This weekend – Aug 7-8 – Nichelle Nichols & myself (Hayden) will be appearing at Wizard’s Chicago comic-con. It’ll be a whirlwind for us as we’re flying in Friday and flying back out Saturday night, but we’ve got a few treats in store whilst there.

First off, there’ll be a Cocktail Party with Nichelle on the Friday night that everyone’s invited to. On Saturday we’ll be signing autographs from 10-1 then from 1-2…roll on the drums…a special panel with Nichelle and me that features the world premiere of the pilot of The Cabonauts!!!

So be there or be a box-shaped type thing, I forget what they’re called. The convention is held at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center which is at

5555 N. River Road
Rosemont, IL 60018

And you can get tickets here - http://www.wizarduniverse.com/wwchicago.html

See you Chicago-types there!! (and if you are, leave us a comment)

We grabbed a moment with David H. Lawrence at the San Diego Comic-Con to talk about Heroes, Goodnight Burbank and The Cabonauts. David is best known for his role as Eric Doyle – the Puppeteer – on Heroes. Chances are his next best known role will be on The Cabonauts as a gay space pirate!

I grabbed a few moments with Torchwood’s John Barrowman – Captain Jack himself – to talk about what his favorite sci-fi shows are – and what he thought about doing an episode of The Cabonauts…!

Some video I grabbed at the Comic Con ’09 Masquerade Ball. It’s Nichelle Nichols on stage in front of 6,000 people introducing The Cabonauts trailer. Thanks to everyone there for such a great response!

Three crazy days are now behind us. I’m still reeling. So what happened? Here’s a few highlights:

For me, it started with one hour’s sleep on Wednesday night (don’t ask) before getting into a car with business manager Phil Ashcroft as we bundled off to San Diego at 5am. After navigating parking (a task that took almost as long as the 2 hour drive), we found our passes and started setting up a table at the huge Wizard booth.

Nichelle arrived around 10am, and the buzz and lines began immediately. So many people approached her for pictures and autographs, all full of love and respect for her and her work – it was almost overwhelming. We spent that first day, Friday, dealing with the hundreds & hundreds of people who had to shake her hand, touch her, and tell her how much she’s inspired their lives. What a living legacy!

I also had a quick word with John Barrowman – Captain Jack from Dr. Who and Torchwood – and he told me he’d like to do an episode of The Cabonauts if his schedule permits. Don’t believe me? I managed to get it on video! I’ll post it later this week.

That night we had drinner and drinkipoos with Erin Gray and her lovely daughter Sam who’s going to be starring in a new online version of Buck Rogers as…Wilma Deering! Sam seems like an absolutely terrific person and I’m sure she’s going to rock the role – can’t wait to see it!

Saturday, it all started up again only we scored a major coup at the start of the day. We were set to premiere The Cabonauts trailer at the Masquerade Ball, an annual Comic-Con event that’s attended by 6,000 people but we weren’t sure at what point in the proceedings that it would play. Once Nichelle suggested that she’d be happy to introduce it, the people at Masquerade pretty much jumped to get her on board – and within seconds, we’d locked in a time for Nichelle to get up on stage. And that night, Nichelle surprised a massive crowd as she walked onto stage to rapturous applause. The trailer got the right amount of laughs and a big cheer at the end – which was pretty damn cool. By the way, a quick word about the people who attend the Masquerade Ball in costume – WOW. The outfits were amazing, truly mind-blowing, and kudos to everyone who participated.

We also interviewed David H Lawrence – Eric Doyle from Heroes – who revealed on video that he’ll be on an upcoming episode of The Cabonauts playing…(wait for it)…a gay space pirate. We’ll be uploading that at some point soon too! And I had a chat with one of the stars of Lost who seemed quite interested in coming on board the Scarad too. He’s off to Hawaii in a few weeks, so schedule permitting, later on down the road he’ll be singing and dancing for us

Sunday was time to wind down – Nichelle and I were at the Cabonauts table for a few hours then called it a day after lunch. We all left very happy in the knowledge that we’d done a lot of word-spreading and, of course, the trailer debut will be the stuff of legend.

If you’re one of the people who stopped by the table and picked up a Cabonauts poster, thanks! Glad to have you on board too!

By the way; the picture of Nichelle above is courtesy of SciFiCrush.com who stopped by to interview her. You can check out the interview here.

Feast your eyes on this! The Cabonauts trailer featuring Nichelle Nichols and revealing that in our pilot, it’s guest starring none other than Dollhouse’s Miracle Laurie (Mellie) and Buffy’s James C. Leary (Clem). The Scarad 27 has been cleared for take-off. Glad to have you all on board

It’s all still coming together, but it looks like we’re going to be at Comic Con on Saturday, July 25th (two days before my birthday if you wanna buy me a present!). “We” is both me (Hayden) and Nichelle Nichols and we’ll be sharing a part of the Wizard booth which is Booth 2643. We should be there most of the day with lots of special, collector’s edition The Cabonauts posters that Nichelle will be signing.

And that ain’t all. That night at the Masquerade Ball, we’ll be premiering The Cabonauts trailer for all to see – that’s about 6,000 people, so we’re told. We’ll have it online the very next day for everyone who can’t make it, and you’ll be able to see who our special guest stars are for the pilot episode.

So please stop by and say hi, show us some Comic Con love, and get an autograph!

UPDATE We’ll be there from Fri through Sun @ Booth 2643 – here’s the official times:

Fri & Sat 10-1 & 3-6

Sun 10-2.

Plus the trailer screening at The Masquerade Ball Sat July 25th PM

Add our twitter @thecabonauts for any breaking news, info, etc!

Our second clip from our interview with Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols as she talks about her new role as CJ in The Cabonauts!

There’s quite a few sites reporting on the announcement that Nichelle’s co-starring on The Cabonauts; thought I’d list a bunch in case you want to see what people are saying (and commenting).

http://trekmovie.com/2009/07/07/nichelle-nichols-joins-sci-fi-comedy-web-series-cabonauts/

http://newteevee.com/2009/07/07/star-treks-uhura-to-boss-around-hayden-blacks-cabonauts/

http://news.tubefilter.tv/2009/07/07/star-treks-nichelle-nichols-to-star-in-the-cabonauts/

http://www.shadowandact.com/?p=7078

http://www.podcastingnews.com/2009/07/07/hayden-black-snags-star-treks-nichelle-nichols-for-cabonauts-web-series/

By the way, that picture above is a snapshot of CJ (Nichelle’s) office. The Cabonauts offices are stationed in orbit around the newly  terra-formed Titan (one of Saturn’s moons but you all knew that).

We shot more of the pilot last Wednesday (June 3, 2009) and we got a lot of great stuff. All the scenes in the front of the cab with me and Norm, to be specific, from about 8 different angles – all with just one HD camera to keep costs down (they’re already spiraling).  Sure enough we ran into problems with importing and digitizing the content but they were solved much quicker this time and we got everything we planned on.

It was an intimate shoot; just me, Norm (Harry), Paul (our DP) and Ashley (make-up). Ashley, bless her, helped out by reading the lines of everyone else’s characters and proved invaluable. She also shot behind the scenes footage of us – I’ve no idea why but virtually everything I said was so rude that I’m not sure I can use any of it. I’ll have to pick through it at some point (but did I really need to create & improvise the Billy Hitler show and talk about fake pornos I’ve been in?).

We spent the next day editing – and Paul (who’s also our editor) put together the roughest of assemble edits. The Scarad looks amazing – Kim Seff did a truly incredible job – and it was lit beautifully, thanks to Paul. A couple of people have seen it – because we’re still missing some major scenes and all the sfx, sound effects, music, video, etc, it’s like showing a pile of bricks and a blueprint and asking people to imagine the house – but despite that handicap, they’ve smiled/laughed, so that’s not a bad start. Our next major step is shooting with our co-star on Wednesday. In contrast to the 5 of us who were on set this time, there’ll be closer to 20 people.