For those of you who don’t remember, Aldis played Jake Talley, the Yellow Eyed Demon’s psychic kid who killed our Sammeh. Booo! A fact which my daughter, Kristen, was not able to get over. She walked out on his panel and refused to take photo ops with him. Currently, Aldis is co-starring with the ever wonderful Christian Kane (Lindsey McDonald, Angel) in TNT’s Leverage. (Side note: Aldis and Christian totally "pwn" that show. Check it out if, you haven’t already.)

But, back to the panel. Now, I didn’t take notes and my camera was "unavailable" (I suck, I know. There is a story behind that… Later.), but I can tell you Aldis Hodge is one funny guy. He told us about how he got into acting – his brother, Edwin, was acting and when they gave Aldis a small role with him, his mother bought him a Batman toy for doing a good job, so he thought "acting = more Batman toys" and he’s been doing it ever since. We also know that both his parents were in the Marines (Bless), so he moved around a lot growing up, including a few years in New Jersey and Hawaii. When someone suggested that Jake could possibly make a return appearance on Supernatural, Aldis replied, "They shot me pretty dead." but would love the opportunity to come back to the show.

Aldis seemed very comfortable with the crowd and turned eagerly from side to side to hear the next question, with a big ‘ole smile on his face. I spent the entire panel with a smile on my face, too.

ALDIS HODGE PHOTO OPS

We were running around, much like chickens with their heads cut off, a lot of the weekend. There seemed to be a lot of places to be, all around the same time. So, in what turned out to be our calling card for the weekend, we were at the end of the line for the photo ops with Aldis. Chris Schmelke, Creation’s God of Photography, always has music playing in the photo room and this time the tunes were pumpin’. We danced in line as we wanted for our turn and then danced up to Aldis. I said, "We’re the end of the line, so it’s a dance party now." So, of course, Aldis had to get his dance on and we joined him. And, Chris took this picture…

Then, the ACTUAL photo op…

As we were leaving, we encouraged Aldis to join us again at another convention. He said he’d love to and next time he would bring Christian Kane with him. So, I told him how I call Leverage "The Eliot and Hardison Show" (Christian and Aldis’ characters on the show). His response was… Victory Arms! \o/

SUPERNATURAL KARAOKE

One thing about Supernatural fans, that I have found, they are very friendly folks. Similar to Firefly fans. And they like a good party. Also, similar to Firefly fans. After the days panels were over, my posse (Marlaine, Maria G. and my daughter, Kristen) and I headed over to Latitude 33, the restaurant in the lobby of the hotel, for dinner and soon after, KARAOKE! When we got there, the place was pretty empty. All the better to get a good seat, my dear.  Because, by 10pm, the joint was jumping! I didn’t sing myself (I was no where near drunk enough) but lots of other brave souls got up to entertain us all with their renditions of the "Supernatural classics". Maria G. even gave us a rousing rendition of "All That Jazz", including a bit of a dance with a chair, that was met with riotus applause.

After a while, we had company. Julie McNiven (Anna the Angel), Alana Tol (Jo Harvelle) and the man of the hour, Aldis, came in to the restaurant to take pictures and talk with everyone. Alana even sang a song or two. Aldis ended up near the back of the restaurant with a line all the way back to the front of people who wanted to take pictures with him and just chat. He was really very gracious, accommodating all of the fans. Several people asked him to do a "gangsta" pose with them. Why the brother gotta be a gangsta? But, whatevs. I’m not about lines (one too many Comic-Cons), so we hung back until it was more manageable. The result was… The Aldis Sammich!

Not long after this photo was taken, Aldis and his brother, Edwin, went up on stage with 2 fans and sang "Sweet Home Alabama", even though Aldis didn’t think he would sing that night. Too buzzed and not a good singer, he claimed. But, they rocked the house! And Edwin plays a mean air guitar.

The party was still going strong when we headed out, about 1:30am. (Kristen had gone up to our room several hours before to leave us adults to our silliness.) It was a completely awesome start to what turn out to be "The Weekend of Awesome".

Saturday and Sunday coming up.