San Diego Comic Con 2004

As pretty much all of you must know by now, I went to San Diego for the second year in a row for the annual San Diego Comic Con International (as I believe is its full name), pretty much the biggest and best comic convention in the country as far as I'm aware.

The reasons I go are pretty simple:

To have a good time with my friends. Of which I have two sets:

Dumbrella people - Friends I've made from the messageboards attached to the Dumbrella group, a sort of loose collective of really excellent webcomics and such. I know there's about five thousand webcomics out there, but there's only about eleven good ones, and Dumbrella makes up a heroic portion of that number.
Delphi people - Friends I've made from the select few (okay, six or seven) Delphi fora I've been reading, who are pretty goddamned awesome, too. The Delphi messageboard system itself is kind of quirky and weird, but I've come to love it and the people thereon.

To see some nerd stuff. Come on, it's SDCC. Over the past couple of years, I've been reintroduced to how fantastic comics are, and there's also a shitload of movie and science-fiction-related stuff there in general.

So yes. This writeup, I should tell you, will come illustrated with photos mostly taken by me, but there might be a picture or two from someone else thrown in there. Between all the cameras floating around, there are seriously like 2 GB of photographic and/or video material on various hard drives. Just so you know.

WEDNESDAY

Our saga begins on Wednesday, when I piled into Alex's hybrid Civic with Seung and Jake.

			We drove down to LA, where we met up with a bunch of other Dumbrella board people on the Santa Monica Promenade and went down to the beach.

	Dumbrella folks on the beach. Damn, James and I had some stylin' sunglasses.

			Charles subjected the styrofoam cooler to a standard Man Ass Stress Test. The test was either wildly successful or not, depending on how you look at it. We were quite pleased with the results. photo credit: Seung

	James, Seung and I built a pretty kick-ass sandcastle. At least it was sort of a sandcastle. Kind of more like a super-awesome mega sand fortress that only the three of us really understood. Look, it had a moat, all right? A MOAT. photo credit: Seung

			The next move was to Julie's house, where we proceeded to get fuckin' drunk and party it up. Competitive, violent patty-cake games may also have been involved. Here, Jake celebrates victory, one of many, as Julie concedes defeat. photo credit: Seung

	Julie and I in happier times. And yes, the patches on my shirt read PLAYBOY PHOTOGRAPHER. I found that shirt at a thrift store here in San Francisco and can only assume it was meant for me.

What followed was the sweet oblivion of sleep, followed by Thursday.

THURSDAY

On Thursday, a number of us drove down to San Diego for the actual convention. The traffic this year on the way down was not as bad, which is to say it did not make me want to murder anyone.

I noticed this time around that southbound 5 takes you past San Juan Capistrano. Does anyone know if the swallows of Capistrano are just a big flock, or their own particular species or sub-species or what? No one I talked to knew the answer. I know I'm not imagining the swallows of Capistrano, people.

			We sort of convened over at the Dumbrella booth itself, which you can see behind us. The dude stooping to fit into the frame of whatever picture is being taken over on the left there is Luke, who we convinced to trek across the Atlantic to come meet up with us. Luke is pretty fucking awesome.

	Nerds Ascending An Escalator. Shortly after we went up this escalator, we spotted a dude coming down the escalator wearing a WIGU "Not a Doctor" shirt, and started yelling at him to come join us, thinking (erroneously) that he was Dumbrella board member Mooseking. Turns out he wasn't, and I hightailed it out of there, thinking "Oh man, we just harassed the hell out of some dude who wasn't even the right dude!" Turns out, though, that he was Dumbrella board member Stranger Dan, who had talked of coming to SDCC but hadn't made any specific plans with us beforehand. How about that! I didn't find out about this until later, though, because I was so busy trying to get away.

			After taking in the con, we stampeded over to the food court at Horton Plaza. There was a bench on the top level sort of overlooking everything. This is a bunch of our butts.

	After the food court, it became imperative that we all meet over at this house that one of us, Evan by name, happened to be house-sitting. This house was pretty goddamned awesome, I'm not gonna lie to you. It then became imperative that we party it up once again. Here I am with the requisite party supplies outside Ralph's. You will note that said supplies include a generous supply of paper towels, plastic cups, and paper plates. Our goal was to crash at "Evan's house,"* celebrate our existence in the manner of rock stars, and then, once the con was over, vanish into the night leaving nary a trace of our existence. I think we accomplished this with some aplomb, because we are hella fantastic. * Some of us for multiple nights.

			Evan had brought with him a bottle each of some very fine if somewhat strongly peaty* scotch, and a Danish(?) liquor called akvavit. I will say this right now: Do not attempt to outdrink the British. It is simply not a good idea. * Is this the correct term? All of us who sampled it remarked that it tasted kind of like what might happen if you were to make liquor out of soil.

	Here is a somewhat blurry picture of the goings-on at the house. In the foreground you will notice an iBook. This was used to provide the tunes, because that is just how we rock it.

			Another party picture. I cannot impress upon you strongly enough the notion that this house was amazingly cool, and what a great time we had. I also got pretty drunk.

	I don't know why the look on my face is so dismayed here. Is it because Kayla is turning into a demon, evidenced by the glow in her eyes? At least she was happy in her demon-hood. Seriously, Kayla was pretty fucking goddamned cool.

			ME AND CHARLES V ROCKIN' IT TO A T FIERCEST GUYS WHO B -- NO BETTER YOU'LL EVER C I could start a rap-rock group right now! Charles is one reason why I regret not having accepted that job offer in Austin, although the argument could be made that had I not done that, I would not be in the position I am today, internet-socially-speaking. Causality is a convoluted thing, people, I'm not gonna lie to you.
The next day I woke up with a hangover -- possibly the hangover. One of those hangovers that causes you to stagger half-conscious into the living room where some people are already up and inquire, "How are you guys all still alive? How did my hangover not kill you immediately?"* We proceeded to jump in the pool (there was a pool) and play some awesomely stupid games like reverse Marco Polo and something whose name I can no longer remember that involved entire groups of people diving and launching themselves with eyes closed at a predetermined target like a phalanx of blind, short-circuiting torpedoes. It was fantastic. * It turns out a couple of Aleve and an additional hour's sleep will work wonders on this sort of condition, thankfully. FOLLOW ME TO THE REST OF THE STORY OR YOU CAN GO BACK TO THE MAIN BLOG PAGE IF YOU WANT