Following yesterday's disappointing breakfast at Hennessey's, we hit a new place this morning. Instead, we tried The Cheese Shop. They were harried, seeming a bit understaffed, but the food came fast anyway, and was quite good. I shared with littlestar -- she ordered biscuits and gravy (which came with a stunningly large side of two eggs, hash browns, and sausage) while I had bagels with cream cheese, salmon, and capers. Nice.
Well-fueled, we instantly crashed into the chaos that reigned outside the hall. Ugh, and all that. With that sorted out in a few minutes, we started our day in earnest.
Panel highlights on the day included the tail-end of the panel covering the new Spectacular Spider-Man television program, a set of Pixar shorts, and Neil Gaiman.
I ended up wishing I'd hit the Spider-Man panel earlier (we sat down mainly to get seats for the Neil Gaiman presentation).
The Pixar panel was all about an upcoming Pixar DVD featuring and focused on their shorts. It includes a documentary, which they showed us in full. We rather wished they hadn't, since showing us the documentary, plus three short films, left little time for questions and answers with the three Pixar folks they brought in. As much as I enjoyed the documentary (and I really did), we're going to buy the DVD and have access to it later. I would rather have heard more from the three Pixar people about their experiences, especially comparing short films and features.
The ten minutes of Spider-Man panel was fun. One interaction:
Q: "Will you ever have villain team ups?"
A (from various): "Villain team ups? You mean like, three villains against Spider-Man?"
"Or four villains? Or even five? Six? What about seven? Six?"
"Six? That would be impressive."
"One might even call it sinister."
Cue applause there, with the Sinister Six reference.
Neil Gaiman came on in a very impromptu fashion, introduced quickly and well by Pam Noles. Neil Gaimain is probably more brilliants sans prompting than he is with someone officially asking questions. He told us about the status of various movie projects (Death has once again wiggled closer to reality) and then moved on to ask audience questions. A number of questions boil down to "How do you work, and how can I work like you?"
I hope videos of Neil's session will show up online, as I didn't bother to record anything he said in detail.
The "Star Wars at 30" panel was fairly lame. I'd already seen the previews for the new Clone Wars cartoon, and everything else tended toward lame. Especially poor was the decision to preview non-Star Wars games coming out from Lucasarts. It felt overly opportunistic to throw random ads at us because we're too polite to leave in the middle.
Outside of panels, I followed littlestar around as we visited booths, checking in again with the folks from Flight, as well as Pascal Campion, Stan Sakai, and other people. I occasionally floated out when she talked with people for a longer time, checking on the rest of the floor.
Last year, we were able to call Taka when they opened and get a table. Today, a call half and hour after opening netted us nothing until 9pm. The rest of the Gaslamp was similarly swamped, so we yet again bagged it and headed home early, eating in Ocean Beach instead.