FRIDAY

This is where things start to get interesting!

By the time we'd gotten ourselves out of the pool and cleaned up the house, it was fairly late in the afternoon and we figured it was time to head Con-ward. We piled into various vehicles and ended up at the Westgate Hotel, where I'd reserved a couple of rooms each for two nights (Fri and Sat).

There was a problem.

A combination of SDCC plus the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan coming into town (apparently that's the name of the flagship of the Navy fleet; it's a gigantic aircraft carrier. But why name it after Reagan? Isn't there now or didn't there exist at one point an aircraft carrier named Enterprise? What the hell was wrong with that name? EH? They should've made that the damned flagship. I'm just talkin' here) resulted in a lot of people overbooking at the Westgate, which meant they couldn't give us the rooms for the night. However, because the Westgate is classy, they did this thing called "walking" where they booked me two rooms for the night at another hotel, and even paid for it! The slight catch was that this hotel was not in downtown San Diego, but they had a doorman with a van who drove us there. He even stayed and waited while we checked in, and then drove us back to the convention center. This was a really nice thing to do, so we tipped the hell out of him.

It was at this point that I parted ways from my Dumbrella peeps for a while, to hang with Delphi crew.

A Brief Word on My Two Groups of Friends Here

You can skip this part if you want, but I think it explains something that I've been having trouble explaining in person.

If you read the first page of this account, you noticed that I have a couple of different groups of friends that converge around these big comics-related events.
  • My Dumbrella people on the whole tend to be at or just a little below my age. We always have a fantastic time together because those of us who actually make the leap into meeting other Dumbrellites (Dumbrellites/Dumbrellons/Dumbrellots? We never really standardized on a name, there) tend on the whole to be creative, outgoing, intelligent, hilarious people. We've made some real connections with each other, and maybe even with ourselves (OMG PERSONAL INSIGHT!!!!!1!11!). Our fun is DIY, indie, genuine in a way that I think few people get to experience.
  • My Delphi friends tend to skew just a little bit older. A statistically-significant portion of them work in or around the actual comics and entertainment industries. The same set of adjectives as with Dumbrella applies to them, in a slightly different way that's hard to pin down. I have never met a group of people online who could have serious, articulate, extraordinarily intelligent and well-informed discussions about so many fascinating topics and tell such great stories while at the same time maintaining (for instance) a several-hundred-post thread about Green Lantern v. the Legion of Superheroes that was probably one of the most hysterical things I've ever read on the internet ever. And I don't know jack about LoS.
I think these two crowds love the same things. They're both fabulous groups of people. But I haven't yet figured out a way to successfully integrate the two, nor do I necessarily think it's a really hot idea.
  • Both groups have a lot of people in them. I mean a lot. We're talking about two essentially separate but highly evolved internet ecologies. More to the point, neither group is really looking to add more people. I think it would be kind of an asshole thing for me to do, to be like "Hey, guys, here's a whole ton of strangers for you to interact with now! Okay, everyone get along!" just for the sake of convenience on my part.
  • Both groups have a sort of social structure to them that I am loath to interfere with. I don't even think I have a right to, nor do I think should I have that right. Everyone has so much fun already that it just seems kind of dumb to try.
I literally cannot tell you which of these two groups I like more. It's an empty question. There are people in both groups that I would take a bullet for, unhesitatingly.

I love them both. Bringing them together would be an impossible (not to mention vainglorious) thing to try. So I'm not gonna do it -- instead I'll be bouncing back and forth between them, trying as best I can to shine whatever this light is inside me that activates when I'm around them.

So guys -- if/when you hear me say "Hey, I'm going to go hang with my 'other' internet peeps for a while," know that it's not because I'm tired of you or something lame like that. It's just that life has given me this double-size cup to drink from, and as long as I'm able, I'm going to do so like it's going out of style.

You notice how I worded that last paragraph so it applies to both of you at the same time?

That's why I went to school!

Now, On with the Con Report

As I was saying, it was at this point Friday that I split off to go hang out with Delphi peeps. Dan, Fraction, Brendan, and Jeremy Love were on a panel that made me sorry I'd missed it the previous year.

Outside, after the panel was done, I caught up with various internet miscreants -- namely Jason, Jill, and Han. Not pictured: About two dozen other people, easily, who I don't want to forget but probably will so here goes

::crosses fingers::

Andy, Alex, Travis, Mike, Matt, Dan, Jeremy, Douglas, Janet, Charlie, Sam, Kelly Sue, and Smokey. OK, one of those was fake. There were some other people right outside the room, but they're in the next couple of pictures.

I've cropped Brendan out of this one because he blinked, and no one wants to see a picture of themselves where they're blinking.

Susan and Megan Thomas Bradner, who may be the most photogenic human alive. Additionally, I don't know why I have to refer to her by full name here. I think it's just a lot of fun to say even if it's only in your head.

You see? This is what internet pals are for!

He had to have planned it so that his sunglasses would match his shirt. Had to. Right? This is a skill not possessed by many. (I'm trying to spin a lawyer joke out of this and nothing is coming. I'm sorry; I ... I tried)

This was taken shortly before we decamped for the Gaslamp Strip Club, a steakhouse where you get to grill your own meat. It seems to be Dan E's eating establishment of choice, and for good reason. Also, there are fancy drinks, and the fried appetizer/side dishes are to kill for. You think you've had good fries, and you may be right, but these are fries and onion rings that may have been designed in the future and sent back through time to us, to show us what we're in for. And maybe what everyone else is doing wrong.

Also, we learned a lesson about dipping your french fries in garlic mashed potatoes. The lesson is that this is the right thing to do.

A dangerous gang of rogues and inebriates. This was us at Laurenn's reading, or more properly right outside the place where Laurenn's reading was. Chu was wearing shoes with their own Flux Capacitors built in, apparently.

I feel like I have a lot of pictures where Laurenn and I are doing this. She is basically the most fantastic person in Oakland, and perhaps even the entire East Bay, just so you and I are on the same page here.

It was at this point that sleep was called for, and my body obeyed the dictates of my mind. This brings us directly to:

SATURDAY

Let me preface this by saying that in no way do I think I somehow deserved what came about on Saturday. Saturday's events were a thing that just sort of happened, an atomic chunk of Luck the size of Manhattan that landed directly on top of my head and exploded like a million-megaton Party Bomb. Karmically, I think I'm going to be paying for Saturday for a damn long time, people.

The first thing I had to do was have breakfast, which I did with SF Isotope crew Jared, Anita, Andrew, and Robyn. It was funny, actually -- I was walking down 4th or 5th on my way to the convention center (couldn't think of anywhere else to go) and saw Andrew and Robyn walking in front of me holding hands. I mock-shouted something like "HEY THAR QUIT HOLDIN' HANDS ALREADY!" Luckily, they turned around before opening fire, and we had a good laugh. Also a good breakfast. I forget the name of the place, though.

After getting a little bit of walking-around time in at the con (and running around with Dan, Rob, Megan, Brendan, and briefly Jill for a little while), I figured that it would probably be a good idea to go up to the Westgate by myself and check in, and hope that they had rooms for me this time.

Indeed, the Westgate had rooms for me! In fact, the girl behind the desk (a sweet blonde named Alexandra (I think) who was just ridiculously, outlandishly pretty and had a charming European accent of some sort) informed me that they had given me a suite, for the standard Comic Con room rate (which was nice). Not too shabby, I thought, thinking of the past hotel suites I'd seen -- a couple of standard-size rooms adjoined by a tiny foyer or anteroom-type-thing. On my way to the elevators, I ran into Mike, the doorman who had driven us to the other hotel the day before and generously driven us back to the con.

MIKE: Hey, good to see you! Did you get your rooms today?

ME: Looks like I did!

MIKE: Great! Where'd they put you?

ME: (checking room key envelope) Uh. 1904.

Mike did not answer me verbally right away, but gave me a look -- the kind of look that someone who is about to watch you open a really great Xmas present might give.

My elevator arrived shortly thereafter. We exchanged further pleasantries and I stepped inside and pressed 19, taking a moment to note that the elevator buttons really only went as far as 19.

What greeted me when I got out of the elevator and finally found the door was ... well, let me just show you.



I spent the next minute or so wandering from room to room in the fanciest hotel suite I have ever laid eyes on, yelling curse words and waving my arms with sudden frenzied joy.

Then I took some pictures.

The suite's living room. That's my backpack there, which I took off more or less immediately so I could jump around and basically lose my shit without damaging something.

Note the fanciness.

One of the fancy bedrooms. Note that it has its own balcony. The balconies, by the way, were really nice.

(And by nice, I mean fancy)

Fancy bathroom sink. I didn't even know those "Bvlgari" dudes made bathroom products. Did you? Is this something only fancy people get to know? Well, now you know!

The only thing remaining at this point was to call Team Dumbrella and inform them of the situation.

Also, we had a party to plan.

HERE FOLLOWS THE REST OF THE TALE

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