blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/07/jessica-alba-go.htmlJessica Alba Goes to Comic Con
By Adam Rogers July 25, 2007 | 7:49:44 PMCategories: Celebrity
Just got word that Jessica Alba is going to be appearing live and in person at what funnier people than me have termed "nerd prom"—San Diego ComicCon.
She's flacking a romantic comedy called Good Luck Chuck, in which she co-stars with comedian Dane Cook. So you're thinking: Huh? Why would a studio want to publicize a rom-com at a genre paradise like ComicCon? Won't it get drowned out by the Watchmens and the Star Treks and the security provided by people in stormtrooper costumes?
And the answer, of course, is: LOOK AT HER.
Here's the thing: Fox has all-but pulled out of Comic Con. As in, meh. Screw you nerds. We didn't have any movies ready. But look! It's Jessica Alba.
Who, you know, is single again. So I have a shot.
Anyway: Am I going to indulge the stereotype that everyone at ComicCon is basically the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons? Yes. Yes I am. I know, I know: women enjoy ComicCon. Super-well-adjusted people enjoy ComicCon. Entourage did a riff on ComicCon...so it must be mainstream, right?
I've never been, so I can only answer these questions like a blogger. Which is to say: dunno.
But this is how I imagine the scene. It's very much like that USO show in Apocalypse Now, when the Playboy bunnies show up. Imagine: 50,000 unreconstructed comics and sci-fi nerds, many of them in costumes from Stargate: Atlantis and Trigun, standing at rapt attention around a massive circular dais. Then someone screams: "Here she comes!" He points to the sky, and sure enough, a Chinook helicopter can be seen closing the gap from the northwest.
Closer and closer it flies, finally filling the air with noise from its twin rotors. The cheers of the crowd are deafening; no one looks at anyone else. All eyes are on the stage. The rear door of the Chinook opens and out steps...a white man in a suit, with a very good haircut. He is carrying a large case about the size of a golf bag.
The crowd erupts into boos, throwing their red vines and Hugo-sized diet cokes at the stage. Guards equipped with t-shirt-launching guns swarm out of the Chinook and ring the stage, randomly firing extra-large Babylon 5 licensed merchandise t-shirts at the fools attempting to climb the bulwarks.
Finally, the man in the suit releases the clasps on the case. Steam pours forth—some kind of freezing agent, subliming in the humidity from all those greasy bodies. The man opens the lid...and out steps Jessica Alba, in a bikini. She is only three feet tall, but oh those proportions! Her caramel skin gleams. She smiles, and 25,000 pairs of thick eyeglasses shatter from pure pleasure.
She begins to speak, telling the crowd what an honor it was to play Susan Storm Richards, the emotional heart of the Fantastic Four.
But then! Something goes wrong. A guard, distracted by the tiny, perfect body of Jessica Alba so near him, let's his attention wander. A man in blue jeans and a home-made chain mail shirt climbs up and disarms him, turning the guard's gun on his colleagues. Whoomp! Whoomp! Whoomp! Three other guards are felled by a t-shirt with pictures of Richard Dean Anderson as both McGyver and Col. Jack O'Neill, a t-shirt with a picture of Thunderbird 2, and a t-shirt reading "Han Shot First," respectively.
Jessica turns to look at the altercation, and briefly her shining visage slows the horde of onlookers who are now rushing the stage. It's like that scene in The Hulk when Jennifer Connelly calms the savage beast. But the center cannot hold. They rush forward. The man in the suit picks Jessica up with one hand and brandishes her at the crowd, but every time he swings her tiny body at them they try to take her away. He runs for the helicopter as the guards try to close ranks around him. The Chinook spins up its rotors, lifts off. The man in the suit scrabbles through the open back door, leaving poor Jessica to ride upward on a rope ladder, hordes of nerds stretching to try to touch her.
But of course, in the end, she's always just slightly out of reach.