Oct 15 2012

65 kilometres walked so far

I’m not quite sure where to start writing about the last few days. I know I should have done a blog every day but I’ve just not had the time, energy or the wifi connection. We’ve had a few real cool days in New York and at New York Comic Con and I’m actually quite sad it’s over. I’m going to ‘chunk up’ events and drip feed them to you by theme over the next few days/weeks until you are as bored as I am by cosplayers 🙂 But first an overview…

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Any convention review starts with the predictable sore feet, queues for everything from toilets to sketches, huge crowds, crazy cosplay people etc etc. But you know what, its actually been a lot of fun. The Con organisers did really well this year and it felt more planned and less chaotic than less year. The food was also much better than normal and the fanboys seem to have read, and acted upon, the advice to have a shower every day. Crucially we learnt some lessons from previous conventions and forked out the extra for VIP tickets this year.

An extra $80 meant four whole hours in bed extra for four days. Sixteen hours more sleep than usual for convention… It’s almost worth it just for that. It also got us entrance to the VIP lounge with comfy sofas, TV screens showing the main sessions. So no queuing there either and we could watch from a sofa with a drink. It also gave us secure and easy storage so Scifi hubby took a small suitcase with him each day, left it there and ran back and forth to switch books over. Massive change from hauling huge amounts of graphic novels around (guess who is usually a packhorse).

We spent the first couple of days racing around getting sketches and signatures from various artists and celebs (more on that later) and then have been light and free for the last couple of days (well mostly) to wander through the booths, laugh at cosplay folk and actually have some fun.

Convention moment of the day today:

    Me to stall holder (who was dressed as a giant kangaroo – I have no idea either) with a wall of scifi knickers: Please can I take a photo of your pants?
    Him: Who do you work for?
    Me: I have this blog…

I’m still not sure why it mattered who I worked for, why he was so protective of his knickers or what the right answer was but I got my photo…

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More tomorrow…

Oct 6 2012

Compared to a purple sea worm I am. How embarrassing. How embarrassing

I’ve just realised that headline sounds quite naughty – but I like it so its staying. It’s not really a naughty story though so no need to blush Scifi hubby 😉

I’m loving the stories in today’s newspapers about a Yoda shaped sea slug:

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I’m not completely sure I see the resemblance though – looks more like a pink elephant to me

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I wonder how many other scifi shaped things we can find…?

By Scifiwife • Tagged
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Sep 30 2012

A tale of two congresses

I have a proper job, I know that may surprise people but I wear a suit, work in an office and like to think that what I do matters, I work for a major multinational company and travel a lot for work. This is a rather large contrast to the Scifi world I often inhabit at home and sometimes the contrast becomes starkly obvious.

This week I’m at a very large conference for work. A brief outline of the event goes something like:

    Attendance – 20,000 people
    Dress code – suits
    Sessions to sit through to learn new information
    Key ‘star’ speakers people want to hear talk, or meet
    A huge exhibition area with every company in the sector here
    Meetings from 7am until midnight
    Long queues for overpriced (and not very good) food at the exhibition centre
    Champagne and cocktails in the conference bar in the evening.
    Lots of media coverage and film crews wandering around.

In two weeks time I’ll be at the New York Comic convention. I was trying to explain the concept of a comic con to some colleagues over dinner last night. It went something like this:

    Attendance – 90,000 people
    Dress code – jeans, comic based tshirts, fancy dress (showering appears to be optional!)
    Preview screenings, talks by comic artists and celebs
    Key ‘star’ people from the movie and comic industry that everyone wants to hear talk, get a sketch or signature from or meet
    A huge exhibition area with every company in the sector here
    Queues from 7am (and earlier) and sessions to go to until midnight
    Long queues for overpriced (and not very good) food at the exhibition centre
    Beer in the conference bar in the evening.
    Lots of media coverage and film crews wandering around.

So comic con is bigger, more laid back and smellier but in some ways there are actually very similar. The biggest difference is the fancy dress. This conference would be so much more fun if a fancy dress rule was implemented!

I find I’m actually looking forward to four days in my jeans (I DON’T do fancy dress), drinking beer, staying in a cheap hotel, getting star struck over Princess Leia, dodging people dressed as Ewoks and random manga characters, hunting down comic artists who you have no idea what they look like. It will definitely make a change. Roll on comic con.

Sep 19 2012

“I do”, or do not – there is no try

We went home for a wedding and to finally meet Scifi nephew at the weekend. Oh and to pick up comics…

Scifi nephew is gorgeous. His mum has got him dressed in cutsie blue onsies and there’s lots of soft toy animals around. Absolutely no signs of Batman, Spiderman etc anywhere near him – yet. However with a father who is a mad Eve player and Scifi uncle around I’m sure that won’t last.

20120919-211516.jpg Scifi nephew with Scifi Auntie

The two friends who got married are huge movie fans and had persuaded the local cinema to let them get married in front of the big screen. To be honest the pair of them have seen over 100 movies there this year so I think the cinema probably owed them one. The cinema hadn’t hosted a wedding before but our friends applied for the wedding licence for them.

All the usual wedding superlatives apply. The bride looked beautiful, the groom was nervous, we had a great time etc. But what I loved was the fact they went all out on the movie theme. The invitations looked like the old movie advertising postcards. They had photos of the two of them up on the big screen. The cinema had rolled out the red carpet – yes an actual red carpet. We threw popcorn instead of confetti. There’s going to be some great photos of the bride on the escalators and the groom serving popcorn. Even the tables at the reception had movie names and there was a movie themed quiz on every table. Brilliantly done. Congrats to the bride and groom!

20120919-211631.jpg View from the back row of the cinema

Of course Scifi hubby can’t go anywhere without finding comics so in between the wedding and meeting Scifi nephew we visited the local comic shop, collected books that had been posted to my parents house and managed to see the new Judge Dredd movie. It’s a good job that there’s no weight limit on hand luggage…

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Sep 9 2012

Sometimes life IS black and white

Scifi hubby is a huge Simon Bisley fan. Bisley, also known as Biz, is a really famous comic artist and has worked on Batman, Lobo, Judge Dredd, Hellblazer etc etc. The first time we met Biz was at a comic shop in Beford. They were running a signing and we turned up really early. Biz, fairly predictably was really late (and drunk but that’s a story for some other time). Whilst killing time Scifi hubby decided to buy a statue of Batman based on a Biz drawing so he could get Biz to sign it.

Skip forward a couple of years and we were at a scifi/comic show in Milton Keynes called Collectormania. The convention had run for several years in the local shopping centre but that year it had moved to the football ground. As a result the con was actually pretty rubbish. They had fewer guests than normal and those they had were hidden away in tents. There were less stalls and less stuff to buy. However Scifi hubby still had the same amount of money burning a whole in his pocket…

At the end of the show he spotted a couple of statues from a set called ‘black and white’. Now I know that once Scifi hubby has three of something it becomes a collection so I know not to ever let him buy the third. Ironically collecting is quite black and white with him, he either has all of something or none. I had completely forgotten about the Biz statue and hadn’t really realised it was part of a series so didn’t think anything of it when he bought both. Until we got home…

Predictably the collection of black and white statues has now got a little out of control – in fact he owns all of the existing 44 black and white statues! Worse, they are still being produced and he’s still buying them. They are quite pretty so live in glass cabinets but he’s rapidly running out of room. Before you worry about the original boxes (like any true collector would), they are, of course, safely stored in several big boxes down the cellar.

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The Bisley Statue that started it all

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Just some of the collection…

Aug 26 2012

Smurfy yumminess

Ok, time for me to confess, I have a bit of a soft spot for Smurfs. It all started when I was hunting the app store for a game like Populous (if you don’t know it you’re too young!). A game called ‘smurfs’ appeared as an option and, as you do when the app is free, I downloaded it to try. 18 months later I’m completely, smurfily, hooked. I have 433 smurfs plus Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Marco Smurf, Clumsy Smurf, Handy Smurf, Baby Smurf, Vanity Smurf, Lazy Smurf, Farmer Smurf, Nat Smurfling, – you get the smurfy idea. My Smurf village now smurfs across both the mainland and the tropical island and Scifi hubby and I have conversations that go something like:

    Scifi hubby – “Hello dear, how was work?”
    Me – “Good thanks. How are the smurfs?”
    Scifi hubby – “They’re busy growing melons”
    Me – “Why melons”
    Scifi hubby – “Because that’s what Papa Smurf wants”
    Me – “And the island?”
    Scifi hubby – “Papa Smurf has smurfs in the jungle for 5 hours and the bottle has sent a raft out for an hour so the others are growing magic blueberries and the palms trees are growing bananas. What’s for tea?”

Reading that back it sounds smurfily crazy even to me. And it gets worse – if the iPad beeps to say the smurfs’ crops are ready to harvest one of us will smurf to sort them out, even at 2am. Who needs smurfing kids!

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So imagine my smurfy delight when Scifi hubby came home with a bag of edible Smurfs! Papa, Smurfette, Clumsy and Brainy all made out of jelly. Cue lots of Scifi hubby jokes as he licks Smurfette…20120826-141052.jpg The whole smurfy gang

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20120826-141124.jpg The lickable Smurfette

20120826-141131.jpg Brainy Smurf and Vanity Smurf

Aug 24 2012

The collection grows again

Scifi and hubby and I have been together for over 14 years. In that time we’ve gone from skint students to skint newly-weds to to skint first time homeowners to, finally, having a little money to have some fun. Interestingly the amount of money we’ve had at any given time has been clear in what scifi hubby has added to his collection.

Years 1 – 5
Comics
Normal 3 1/4″ Star wars figures
A local comic con with the odd bit part person from Star Wars (Greedo)

Years 6 -9
All of the above plus:
Graphic novels
12″ figures
More Batman stuff and less Star Wars
Travelling further for comic cons around the country

Years 10 – 11
All of the above plus:
Hardback omnibus special edition books
New York Comic Con
Batman Black and White Statues
Original pieces of art

Year 12
All of the above plus:
Sideshow collectibles statues…

I’m told that Sideshow Collectibeles are THE statues to have and worth their ridiculous cost. I remain to be convinced about that but Scifi hubby is super excited that his first one has arrived. It’s partly how good it looks (and that I can agree with) and partly that we can at last afford to buy at least some of the things he’s always wanted.

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So the box arrived

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And the actual box

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And the insides

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And the statue itself

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Now we’ve just got to wait for his two friends to arrive.

And then see how many more SC decide to release – I don’t think the budget will stretch to the whole Batman universe or Justice League. Of course, we would have to win the lottery several times over to actually buy everything Scifi hubby would want. He’s currently ‘watching’ a life size Batman statue on eBay – keep dreaming babe… 🙂

Aug 17 2012

“When you don’t know what’s in your collection that’s a really big red flag because it’s not a collection anymore it’s an obsession”

A new TV series has just started on the Syfy channel called ‘Collection Intervention’ and I’m torn between laughing hysterically and calling them up to meet Scifi hubby. The first episode follows two couples as one partner tries to downsize the others collection.

The first couple are both Star Wars fans but she is completely obsessed. Their whole house is full of Star Wars stuff. Now I know friends would say that the same is true of our house but even Scifi hubby has NOTHING on this woman. We have one room dedicated to scifi (and the attic full of boxed stuff). There’s some ‘leakage’ into other rooms but nothing too serious. This couple had Star wars toys on every inch of every wall in every room and Star Wars wallpaper underneath. Shelves and shelves of memorabilia. Even their kitchen spatulas were Star Wars themed.

The second couple have a cat infestation – a Catwoman that is. He has collected Catwoman to the extreme and yet not kept anything properly. It’s quite sad actually that he’s got into debt over it and then he looses so much money on it all through buying bad pieces, keeping it in a garage and not knowing what he’s got.

The show has a valuation specialist, Elyse Luray, who helps them sort and part with some of their collections. She’s got way more patience than I would have with them. Crying over selling an Ewok – really? If you’ve got a spare hour it’s worth a watch: http://www.syfy.com/collectionintervention

All this does put Scifi hubby in perspective. He hasn’t hidden the collection from me (at least not since after I said ‘I do’ – that I know of!). It is mostly confined to one room. He does generally know what he owns. There is a certain sort of focus. He does understand the value of what he’s got and, mostly buys stuff that will increase in value. On a normal to ‘crazy collector’ scale of 1 – 10 I’d say Scifi hubby is about a 7.5. Bad but not certifiable – yet…

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“Extreme collectors have a deep emotional attachment to their items” Alise Loray

Aug 14 2012

Note to self: keep geeky side quiet when having dinner with normal people

I’ve been out for dinner tonight with some people from work. We’ve had a lovely evening. We had cocktails on the roof terrace then great food in the garden restaurant. They are a group I don’t know very well yet but will be working with a lot in the coming months. Maybe I should have thought about this before my geekiness began to show…

As dinner table conversation flowed from work to holidays to restaurant recommendations to the Olympics to Delboy and Rodney being Batman and Robin to the latest Batman movie I found myself explaining the whole DC v Marvel universe. In WAY too much detail. No normal person should know this stuff.

Someone said they liked the new Spiderman movie but couldn’t understand why they were telling the back story all over again. What possessed me to actually answer I’m not sure but I did (I’m blaming the cocktails). How do I know the names of all the Avengers and all the Justice League? How do I know about Sony having the rights to Spiderman and Marvel wanting them back so they can include Spidy in the next Avengers movie? Why does no one seem to know that there is an extra clip after the end credits on all the Marvel movies which all link together? How do I know so much about the new Superman movie. And what ever made made me think that normal people would know or care who Adam West and Burt Ward are?

I’m hoping I didn’t sound as insane as Scifi hubby can at times. I didn’t rant about the Batman movie. I didn’t declare undying love for Superman. I didn’t tell them I’m half an inch too tall to be an Ewok. I didn’t mention the collection or conventions or that I was wearing Batgirl knickers (yes really). I think I pulled it off but I guess I’ll find out in the office tomorrow…

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Batman and Robin appearing at the Olympic Closing ceremony

Aug 10 2012

Bellinis, BBQ and Batman

It’s Friday night and 35 degrees so it’s time for a BBQ and cocktails. We were sitting in the garden having a lovely evening when, through the flicker of a citronella candle (there’s more bugs here than bats in the bat cave), I realised that the Batman ‘garden gnome’ could be seen.

When we moved house the removal men broke just two things… One was a cute mug with an elephant on it (a gift from my Mum but no big deal really – sorry Mum!). The other was a £300 Warner Bros 24″ Batman Statue.

All credit to the removal men that that was all they broke. They wrapped, packed, transported and unpacked over 5,000 Batmen halfway accross Europe. All with pointy ears, gloves with fins, fragile capes and general high ‘breakability’. Let alone the art…

As we unpacked we discovered Batman’s torso and Batman’s legs were no longer connected. Queue very upset Scifi hubby and slightly freaked out removal men. The language barrier didn’t help as they only spoke German and Scifi hubby is Yorkshire through and through. “Tut mir leid Frau Scifi…” The insurance company were great and quickly paid out the value we told them.

As it happened this is one of very few things that we own two of. The second is safely in an attic in its original box. As a result Scifi hubby couldn’t really be too upset. The insurance paid for a few new toys and the broken Batman, now valueless, had his legs glued back on and he became a rather expensive garden gnome. Shhhhhhh don’t tell Scifi hubby but I quite like our Bat-gnome.

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