My Feet Hurt

Stardate: Thursday July 14th, 2005. OK, to be fair.. I know that is not the “correct” stardate.. and just to prove my dorkdom here is a quick link to where you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about “stardate” but were afraid to ask hosted right here on the site. So why the flashy intro? Why all this stardate bullshit? Well the sad fact is that me, Mike, and his fucking dad Eben all went to the San Diego International Comic Convention today. Basically the biggest collection of nerds and dweebs and dorks and social outcasts on the planet. Yep, this is the biggest comic book convention in the whole fucking world. People from around the glove fly, drive, and swim (some I think even ‘beamed down’) for this four day extravaganza. You wouldn’t know it, but right now I am updating this web site there are over 50,000 palefaced virgins freely roaming the streets of San Diego with sweaty necked nearsighted expectation after a long day of comic book hell. To be honest, I fucking had a great time.

I woke up extra early with the eagerness of a kid on christmas morning. I was at the gym by 0645 this morning and finally done working out cleaned up and had just enough time to gulp down a bowl of Special-K “red berries” before driving straight into the heart of San Diego to emblazon my name alongside those countless others in the annals of Dorkdom. It was a misty morning, cool, no sunlight penetrated to the ground. This must be the work of some great underground weather controlling computer system because this is exactly the weather that allows the pale-skins to roam free. Nerd weather. I got to the convention center and met up with my buddies and let me tell you – it was a fucking zoo! Spock rides by on a unicycle, a japanese schoolgirl argues with some kind of lobster-man, gothic types with gobs of make-up scavenge the curbside while three dudes in full metal body armor and swords chase down a ninja. The rule of thumb is pretty simple, if you are looking for the weirdos – go to a comic book convention. I accidentally bump into a stormtrooper and apologize fruitlessly as he rises to his feet, aims a blaster at my face, and threatens to ‘disintegrate me’ if I don’t watch where I’m going.

We wait through the longest line I’ve ever seen and get inside. The tangy smell of nerd sweat drips from every set of eyeglasses and pocket protectors. In this convention hall probably lies the greatest concentration of useless information on planet earth. Given enough Redbull and hot-pockets these people could probably argue and nit-pick every single solitary fact about any given Star trek episode or Star Wars movie or X-men comic or anything. This gives the place an unearthly feel. This also makes this place super fucking cool. I personally love comic books. I don’t have an extensive collection, I don’t quote the things or memorize their details, but I still love them. The artwork, the stories, the imagination. It is subversive, it is underground, it is diy and it is totally punk. I look like kind of an outcast amongst the comic-dork hoards. I mean, I don’t want to be a tourist but I don’t own over 100 bucks worth of comics and I’ve had sex with girls and I work out at the gym and all this other crap but deep down I’m a total dork too. I just don’t advertise any of the traditional trappings of a nerd.

Lucky for me these are some of the most cool and accepting people around. They are just happy to share time and space with other people that share their interests. If I’m around next year I’m gonna dress up like a fucking comic-hero or something just to show my support. Hell, I’m gonna dress up and do the Con and then go into the gaslamp in full regalia and proceed to get totally shitfaced. How fun would that shit be?

Well, after about 5 minutes on the conventionroom floor we lost Mike’s dad Eben in the swirling nebulus of people and colors and sounds. Eben would remain completely lost to us for the entire rest of the day. It’s not surprising that we never found him again, I mean, there are thousands of people in an 8 block area of mazes and comics and god knows what. Mike and I decided that if we do anything else on this fucking day that we would get a picture with Bruce Cambell (yeah, that Army of Darkness guy) at 3:30 when he shows up. That would be the highlight to our day and be a really cool thing to do anyway. Of course that never happened. It was like a nerd feeding frenzy around anything even remotely cool so we had to abandon our first goal almost as soon as we made it.

Comic book conventions are usually a pretty cool thing to go to. There are people dressed up in costumes, tons of unique and cool stuff to look at, and of course a shitload of good comicbook treasures waiting to be discovered. The problem with this convention is it’s best quality as well. Too fucking big. Now it’s not too big to find good comics, but what I mean is that because it is like the premiere comic book convention in the whole world there are a lot of people that want to have booths and shit. To hold all these people and the 50 thousand that want to come and check out their shit they have to hold it in the San Diego Convention Center. This means that the convention organizers have to charge a thousand dollars a day to even the smallest booth. So if you are Joe-Shitbag Comic dude and you want to have a booth and share your collection with everyone else you have to fork over nearly 4,000 bucks to do it. That means that right from the start you are weeding out a fuck-ton of the smaller collectors, but worse than that the people who do come and have a booth have to boost their prices up to like double what you could get on even e-Bay just to cover their overhead. Basically this kills all the good deals.

So anyway, we souped through comics and anime artwork and figurines and old toys and all kinds of shit. One booth was loaded with every movie or tv show sword you could ever think of. He had common shit like the sword from Highlander to the sword from Kill Bill (for each character) to the more unique stuff like that spinning sword from Hellboy as well as a bunch of stuff I can’t even remember.

Aside from collecting tons and tons of “freebies” (fliers, comics, posters, pins, magnets, stickers, key chains, soda-can holders, you fucking name it) we also took a bunch of pictures with some of the kickass presenters and other stuff.

Remarkably we found ourselves reunited with Eben after taking a break for lunch. He had gotten so lost and pissed off that he took a cartrunner or rimshaw or whatever to the fucking train stataion and was gonna bail back to OC. Good thing we caught up with him.. The rest of the day would not have been the same without the big guy.

Eben “I was looking and looking but that place is so big. It was like – look through 500 weirdos, take five steps and look through another 500 weirdos, take five steps and look through another 500 weirdos. My eyes were watering and going crazy, I did that for three hours straight.”

Mike and I had already eaten some pizza but Eben was hungry so we stopped by the historic Kansas City Barbecue (610 W. Market St.). We quickly found out that this was the place where the notorious “sleazy bar scene” from Top Gun was filmed. We ate right next to the ‘great balls of fire piano’. Bras hung from the ceiling and we had to suffer through the slurping noises of Eben gobbling down a rack of ribs like some kind of space beast.Back to the Con.

Well if you know Eben then you two things. First, he’s got a fucked up story for everything, and second that he loves tits. The whole afternoon he was continually telling us about some girl with green and blue hair and this huge rack of tits. Now at these conventions they have booths for everything and you can usually find one or two burned out porn stars and a playboy bunny hanging around signing 8×10 glossies of their naked asses. I really don’t give a shit about these bitches but Eben was all about it. After what seemed like an eternity of nagging I finally said, “ok, fine, fuck it, lets go talk to the playboy bunnies’.

We walk over to her booth and Eben starts to like smooth talk this chick (if you knew Eben then you would know how fucking hilarious this really was). She looks like she;s been snorting cocaine in a truck stop for the last 10 years but she does have a nice body. Right when we are there talking to this girl two other of these types pull up wearing skimpy clothes and acting all flirty and crap. Eben is like, “hey, can I get a picture with you?” (It was his fantasy all day to pick up two girls – one in each arm – and have a picture like that). I was barely paying attention.. my last comment was “Whoa, theres a lot of skin over here.” which I thought drew negative attention so I kinda just pulled back and was zoning out. These girls though didn’t want a picture with Eben becuase he didn’t fit some kind of qualification and they wanted a pic with me. I was turned around and Eben was like “why don’t you want to.. blah blah blah” and I got a little snappy and said – of fucking course! “DUde, fuck these bitches… I’m not about paying homage to some chick just because she’s got a hot body. All they do is lay around and get their pictures taken for money. These chicks aren’t even that fucking hot, got damned Skullissa is better looking than all these sluts and all her shit is real. I’d rather go hang out with some nerdy chick dressed up like a pokemon than hang with these fuckers!”

Well dudes, in classic style I totally embarrassed myself AGAIN! I turn around to look at Eben and what I didn’t realize is that these girls had all come around from behind the counter to get all snuggley close for a picture or whatever – I think they might have thought I was cute or something because I was about the only non-Klingon at the whole convention. So they were all like 1 foot behind me and heard all that crap I said. I turn around and they all looked super sad and really hurt (maybe because their fragile little spell had been broken). I panicked and sputtered out “..ooh.. um, whoops,.. I.. ummm.. sorry” and walked away. Then I had to listen to Eben tell me how I could have fucked a playboy model if I wasn’t so stupid for the rest of the day. I really did feel bad about hurting their feeling though.. god I’m such a prick!

By late afternoon we were getting pretty Comic’d out. I knew it was time to go when I looked over and saw Wolverine puking his guts out into a trash can. If that dude couldn’t take any more we surely couldn’t. We pulled chalks and headed home. It was a great convention, hell – its still going on full power. I swiped a four day pass totally ninja-like when we got in so I can cruise back if I feel the need. If anyone reads this and wants to go today or tomorrow just give me a call. I’m down for a repeat. Until then, live long and prosper dudes!

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