On Saturday, 2/28/2009, my friend and I had a grand adventure.  We spent all day at WonderCon 2009 in San Francisco, and saw the 10:00PM performance of  Cheech & Chong in Santa Rosa.  By the time I got home on Sunday morning at 2:30AM, I been awake for 20 hours straight and had driven 230 miles.

Driving Up to The City

When I parked my car at my friend's place in Sunnyvale,  he was supposed to give me a parking permit to avoid having my car towed by the neighborhood association, and then we would drive up to the City in his car.   Except the permit couldn't be found after 15 minutes of frantic searching.  We ended up taking my car instead.  Driving to San Francisco, Santa Rosa, and back was a big deal for me.

I got my driver license in December 2008 after putting it off for 20 years.   I grew up taking public transit, never had a strong desire to own a car, and my life wasn't stable enough for me to be a responsible driver.  When my Dad insisted that I take his 1994 Pontiac Grand Prix as a birthday present, and another friend offered to teach me how to drive, everything fell into place for me to become a responsible driver.  Until I went to San Francisco, I haven't driven more than 20 miles away from my home.  For the past year, I been driving an average 160 miles on one tank of gas per month.

Driving north on Highway 101 towards the City was smooth until we drove past Candlestick Point.  My friend then guided me through the City to reach the 5th Street and Mission Street garage.  I didn't want to get lost in San Francisco.  My Dad and I got lost once in China Town looking for a job site when we worked together in construction in 1989, and an unsecured pallet of concrete blocks slid down back of his flatbed truck by two feet when going up one of those steep hills.   Nothing fell off but it was awfully close.  On another occasion in 1993, a group of friends and I were going to a church service at the San Francisco Marriott when we took the wrong exit and ended up being part of the Gay Pride Week parade for five blocks before we could find a street to exit on.  That was a wild tale for being an hour late for church.

Before we made it safely to the garage, some idiot in SUV made an illegal left-hand turn from the middle lane at an intersection in front of me that I had to hit my breaks hard.  I'm such a noob at driving that I don't bother to honk my horn, scream my head off, or wave my finger.  California road rage is one thing I haven't mastered yet.  Those taxi drivers drive worst than the idiots who think they know how to drive.

The first time that I saw the Moscone Center was in 1989 when it was still a huge hole in the ground.  I been there twice for the MacWorld Expo in 2007 (iPhone introduction) and this past January (Apple's last appearance), where both exhibit halls were used.  Since WonderCon was using only one hall with the space split between the registration area and the exhibit floor, the support beams for the convention center was exposed in the empty space of the registration area.  That's something you don't notice while attending the exhibits.   That reminded me of the ship support areas on the Battlestar Galactica, and I could imagine the hall filled with parked Raptors and Vipers.

The Panels

After we got our badges, we parked our butts in the Esplanade Ballroom for the next four hours to see the panels that we wanted to see and saw other panels because we didn't want to surrender our seats.  I think there was room for only 200 people to sit down and no one was allowed to stand in back or along the walls.  We missed out on the Terminator Salvation panel later in the day because the line going out and around the building was too long.

WatchMen Panel

The highlight for the day was the Watchmen panel that featured the first 20 minutes of the movie, which corresponds to the first 14 pages of the graphic novel, showing the death of the Comedian.  There's a short interlude in the middle that showed the superhero movement from the 1940's to the 1980's with Bob Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changing playing in the background and pop culture references everywhere.  The one part that I didn't like was the Comedian pulling the trigger in the JFK assassination.  Being a huge fan of The X-Files, only the Cigarette Smoking Man could've pulled the trigger on JFK after setting up Lee Harvey Oswald.  Otherwise, this was a stunning clip.

Another clip showed Rorschach defending himself from another prison inmate in the cafeteria, and uttering the most memorable line from the graphic novel: "None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me."

Having seen Watchmen at the theater since then, the movie was faithful to the graphic novel in capturing the main elements of the story like a Reader's Digest version (in a good way).  The ending was different to keep the movie running less than three hours.  The director, Jack Synder, announced at the panel that a director's cut version will appear in limited release in July 2009

Summit Entertainment Panel

Two movie trailers were shown: Astro Boy and Knowing.  The unfinished trailer for Astro Boy didn't turn me on.  I'm wary of any animation movie since I saw two-thirds of the animation movies that Hollywood swamped the box office in 2005.  Still recovering from that.  The trailer for Knowing was much better about a list of numbers kept in a time capsule for 50 years that predicted every major disaster that happened and will happen.

Pandorum Panel

After seeing the trailer for Pandorum, a new sci-fi horror movie from the creators of Resident Evil movies, we got three relatively unknown cast members who had no clue what to talk about except make lame jokes about a sex tape that may or may not be release on the future DVD.  The trailer, however, was really good with strong hints of Alien and Event Horizon in the storyline.

Alien Trespass Panel

After seeing the trailer for Alien Trespass, the director and cast members came out to discuss how they made a 1950's style science fiction movie the exact same way that movies were made back in the 1950's with only three len sizes, rubber monsters, and serious acting.  The new movie, and probably most movies from the 1950's, are funny today even though they were made during an era of possible nuclear annihilation.  I was fascinated by how actors back then had to memorized the script rather than ab lib as many younger actors do today.

Star Trek Panel

The new trailer for Star Trek that acutally made me believe that this will be a successful relaunching of the franchise with the part showing Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) is pointing out that the Enterprise doesn't have a captain or a second-in-command, and a young Kirk (Chris Pine) saying "Yeah, we do." before taking the captain chair himself.  The panel had an interesting discussion about being faithful to the original series while breaking new ground.  There was a bizarre moment the director, J.J. Abrams, and Chris Pine started rapping.  A second movie with the new cast may happen if a good enough script comes along.

The Exhibit Floor

The first big decision on the exhibit floor was to head straight to the autograph tables and figured out how much money I was going to spend.  As Wired pointed out, you can spend $100 for a Mark Hamill autograph or buy ten other things for that amount.  I decided to have Carrie Fisher autographed a Princess Leia in the slave girl outfit picture for $40.  I debated whether or not to get an Erin Gray's autograph for $25, but decided that one autograph per convention was enough.  If I keep going to conventions, I'll probably end up with a wall of autographed pictures of science fiction babes surrounding an autographed picture of William Shatner.  If you seen the movie Fanboys, you're understand where I'm coming from.

Once I had my autographed picture, I wasn't interested in anything else.  I'm not a comic book collector even though I been picking up issues of The X-Files and the forthcoming Resident Evil comics from Wildstorm, and read mangas like Genshiken and S.S. Astro.  If you didn't get your Star Wars action figures when they first came out in the 1980's or 1990's, there was several bazillion for sale.  I did pick up The X-Files "I WANT TO BELIEVE" poster and an Alien Tresspass movie poster for my office space.

There was a masquerade ball later that evening that we didn't go to because we had to be in Santa Rosa.  I told my friend that we could get some blue body paint, spray paint ourselves naked, and go in as Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen.  (There was one blue guy wearing nothing but a Speedo and sandals walking around.)  Except we're not exactly the tall skinny types and could be mistaken for naked Smurfs instead.  I'm sure the Star Wars stormtroopers and bounty hunters running around the place would've hauled us out of the building and stomp us to death.

Driving North Again

If my friend wasn't there to guide me through San Francisco, we would've never made it to Santa Rosa.   For the second time in my life, I had crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.  This time in the dark.  Although the bridge was illuminated from one end to the other like a Christmas tree, the only thing you can from the bridge was the bridge itself.  If you drive over the bridge on a clear day, you can see out into the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Oakland Hills to the east.

Now driving north Highway 101 through the hills of Marin County was a different story.  You may be driving up a hill or around a curve at 55 MPH, and then find yourself accelerating to 80 MPH while going downhill.  That was a unnerving experience.  Trying to drive at a sane speed while some people are driving insanely faster than you was also a challenge.  When we thought we had driven past the exit for the Wells Fargo Center for The Arts, we came upon a bright electronic sign announcing that the Cheech & Chong performance was sold out.  Fortunately, my friend got the tickets in advance three months ago.

Cheech & Chong

Although I saw the Cheech & Chong movies during the 1980's when my family got cable for the first time, I didn't quite remember their comedy routines and wasn't really a fan.  My friend is a big fan.

Chong's re-interpretation of the Bible that God was a stoner: the scripture says God is Lord of the MOST HIGH.  God created a green earth to get stone on the seventh day, spoke to Moses from a burning bush, columns of fire and smoke in the desert, the ancient Israelis kept asking Moses if he was high enough when wandering the desert for 40 years, and Moses wanted to find the land of milk and honey since everyone had the munchies.

The other skit begins with Chong pointing out that Mexicans and pot can be found everywhere except for one place.  Then Cheech comes out as a janitor who takes a joyride on a rocket to the moon with the music from 2001: A Space Odyssey playing in the background, and the video screen at the back of the stage showed Cheech getting into a lunar rover on the moon to jack the front end up-and-down on hydraulics.

Kids today don't put hydraulics on their cars like they did in the 1970's.  They install two 18" speakers and a dozen car batteries in the trunk to blast their music.  When I was working at The Old Spaghetti Factory in 1995, the assistant kitchen manager had his car set up that way.  One night after the restaurant was closed, he cranked up the volume.  I could still hear the Mexican music playing when I got home two miles away at 1:00AM in the morning.

I have a very indirect relationship with the pot culture.

My brother was a 1970's hippie/stoner (he was born too late to be accepted in either group) who grew pot out in the backyard. When he told our mother that these were tomato plants, she believed him until the plants got really tall, there was no red fruit, and a pair of FBI agents came by looking for him.  For the next ten years, I was forbidden by my mother from growing tomatoes plant from seed since she thought the FBI would come knocking again.

On the other end of the legal spectrum, I took care of a roommate dying from Lou Gehrig's Disease for four years in the late 1990's when he had a prescription for medical majurania.  When his arms became too week, I had to hold his joint while he smoked it while a fan blew the smoke out of the window.  That was tough on me because I had sinus headaches from the secondhand smoke, and I couldn't go out to a park without some kind of reaction to the grass or pollen for five years.  Depending on where you are in the medical majurania debate, my roommates were either heroes or criminals for helping a dying roommate.

Driving Home

When the show ended, a thousand joints must've been lit up at once since the smell of weed was everywhere.  We got out of there as quickly as possible since I got a pounding headache from the secondhand smoke.  Which was good since the pounding headache kept me awake on the way home.  We drove south on Highway 101, outrunning a storm that was coming off of the Pacific Ocean.  Again my friend guided me through San Francisco since Highway 101 disappears inside the City.  We got to his place after 90 minutes of driving, and I got home about 30 minutes later.

When I got gas the next day, I was surprised that I got 23 MPG for 230 miles.  When I worked at Google in Mountain View for a while, I was getting 18 MPG on the daily commute.  Otherwise, I only get 11 MPG while driving around town.  When I told my Dad, he told me that I had a performance car, that I needed to get out drive long distances from time to time, and that I never listen to him.  I reminded him that my brother became the auto body specialist, and I became the computer specialist in our family.   I'm still learning how to be a responsible driver.

The Future

My friend and I are planning to attend Comic Con 2009 in San Diego this July.  That's a major trip since driving in my car would require ~70 gallons of gas for the 1,600 mile round trip.  Flying might be cheaper but I never been on a plane either.  (Yes, I'm a village idiot.)  Go down on Friday, stay at a hotel near the convention center, and come back up on Sunday.  This is the only convention that the web comic artists that I'm a fan of will attend on the West Coast.  I'm hoping to meet the artists and writers behind AppleGeeks, Megatokyo, Penny Arcade and many others.  I'm looking forward to challenge of driving—or flying—that distance.

Related Links: WonderCon 2009 Pictures,  Dedicated Office Space Pictures

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