DAY ONE... cont'd
I had some time to kill before the next panel, so I decided to try to score my Burn Notice T-shirt down at the Fox booth in the Exhibition Hall. When you’re actually heading for a specific destination in the Exhibition Hall (rather than browsing the aisles), it’s sort of like being a quarterback in a football game where everyone in the stands had decided to join Defense. I had to set my heading to the Fox logo hanging from the ceiling and then steer that general direction through whatever holes in the crowd presented themselves. When I finally got there, I asked a nice young Fox representative if she had my Burn Notice T-shirt; and she explained in a fair and balanced manner that the studio representative had been mistaken when directing the hundreds of lucky T-shirt ticket holders to the Fox booth. She advised that the shirts were being dispensed in Room 29, and politely asked me to please go there to pick one up, and that if I happened to run across the studio representative in question, to let him know what she had discovered about the marital status of his parents.
Fortuitously, I had planned to meet Sam for the next program on my schedule at Room 30, which, even in the Comic-Con universe, was right next door to Room 29. On my way upstairs and toward the other side of the Convention Center, I got a MayDay call from Sam, asking for assistance with his approach to Room 30. At first I thought he was being obtuse, since anybody who’s attended as many Cons as Sam knows the all the rooms numbered 20 or above are on the upper west side of the Convention Center. He explained, though, that he knew where Room 30 was; he just couldn’t find the door. I told him to keep circling the field and I’d talk him in as soon as I got to the tower.
When I arrived, I could understand Sam’s consternation. The door to room 30 was completely obscured by a line of people that originated from Room 29 next door and made its way in a non-organized fashion down the corridor and in front of the entrances to Rooms 30 through 33, blending in with folks who were trying to line up for entrance to these other rooms. As you’ll recall, Room 29 was the room that held my prized Burn Notice T-shirt, so I abandoned my plan to pick up the shirt. Instead, I managed to finagle my way near the entrance door to Room 30 and plaster myself against the wall in such a way that people would know I was either in the line for that room or suffering under the delusion that I was providing crucial structural support for that part of the building. Either way, I hoped I wouldn’t be challenged.
As it turns out, not all the people lining up for Room 29 were clamoring for a Burn Notice T-shirt. Room 29 was the designated room for distribution of all the ticketed premiums handed out by the studios at the Con, so folks were also there to get their Psych 8-balls, Astro-Boy posters, Dexter bone-saws, and Twilight sunscreen. In fact, it’s officially designated as the Fulfillment Room, which may have accounted for the crowd; it’s a label that, frankly, promises more to a convention of comic-book fans than it can deliver.
Sam and I eventually managed to gain entry to Room 30
for The Physics of Hollywood Movies. It was surprisingly well-attended,
considering it featured no celebrities and was hosted by a physics
instructor. But it was an entertaining look how Hollywood ignores the
laws of physics in favor of what looks good (which accounts for the
large number of plastic surgeons there). The host used scenes from some
big-budget movies to explain some elementary scientific laws, like:
- even if you’re the Green Goblin, you can’t really kick a guy 50 yards
without flying back a few feet yourself;
- hitting the ground at 60 mph is going to hurt no matter what kind of
high-tech body armor you’re wearing; and
- wearing Spandex is not a good idea if you’re a guy.
About this time, Sam discovered a voicemail message from his doctor, and we had to radically rethink our dining strategy for the trip.
We don’t eat at the Convention Center. The cuisine is mostly dough… Wetzel’s Pretzels, followed by Mrs. Fields Cookies, washed down by soda or Starbucks. There’s a snack bar in the Exhibition Hall that offers a bit more variety, but when an establishment with the square footage of a walk-in closet is trying to serve a lunchtime crowd of 125,000 fans, it can get pretty ugly. They try to control the crowds by charging gold-rush prices and refusing to take comics in trade, but I think the Comic-Con snack bar is still responsible for the annual spike in the GNP every July.
Nor do we try to eat somewhere nearby in downtown San Diego. It’s also crowded; but some of that crowd is bound to contain non-Convention-attending locals who work in the downtown area. These folks tend to be a bit cranky from having to get up at 3 AM in order to beat the Con-generated traffic to get to work on time. Wearing a Comic-Con badge and shuffling through that crowd is risking a shiv in the gut.
So we normally try to grab a good breakfast before we get to the Con, and then have a good dinner on our way back to the hotel at the end of the day. Of course, by “good” we mean fried, or at least fatty, and in supersize quantities. Even at places with actual table service, we try to pretend we’re giving our order to a speaker.
But Sam’s been taking some medication that has the possible side effect of pushing his cholesterol needle into the red, so he has occasional labwork done to monitor his blood’s Crisco factor. And the voicemail from his doctor was advising him that his latest blood work could have come from a crankcase and he should watch his diet for the next few weeks. This was a significant disappointment for Sam, who doesn’t believe that watching what you eat should interfere with eating what you eat, and his doctor had really rained on his Comic-Con parade.
So we nixed our plans for dinner at TGIFried’s, and tried to figure out a place that would offer a variety of dishes that Sam could eat, and still meet our standards of fine dining. The answer was obvious: Hometown Buffet.
This is not a paid endorsement… although we have no
objection if the Hometown people want to turn it into one. Our family
loves Hometown Buffet. This is not a sentiment shared by most of our
family and friends, who have an irrational fear of sneeze guards. But
nearly every reason they have for treating Hometown Buffet like a CDC
Hot Zone is a reason we like to go there. Honest, we’re not proud of our
lack of sophistication… we’re just happy with it. For example:
- At a conventional restaurant, someone takes your order and brings you
your food. Ben and Sam and I get enough of that at home. And we’re not
that crazy about the waiting period between the time we order and the
time the food gets to the table. For fast food aficionados, nothing is
faster than Hometown Buffet, where they lay out the food for you before
you get there.
- At Hometown Buffet, you put what you want on your plate. I find it ironic that the people who look down their noses at Hometown Buffet are the same people that, when the food arrives at their table at a conventional restaurant, immediately start sampling something from everyone’s plate. I’d rather that my food encounter as few detours as possible before making it to my mouth.
- It’s all you can eat. Folks who don’t like Hometown Buffet have to pretend that this factor doesn’t totally make irrelevant any criticisms involving quality or ambience.
Through the magic of the car’s onboard (via suction cup) GPS navigation system, we were guided to the nearest Hometown Buffet located right next door to a Chuck E. Cheese bistro in National City’s restaurant row. We decided this would be our dining destination for the next couple of nights.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton