What to Do when You're Sick of Dealing with ComicCon.
Your loyal comiXology columnist will not be attending San Diego. That's by choice mind you--us skinny pasty white chainsmokers know where we're not welcome, and one of those locations is directly under the yellow sun of California's crashing economy. But if we were attending, here's what we'd be checking out.
Priority Ten:
The San Diego Zoo apparently has some kind of
Cheetah/Golden Retriever team-up. I've seen pictures of this online, and I've met people who claim to have seen it, but honestly: a Cheetah and a Golden Retriever living together? That just seems wrong. It seems even more wrong that this lunacy has been going on for years, but hey, it has, and I think that the little boy who lives inside me would be very disappointed if I went to San Diego and only fed him Dwayne McDuffie's anecdotes about attempting to write
Justice League scripts while being weighted down by advertisements for the
Tangent mini-series.
Priority Nine:
Although I'm fully aware how popular it is to complain about the Hollywood invasion that's all but turned San Diego into some kind of screeching entertainment complex built around the excitement of being the first to find out what Ridley Scott's live action
Monopoly movie is going to look like, I got no shame. (Born without it! Sleep like a baby!) Miguel Ferrer is going to be at the convention, and the opportunity to meet Miguel Ferrer and scream my favorite lines from
Traffic at him is one that would last in memory much longer than getting Darwyn Cooke to autograph my perineum.
Priority Eight:
For some terrible reason involving non-Indiana Jones related archaeology, they're aren't any ghost hunting tours going on at
San Diego's Whaley House during the weekend of the convention, but that doesn't mean that one couldn't still go to the Whaley House and initiate arguments with anyone nearby who looks A) bored and B) like they believe in ghosts.
Priority Seven:
I've never gone on any sort of vacation without doing something I could do just as easily at my home. It's a tradition I learned from my father, who wanted to watch
Braveheart in Mexico despite having already seen it months earlier when it was released at movie theaters within a five minute drive of where he slept. In his honor, I would go to the
Landmark Hillcrest Cinema and watch
The Hurt Locker again, because I thought
The Hurt Locker was a great movie.
Priority Six:
I'm not legally permitted to give blood, but I would still go to the
Robert Heinlein Blood Drive. If prior experiences at comic conventions have taught me anything, it's that the food is excruciatingly overpriced. Blood drives always have cookies, and they are almost always free.
Priority Five:
I'd hire some bikers, get really drunk on Snapple, go to Demetri Martin's live performance on Saturday night at
Spreckel's Theater, and heckle to my heart's content. And by heart's content, I mean get in a fight. Another thing my dad taught me was that men who don't get in a fight based around principles every couple of years are unattractive to women, and I have no wish to lose my wife's affections to a blustery Tom "Scrapper" Spurgeon. I do wish my father had taught me to fight, but hey: that's what the bikers are for.
Priority Four:
I'd get a preview for
Larry Marder's Beanworld at the comic thing. That would be because I actually want to read it, but also because I would go to every single booth that looked halfway interesting and say things like "Is this free" while scowling. That was one of my favorite things I heard about people doing at the New York Convention, and I'd hate to think the behavior was specific to the East Coast.
Priority Three:
After reading the plot description of
Hayate: The Combat Butler, I'm not sure why I want to see it. But I do want to see it, and
it would be playing for free. There are worse things I could do with my time. Watching a butler fight, anime style? I'm game.
Priority Two:
I would steal Seth's hat. I would make sure that happened. Not because I want to wear it. I don't particularly trust hat-wearers, and always feel like a liar when I wear one myself. But I would gladly steal his hat, and I would feel no guilt about doing so. I believe he would respect me for that, especially if I promised to only wear it while using a typewriter.
Priority One:
Comics? You can keep them. The best party, the only party, will be on Friday night at
Humphrey's By The Bay. That's where Joel McHale--host of E!'s
The Soup and all around much funnier than everybody type--will be ripping out the intestines of whatever audience is lucky enough to bail on the Comic Con festivities. Let's be honest here: there is absolutely nothing involving comics Friday at 7:00PM that can top the opportunity to see McHale live.
I'd say "have fun" at the con to those of you who are going, but because I've failed to give you "useful" information, you stopped reading after the word "Zoo."
Tucker Stone's writing may be found in print in Comic Foundry and online at The Factual Opinion, where he frequently reviews new releases.
This Ship Is Totally Sinking is © Tucker Stone, 2008
