Letters From The Loft

Stuff From The Desk Of Chuck Thornton

Comicon 2008 Journal

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DAY TWO
FRIDAY; JULY 25; 10:00 PM

The day started early with the anticipated phone call from Sam at about 2:30 am. I was thrilled he was there, of course, but enthusiasm manifests itself differently at that hour, so I can only hope that Sam knew I was saying “Good to see you” when I opened the door, punched him in the face, and stumbled back to bed.

 We were up again at about 7:00; and, after a detour to McDonald’s for the most important meal of the day, arrived at the bus stop at 8:00. This morning we had a different bus driver who wasn’t as adventurous, and our trip to the Convention Center was a bit shorter and didn’t include a goodwill tour that plowed through the downtown commuter traffic. We got there in about a half hour.

 Of course, Sam had to go through the same registration/badge pick-up procedure that I had already accomplished on Thursday night, but there’s considerably less folks checking in on a Friday morning. I figured I would accompany Sam through the process, then move on together to the first panel we planned to attend.

 There’s a phenomenon that every Con attendee will inevitably experience, but always at random unanticipated moments. I don’t know the clinical term, but it’s commonly called “volunteer megalomania”, and it usually starts happening about the second day of the convention. For the dear people who volunteer to help at ground-level with managing the teeming mass of Comicon humanity, that’s when it dawns on them that with great power comes great… well, power. And so at any given time, attendees can find themselves subject to some rather arbitrary and baffling directives, delivered in an overbearing manner by people who, just a couple of days ago, wouldn’t have raised their voice if a neighbor’s Rottweiler were chewing off their leg.

In my case, my first encounter with this phenomenon came as I tried to go with Sam to the pre-registration area, and was stopped by a volunteer who told me that, by the authority vested in him by the Comicon Commissioner, he couldn’t allow me to stay with my son during registration, because people who had already registered weren’t allowed in that area. I wasn’t as loud as this gentlemen, but I was bigger, so I decided to discuss the merits of this policy with him and asked him why I had to arrange to meet my son somewhere else when I was already with him, and would just be standing with him while folks quickly scanned his paperwork, gave him his badge, and sent him on his way. The volunteer (my recollection’s foggy, but I think the name on his badge was “Tiny Twerp”), who saw a direct correlation between logic and decibel-level, patiently explained that the registration area was for people who hadn’t registered, and, since I had registered, I couldn’t go there. Instead I could go anywhere else in the Convention Center, and Sam, once he had a badge, would be banished from the registration area and could meet me in the Promised Land.  So, I asked him, let me get this straight: there’s an area in this Convention Center where ONLY people WITHOUT badges are allowed? He didn’t say yes, but he did say, SIR, ALL PEOPLE WITH BADGES MUST GO TO THE RIGHT; ALL PRE-REGISTRANTS TO THE LEFT, and since I had now embarrassed Sam to the point where no jury would convict him for throwing me off the balcony, I gave in and met him on the other side of the registration area.

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