This weekend was epic. I just wanted to do a quick post recapping all of the craziness that was Comic Con ’09.

Comic Con Vid Cast will be posted later today, we will also be posting the full video of each panel later on in the week

The night before we left for CC, I received a confirmation E-mail from the NBC rep that we were going to be able to interview Yvonne Strahovski (“Sarah Walker”), Josh Schwartz (Executive Producer) and Chris Fedak (Executive Producer) on Sunday before their panel. Rob, CB and I proudly entered the press room to pick up our press badges, etc on Saturday morning at approx 9am. As excited as we were, we decided to take a few minutes to figure out a game plan for the day’s events. While we were there, we overheard one of the members of the CC Team  mentioning the fact that Daniel Dae Kim was now going to be making an appearance on Sunday to do a press conference. As quick as we could we contacted ABC to RSVP. Their contact was on location all day and would only be reachable via Email (Thank you blackberry!) Before we knew it, we were off to the first panel: Watchmen, Terminator: Salvation and Friday the 13th. **STAY TUNED: Full Videos of the panels will be available on the site later this week** Dave Gibbons was brilliant and very articulate. You can just see the brilliance in the man as he speaks, and McG (Terminator: Salvation Director) knows how to command a room. Derek Mears (The actor who is playing Jason in the up-coming Friday the 13th) looks as creepy with the mask off as he does with the mask on.

After the amazingness of the Warner panels, we decided to check out the floor and do some man-on-the-street interviews. It was awesome to see how excited everyone was about CC. We had a few standard questioned we asked and then we dove right into the listener questions that we received on the forums, over E-mails and on twitter. The costumes were fun, there was a big buzz in the air. Saturday was completely sold out and people were EVERRRRRYWHERE (a la Cleveland Style).

After checking out the floor, it was back to the IGN theater for Pixar’s first look at their next film Up. After seeing 5 clips of this charming movie, although I hate to admit it, I believe Pixar has done it again. With out going into to much detail, Up is the story of Carl Fredricksen, an elderly man who longs to escape to South America. As many of us have seen, he does this by moving his house using thousands of helium-filled balloons. He eventually finds out that he has a stowaway on board, a “scout” named Russell who is eager to get his “helping the elderly” badge. Along the visually stunning landscapes, we get to meet some more fun characters. After Up, we were shown the trailer for Surrogates, and dozens of male and female models who seemed as if they were only void empty shells, creepily came around to pass out business cards to each of us prompting us to visit a website, where we could get our own Surrogates.

After a long first day, we decided to get some R&R along with some food-ski.  We Celebrated the night away with some good friends and even did a little karaoke. Saturday night, I got an e-mail from ABC. 3 words: 11:30 room 1D05. We were in for the Daniel Dae Kim Press conference.

Sunday morning came all too fast, but we were pumped! The first thing on the agenda was going to be the round table Chuck interview. After some slight readjustment to the interview room, we were under way. Yvonne, Josh Schwartz and Chris were seated in the middle of the room (all of 2 feet in front of Rob, CB and I) where they fielded questions from the 10 or so people who were interviewing. Besides our own questions, we asked Colleen and Jay from ChuckCast if they had any they would like answered. I believe that between all of us there, we had most of them answered. Yvonne is even more beautiful in real life then she is on TV. She seems to sparkle ::sigh::

After that we ran off to what we thought was going to be the Daniel Dae Kim press conference. When we entered the room they asked us which ad medium we would be recording with, and when we said we would be filming, rather then us doing a round table discussion, they allowed us some one on one time with Daniel. We have the audio from the round table as well, which we might discuss on this weeks episode with special guest Sue. Daniel was extremely nice and even recorded an opening bumper for us!

The whirlwind day continued on with the Dollhouse Panel at 1pm. One quick note here, people began to line up for Dollhouse at 9am. Those Joss fans are dedicated! Joss was amusing and whimsicle but he really didn’t talk a lot about Dollhouse. The conversations ranged from that, to Buffy, peppered in a little Doctor Horrible and a bunch of Battlestar.

Fringe was the final panel of the day and of our visit to Comic Con. It was amazing to have the whole cast there  Originally, only a few of the actors were schedule to make appearances. You can really tell that they all get along well and really enjoy what they do. There were some great conversations including “games” that they have built into the series. Did you know that the observer is in every episode? Or that the pictures that appear at commercial breaks are actually a code? They also talked about the grossest thing they have had to deal with on set.

Overall, the whole weekend was amazing. Rob and I were up until approx 4am trying to edit and post out the video. I can’t wait until everyone has a chance to see it. I hope that everyone has as much fun watching it as we had filming it.

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     Last Night Rob and I recorded episode 38 (it should be up sometime today) the first show of the New Year. We got a really warm, heartfelt Holiday / New Years Message from Kelly Jo and it really made me think about ’08. I just wanted to take a moment and look back at the year, before we begin the long haul of 2009. A lot occurred in 2008, we got the website up and running, had our first vid-casts, some minor structural / organizational changes and we finally stepped out of our cave and got involved with the podcasting community. (The Vid Casts were actually an Idea suggested to us by Colleen from MetroBuzz while we recorded the Podcast Trivia Challenge.)

     Over all we met and connected with a lot of great people. Behind the scenes Rob and I both went through good times and bad, through it all the community on the forums and twitter were always there to back us up. I just wanted to say Thank you to all of the good people that have crossed our paths this past year. Everyone has really helped form our show into what it has become today.

     Looking ahead to 2009, we have a few ideas that are beginning to take form. Rob and I are going to continue inviting people to guest host. We have some great people lined up for ’09 kicking off during episode 39 with Chris from Boston. Also making appearances in ’09 will be Sue and Robin from Trivia War, as well as listener Rob.

     2009 can hold limitless possibilities, on the down side there is potential for a SAG strike, and analysts believe that the country will continue to be in recession for another year. On the up side, as of Jan 20th we will have a new leader who is inspiring hope in the country. I wanted to leave everyone with a paraphrased statement that John Norton from MetroBuzz made during Trivia War’s 12 Days of Christmas “This year universally was a tough year, 2008 isn’t going to be on anyone’s list of best year’s ever, forget about the tough year, we are hopefully heading in the right direction now, it’s a new day think of ’09 as a brand new day, forget the past and it’s time to start something new.”

We’re big readers (some of us just read graphic novels–ahem, Rob), so we were excited to learn about firstbook.org, which asks you which “book got you hooked.”  It got us thinking.  What book unlocked our imaginations as wee babies and what book made us fall in love with reading? (more…)

Friends mean pressuring you to do things of which you were once initially resistant. I, Meaghan, your favorite xy element to Media Junkyard’s Über manliness, am now on Twitter(!!), because i know that ya’ll need to know what i’m doing ALL THE TIME.
like when i’m plucking my eyebrows lest they become chewbacca twins on my face.
or when i’m wondering why i can’t paint my nails without getting polish on my elbow.
pressing stuff.
so check me out here, or on my twitter box of wonder to the right. then you can ask rob and chris why my box is last. –Meg

The SciFi show Ghost Hunters had a panel on the second day of the convention. No pictures or video footage was allowed to be taken during the panel but the full audio of the panel is below. The panel was hosted by Josh Gates from the show Destination Truth which also airs on SciFi. Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, the two lead investigators from T.A.P.S. (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) who are the front runners of the show answers questions from both the audience and from Josh.

After the Panel Rob and I were able to sit down with Jason and Grant to ask them a few more follow up questions. We were also able to find out their true feelings about a certain paranormal show which happens to run on A&E.

 NYCC Ghost Hunters Panel [49:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 NYCC Ghost Hunters MJ Interview [8:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The final large panel of the second day at Comic Con was by Lionsgate. They were there to talk about the film The Spirit. No pictures or video footage was allowed to be taken during the panel but the full audio of the panel is below.

The Spirit is a film based on the comic book by Will Eisner, it is being directed by Frank Miller ( The 300, Sin City) the cast will include Gabriel Macht as the title character, Eva Mendes, Samuel L Jackson and Scarlett Johansson. Frank and Eva were both on the panel. They discussed the direction in which the film is going to go, Eva Mendes talks about her role in the film and they have a Q&A session.

 NYCC The Spirit Panel [36:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download