June of 2022 was a tough month for Grant and me. The theme of the month was — “just get through June and July will be better.” I would often find myself just repeating this phrase over and over and over. July 1st hit and our lives didn’t miraculously get better, but it slowly over time.
We have a new addition to the family. His name is Ludo. Ludo Chris to be exact. He is a goofy Old English Sheepdog and is about 12-13 weeks as I write this. My body looks like I was in a car crash with the number of bruises and scratches this dog has caused, but we wouldn’t change anything. He is fully potty trained already and knows basic commands such as “give me food…now” and “I want some of that.” Rather, he has taught us his basic commands.
July marks the beginning of our Annual Tradition season. The first event up this year was Comic-Con 2022. 100,000+ people descend to San Diego to enjoy this “nerd-a-palooza” where anything and everything goes. You want to dress up. Sure. You want to fly your freak flag. Sure. You want to spend lots of money on toys. Sure. Anything goes here and you're likely to run into someone who has the same strange likings.
There was not a lot of “planning” on my part for the convention this year as I was preoccupied with June Gloom. However, the fact that we had tickets was a miracle considering they were sold 2 years ago in 2020. New tickets did not go on sale so unless you carried your tickets over it was near impossible to purchase them. Grant was in the midst of getting a new portfolio with his company so his interest level in Comic-Con was at an all-time low, which is saying something for him. And with no Conan this year (since no one ever watched him outside of Comic-Con) there was no unifying event to bring friends together.
This year Jake and I went stag to Comic-Con, but we still had an amazing time. This year was all about celebrity sightings for me. Who was going to be here and when? Most of my time was split between two places— Ballroom 20 and Hall H. Ballroom 20 is TV, while Hall H is movies.
In Ballroom 20 on Thursday, throughout this 5 day convention, we saw the Rookie with Nathan Fillion, Paramount+’s Ghosts, the TV reboot of National Treasure, Severance with Ben Stiller, and Adam Scott, and Mike Judge’s Bevis and Butthead. On Thursday, I also snuck into Hall H and was able to catch Dungeons and Dragons with Chris Pine, Hugh Grant, Michelle Rodriguez, and the guy from Bridgerton Rege Jean-Page.
On Friday, we started with the 22nd Annual Animation Shown of Shows. It wasn’t bad. I was surprised by how interesting some of the stories came off. The big panel was Marvel Studio’s 1st Animation panel. A lot of great stuff came out including the reboot of the X-Men cartoon, What-If, Zombies, I am Groot… basically if you like Marvel you know what this is. Otherwise, it’s just Marvel cartoons. I stayed for one more panel—Paper Girls, which I am calling it now— is DOA. I ventured off to Hall H afterward to hear Keanu Reeves talk about his new comic, to randomly watch Dragon Ball Z’s new movie, and finished with a candid discussion with several directors who truthfully had some major flops.
After doing Comic-Con for years— I have given up on Saturday. Unless you want to camp out or spend shifts of your day elsewhere— it is not worth it to me. Jake went in early and was willing to deal with the chaos, while I just vegged out with Grant. We took Ludo to a park, had a nice lunch, and then just slowly made our way to the convention center. We caught two panels— one we had no interest in called Resident Alien, but the next one was a show called “The Resort.” Oddly enough Grant mentioned several weeks back as one he wanted to watch. We watched the pilot/premiere of the show and then had a talk-back with the cast.
Sunday is usually a dead day for the convention as most people are packing up to leave. The celebrities and large studios have already presented so the only thing left is the small panels that only those truly interested attend. This is probably the first year ever that I don’t need a day off just to recover. I am probably going to continue this trend for future Comic-Cons. After 2 years of COVID, it is nice to have something exciting like this back in San Diego and revitalize downtown. To many more!
Probably the coolest thing or at least the most expensive thing I saw at Comic-Con was a real-life replica of Thano’s gauntlet in which someone put real-life jewels in the glove. The glove is worth an estimated 25 million dollars and of course, it was on full display for anyone to “snap” a photo of.