More Fan Girl Adventures

I said I wouldn't write in this blog again unless I started the Peter Capaldi madness.

Well, sadly I'm not on a quest to find Capaldi (ok who am I kidding I'm constantly on a quest to find Capaldi, but that's not what I'm writing about).  I write today because after my adventures in Washington I have decided to go to Fanexpo in Toronto this year.  I thought that I would share with you all how this decision came to be and what some of my expectations are since I have only attended once, six years ago.

Let's hop in the TARDIS for a moment and head back to March.  This was the month that I decided to drag the Husband to Washington to meet the always lovely Peter Capaldi.  That same month it was announced that John Cusack was coming to Fanexpo. I was mildly excited about this because even though he's not British, I have always enjoyed the Cusack.  However, not as much as my friend Heather.  So naturally, myself and another friend told her about him coming and me being the great friend that I am "volunteered" to be the one to take her as she's never been to a convention before.  Now when I say volunteer it's more like I'm trying to push a friend to become a crazed fan just like myself.  That way I don't always have to drag the Husband to far away lands to watch me drool over older British Men.



Now back to the present.  I am excited to attend Fanexpo for several reasons.  Firstly, I am starting to become a bit of a Doctor Who collector, so I'm really excited to see what the vendors have to offer.  I know there are a few things that I am looking for and I feel that this is the place I will find them.  I really need a 12" Twelfth Doctor to put with my 12" Giles (Mind out of the gutter people.  They're action figures and that's all!).


Secondly, I expect to meet a lot of cool people in really awesome costumes.  I'm not into cosplay myself, but I do love Halloween and can therefore totally respect that amount of time and effort that goes into a lot of costumes.  I am tempted to carry a boom box around for John Cusack, but I'll probably pass on that.

Thirdly,  I am most excited to be the one who gets to see Heather fan girl out over John Cusack.  I don't think I have ever been on the other end of this, so who knows I may suddenly a have a new found respect for my husband and friends who experience my fan girl moments on a daily basis and don't slap me silly.  I don't expect Heather to be as bad as me because I'm not quite sure what her level of love is.  We have both got a photo op and I have said that I will share my photo time with her just so she can get an extra 2 seconds with him.  This was described as feeling like she won the lottery.  However, she has decided not to get an autograph.  I have tried to convince her otherwise because for me that was where I truly got to talk to Capaldi, but I guess we will have to wait and see if she sticks to this decision.  Maybe I'll get an autograph and make her wait and watch from the sidelines while I become his new best friend and then she'll cry because she'll wish she got an autograph too!  Wait, supportive friend is who I am, not cruel friend.  Sorry Heather!

So those are some of the things I am excited about.  Now for some of the things I'm not so excited about.  I have heard that Fanexpo is not the best organized event.  I would have to agree from the one time I went, but that was 6 years ago and it was only in the North building.  I am expecting a lot of people to be there, so much in fact that my husband doesn't want to go nor our other good friend who were going to this thing long before I knew them.  I'm not going to lie it kind of scares me a bit, but if I can go see AC/DC at Downsview Park twice and survive, I think I can survive this too. I am also expecting my photo op with John Cusack to not be as good as my one with Peter Capaldi.  Let's face it that man has set a very high bar that I don't think any celebrity can meet.

I will share my review of Fanexpo after the weekend and compare it to Awesome Con, as I felt that was really well done despite some of the Doctor Who issues.  I'll let you all know how Heather survived meeting her Peter Capaldi and if John Cusack really looks like a security guard in photo ops (seriously google John Cusack photo op, that's what he looks like)

Note:  When I published this blog this morning my first paragraph was true, I wasn't actually on a quest to find Capaldi.  Now tonight I have learned that he will be coming to Toronto on Oct. 5, so LET THE MADNESS BEGIN!  Wish me luck as the only way to have a meet and greet is to win a contest.  More updates to follow.

All great journeys must come to an end...

The moment I've been waiting months for is now over.  I feel happy and sad all rolled into one.  Many stories have been shared about the weekend and now I will share mine.

The story begins Friday.  Work was difficult that day, and the day seemed to drag on despite leaving 2 hours early.  Finally the time had come and off I was to collect the Husband and head to the airport.  Everything was going smoothly, that was until we hit the baggage drop off.  Here a lady for the airline scanned my boarding pass and then took it from me to check something.  She came back and said that she had good news and bad news.  The bad news was that the flight had been over booked and that I was randomly chosen to be on standby.  The good news was that 99% of the time people will still be able to get on their flight.  To me this wasn't good news.  This was all freaking bad news!  How could this happen?  I booked my ticket months ago and had even checked in the night before and was assigned a seat.  Now this lady was telling me that the seat had been taken from me and I might not get on this flight.  I wanted to go full Malcolm Tucker on this woman, but as we were in an airport I refrained. Once we made it through security and customs, I headed to a help desk for the airline I was flying another lady what had happened.  She didn't understand why and said that I had a seat, but that I should still wait and confirm with the agent at the gate.  With a pit in the bottom of my stomach we went and got a bite to eat and a shot of tequila.  I sat there looking at the pictures that were now being posted of the Dallas Fan Expo, convinced that I wasn't going to get on the plane and I wasn't going to meet Peter Capaldi.  Finally the time had come to head to the gate where I explained my story a third time.  The new person confirmed what the second lady had said, I did indeed have a seat and the flight wasn't even sold out.  Relief swept over me as I was once again on track for meeting Capaldi.

Fast forward to Saturday.  We had decided to pick up our passes this day and scope out the convention in preparation for Sunday. We didn't spend much time here and in retrospect, I wish we had, but as we had never been to Washington I had other sites I wanted to see.  As the day went on, I was getting increasingly more nervous about the next day.  To no surprise I did have trouble sleeping that night.  But who wouldn't, it was like Christmas Eve!

Finally the day was here!  I awoke with an army of butterflies in my stomach, convinced that whatever I ate for breakfast that day would make an appearance in my photo op.  We left the hotel and got to the convention centre (yes that is how we spell it in Canada) around 9:10 or so.  At this point there was already a line of about 100 or more VIP ticket holders ahead of us, most of which were Doctor Who fans.  Having been the day before, we knew that Peter was going to be doing autographs at 10, so once we were allowed in, I and the rest of the hoards of people headed straight for Capaldi's table.  Some people waited for Jenna Coleman, but a long line had already started to form for Peter.  Confusion set in as no one seemed to know which line people should be standing in, and at one point we were told to stand in a different line, only to be told we should go back to the one we were in.  Luckily the people who were standing in front of us and behind us in the original line were great and let us back into where we were standing.  Once it seemed sorted we had to wait, but that was OK as I got to talk to some fellow Who fans who gave us the low down on photo ops and panels.  (This was my first time going all out and only the second comic convention I've been too).  With my new information I felt better equipped for the day.

After waiting for about 40 minutes the crowed cheered and I could see a glorious head of grey curls appear.  There were about 50 people in front of us and probably a 100 or more behind, so we were lucky we got the spot we got.  At last the line started moving and we started getting closer and closer to the front.  Suddenly, there he was in plain sight.  My heart was beating and I couldn't take my eyes off of him.  He looked just as wonderful in person as he does on screen.  It was so great to be able to watch him as he was meeting fans.  A family was ahead of us in line and the father told Peter that the little girl was nervous.  He bent over the table and shook her hand, told her not to be nervous because he was nervous too, he had to meet all of these people.  He finished with the family and then looked at the Husband and I.  We were greeted with a warm smile, a hand shake and a nice to meet you.  I was suddenly put at ease as he was just so gracious and warm.  I expected this to be all for the interaction, but then he asked us where we were coming from and I told him Toronto.  He said, "Oh wow."  I replied, "We came here just to see you."  To which he said "thank you so much" with such a big smile.  We chatted a bit about Toronto as he signed our photos and told us that he was pretty sure he was coming to Toronto towards the end of the year then he said he would see us later.  I walked away with a huge smile on my face and shaking, but thank god I didn't throw up on him or start crying.


The next thing we had to do was line up for the Doctor Who Trio (Barrowman, Capaldi, and Coleman) photo op.  Again there was some more confusion around the photo op area, but I feel that this was mostly due to not enough announcements being made or lack of signage.  A few white boards around the area where volunteers could write what photo ops were being taken and which line to be in, would have helped with the congestion around this area.  That aside, this was my first time doing a photo op and I have to say everything I had heard about it being fast was true.  Everything is such a blur that I all I remember is John Barrowman saying hi and telling us to come over, positioning me next to Capaldi and the Husband next to me and then Barrowman and Coleman on the ends.  Then the photographer says, 1, 2, 3!  You're ushered out and then suddenly handed a photo.  At this point I didn't care that it was so fast, I was just ready to line up and do the ride again!  And that's exactly what we did since the next photo op was for Capaldi VIPs.  This time the Husband and I each had a photo op ticket, so that meant that I could have my own and also be in the Husband's photo.  Suddenly I'm at the front of the line and it's now my turn.  Capaldi greeted me with a huge smile, said something like hi or how are you, but I don't remember.  I walked towards him said hi, put my arm around him, he put his around me, and just before the photographer started his count, I remembered that I wanted to ask Capaldi to smile.  So many pictures I had seen of him in photo ops, he would always do a Doctor face and look angry or very serious.  I just wanted a nice picture of us together him smiling.  So at the last second I asked him to please smile and he said absolutely!  This is what I got....

That was exactly the smile I had wanted!  So then the photo was finished and the Husband walked over as I told Capaldi that there was one more and in which my husband was going to stand off to the side and look sad.  He said, "Sad? OK" and we repeated the above pose while The Husband stood off to the side next to Capaldi.  After the photo was taken, Capaldi said as he was smiling "You've got a whole story here."  The Husband said yes, but in his mind thought you don't know the half of it.  Once again we were ushered out and handed photos.  I was so thrilled with how they turned out.  I won't post the second photo here out of respect to my husband who asked me not to, but I will tell you it looks exactly like the one above, but just with him off to the side.  This photo was an instant hit with all of our family and friends, as they thought it was hilarious.  I have to say I have the best husband ever!

So that was it.  All of our interactions with him were over by about 1:15 and now all we had to do was go and wait in line for the Q&A.  And boy did we wait!  It was supposed to start at 2:30, but didn't start until almost 2 hours later.  I won't go into detail about the organization of the event because I know there were a lot of unhappy people, but I do know that Peter and Jenna were very nice and said they weren't leaving the building until everyone had left with what they had paid for.  I will say that I am incredibly happy that I paid for the VIP tickets and arrived at the convention centre when we did.  All that aside here's a nice video of the Q&A, but I'm sure all of you have already seen it...

And just like that it was all over.  What a fantastic day it was.  I had read that Peter was a very nice person, but you really have to meet him to understand just how nice he is.  I have read several stories that people have shared from the day and I have to say the man is very good at making people feel as if we all got a little one on one time with him and that our experience was unique to ourselves.  It's going to take a very special person to knock Capaldi off the top of my list because after the weekend he has sky rocketed above all of my other obsessions.

I want to thank everyone who has followed me on this journey and those that have had to put up with me talking about it for sometime, but most of all I want to thank my husband for taking this trip with me and having just as much fun as I did.  Not to mention his understanding of my love for older British men.  Until the next journey begins (if he does indeed come to Toronto this madness will be repeated), I bid you farewell.

Closer now....

After I had made the decision to go to Washington, I had to wait for the Peter Capaldi VIP tickets to go on sale.  This was an agonizing time for me and my co-workers.  For me I was anxious about what it was going to cost and was this really going to happen.  For the co-workers, I think they were and still are sick of me talking about it. To me it felt like I had waited about a month, in actuality it was one week, but finally the tickets went on sale and I immediately bought them.  This was really happening!


I made the purchase and now it was official, I am going to meet Peter Capaldi, even if it is for a few seconds.  I was extremely excited that day and have pretty much been every day since and now here I sit just a mere couple of days away (2 days, 5 hours and 36 minutes to be exact, but hey who's counting).   I've been thinking a lot about what I want to say to him at the autograph session and at the photo op, but the reality of it is, that I will likely be so nervous I will turn into a blundering fool, much like when I met Alan Rickman and Hugh Laurie.  I really hope this isn't the case though.  A friend told me to remember he's a person, just like you.  And it's true, just an incredibly talented sexy person, just like me.  Haha, I kid.  But seriously, it's good advice and I think a mantra I will say in my head as I'm waiting to meet him.

Now I find that I am faced with fan girl problems.  The biggest one being, what to wear for the photo op.  I've tried on several outfits, got advice from friends and have pretty much narrowed it down to two possibilities.  Who would have thought this whole process would have been so stressful!  


I still can't fully believe that the moment is almost here.  I have now checked into my flight and will be off tonight.  Who would have ever thought that the girl who once never wanted to go to a comicon with her husband, is now dragging him to a different country to go to one.  A good friend of ours said in his bestman speech that the reason it took so long for The Husband and I to get married was because I needed to complete my nerdification.  I think it's safe to say I have :)

This will be my last post until I return, so wish me luck and I can't wait to regail you all with the low down on what happened.  Peter Capaldi here I come!

The quest begins...

The quest to meet Peter Capaldi began in January of 2016.  I started thinking of ways I could meet him...

1. Wait for him to miraculous walk in to my place of work one day.  Not likely, as I'm pretty sure he doesn't need English lessons in Toronto.
2. Hope to run into him on set because they've decided to shoot an episode of Doctor Who in Toronto.  Again not likely, but hey a girl can dream that the TARDIS will land in her back yard one day.
3. Plan a trip to Cardiff and hope that they are shooting while I'm there.  This was almost a possibility, but then it was announced that Doctor Who wouldn't be back on until Spring of 2017.  First, AHHHHHHH.  I can't wait that long for a new season!  Second, that means god only knows when they'll start filming again, which makes it hard for me to plan a trip.
4. Go to London and search the city with a "Have you seen this man" poster and hope that someone will point me in the right direction.  Nope, this was a line I'm not going to cross.  (To my friends... stop laughling because seriously I'm not crossing that line)
5. Wait for him to come to Fan Expo in Toronto.  Yep, this was it.  This was the plan.  I could see no other way.

So now I have a plan. 
Not a good one as it depends on the people of Fan Expo being able to bring him to Toronto, but everyday I would ask the magic 8 ball at work if I would meet him at Fan Expo and it said yes, or ask a friend who of course would say yes.  I knew I would have to wait a long time to see if he would be announced as a guest because Fan Expo wasn't until September and this was now February.

I had pretty much convinced myself that this was not going to happen, but I tried to keep the faith.  Then one day, I'm on facebook and I see a post that says Peter Capaldi would be at Fan Expo in Dallas in June.  My first thought was, oh my god he's on the same continent as me!  Dallas is closer than London and I've never been to Dallas.  So I share the post with my friends and ask if anyone wants to plan a trip to Dallas.  Surprisingly, no one said yes.  So once again I was back to keeping my fingers crossed for Toronto.  Then there it was!

 
Another post saying that Peter Capaldi would be at Awesome Con in Washington the same weekend as Dallas.  Wholly crap he really is a time traveller because how could he be in two places at once.  Upon further investigation, he's not a time traveller just an incredibly busy man who is splitting his time in two places that weekend.

Hmmm, Washington is even closer than Dallas and I've never been to Washington either, so perhaps this might be an easier sell to my friends.  So in passing I kind of jokingly asked a friend at work if she wanted to go to Washington the weekend of June 3.  To my surprise she said sure because it was her birthday that weekend and it would be fun to go away.  Oh my god I had a bite!  So off to the Internet to research flights and hotels.  I was able to find some good deals, so suddenly other friends at work wanted to join and I started thinking, this is really happening.  I even asked the Husband if he wanted to join and he said yes, which I really didn't think he would.  The joy I felt was so much I couldn't put words to it.  But then we let a weekend pass us by before booking and when I checked the cost again it had gone up.  Suddenly everyone was backing out and my joyous feeling was gone. But wait!  The Husband said he would go.  I don't need friends, I have a husband!  He agreed to still go (he really didn't have a choice) and the next thing I know I've booked a trip to Washington!  What a rollercoaster of emotions.  All I had to do now was wait for the Capaldi VIP tickets to be announced.  And I'll leave that for my next post.  Thanks for reading!
 

You can't really tell something is an addiction until you try to give it up....

And I'm not giving it up.  Hi my name is Lisa and I have a Capaldi problem.  It's been 0 days since I last spoke about him.  I'm sure several of my friends and colleagues wish that there was such a place as Capaldiholics Anonymous where I could go and discuss my love of this wonderful actor, but there isn't so I have no choice but to bore them to death on a daily basis.  I am determined to make fans of them all or at least entertain them with my wacky anecdotes and daily photo updates.  The way I see it no one has told me to shut up yet, but now they likely will after they read this.  Doesn't matter, I will continue.  If I can  make at least one of them a fan, I will consider it a job well done.

As I have stated before this past season of Doctor Who was so good that I had no choice but to fall for the Doctor. I suddenly found myself wanting to pursue a hobby that I hadn't touched in years, video editing.  I used to make quite a number of fan videos back in the day when I shipped Grisom and Sara from CSI, but after that ship sailed (quite literally if you saw the finale) I hadn't felt inspired to work on anything.  The spark was back and I made my first Doctor Who video.  Here it is here if you want to check it out...

Followed by my second one...

and a third...

and three more here... Click here for more awesome Doctor Who videos

So as you can see I have been inspired.   Doctor who and Capaldi have slowly taken over my life.  Well maybe not entirely, but I'm pretty sure everyone I work with would say it has. 

It was somewhere amongst all of this video editing and Doctor Who watching that I got into my head that I really wanted to meet Peter Capaldi.  Not an easy feat as I live in Canada and when I did go to England last December for work, he was no where to be found.  He didn't even show up at the airport to meet me.  I was left with no choice but to resort to the magic 8 ball at work.  Every day I would come in and ask the powers that be if I would meet Peter Capaldi this year.  It got to the point that my co workers would even ask it for me, with a bit of an eye roll added in.  Well I have to say every time I asked it I always got a positive answer.  God bless that little 8 ball.  Clearly I was destined to meet him.  How, I did not know at the time, that was until an awesome announcement hit my facebook feed!  Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

Warning foul language ahead...

Once I become enamoured with an actor, I must try and see everything they have ever done, regardless of if it's good or not.  Peter Capaldi was no exception to this.  Now that the fire was burning, I wasted no time in hitting research mode, aka IMDB.  What I found was a long list of TV shows and movies that Capaldi has done, most of which are British so it has been difficult for me to find some of them, but thanks to Youtube and Netflix I've managed to see a few.

Malcom Tucker.  The second greatest character to be played by Peter Capaldi.  How is it that I was living my life completely unaware that this show even existed.  This is one of the reasons why I am so happy that Capaldi became the Doctor because if he hadn't, I would have never known about "The Thick of It".  I watched the first episode on my own and then immediately after told The Husband he needed to watch this show.  So being the good husband he is, he watched it with me and he and I were instantly hooked and binge-watched the entire series.  As a side note this is not good if you are in any kind of authority position at work and have a tendency to get angry from time to time.   Needless to say I was told by my staff to take a break from watching for awhile. Malcolm Tucker is a character that you probably shouldn't like, but the way that Peter Capaldi plays him, you can't help but love him.  Not to mention he's just down right sexy when he swears with his Scottish accent.  Swearing sounds so much nicer when it's being done in Scottish.
 
After watching "The Thick of It" and "In the Loop", I left Malcolm behind and moved on to a show I had seen before because of my love for Hugh Laurie, "Fortysomething".   This was a show I had seen because as mentioned above I try to watch everything my British loves have done, little did I know at the time that I was watching a future obsession.  Now I could watch with new eyes and see the adorableness of Ronnie Pilfrey.  The show isn't great, but it did allow me to see another side of Capaldi's acting chops and once again I was impressed.  This man seems to be able to do it all!  He sings, plays the guitar, acts and he can draw.  What a guy!

So now that I was drawn into the world of Capaldi and loving Doctor Who more than ever, what next.  Well in my case that would be annoy everyone around me by talking about him and wondering how on earth I could meet him.  That will be shared in my next post.  Thanks for reading!

Doctor Disco

My interest was piqued and I patiently waited to see how Capaldi would play the Doctor.  Once I finally got to see him in action I was impressed.  The Doctor would be in good hands and while he was trying to figure out what kind of man he was, we would be in for some grand adventures. There were some things that I had to get used to with this new Doctor, such as he wasn't a hugger, and he seemed grumpy, but eventually I found these traits to be endearing.  I'm sure if it were anyone else playing the role I may not have, but somehow Capaldi and his attack eyebrows made grumpiness look adorable.  I'll admit that while watching Season 8, he was growing on me more and more.  A spark had been lit, but it was merely an ember waiting for more fuel to turn it into a full fledged fan girl obsession.  That moment wouldn't come until the first episode of Season 9. 

If you are a fan of either the show or Capaldi, I'm sure you know the moment I am referring to.  The first episode began and we see the Doctor briefly in the beginning, but then he is nowhere to be found for the first half.  Then suddenly this happens...

OH MY GOD!!!!  A barrel of gasoline had been dumped on the ember and the obsession was about to take flight!  What an entrance!  We all knew Capaldi had been in a punk band in his younger days, but HOLY crap, he was a rock star!  I loved everything about this scene.  The tank, the smoke, the guitar playing, the sunglasses, the hair, his outfit.  I still can't get enough of it.  There it was, I suddenly needed to see everything he had ever made and find out more about this man.

As the season progressed I found myself getting more and more obsessed with not just Capaldi, but Doctor Who.  I hadn't been this excited about the show since the days of David Tennant.  I loved this rock star, guitar playing Doctor.  I loved the story lines and pretty much every episode, with the exception of "Sleep No More".  I loved the relationship between 12 and Clara, which much like 10 and Rose was bitter sweet because we knew Jenna Coleman was leaving at the end of this season.  Saturdays couldn't come soon enough for me this past Fall.

So what other things had this man named Peter Capaldi done before.  A lot, according to IMDB and that's what I'll write about in my next post.  Thanks for reading and I would love to hear from other Capaldi fans about the moment they became a fan.  For now I will leave you with this image...