DAY ZERO
WEDNESDAY; JULY 23; 10:30 PM.
The Con doesn’t officially start until tomorrow,
but for the past few years they’ve had what they call a “preview night.”
When you go to an event like this, it’s not like buying a ticket to the movies, where you simply show up, stand in line, have your ticket ripped in half at the door, then enjoy the show while you munch on the Raisinets you had your wife hide in her purse. This is a four-day event where your price of admission gets you:
a bag full of important publications that you’ll throw away the following week;
an official Comicon cardboard badge that tells everyone who you are and where you’re from, resulting in follow-up mail that offers to keep the fact of your attendance a secret from your family and co-workers for a reasonable monthly fee;
a plastic pin-on sleeve in which to place the badge;
a stylish lanyard supplied by the friendly folks at Upper Deck, on which to snap the sleeve that holds the badge that hangs on the neck that holds the head that contains the brain that lives in the house that Superman built. I’m not sure who the Upper Deck people are, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve never bought anything with their name on it, so they’re probably wasting money giving me a conspicuously labeled lanyard.
Other than a tolerance for the bizarre, the badge is your most important possession at the Comicon. The Con is heavily populated by employees of Elite Show Services Inc., self-described as “San Diego County’s Finest Security, Event Staffing, Management and Consulting Firm.” These folks all wear red t-shirts with the word “ELITE” emblazoned on front and back, and they take their t-shirts very seriously. Their only purpose in life is to let you know that a) you better have a badge; b) it better be facing outward; and c) wherever you’re standing, it should be somewhere else.
The process of getting that badge involves proving that you’ve already forked over the admission price (which had to be done in advance… there are no longer any on-site ticket purchases due to the preponderance of folks who brought their mayonnaise jars filled with the previous year’s accumulated pocket change). The system’s fairly automated and involves scanning a bar-code that’s been provided to you before the event, but the fact remains that this badge-obtaining registration is the one common activity in which ALL 10 billion (and climbing) Con attendees must participate.
In addition to the advantage of registering early, “preview night” attendees also are allowed into the exhibitor’s hall from 6 to 9 pm. So for three hours, this hall contains all the people who will otherwise intermittently visit over the next four days. For those of you as old as I am, you’ll understand when I say it’s phone-booth stuffing taken to a cosmic scale.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton