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zwolanerd

I guess I just like liking things

The first thing I saw at the con.

The first thing I saw at the con.

I’ve been thinking about last weekend’s pop culture convention all week. I should have taken notes while I was there, but I worry sometimes that doing that will take me out of the fun of being somewhere, you know? I don’t know that I have any great narrative to share on the con as a whole, so it seems like maybe bullet points are the way to go on this for me.

  • I don’t know if that Dalek is considered cosplay, but I’m not entirely sure if there was a person in it or if it was a remote-controlled robot.
  • Speaking of cosplay, I guess I knew there would be some but hadn’t thought much about it. I’ve never been around cosplayers before. There were some great costumes! There were a lot I didn’t recognize (mostly anime stuff, I was informed).
  • There was some sort of Democrat gathering going on in the convention center at the same time, and many of us had to walk through their crowded hallways to get to the PopCon. The looks on some of their faces as a blue person or someone with wings or swords made their way through them…
  • I only ended up doing four things on my list. Some of that is because I didn’t understand how to con very well. Next time I’ll have a better plan.
  • There were a lot more booths selling things that I expected. Again, I think it’s because I didn’t know much about cons, but there were a ton of stores and most of them had things I wanted to buy. I literally left the con with zero money in my wallet (which is actually a story for another day).
  • The celebrity guest signing booths were all at one end, so I did see Nicholas Brendan, John DiMaggio, and Ron Glass, but I didn’t have the $40 to spend to get any of their signatures, and I got the distinct impression you weren’t allowed/encouraged to go up and talk to them if you didn’t have the dough for a signature.
  • However, I did sorta quickly approach the Ron Glass table and mutter/stammer out an apologetic “I literally don’t have any money but wanted to say I enjoy your work.” He graciously smiled and nodded, but the security guy stationed there looked like he wanted to feed me my own severed head (and I don’t even know how he would do that). I literally did not go any closer than 15 feet. This was the third-most stressful moment of my day.
  • I need to do a separate post about the things I bought at the con. Sneak preview: Ghostbusters, TMNT, and comics
  • I attended a panel about how videogames have become a larger part of society, and it was interesting, but I thought the guy in the middle talked too much and the other two didn’t really get to have much input.
  • Weirdly enough, watching the panel made me think, “I could do this sort of thing,” so now I have a year to work on an idea and pitch it to the PopCon folks.

I’m going to separate these next things out to draw attention to the fact that these were my absolutely favorite things about the con:

  1. The Ron Glass Q&A – Something very moving struck me during this, but I’m still trying to formulate my thoughts on it. Aside from that, it was very interesting and fun listening to him talk about his experiences on Firefly and Barney Miller.
  2. Meeting Kevin Eastman – I can’t really explain how nervous I was about this. I mean, he’s just a guy, right? No, sir, he is not – he is one of the co-creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I mean, I don’t even know him well enough that I would recognize him out on the street, you know? But there I was at his booth, five feet from him, going through the things available for sale, not talking to him even though no one else was there at the moment. But when I chose an already-signed print and gave his wife the money, she asked if I wanted him to sign it, and of course I did. He shook my hand and was very friendly and signed it and even put my name on it and drew a Ninja Turtle head. I told him that I’d been a fan for almost 30 years and thanked him for his work. I asked him who his favorite Turtle was and he said, “Raphael, because he’s fun to write.” And that was pretty much it.  And of course I forgot to ask for a picture together but I don’t know if he would have anyway because some of the guests had specific picture-taking times that you had to pay money for.
  3. Meeting Internet people – I wasn’t in the main hall for ten minutes before someone I knew came up and said hi, a friend from church. She and her husband were there, and we ended up talking for a few minutes. But then I finally worked up the nerve to go look up the people from Twitter that I’d been talking to for a few months but had never met, and they were all great:

So, yes, I had a great time. I’m already looking forward to next year, and in between I might work up the nerve to go to a few other cons.

I will leave you with this picture of Action Comics #1, which is worth (almost?) a million dollars, and it was just sitting right there in front of me:

actioncomics1

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