June 2, 2009
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25th Anniversary …
The past few days I was in Pasadena, CA for the annual Transformers convention known as Botcon. It was totally AWESOME!!
Like previous Botcon’s, we basically stood in line to basically register to get in, get extra souvenir toys, enter the dealer room, get autographs, take tours, get food, etc, etc. Over the course of four days I think I stood in line for well over 12 hours.
The event was pretty cool since they had announced some nice guests such as Peter Cullen (voice of Optimus Prime), Vince Dicola, Weird Al, Gregg Berger (voice of Grimlock) and many others. They also had a party at Paramount Studios and surprised everyone with a “surprise” movie star. That namely being Tyrese Gibson or Mr. Left Cheek as many were screaming out. I was essentially five feet from him and just missed shaking hands with him! It was just like when I met Dan Quayle back in the day.
In the dealer room was Optimus Prime (who was leaking oil). He took so much space in the dealer room I wish they had stuck him somewhere else to make more room for people. At the Party at Paramount, Ironhide was in attendence and then Tyrese came riding in Ratchet. I overheard someone saying that Ironhide wasn’t street legal because he had didn’t have a VIN on him. Yeah, talk about fanboy details.
The Party at Paramount was pretty cool even if the buses that were going to take us were late. The buffet was pretty good considering the type of food they had at previous Botcons. There was a concert by Stan Bush and Vince Dicola. If I ever hear “The Touch” any time soon I think I’m going to go crazy. Talk about overplayed! We all knew a “special” guest was going to be at the party and most of us figured it was Tyrese. He was in Providence during the preview showing of the first movie. Apparently, he’s a BIG Transformers fan and he was in town for some MTV awards show.The one thing we all wondered was if they would show the new movie at the party. As time ticked away we were later ushed to a nice theatre where they started to collect everyone’s cellphones and cameras. ooooh the suspence! But alas, they were only going to show us the latest trailer. yeah bummer. That’s when Boo’s started to echo in the hall and then they turned to screams!!!! Michael Bay comes running out, my friend and I had front row seats but NO CAMERA!!!! Bay talked abunch and then they showed two short clips. First was a clip of Devestator combining and then a prolonged fight scene between Bumblebee, Rampage and Ravage. It was pretty slick. Especially since Shia was holding a sock in his hand! Since the footage was not final we expect it to be digitized into something else.
After that, we took a quick backlot tour with my friend and I being one of the last ones being able to do that. It was pretty cool. Saw an area where they shot a clip of 24, the place where Spider-Man kissed Mary Jane in the first Spider-Man movie, the diner from Indiana Jones 4, a street from Sunnydale (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and an alley used in Angel. The rest I didn’t know the references to or just can’t remember.
