The Con spilleth over

Plenty of Comic-Con–related events don’t require a pass to the convention center. On Wednesday, July 23, Star Trek’s Wil Wheaton will be at Stone Brewing Liberty Station to tout a stout he reportedly co-brewed called Drew Curtis/Wil Wheaton/Greg Koch Stone Farking Wheaton w00tstout.

w00tstock 6.0, a Night of Geeks & Music, happens Thursday, July 24, at the Balboa Theatre, while steampunk robots Steam Powered Giraffe play an electro-disco set at North Park Theatre. Birch Aquarium’s Comic-Con Dive Show features Gene Roddenberry’s son Rod, in an event described as a chance to “Interact with Rod while he dives in the aquarium’s two-story, 70,000-gallon kelp-forest tank.”

Kids-show rockers the Aquabats will do their annual House of Blues concert on Thursday, the 24th, and Video Games Live returns to Embarcadero Marina Park South with gaming tunes performed by Sacra/Profana, synchronized lighting, and onstage game playing. Linkin Park and G-Eazy will headline the mtvU Fandom Awards and MTV Fan Fest, both held at Petco Park.

On Friday, July 25, the Sacra/Profana chorus hits the Marina again for Danny Elfman Music from Tim Burton Films, while Geeks: The Musical at Hillcrest’s BLKBOX Theatre tells the tale of “a gaggle of geeks through the San Diego Comic Book/Sci-Fi Convention...all the while, they geek, sing, and dance.” The Merrow in Hillcrest hosts the fourth annual Nerd-a-Thon, with MC Frontalot, MC Lars, Schäffer the Darklord, Dr. Awkward, and pelvic thrusts courtesy of Devil’s Playground Burlesque.

Garfunkel and Oates will play funny songs at House of Blues, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett is jamming with thrash-metal band Exodus at the Fear FestEvil After Party at F6IX, and CraveOnline’s Comic-Con party on the USS Midway features performances by MGMT and Grimes.

Saturday, July 26 finds Weird Al Yankovic at the Horton Grand Theatre for a ticketed discussion and Q&A session sure to center on his new album Mandatory Fun. Guests over 21 are encouraged to wear costumes to the Heroes Brew Craft Beer Festival at North Embarcadero Park, featuring more than 40 breweries, food trucks, a costume contest, and live music performed on a solar-powered stage by hip-hop crew Vokab Kompany.

The 2009 Star Trek film will screen at Embarcadero Marina Park South with live orchestral accompaniment, featuring the San Diego Symphony and the Sacra/Profana chorus. Somewhere Loud Events Center in the Midway District has the DJ M.A.D.E. & Super Friends 4 Comic-Con After Party that also features local trance/house DJs Ozan and EpiQ, while the SuicideGirls Blackheart Burlesque will shake their alt-thangs at House of Blues.

At the Con itself, Metallica will screen their new animated film ’Tallica Parking Lot on Friday, created by bassist Robert Trujillo and depicting “what happens at the tailgate party before a Metallica concert.” Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett will launch a new action figure of himself, limited to 300 copies, which he’ll promote at the Nuclear Blast booth 503 on Friday and Saturday. From the Nickelodeon show Big Time Rush, Stephen Kramer Glickman (who grew up in San Diego) will be doing several panels and onsite podcasts.

Music-themed panels include a couple featuring music and TV composers, Behind the Music: Crime, Death and Resurrection and The Character of Music, with other panel topics such as hip-hop & comics, comics & pop music (covering music-based comics), Cartoon Network’s Regular Show Rock-a-Thon, The Fifth Beatle: Big Screen and Beyond (spotlighting a graphic novel about Brian Epstein being developed by the surviving Beatles for a feature film), plus Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog Sing-Along and a screening of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode “Once More with Feeling.”

The show will also see the debut of a new set of Transformers Knights of Unicron action figures, casting Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Smooth Jazz, and Megatron as a hair-metal band, jamming with a character named Ratbat who transforms into the nerdiest knickknack imaginable: a keytar ($185).