This year marks my first venture in attending out of town conventions. Town is a relative term as the 8 shows I went to last year were all in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego County, i.e. Southern California with the furthest being 130ish miles away (which I made door to door in 94 minutes, you do the math). But this year I'm cranking it up a notch by hitting two out of town shows in less than a month. One of them is actually out of the country and I need to get an updated passport to attend! It all started with rumblings of this show in Calgary, Canada, a city in the province of Alberta about 600 miles (or 970 kilometers) east of Vancouver and north of western Montana. The only thing I knew about the place was that it was the home of "the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be" professional wrestler Bret "The Hitman" Hart. I randomly found them on Facebook and started keeping up with this show that seemed to be booking tons of great guests and providing endless amounts of fan centric events and opportunities.
From loads of comic book artists and writers to a bevy of familiar faces from television and film, the Calgarians (that sounds like something out of fantasy literature) were putting on a fucking show. Then to start things off, they held a Cosplay parade that wasn't just a few dozen folks in costume. Oh no, we're talking hundreds of people in homemade outfits filling the streets and 60,000 attendees. 2014 looks to be another great show in the making and then shit got real as the organizers of Calgary Expo and Coolwaters Productions announced they would be putting on Aliens EXPOsed, a celebration of James Cameron's seminal sequel from 1986. Sure there have been plenty of
Aliens screenings and whatnot before this, heck, I just attended one last week. The New Beverly hosted a
The Terminator and
Aliens double feature that saw Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Mark Rolston, Jenette Goldstein and Ricco Ross show up and shoot the shit. I unfortunately could not because I was attending an out of state wedding...
But Calgary is coming on strong with the announcement that Ripley herself, Sigourney Weaver, would attend this little shindig along with Biehn, Henriksen, Rolston and Goldstein IN ADDITION to convention newbies Bill Paxton, Paul Reiser and Carrie Henn. Now that's some fucking organizational skillz. EXPOsed is being held outside the actual convention and requires a separate, not cheap ticket. But hey, this is basically the entire main cast of one of my favorite movies we're talking about here and they're treating it right, using a local stadium to house the event. So how did I spend my Saturday morning? By getting tickets to EXPOsed, then moving right into securing passes to Calgary Expo (Friday and Sunday still available!), booking flights and checking out all of the beautifully swanky downtown hotels the Expo has teamed up with provide discounts for show goers.
Next up, finding Calgary's tastiest chow down spots via lots and lots of Food Network and Travel Channel programs. See ya up north!
It was either a tourism pitch or a Bon Iver song...
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