A San Diego Comic-Con, Part Three: A Drink Best Served Strong

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8:30 P.M.

As soon as the roundtable ends I speed-walk 12 blocks to the San Diego Civic Theatre and barely make it in time for the start of the highlight of Comic-Con for me this year – the celebrity premiere of Cowboys & Aliens. (It seemed a lot closer on a world map.)

Sure, Jon Favreau brings out Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde and Ron Howard on the same stage, threatening to blind the audience with the sheer star-wattage. But damn it, it’s not a party until I get there.

“All the people who won a Golden Ticket… welcome to the chocolate factory,” he says to the screaming fans – many of them really did win the right to see it alongside the cast and crew who made it.

It’s days before the movie almost got its ass handed to it by The Smurfs at the box office and everyone in the theater – an opera house fitted with a high-tech screen and a new sound system for the occasion – is pumped for a high-octane popcorn movie.

“When I was little, Christmas was a big deal in my house. I’m half-Catholic, half-Jewish, and my Jewish grandfather grew up in the Depression and he loved Christmas,” Favreau says, working the crowd. “I remember I was a pretty spoiled kid; anything I saw on Saturday morning cartoons advertised, I said, ‘I want that, I want that, I want that.’ And I was an only child, God bless my parents and my grandparents – I got all the presents. I’d see them all wrapped up and I knew what all the presents were because I’d asked for them. I could tell by the size of the box and the wrapping paper.

“But there was one box that my grandfather would put out there, and it wasn’t something I asked for, I didn’t know what the hell it was. He would say, ‘It’s from Santa.’

“I used to get mad; I knew there was no Santa, and I didn’t know what the box was. I would shake the box, and I would look at the box. Finally, Christmas would come around and I would unwrap all the presents and finally they’d give me that box.

“My grandfather passed away, God bless him, he’d always find something that I didn’t know that I asked for. So this summer, we’ve had a lot of Christmas presents, and you’ve unwrapped them all and there have been a lot of good movies this year. But there’s one that everybody’s been shaking the box, and reading the label, and they say, ‘From Santa?! Cowboys & Aliens, what is this?!’ Well, you’re the first people to unwrap the present.”

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I did, I really did – despite the incredibly hokey ending – but even better was the afterparty outside on the very same red carpet treaded on hours earlier by all those A-listers. A replica of one of the movie’s spaceships hung above the free food stations, dispensing everything from BBQ pork sliders to Western chicken salad to corn tortilla cones. And then there was the free beer.

I trawl around looking for either celebrity sightings or any signs of people I know and strike out on both counts. I’m really good at entertaining myself, though, and get by on seconds of the food.

MIDNIGHT

By the time I leave to head over to see my friend Colin at the Syfy party at the top of the Hotel Solamar, the rest of the evening starts to become a blur.

I distinctly remember setting a top five score on an old arcade game of Centipede and imbibing blue Syfy-tinis to help boost my skill.

I remember Colin telling me about the orphanage he was having built in Haiti and then him telling some good-looking woman about some sexual experimenting that we did in college together – which, to my recollection, we never really did.

I remember a producer coming up to me, seeing my name tag and paying me the best compliment I have ever received: I dig your work, I read it in the News all the time and can’t believe you get away with it at a major newspaper. And I didn’t have to pay for that one.

On the way back to the hotel, I pass an attractive blonde woman dressed as Supergirl and all I can think about is, man, your costume is now outdated because of the DC reboot. Then I feel a strong urge to give myself a wedgie.

Within five hours I’d be hung over and slinking out of San Diego headed for the airport, having only a mixed record to show for Comic-Con. I had been depressed about nixed interviews and all that time away from my family. But for now, at least, it sure does seem like the center of the galaxy – ours and all the other 12 systems where Evazan had a death sentence.

San Diego Comic-Con has gotten too big, too crowded, too Hollywood, too commercial, too inaccessible, but once in a while the charm pokes through. Just a bunch of geeks being geeky.

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