(To be fair, I should mention that on this year’s preview night, there’s also a couple of showings of the new Fox TV show Fringe, brought to you by the creators of Lost. I expect my product-placement check within the month).
I checked into my room at the Holiday Inn with no problem; the clerk swiped my credit card and noted the encrypted message that says “please give the bearer the uppermost room furthest away from both elevators and ice machine”, so things went without a hitch. By 4:30 my car was in the parking lot and I was on the shuttle bus to take me to the Convention Center.
On the bus I struck up a conversation with a pony-tailed guy about my age who had gotten out of the army in 1975, and had been attending the Con ever since. He said his 25 year-old son has been a volunteer worker at the Con since he was 16 (the son, not the dad). (The Comicon, taking its cue from most comic-book retailers, is officially a non-profit organization, and offers free admission, lodging, and official nerd status to anyone who volunteers to help out during the convention). His insider information was that the Comicon is only booked at the San Diego Convention Center through 2012, and will subsequently move the venue to Los Angeles, a city where the words “you don’t see that every day” have yet to be uttered.
It took almost exactly an hour from the time I stepped off the bus to the time I completed the registration process, which was pretty impressive considering I stood in a line that stretched to the moon and back, thanks to the Disneyland-like convoluted queuing. All I wanted was my badge… I figured I had four more days to check out the exhibition hall, and eventually Fox was going to send Fringe to my living room, so I immediately went back to the shuttle bus to return to my car.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton