MTVP Comic-con International 2014 Coverage: W00tstock 6.0

So, if you've been wondering where Sarah and I have been this week, we have a very good explanation. If you recall, we revealed last month that this summer, we would be attending Comic-con International in San Diego. Well, that's where we are right now. We spent our first full day in SoCal walking the Comic-con floor (Sarah will be writing about that later) and attending W00tstock. W00tstock is a celebration of geekery that has been organized on a semi-regular basis by Wil Wheaton, Paul and Storm, and Adam Savage. While Thursday night's show wasn't quite as epic as W00tstock 5.0 sounded, we still had a good time and were thoroughly entertained.

The show opened with a reminder that last year, none other than "Game of Thrones" mastermind George R.R. Martin smashed a guitar on stage. We were informed right away that this year's show wouldn't be living up to that moment. Instead, Adam Savage (of "Mythbusters" fame) came on stage to smash a guitar.

The first big musical act was Paul and Storm, who opened with my personal favorite song of their's, "Write Like the Wind." This song implores George R.R. Martin to write his books faster already! This was the song that was apparently interrupted by the guitar smash last year. As we know from recent interviews, Martin really does not like it when fans speculate that he will die before finishing "A Song of Ice and Fire." Paul and Storm's set overall was a lot of fun, even if it was a bit heavy with their trademark "cover band" jokes.

For his set, as any fan would likely suspect, Wil Wheaton performed a reading from one of his creative nonfiction pieces. This story in particular was called "Blue Light Special." This story was about young Wil on a trip to K-mart trying to decide between the instant gratification of a Star Wars figurine he didn't really want versus the delayed gratification of saving up for a Millennium Falcon. The story was told through the framing device of Wil watching a child play with Star Wars figurines while eating dinner with his teenage son. I enjoyed the bit of a twist at the end where Wil is taken out of his daydream with the realization that the child he's watching has a Jar-Jar Binks figurine!

For his set, Adam Savage also told a story, although it wasn't a story he had previously written down. He told us about a time when he was an NYU film student and he and his roommates were almost shot by a SWAT team. It involved construction workers jackhammering at all hours of the day and night and one of his roommates pretending to wield a (prop) machine gun to get them to stop. It was a funny, entertaining story, for sure. Not as entertaining was his attempt to sing "I Will Survive" in a Gollum voice!

The best part of Adam Savage's set, however, was that he was introduced by a very surprise guest. None other than Craig Ferguson!

After Adam's set, the whole gang came back on stage for the classic W00tstock closing, "The Captain's Wife's Lament." The whole schtick with this bit is that the guys do more talking and joking around than singing. I'd say this went on for at least 45 minutes. Most of it was very funny, although Sarah and my jetlagged selves were quite tired by the end of the whole thing.

Overall, we had an enjoyable evening, and we count ourselves lucky to have finally seen Wil Wheaton in person, since he (understandably) tends to stick to the West Coast. We would definitely recommend W00tstock to anybody in town during Comic-con.