Letters From The Loft
Stuff From The Desk Of Chuck Thornton
DAY TWO...CONT'D
The following item was available for purchase:
I thought this would make a nice piece for our living room, but if I brought it home, I’m pretty sure Sue would convert it into a bookend set, with me as the second piece.
We also stopped by the booth of a book dealer called Dumbrella and one of the people selling books there was Wil Wheaton, who used to play Ensign Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s nice to know that, unlike William Shatner, some folks can get honest work after Star Trek.
We decided to take in another program that had to do with amusing excerpts from old comic books, and while we waited, I worked on coordinating Ben’s arrival. He was getting off work at 3:30 and driving in from Chatsworth. Unfortunately, traffic wouldn’t put him here until after registration shut down at 6:00, and Sam and I were planning on attending a reunion of Mystery Science Theater 3000 cast members between 7:15 and 8:15, so it looked like Ben would have to cool his heels for a while until we made it back to the hotel.
Actually, things worked out in a “bad news/good news” kind of way: the bad news was that although we arrived about an hour early for the MST3K program, we were told that it was already filled to capacity. So the good news was that we were able to go back to the hotel room before Ben’s arrival. The bad news was that due to traffic, it took Ben about 5 hours to get here, so we waited until his arrival to eat dinner. If Sam goes more than four hours without eating something, he tends to broadcast a Donner-party-like vibe, so I had to tie him up with some phone cord while we waited for Ben.
A quick aside: the Holiday Inn is right across from the San Diego Sports Arena, and apparently there’s some problem with people attending Arena events and using the hotel parking lot. When I checked in, I was given a green sheet of paper to put on my car dashboard, identifying me as a guest with some sort of unique numerical identifier. It didn’t dawn on me till later that I would ultimately have three vehicles parked here, and although I had booked the room to indicate 3 occupants, I felt funny about going back to the hotel clerk and explaining that I had brought the Thornton auto fleet with me and needed to take up more of their parking. So instead, I stopped by Kinko’s and had two more color copies made of the green parking permit. They came out so well that I also ran off some 20 dollar bills, just in case I got in a bind.
Ben arrived safe and sound, and we discussed
where to eat, finally deciding on the local Benihana, which, as you can
see by the picture below, was catering to the Comicon tourists:
Ha ha ha. No, seriously, we went to Wendy’s, since we just wanted to eat and relax in the hotel room before another full day tomorrow.
Although the room has two double beds, when three males are involved, it is apparently unthinkable that any two bodies should occupy one of them at any given time. So I brought a cot and set it up for Ben… it’s a magical cot that magnetically draws my shin to it every time I walk past it. But it’s a small price to pay for Ben’s company.
The fun level’s increased astronomically since Sam and Ben arrived, so I’m really looking forward to tomorrow… especially since I taped those “free hugs” signs to the back of their shirts.