Fan Expo Canada

I went to my first fan convention over labor day weekend!  To sum it up: it was amazing!  I had the absolute best time!  Here are some highlights.

THURSDAY

I took a short puddle jumper flight from Newark International Airport to Bill Bishop City Airport in Toronto.  Porter, the Canadian airline I took, even had a little lounge just for those flying Porter that had complimentary beverages (water bottles, soda, juice, tea & coffee) and cookies.  The flight itself was only a little over an hour and soon I found myself in Toronto!  There was a free shuttle that dropped me off just outside my hotel and the airport was only 10 minutes away from the hotel anyway!

I stayed at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, which was beautiful! It was a wonderful hotel.  When I was checking in Karen Gillan (from the TV show Doctor Who) was checking in and I went up and said hi which made my whole day :)

FRIDAY

Friday was the first day I got to see the convention. I was by myself since my partners in crime weren't coming in until Friday night.  I got up early to wait in line to get my badge and my bag of swag.

I walked all over the vendor floors, and saw panels with Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond in Doctor Who), and James and Oliver Phelps (The Weasley twins in the Harry Potter films).

Standing in line underneath the CN Tower

Premium - because I'm worth it

Tom Felton panel

Tom Felton panel

I'm in a tiny TARDIS!

Me with a weeping angel

Doctor Who nonsense

Karen Gillan panel

Karen Gillan panel

One of the vendor floors from above

Silly green screen photo op

Storm Troopers on the escalator behind me

James and Oliver Phelps panel

James and Oliver Phelps panel

Sabrina and Filip came in Friday evening and we all had dinner and got to check into the hotel.  I moved rooms as we were going to share a room for the remainder of the trip.  We got a complimentary upgrade to a suite and that was awesome!  It included 2 bathrooms and a beautiful, huge room!

SATURDAY

Saturday was crazy!  There were so many people at the convention that it definitely felt a little crazed.  I went to the Star Trek Voyager panel, wandered all over the vendor floors, saw the Hogwarts Reunion panel (including Tom Felton, James and Oliver Phelps, and Rupert Grint), and saw a sketch duel!  This was Rupert Grint's first convention ever so that was pretty cool.  The sketch duel was interesting.  They took two comic book artists and gave them a character to draw in their own style. They had 30 minutes to draw and meanwhile they answered questions from the audience. It was fascinating!

I don't know what these creatures are. But now I have a photo with them.

Cast of Star Trek Voyager panel

Storm Trooper parade

The Premium pass holder's lounge

The tumblr I won from Subway

Sketch Duel - The guy on the left draws for The Hulk and the guy on the
right draws Daredevil

I bought a print from this artist!

Hogwarts Reunion panel

After the fun of the day was over, we found a fun food court type restaurant to have dinner. They gave you a little swipe card so whenever you wanted something, they swiped your card and then that was used to charge you the correct amount at the end.  We ended the day with a low key drink in the hotel bar.

SUNDAY

Sunday involved more panels, more photo ops, and another sketch duel. We also did an interactive game where we were on Star Trek.  I was the science officer and got to scan the enemy ships to find out more.  Sabrina was the pilot and drove us into an asteroid.  We also were surrounded by a hoard of Daleks (monsters from Doctor Who). It was hilarious!

Daleks

Star Trek game

We're excited to play the Star Trek game!

Sketch duel with artists from Archie comics

Gillian Anderson (X-Files) panel

Gillian Anderson (X-Files) panel

Tyler Hoechlin (Teen Wolf) panel

Jenna Coleman (Doctor Who) panel

Haley Atwell panel

Haley Atwell panel

Here are some videos of the Daleks.  It was too funny!

Long story short. I had an amazing time and I can't wait for my next convention! I think I've got a new favorite activity!

Fun with Friends!

So I haven't updated my blog in a while.  I've got to get better about that!  But, mostly all of July and August was spent seeing Hedwig and the Angry Inch a million times.  Ok not a million.  Just 8.

But last weekend I had 2 exciting visitors!  First Ju Yeon, and then Monica!  It's great getting seem my buddies who I miss dearly.

It was a pretty quick visit for both, so mostly we hung out and chatted.  Though we did have dinner at the pub that inspired MacLaren's pub in the TV show How I Met Your Mother.

We also made a trip downtown, made a quick stop at Marie's Crisis (a piano bar that specializes in nothing but showtunes), and had some ice cream from The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop.

We also played with Fondant

Brains and Bette

June has just flown by!  I'm now in Oregon visiting family for a few days but right before I left I had a couple of show adventures.

I got to see A New Brain at New York City Centre's Encores starring Jonathan Groff.  It was a very intriguing musical about a man with a brain tumor. Spoiler alert: he lives.  It was very upbeat music and a fun story, though slightly odd subject material.  Jonathan Groff, of course, was great!

The only downside.  The guy sitting next to me had THE WORST BO I've ever had the misfortune to encounter.

Then the very next day I went to see Bette Midler in her Divine Intervention Tour at Madison Square Garden.  I won the tickets through a Time Warner Cable online giveaway. I know, I was astonished too!  I'm really glad I won these tickets though because otherwise I never would have gone and I had such a good time.

Bette Midler was really fabulous! It's hard to believe she's 70 and doing a show like this.  She had several costume changes and she never seemed to stop moving!  Plus she sounded great, she was really funny, and she seemed like she was having a good time on stage.

Theatre For One

Well you can't say that I don't go outside of the box in my quest to see theatre.  Ok, well in this case it was going inside the box.

Theatre For One is this very strange theatre experience that was happening the last couple weeks. I caught a show near my office last Friday.

I forgot to take a picture of the actual box, but you can kind of see it in the background behind the trees.  There was quite the line, it actually took about 1 and 1/2 hours before it was my turn.  I wouldn't normally have waited in line that long for something like this but I was killing time anyway and it was a nice day to sit outside!

Once it was my turn, I went into the box and sat in a red chair.  Then a panel was opened and a girl was sitting on the other side.  She started talking to me and telling me a story of how one time she was lost.  It was really awkward because she would ask me questions that I was never truly sure if I was supposed to answer or not.  There are several shows that are performed by different actors so I only saw one of them.  It was a weird but interesting experience!

On Saturday, Seth and I were wandering around the east side and randomly decided to take the tram to Roosevelt Island!  It was my first time on there so that was quite cool.

We also passed this very cool Manhattan Mini Storage that used to be a movie theatre. So they had silly fake movie titles up on the marquee.

Ever After

Yesterday Kari and I went on a New Jersey adventure.  Why, you might ask?  I decided it would be fun to see the new production of Ever After the musical (based on the movie with Drew Barrymore) that is playing at the Papermill Playhouse.  This is the same theatre where Newsies got its start.  I figured Ever After would make it to Broadway eventually, but this seemed like a fun way to see it ahead of time.

First of all, Papermill is such a cute little theatre.  It's only about a 5 minute walk from the train station, it has a cute little backyard with patio tables and a koi pond next to a rushing brook.  Very much your tranquil ideal setting for some peace.  It even has these iron arches with different fairy tale characters on it.

The show itself was also pretty cute. I wouldn't say it's the most amazing musical I've ever seen and I do think it needs a little work and some tightening up before it could really make the Broadway leap but the potential is there. The songs were cute and they did keep some of the best lines from the movie.  The cast, though, that was the best part.  I had heard that Christine Ebersole was in it and she's a pretty big deal. I don't really think I know who she is all that much, but she definitely have an amazing voice.  I was really excited when I got my playbill and realized that Charles Shaughnessy was in the show though!  He plays the King and he was also Mr Sheffield in The Nanny!  Andrew Keenan-Bolger, who starred in the original cast of Newsies, was also in the show.  Even though I hadn't heard of the rest of the cast, they all had at least 1 Broadway credit under their belt.  So all in all it was very impressive the caliber of talent they are able to get at this theatre. If there was another show that sounded fun I would without question make the trek again!

Here's a little video from the show.



And then lastly, on our way back to the train. We saw a groundhog!!  I'm not sure I've ever seen one in real life before.  It was just hanging out in its hole in the grass along the walkway.  Not something you see in the city, that's for sure!