Category: WWdN in Exile

My friend Otis, who I worked with at the 2006 WSOP in Vegas for the PokerStars blog, wrote an awesome story about how I indirectly traumatized his son, with my recommendation of the Color Coded Criminals shirt from Threadless:

Wil Wheaton (a guy who will occasionally refer to himself as West Coast Otis), tipped me off to the shirt a few days ago.  He and I occasionally get into the same things.  This shirt was one of them.

“Is Mr. Orange a baby?” my son asked. 

My wife sensed that I was struggling to accomodate my son’s curiosity without telling the whole story.

“He’s crying like a baby,” my wife said. I half expected her to say,
“Hey, just cancel that shit right now! You’re hurt. You’re hurt really
fucking bad, but you ain’t dying. Say the goddamn words! You’re gonna
be okayyyyyy!”

You’ve got to read the entire thing, because while what I’ve quoted is funny, it’s really just set up for the fantastic payoff. While you’re there, read some more of Otis’ blog, and you may understand why I can never tell where West Coast Otis ends and East Coast Wil begins.

It looks like I picked up a touch of the convention sars at Wizard World: sore throat, coughing my guts out, massive headache, and other upper respiratory stuff that is too disgusting even for me to describe.

So I’m back onto the goddamn couch for at least 24 hours. At least this time I have LEGO Star Wars 2 to keep me entertained. It’s fun to play, really cute, and hilarious. I’m only into story mode on Episode IV, but if the whole game is as entertaining as it’s been so far, I’m going to give it a massive thumbs up.

Four things, however, that I wanted to mention while I can fucos long enough to mention them:

Thing the first: Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday. I don’t have anything profound to say, but 2001 was one of the most important movies I ever saw, way back when I was a young geekling in 1987. It was in the Cinerama dome, a special screening one afternoon, and I wouldn’t have known it was playing if I hadn’t been doing some ARD recording for Star Trek at Modern Sound across the street. There were only a dozen or so people in the theater, but seeing it on that screen, in that setting, increased its already power over me by several orders of magnitude. I bought Clarke’s book on the way home, and read it in the next two days. There’s an amusing image, I’m sure, of me in the horrible rainbow uniform, sitting in Engineering or something, reading 2001.

Bonus that I didn’t know until yesterday: he pretty much invented the geosynchronous satellite. In 1941. Holy. Shit.

Thing the second: Barack Obama’s speech "A More Perfect Union" yesterday is one of the most inspiring and wonderful political speeches I’ve ever heard. He wrote it himself, too. Not a consultant, not a speech writer. He did it. That’s phenomenal. He talked to us like we were grown-ups, and addressed something Americans have needed to deal with for decades. It brought tears to my eyes, inspired me, and reaffirmed why I’m so proud to support him.

Thing the third: Today is the 5th anniversary of the beginning of George W. Bush’s disaster in Iraq. Does it surprise anyone that this man, who has run every single business he’s had into the ground, has done the same to our country?

Thing the fourth: I’m smart enough to separate the soldier from the war. Having said that, It’s important to me to sincerely thank and honor the men and women who have served, and are continuing to serve, in our armed forces.

Oh, last thing: Ryan came home for spring break (rather than run off to some idiot fest with idiots. I’m really proud of him for making safe and mature choices.)

Last night, I made a veggie stirfry with ginger rice and tofu. I served it with some tamari and Sriracha sauce on the table. I love Sriracha sauce, but I know how insanely hot it is, so I always put just a few drops on, mix it up, and apply more if I feel like it as I eat.

Nolan, however, put it on his dish like frosting.

"What in the world are you doing?" I said.

"I’m putting my chili sauce on like a man," he said, "not like a pansy."

Nolan took a bite of his food, and his face turned as red as the sauce.

"Yeah," he said, in a pinched voice, "that’s the stuff right there!"

I took a bite of my food.

"How’s your dinner treating you?" Nolan said to me.

"It’s good," I said. "I don’t need as much hot sauce as I used to, because after my surgery, I can taste food a lot better than before."

"And you’re a pansy," he said.

Ryan put his chopsticks down, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and said, "The difference between you and him, Nolan, is that he’s enjoying his food, and you’re enduring it."

"Owned," Anne said.

It’s good to have Ryan home. He’s grown up a lot since he was here two months ago, and it’s nice to have my whole family back under the same roof, even if it’s only for a week.

Okay, that’s all for now. Back to Sars Wars. (Ha! Ha! Ha!)

Oh my god, there’s a giant steampunk robot, and they’re fighting on top of it. With cutlasses.

CUTLASSES!

Much more beauty and wonder at io9.

On Friday, I went down to the convention center to check out Wizard World Los Angeles.  It was only my second real trip out of the house — all by myself, in my big boy pants and everything — in almost two months, so I was very excited.

It’s the first Wizard World I’ve been to, but I understand from people who’ve been going for years that this one was very small compared to past conventions. Personally, I thought it was very small compared to just about anything. Seriously, the entire con floor felt smaller than the room they had the Futurama panel in at Comicon last year.

The small size of the thing, however, worked to my advantage. I’m still working my way up to full strength, so I was able to take my time and see all the nerdy stuff I wanted to see without feeling like I was going to miss anything. Or, actually, missing anything at all.

I saw some cool toys, decided that I don’t have the "fuck you money" for any of the Transformers I wanted, and was surprisingly restrained in my spending. I bought a few comics and a couple of T-shirts for myself, a T-shirt for Nolan, and was — finally — able to support one of my favorite comics in the universe when I met David Malki !, creator of Wondermark, and traded him shiny gold rocks for a book and a T-shirt. He was very humble and gracious, and I hope I didn’t slime him too much with my effusive praise. (For those of you keeping score, I just need to meet Jeph Jacques from Questionable Content and Randal Munroe from xkcd to complete the list of awesome people I want to give shiny gold rocks to and slime with effusive praise one day.)

I fell like a name-dropping dick, but I was really happy to finally meet Ariana Osborne and Matt Fraction in person. Warren Ellis introduced me to them last year, and though we’ve spent lots of time talking on the Internets, I’ve never been in the same physical place as them until Friday. I spent most of my day at Wizard World getting to know Matt, because it turns out we have a lot in common. Ariana was working with Avatar Press, so she could only break away for a few minutes to have coffee with us, but Matt grabbed a hawesome picture of us both to prove that we were all in the same place at the same time.

The best moment of the entire day for me happened about thirty minutes after I went inside.

I thought that it would be quick and easy to buy my badge at the door, because it was Friday and there wouldn’t be that many people there. Apparently, about 300 other people thought the same thing, and we all got to spend about 40 minutes waiting in various queues while a group of Stormtroopers formed a thin white line which separated all of us nerds from certain chaos. After I paid cash for my badge (much shorter line than plastic) I met up with Matt and we headed in.

Matt had an exhibitor badge, and when he attempted to show it to the security guard who was checking badges at the gate, she freaked out at him for not having it in a holder. I waited while Matt went to get a plastic holder, and she freaked out twice as hard at me for holding up her line (I wasn’t. We con-going nerds are skilled in the ways of navigating around the guy who has stopped for a few seconds for one reason or another.)

Matt came back with his badge in a plastic holder, which he attached to his clothes to meet the security guard’s satisfacton, and we went inside.

About thirty minutes later, we met up with Ariana, and the three of us decided to head off the con floor to grab coffee at a nearby Starbucks. When we were about eight steps past the officious security guard, I reached up for my badge, which I’d pinned to my T-shirt’s collar, so I could write my name on it.

It wasn’t there.

I looked all around my jacket, checked all of my pockets several times, and had to accept that it had fallen off somewhere inside the con floor. Because I’d paid cash, I had no receipt. Because I hadn’t written my name on it, yet, I had no way of proving that I’d lost anything.

I sheepishly revealed all of this to Matt and Ariana while I was whirling around like a dervish, patting my pockets and shaking out my jacket, looking like that guy down the hallway in Jacob’s Ladder.

We decided that we would just use The Force on the security lady when it was time to go back in. If she stopped us and didn’t accept my explaination about losing my badge, I’d just go buy another one and chalk the expense up to me being stupid.

Although, I have to say: what the fuck is Wizard World thinking giving attendees little plastic sleeves with a safety pin attached to hold their badges? Was the thousand year-old tradition of putting badges on lanyards around your fucking neck just not time-tested enough for them? Maybe next year they’ll party like it’s 1979 and spring for something a little more durable.

So, we’d sat down and talked for a little bit, we headed back into the con together. We walked in an inverted phalanx, Matt and Ariana flanking me. We walked with purpose. We walked like we had somewhere to be, and didn’t have time to waste on the quaint practice of flashing our plastic-sheathed badges.

I don’t know how, but we pulled it off. Security Lady even smiled at us as we passed.

Badges? Badges!?  We don’t need no stinking badges!

I’m glad I went, and I had a really good time. I don’t know why it’s so much smaller this year than it’s been in the past, but we’ve already lost GenCon SoCal to mismanagement, and I sure hope Wizard World Los Angeles grows in the future and is successful enough to afford lanyards for attendees.