When Good Conventions Go Bad

My most recent trip was to the first ever New York Comic Con in my very own backyard. Well, it's not exactly my back yard, but it was in the Javits Center on the Hudson River and that's close enough. Originally I was just going to go and hang with TMac and Triple G as they run their FMAtasticness. However, my WotC tournament organizer said we'd be running Wizards stuff and asked if I wanted to work Saturday, get paid, and get a free weekend badge. How could I refuse?


I spent most of Friday afternoon wandering around the exhibit hall wearing my nifty WotC Exhibitor Badge (I love all access). Oddly, the hall was the same hall where I promoted my soccer club during last year's Expo. The notable feature of this hall is that it is only a fraction of the total number of halls in the Javits Center, a very small fraction. I didn't think too much of it and wandered around. The hall was packed with booths, most of which were anime and comic related. Sadly, I was unable to find the one comic I really wanted (X4 #2). Yeah, it's a year old and part of a 5 issue series, but still - it's Comic Con! So, that was a disappointment, but a small one compared to what would happen later in the convention.

Any sadness I felt from not finding X4 #2 was soon forgotten as I met up with TMac, Triple G, and Mike G. after the convention and we headed off to Carmines for dinner. Carmines is a fantastic family-style restaurant which is so popular that you have to book your reservations about a month in advance, which I did. Some of Trevor's FMA players/volunteers joined us as well, which made for some interesting dinner conversation - a standard fare of gaming talk with a smattering of mockery and insultation was served. Hydro Alchemist loves insultation!!

When I arrived at the convention on Saturday morning I noted that there were still an 1.5 hours until it opened and the line for people to get inside ran the entire length of the Javits center (3-4 blocks). I went up to the gaming area and proceeded to get things in order. Events were supposed to start at 12, but we waited a bit longer because attendance was poor (13 for the JSS and 34 for the DuelMasters Qualifier, the latter of which I ran). These turned out to be the final numbers and we learned from several severely late would-be-players that there were so many people trying to get into the convention that the lines were moving at a crawl. Shortly thereafter, security began blocking off the stairway to the gaming area (which was deserted in comparison to the exhibit hall). Ultimately, this was part of a much larger problem. Apparently the convention organizers anticipated and booked for 10,000 attendees and 10,000 people bought badges in advance. What this meant is that they couldn't handle the actual number of people who showed up (some number larger than 10,000). By early afternoon on Saturday the sheer number of attendees created a serious fire hazard and a bizarre sort of lockdown occured where they weren't letting people into the building at all until a certain number of attendees had left. Sadly, they did this as a blanket policy which meant that people like Jim Lee, Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada couldn't get into the building. Yikes! Things really never got back to normal after this - they had to stop issuing badges completely. So, if you didn't get there early (regardless of whether or not you had a badge), you were screwed. As evening set in, those of us in the gaming area discovered a new problem and that was that the lighting had a fractured design and only a handful were on. So, it got real dark real fast. Apparently they couldn't just turn on the other lights. Instead, they had to set up portable floodlights so my players could see their cards during the single elimination portion of the event. Fan-tastic.

Sunday wasn't quite as bad as Saturday, but that's largely because so many people were turned away and pissed off on Saturday, that they just didn't bother coming back. Still, the number that showed up was too large and they kept everyone outside in a monstrous line and only let them in a handfull at a time so that they could keep track of the number of people entering the hall. This policy resulted in large numbers of people standing in frigid, wind-chilling weather for hours. To help ease the pain, the convention provided coffee/tea stands for people outside, but that was little comfort I'm sure.

With fewer people on Sunday and more restrictions on entrance, there were virtually no people in the gaming section of the convention. So, the people that were on call to work there pretty much just sat around and played games themselves. I was off that day, so I went back and forth visiting my friends working for Wizards and those doing FMA stuff. I did manage to play in a FMA sealed deck tournament, but by the end of the day it was so boring that Triple G and I degenerated into playing baseball with a Poland Spring bottle for a bat and a glove as the ball. Good times!

Well, this has been a long enough entry for sure. The next stop for me is Pro Tour Hawaii on the beautiful island of Oahu. Until then, aloha means goodbye!

Baltimore

This weekend marked the first of my 2006 trips. This time I went south to visit my good friend Mike in Baltimore. I've been to Baltimore before (I saw the Orioles lose), but this is the first time I visited while Mike was living there (he is doing a post-doc at the Space Telescope Science Institute). Since I have several trips looming on the horizon, I had to visit cheaply, so I took the Chinatown bus. Although it was a bit late in arrival, you can't beat a $35 round trip!

Mike and I spent most of Frday catching up, which was great. Later in the evening we ate dinner and went to see Date Movie, which I enjoyed, but which really isn't a good movie. On Saturday we went to one of the Johns Hopkins fields and played in a pickup a game of soccer. Despite having around 20 people we never evolved past two lacrosse goals. Things were made worse by having players who didn't understand the concept of marking the man. Also it was like 20 degrees with windchill making it feel even colder. Still, soccer is soccer and a good time was had. After soccer Austin and his fiance Nicole stopped by to chat a bit and then Mike and I left to get his friend Kevin from the Airport. After that was dinner at a nearby restuarant and then lots of chatting back at Mike's place. Oh, and I must not forget the viewing of an old VHS tape with Mike and Kevin acting in high school plays. I highly recommend Mike's impersonation of John Wayne. Quality.

On Sunday morning Mike, Kevin and I went to a Trap and Skeet range where I used a firearm with real ammo for the first time in my life (see picture above of Hayden with shotgun...he he). The range itself was pretty scary as there were all these people there that appeared to be displaced southerners. I was sort of feeling like I did in Nashville (not happy) and at one point it was particularly scary when I passed a group of guys having an anti-gays discussion. Definitely don't see that in NYC. At any rate, on my way out to the range I noticed the "No Aiming" sign which still cracks me up. Pretty much the last instruction you'd expect to see on the wall of a shooting range is "Don't Aim!", but that's the way it works when you're trying to shoot skeet (the disk moves so fast that aiming is too slow; you have to track and fire). However, we just did Trap which is shooting the orange disks that fly out at random directions. Here you can aim a bit, but not always. At any rate, I was quite good for my first time of shooting and even hit all the disks at one of the 5 shooting stations. I look forward to shooting again at the end of May when I'll be visiting for Austin's wedding and when the ambient temperature won't cause my trigger finger to go numb.

Snow Job

For a while now I didn't think it would happen, but winter finally hit. We had what I guess constitutes a blizzard here in NYC. The snow started late Saturday evening as I was on my way home from judging a Magic PTQ. It wasn't really sticking, but the wind was vicious and the forecast called for much worse after midnight. When I woke in the morning it was snowing strong and it didn't really stop until 4 pm on Sunday. We definitely got over a foot of accumulation and this caused Neutral Ground to close which meant no day 2 of the Vs. X-Men Sneak Preview, which meant no judging for Hayden. :( Another downside to the snow was that it meant people couldn't fly into NYC. In particular Mark wasn't able to fly in for Toy Fair which is a real bummer because I probably won't get to see him until next year (with all my Magic judging and a major soccer tournament in July I'm not going to be able to make any of the conventions this year).

The positive to all of this precipitation is that it meant I got a good solid day of home time, which I desperately needed. I was able to get a lot done today including some labwork, food shopping, laundry, organizing my bookcases, preparing my receipts and W-2s for taxes, putting away random cards, throwing out junk, writing up my Level 3 interview form, watching all saved shows on my DVR and watching two Netflix movies. Of course there's still tons more to be done, but I've made a solid dent and hopefully this will keep me out from under in the long run.

Bra Studies

After attending soccer practice last night and barely having enough players to play soccer I was hot to post on how the American male's tendency to *follow* sports as an integral part of his life ultimately ruins mine. However, all this will do is create a rift between me and my friends (nearly all of whom follow sports they don't actually play). So, I will continue to seeth quietly about it all and post about something altogether different. The story comes from a recent issue of C&EN:

"The Chinese have become significant competitors in a number of industries. Now they are serious about building a better bra, according to the Associated Press. Hong Kong's Polytechnic University is offering a degree in bra studies. Top Form, a Chinese firm that makes 60 million bras a year for labels including Victoria's Secret, Playtex, and Maidenform, has a bra lab at its factory. The firm has experimented with ways to boost busts. Air-filled bras tend to get flat like tires. Oil-filled bras tend to be heavy and expensive. The firm is now trying fiberfill."

The sad truth is that it's too late for me to get my degree in bra building, but surely someone out there is between jobs and undecided about their future career? Whoever you are, look no further.

Al Gough Can Kiss My...

For quite some time now Smallville has been "my show." It's the show I've seen since day one, never having missed an episode. It's the show that I always looked forward to seeing every week and that always had really cool touches (like cameos by Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder). It's the show that has a great cast. I love Clark, Chloe, Lois, Lex. It's not just the younger cast members that are great, though. Lionel is great and so are Clark's parents, in particular Jonathan Kent played by the original Duke of Hazzard, John Schneider. Well, last week's episode (I'm going to spoil it, so stop reading if you care) was a tremendous disappointment for me. True the show had been leading up to the "someone close to you will die Clark," but when the show ends and it's Mr. Kent they're lowering into the grave, I couldn't help but feel cheated and betrayed.

Smallville's writer Al Gough said that "...The show needed to take a risk. It was a hard decision and it took months before making the final move. But the show must go on and it's a necessity for where the show is heading." Well, I say that's a load of crap. Taking risks is fine, but you don't get rid of the characters that people love - the characters that keep people tuning in week after week. The other thing that bothers me is the show now has made a significant enough departure from the comic book storyline, that there is no way to see it as being the real Superman story (up till this point it worked...not perfectly, but well enough to turn a blind eye to the inconsistencies). The crystal part of this episode really stretched the storyline continuity, but now there is no turning back because anyone who follows Superman knows that the Kents live well into Clark's post-Smallville life. My parents have told me they are finished with Smallville and I can understand that completely. For me, though, I've invested so much into Smallville, that I will have to keep watching. It just royally sucks that every time I watch an episode from now on I'm going to say, "It should have you Lana. It should have been you ya ho!!"