him because of a huge tour bus parked on the side of the street.  (And the Hallelujah music continued.)  So Stelios picked me up and gave me a ride to the curb outside the ice cream place where Arthur was waiting for me and I was reunited with my people, and Melanie was reunited with her map.  I was just in time to grab a frozen yogurt and walk over to the theater to catch the Mythica premiere.

    

It was a great moment of heroism and epic-ness.  

And please excuse my sweaty armpits.  I had been running and slipping past guards and pushing my way through crowds of crazy people in costumes and I have learned that even Heroes sweat sometimes.

For Melanie's version of the Rescuing of Thorin's Map, click HERE.

Super glad we could be there with Melanie for her Comic Con coolness.

We love that lady.

Box Sliders

This is what you do with giant cardboard pieces leftover from a shed project:

hours and hours of fun!

They also made a movie, inspired by my brothers' short films entitled 

Master Skaters and Master Surfers

Reed and Nathan, please enjoy:  Master Box Sliders

Shed

For months, our back porch has looked like this:

What is all that junk? you are probably wondering.  That's stuff to be stored in the CMT shed.  It sat there all summer because we were just too busy to get the shed up, but the first weekend in September, Arthur and I cleared the calendar and worked together to assemble the shed.

Building the base took the most time.

Had to buy our 4th power saw.  Gotta have the right tools for the job.

Getting the floor nailed into place

Put the kids to work when they got home from school.

Arthur is a big fan of reading instructions.  

I'm a fan of looking at the picture and giving it my best guess.  

Putting the roof on

I didn't even realize that we were both wearing BYU shirts.  Must have been a game day.

Our beautiful CMT shed full of everything that was on our porch!  It turned out great, and we are both glad to have our porch and garage back.

Some of September

Birthdays:  Daphne and Sean have birthdays five days apart.  Had I known they'd both want the exact same cake, maybe we would have just celebrated both on the same day, and save us all some calories.   darned delicious Texas sheet cake.

Daphne, 11 

and Sean, 9

Sean earned his Wolf badge!  

He had barely anything done when summer started, so he and I worked on it a little bit everyday to crank that puppy out.  

I think this is the first time I can say that I really deserve that pin he's giving me right there.  It took a lot of prodding and reminding and "Sean get over here we're working on your Wolf!"

Dollar Day at the NM State Fair

Since admission was only $1, and kids under 5 are free, we did the State Fair for our preschool field trip.  The McDonald's farm activity is always a favorite of the littles.

And since it was dollar day, we went back that night for Family Home Evening.

We got Deep Fried Green Chile Cheese Curds, Green Chile Cheesy Fries and a funnel cake to share.  Hayden was pretty annoyed that we kept getting all that green chile, but HELLO!  this is the New Mexico State Fair.  I don't care if it's burning your mouth, you will EAT that green chile!

Since it was raining, there wasn't a lot to do.  We found a few animals to satisfy a few of the kids who really love animals. (daphne).

And then it was dark, and we just decided to call it a night.

And since we didn't eat enough junk food at the fair, we had ice cream cones at home.

Our experience at the fair this year was kinda. . . meh.  Could have been the rain, could have been that while we were waiting for Arthur to buy our admission tickets I found out that Daphne was the only one who actually wanted to go.  But we made the best of it and saw what there was to see, and since it was dollar day I didn't feel like it was a total bust.   But maybe next year, just to mix it up, we'll try the mutton bustin'.   That looked pretty fun/ny.

Dress Like a Pirate for Free Donuts!

Krispy Kreme donuts celebrates "Talk Like a Pirate Day."  If you go in and talk like a pirate, you get a free donut.  However, if you go in dressed like a pirate, you get a whole dozen for free.  So we met with a few other pirate/donut loving friends and went down to our local Krispy Kreme.

You might notice Sean is not pictured.  That is because a box of free donuts was not enough to entice Sean to go to the effort of getting dressed as a pirate.  Seems like a pretty fair trade to me, but  everybody's different, right?  Typical Sean.  

Sydney with her favorite swim teacher, Bekah.

We had 4 pirates in our family.  In case you are fuzzy on your math, that equals 48 donuts.  

Just for future reference, no family should ever consume 48 donuts in less than 24 hours. 

It makes you lethargic.

Planting Pansies

I never got my summer annuals into the front planter this year, so I made sure I got right on top of the fall pansies.  We'd just been waiting for someone to advertise their pansies going on sale, so when Osuna Nursery had their "Pansy-monium" sale, we went right down to pick up a couple of flats.

They will get pretty big before it's too cold for them to grow anymore, and come spring they'll be stunning with our tulips and daffodils.  I love this time of year.