Angel

Well, I’m back from spending an entire day at the Grove (a new outdoor mall next to Farmer’s Market.) Representing AtS were David, James, Amy, J. August, Andy, Mercedes and... um, I can’t remember her real name yet, but Eve was there as well. So everyone but Alexis. Contrast that with Smallville, where only Clark’s dad and the conniving one who married Lex bothered to show up. They claim that the leads are doing location work in Vancouver right now. Some other random WB stars were there, such as Mo Gaffney.

Slightly over half the crowd was there for Smallville (mostly young male, mostly screaming for Kristen Kreuk to show up, and mostly, for some reason, Asian- or Pacific Island-ancestry), but the Angel fans were fairly vocal. When the Angel main titles appeared, Spike and Lorne got the big cheers, and on stage, David, James and Andy got the most attention. J. August got mostly ignored by the audience, poor thing. Andy stayed on stage the longest, signed a bunch of autographs, albeit only for the VIP access area, and even sang some Karaoke.

Highlights will be shown on the KTLA Morning News tomorrow, and possibly on the San Diego station as well. I’ll have to check tonight’s tape, but I think they showed me in the crowd a few times. I managed to score a Spike and Angel poster at the end by just looking around for security, then ripping the damn thing off the display. Hah ! (Well, several were already missing from others doing the same thing. There were eight, and five were already gone.) My husband scored a small temporary tattoo of Angel’s bird that’s on his back. Oh, and a Smallville something or other, but who cares about *that*. ;-)

At one point, when David had just gone and James was moving offstage and as I was trying to follow him around to the back, my way was blocked by a couple guys standing around, who were complaining that "nobody wants to see those two idiots [David and James], we’re all here to see Smallville." So I gave up with politeness and body-checked him out of my way. "Oops !" Served him right. :-P

It wasn’t really possible to enjoy the episode, since the volume was turned off for half of AtS, and the portable semi-Jumbotron wasn’t the best anyway, but people seemed to enjoy what they could see of it, seemed glad to see Harmony again (even those near me who couldn’t remember her name), and applauded the return of Spike. Some seemed genuinely surprised that Cordelia wasn’t in the credits, and was later revealed to still be in a coma. Heck, they were expecting CC there. Amy got cheers, and the cruder guys started chanting "Take It Off !" Jerks. But even though we had just seen the Eve scenes on the big screen, *with sound*, most people still didn’t know who the actress was when she came out on stage with J. August, Mercedes and Andy. Everyone knew who Andy was, even without makeup, but I heard a few "Who’s that woman ? What show is she on ?" for Eve.

I’ll probably remember more later, but it’s late, I’m tired and my back went out when I went to leave (ow !).