On Saturday, I met up with girlpirate, mystikdragon7, and rfjason to attend Emerald City Comic Con: The Dorkening. When I texted Kiki to let her know I’d arrived, she responded that it was insanely busy and they were headed over to Gameworks to get some food and see if the crowds would die down a bit. I decided to go in and grab my badge before heading over to Gameworks, and immediately saw what she meant, and felt it. The hall was so full of people, my claustro-people-phobia kicked in almost immediately. I’m mostly good in enclosed spaces, but when it comes to spaces crammed full of people, I am not so good. I get a little panicky and feel a lot like nerd-punching. There, in a sentence, why I am not interested in attending PAX pretty much ever again.
Luckily, before I punched any nerds, I ran into evillin, who defused my crowd rage by ranting about slow-moving crowds herself. Soon after, I swapped my ticket for a badge and rushed back out into the fresh air.
Gameworks was fairly empty, so much so that they were not serving entire sections of tables, only not informing customers of that fact who were patiently waiting for booze. Jason called out that I should flash my tits at the bartender to get him up to their table, and while I wasn’t at whip ’em out stage just yet, I did manage to get him to tell us where we actually SHOULD sit in order to be served.
While we waited approximately a year and six days for them to make three orders of fries and a hot dog, we played with action figures and watched Iron Man on Jason’s phone. This one is entitled “Eat me like a rancor”.
After sating our hunger (or in my case, covering myself in an insulating layer of a 25oz, eight dollar beer), we were prepared to face the crowds again, which had actually gone down significantly to a much more manageable level.
We then proceeded to mock people. Look at this guy’s pants. Can anyone tell me what’s going on with this guy’s pants? It’s sweatpants tucked into socks with shorts worn over the whole mess. Is this a thing now?
I would also like to know what’s going on with purple wig over the ponytail girl.
I had a horrible, horrible moment when I saw the guy facing the camera in the righthand corner of the purple wig photo. He looked shockingly like an ex of mine, also known as The Worst Person Alive, and I wondered if I was going to have to kill a man with a plastic lightsaber to the throat. Luckily, it was just a resemblance and no murders had to go down. Also, it was not my lightsaber, so there’s that, too. There’s only so much you can get away with, covered in blood and screaming “JEDI BUSINESS!”
People I ran into at the con: evillin, ravenmimura, goosezilla, strand, amazoni + husband, and Amber + Greg.
I also ran into His Hotness, Aaron Douglas. A couple of years ago, Kiki and I both paid for pictures with Jamie Bamber, but paying for photos and autographs was not in the budget this year. Aaron is still my faaavorite, though, and I saw he’d stepped away from his booth and I ambushed the poor man, starting off the conversation with the eloquent and tactful “*GASP* HI YOU’RE MY FAAAVORITE!!!”
He smiled and introduced himself, shook my hand, and I asked him if he remembered taking a picture with Tonya last year and resting his face on her chest. “Like…a shelf of boobs? Oh yeah, I remember those–uh, her!” I then inquired if the only way to get a picture with him was through, uh, official channels, and he smiled and immediately posed with me for a photo in his manly, manly arms. And at that moment, I died a little. With happiness. My faaaaaavorite.
Kiki then asked for a picture, threatening to cry if she did not get one, and he complied. I am glad to live in a world where obliging men will take photographs with fawning ladies and not ask for their money.
I then took an unauthorized photo of Leonard Nimoy, causing one frazzled security guard to plead and cry. Cry on, crybaby, if Spock is allergic to photographs that don’t cost $60, you should really enclose him in an area that’s not accessible by the general public.
We saw that people were going through the line and NOT getting autographs, just saying hi, and we figured there was no reason we couldn’t do the same. The woman collecting money asked each person in line for said monies, and my response was “I am of the lower class and would just like to meet and greet” and she waved me through. Then, for a brief moment, I held Leonard Nimoy’s hand in mine, and stole his powers. Just long enough to be uncomfortable, but not long enough for him to have to ask for it back. Just at that awkward level at which I consistently operate. I guess at least I didn’t squeal “You’re my faaaaaavorite!!” this time, which is progress.
One person I would’ve liked to meet but did not want to wait in the hours-long line was Jhonen Vasquez. Had I met him, I suppose our conversation would have been “OH MY GOD YOU ARE LIKE TOTALLY AWESOME AND UH LIKE WOW…UH…BYE” so neither he nor I missed much and he was probably better spared.
Some dude was wandering around with a camcorder, asking people “Wil Wheaton or Sheldon Cooper?” Apparently, I was the only person to make a face and answer “I DON’T CARE.” Good luck in your dork wars, boys.
After Kiki picked up her rad commission from Hijinks Ensue (which they are totally selling on their website now), we were pretty well done for the day. Next year: so much Jedi business in more senses than you could even imagine possible.
The only time I have ever done anything like this was when I met Craig Charles. And then he was the only one famous there, and there were only about 40 people.
Otherwise I could not deal.
There were a LOT of people there, we contemplated just cutting our losses and selling our badges if it was as busy as it was earlier in the day.
Sunday was WAY less crowded.
Hahaha! “…a shelf of boobs”! HAHAHA!
Just wait til you see THIS year’s pix. BWAHAHAHAHA! (Sadly, the printer lost it’s mojo after being slayed by the intense amount of Stan Lee photo ops, so they’re gonna be mailed out later.)
STAY AWAY FROM MY SCI FI HUSBAND OR I’M GONNA KICK YOU IN THE BABYMAKER
“Shhh…the baby’s sleeping!”
RIGHT IN THE BABYMAKER
You should thank me for so lovingly displaying him on my “shelf”…
You would think so, but no, I am threatened by your shelf.
LOL You’ve got a pretty threatening shelf yourself, lady. 😉
hah! Do you remember meeting Rob Zombie? good times.
I still have moments of panic when I see somebody that vaugely resembles Chris, man he screwed me up.
You look awesome in that picture Melissa, I am living an exciting life vicariously through you.
“…Hi.
…Thank you”
In our defense though, we were exhausted and dehydrated when we met Rob Zombie.
Which was worse for claustro-people-phobia? PAX, or Dragon*Con?
PAX is much worse. Because D*C is spread out over several hotels, there’s space to breathe as people are constantly flowing between venues. PAX is just the undersize Seattle Convention center crammed to capacity.
Then it’s time for you to return to D*C, innit?
I have no idea who he is, but that Aaron feller looks a lot like my friend Pantsless Dougie. I’m sure he didn’t mind being accosted by you, ’cause I’m sure you smelled a lot better than a great majority of the other attendees. :-/
I was w/ my friend Annette on Sat. as she parked in the Conv. Ctr parking garage, before going to get ready for her Moisture Festival show at ACT Theater. I had forgotten it was ComiCon until we saw a 15ish-year-old boy in a Spiderman costume, and boy did he not fill it out properly. :-/ We kept saying, “Neeeerrrrrds! NEEEEERRRRRRDS!” a la Ogre. The people-watching must have been epic!
I think the rep nerds have for stinkiness is undeserved, actually. I didn’t catch a single whiff of foul odor the entire time I was there.
We saw some INCREDIBLE sights including a dude dressed up in green spandex that left nothing to the imagination and the Hello Kitty Hooker.
Also, the word ‘moisture’ skeeves me out. Why oh why did they make that the festival name?
Seattle, rain, y’know … There were some incredible performances, and my homegirl brought down the house with her dirtied-up rendition of “Rubber Ducky”, because she’s awesome like that.
I don’t really like the word moist, but it doesn’t skeeve me like I know it does a few people I know. Moisture is better, actually.
I feel like the moisture festival isn’t advertised very well, because once again I had no idea it was going on this weekend.
Shit, I shoulda mentioned it to you! Yeah, there was a nice writeup in the Times about it, but I’m not sure what sorts of promo they do for it. This was Annette’s second time performing; she did it two years ago, as well, but couldn’t get time off last year to do it. She’s the one who’s in Vegas, performing in Menopause.
There are still some performances, FYI. MoistureFestival.com for the deets!
a) Leonard Nimoy doesn’t come to our anime conventions.
b) If he did, he wouldn’t have to have a sign over his head saying who he is.
c) Looks like fun, anyway. Can’t wait for our cons to start. We have Louisianime sometime in the spring, which I haven’t been to, and Mechacon, which I went to last year. I’m hoping Louisianime is bigger because Mechacon was lame.
b) hahahaha three signs! excellent point
Maybe they wanted to make sure he found his table…
Maybe he really likes seeing his name…
Look who we got? Did you see who we got? Look who’s here!
They are pleased with themselves. But really, he is not just a great actor, he’s a great voice talent, too. I hear his voice in just about every science documentary.
Well, look at it this way–if some douche who nobody knows gets his own name plaque, why would Leonard Nimoy deserve any less?
I guess. It was just funny.
“Emerald City Comic Con: The Dorkening” LOL..
This was my first Comic Con. It was insane. We did pay for the photo op with Leonard Nimoy.. I do not regret! lol.. (although I thing the photo booth folks got a lot of flak for the mess up/bad organization.. having folks pick up pics right outside the entrace where folks were trying to enter for other photo ops.. really? and they didn’t expect the rush for Nimoy? or Stan Lee… really?) We were lucky to get one of our prints before the printer broke. We still have to email to get the other and the jpeg.. which for some reason will take a week?
They want folks from the first day to email them pics of themselves so they can figure out who to send which pics.. ahh.. you might wanted to have numbered the cards or something?!
Uuugh, that is shamefully disorganized. They’re fast to take the money, though.
This one time I talked to JV on the phone
and he pantomimed a zombie. I think? It was neat, then I handed the phone back to my friend. I’m pretty sure I didn’t know wtf was on the other end of the line at the time.
agreed. Leonard Nimoy’s pr guy was running around trying to work out logistics to unruffle flustered folks.. the actual photo booth people however were a big wall of uhhhh…. I dunno what to do… nice huh 😉 I suspect they may end up with lawsuits if folks that paid and have the means to be disgruntled don’t get their pics for some reason or another. There was no reciept system either, though.
It sounds like this event was his likely last public appearance for signings and whatnot, too.. and after the kookiness of this weekend I don’t blame him :p
I know about cons….
I have to help my daughter with her Mudkip costume for Sakura-con….
she’s gone as various incarnations of Link a few times, but it’s Mudkip time now.