2003-07-21 1:08 p.m.

I was able to get my extremely lazy butt up at 5am on Saturday & was parking at the convention center at 6:30am. I took a book bag with a book for me to read & my "Bite Me" book to get sigs in, some bottled water & some granola bars. When I got there the line had about 50 people in it already & I sat down on the sidewalk & waited. By 9:45am when they opened the doors the line was down to Seaport Village (2 blocks away) but I was inside by 10am, had my registration done by 10:15. Then I went and sat down with my floorplan of the huge convention center & worked out my game plan.

The first panel I wanted to see was at Noon so I walked around the vendor area until about 11:15, then got some over priced lunch & was up in the Futurama room at 5 till noon. It was pretty packed but I got a good seat. That panel was great & they showed an un-aired episode. I skipped out on the Simpsons panel to go see if I could find Nick Brendon. Turns out he was a no-show, but on the cool side, I ran into these 2 gals who had on tee shirts that said something about Buffy. I asked them if they knew what was up with NB. They didn't but they did tell me about a Buffy Convention that's happening here in San Diego in October. YAY :-) There'll probably be some minor buffy celebs there, but even if there aren't it's still cool to get with people who've wasted as many hours as I have watching the best TV show EVER.

I went back to the Simpsons room which was packed & worked my way down the side of the room near the front. When that panel was over much of the crowd got up leaving me a prime spot on THE FRONT ROW, CENTER!!! :-) :-) :-)

Next was an hour and 1/2 from Cartoon Network, which was also awesome. They had 2 shows to plug - Duck Dogers (Daffy & Porky) which had super amazing animation & good writing. Not super awesome, but still great. Then Teen Titans. They didn't show an ep since it was actually premiering that night on CN, but did still had a presentation from it. It looked cool with quasi-japanimation. It's really geared toward younger kids, but I'll probably check it out. The modertor from CN was a cutie & so funny. Plus he was wearing a SWATCH. How cool is that?

Then it was time for Joss. I was super giddy & he was running a little late so I had time to chat with the people beside me - mostly about season 7 & Angel speculation. Then - there he was!!!! I wish I had a tape recorder with me cause I was so much in the moment I don't remember a lot of the actual conversation. But here's the highlights & if you aren't a buffy fan this won't make sense but Pat will get it :-) :

In Conversations With Dead People, when Dawn saw Joyce, that was the first.

He's working hard to get Willow to do guest appearances on Angel. He'd also love to do either a Faith spinoff or a Willow spinoff but Eliza & Ally are both pretty busy right now.

He's going to do another series of Fray comics to "fix" the mythology he messed up taking the Slayer power from just Buffy & Faith and giving it to all the potentials.

Firefly is coming out on DVD in December with every ep in the order he wanted them, not the order Fox wanted them; commentary on every episode; and a blooper reel.

Nathan Fallon (Caleb/Captain) was there and got a big bunch of praise from Joss & clapping from the crowd.

Joss said he was trying to do a Firefly movie, but didn't have financial backing yet.

Willow is his favorite character from the show.

Somebody asked how he felt about the backlash from season 6 & he said he totally respected that it was really hard for somepeople to watch, that even when they were making it the writers and the crew were like "damn, this is depressing". But he felt that when you look at the whole 7 seasons together then you'll see it was a necessary place for them to go.

He said he was still talking with Tony Head about doing something with Ripper - either movie or series but it was a ways away.

The Buffy/Animated series is looking less and less like it's going to happen mostly because of $$.

For last season's Angel they had planned for the whole season for Cordy to be the big bad & after they'd broken the first few scripts they found out she was preggers. Connor was also written to be against Angel, but the pregnancy in real life is what lead to the Jasmine story - which they were happy with.

That's all I can think of for now... More later if I think of it.

The writer's panel was next & Drew was right in front of me so I was happy :-) But.... I have to say I DO NOT like David Fury. Man I tried, but he just took it upon himself to be the spokesperson for the panel and really didn't want to let anyone else talk. This man has no problem with self confidence. But Drew got in a few words here & there, as did Steven DeKnight who is very well spoken. Highlights from that:

Fury, Drew Goddard, James Marsters and DB Woodside did audio comentary for Lies My Parents Told Me for the DVD.

Fury said Goddard did comentary for all his episodes but Drew didn't confirm that so I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed.

Harmony should be around on Angel alot next year.

Steven DeKnight fielded the "Seeing Red" questions very well saying it was hard to kill Tara but it wasn't personal - if Willow had still been with Oz at the time, Oz would have bought the farm. Also the rape sceen was Marti's idea & it was to show that even though Spike had a chip he still didn't know how to be a "good man" because he was soul-less.

Connor won't be back (which got HUGH cheers from the crowd).

Gunn is going to have a lot more change & growth as a character this year - that's as close as they would get to explaining the white room.

No spoiler info on Spike at all but they are very aware they can't treat it lightly because he made the ultimate sacrafice at the end of Buffy.

Oh, back to Joss - he got a question about {paraphrase} - what kind of message did he feel he was sending with Buffy becoming close again with Spike after he tried to rape her. He said that Spike & Buff's relationship was one that was very unhealthy and all about dominance and submission. When they were in the bathroom Spike didn't have what it took to realize that this time the No meant No. But that didn't just make him be the Big Bad again. He went to seek out a soul to try and change and learn to be a better person. They (the writers) knew that they could never bring Buffy & Spike to a sexual relationship again, but they could show that he could work to regain her trust & her forgiveness. Joss felt they did show that well.

Ok, I'm going to stop with that vein for now. If I think of anything else from the panels I'll write it later.

Post panels I didn't get in the Joss signature line cause it was way downstairs. I did get Danny Strong's sig (Jonathan) and can I just tell you how amazingly cute he is? I had him sign "Superstar" in "Bite Me" but he thought the review was awful - way to anal. Robia (Jenny) was there but I didn't get her sig. Got Mark Lutz - Groo from Angel.

Then on to the writer's table & I got all of theirs. I told Steven how much I loved his directing style on Angel & I hoped that he did a lot next year. Drew loved the page I made up for him & he had to explain to Mr. Bell (producer guy) about the whole website the the minion thing. The Bell accidently marked on Drew's pic on my page (which I'll be able to fix) so his sig to me in my book was "Tonya, sorry I marked on Drew's perfect face" Very Funny. I asked David Fury to sign "Primal" and he made a "pfft" sound. I asked him what the "pfft" sound was for & he didn't answer but asked if I had liked that ep & I told him it was one of my faves. But to give him a little bit of credit he didn't have to ask me my name - I guess he had been listening when I was talking to Drew.

I didn't make it back on Sunday cause I was exhausted & broke. O-well.

The best way to end the recap of my wonderful Saturday is with The Ultimate Drew, here's a pic from Saturday: