The Bends

July 20, 2005

It’s been a few days since I left San Diego Comicon and my brain is still on vacation. After a while you get used to the crush and the busy, and you half expect the people you work with to show up dressed as Jar-Jar Binks. Someone mentioned that after your first day you grow nerd gills, where your body learns to breathe and process nerd and use it for precious life energy. Even though I took an extra day before popping back into work, it’s been sort of a case of the bends. Has anyone ever died of nerd decompression?

Con went a lot smoother than last year, with my precious lessons learned from 2004. I only made one or two walkthroughs of the con floor, killed time in panels, slept in a lot and generally got tons of rest. The weather was wonderfully cooperative, and I was able to traverse the Gaslamp at will without bursting into flames. A non-immolating Han is a happy Han.

In terms of schwag, I bought a power glove shirt from Gameskins and a new Chocolate Thunder shirt from Jeremy Love, but that’s about it. I did score a couple of little freebies, including a tin of Invader Zim mints. Every thing else I wanted had stratospheric prices, like the red version of those previously coveted Gorillaz vinyl dolls or weren’t available at all, like the upcoming Mospeada Beta Fighter/Alpha Fighter combo. I also found that I was generally unimpressed by the wide variety of crap, mostly because all of it is available via internet anyway. Other than some convenience and saving on some shipping charges, I didn’t really see the big deal most of the time. I was vaguely interested in Black Lava‘s t-shirts, which run like some kind of bizarro Ambercrombie with their pro Asian sloganeering. Unfortunately, their designs are pretty plain and just not competitive with the gear from places like Giant Robot or Threadless.

The nerd contingent was quite a bit bigger this year, with lots of visitors from overseas, but somehow everyone managed to avoid a chaotic dinner party of 20+ and I snuck out of San Diego never getting stiffed on a bill, which is a minor miracle dining with cheapass nerds. Best meal of the weekend was probably a tapas extravaganza at Sevilla with old college buddy Charity, which was one of the few non-Mexican meals I had.

For the most part I got to see all the people that I like that I barely see once a year and was able to avoid most of my mouthbreathing internet stalkers, except for a few schlumpy exceptions. Kelly Sue was totally ditching me all weekend, but I’ve parlayed her guilt into future favors, so I’m still in the black overall. My pics are clicky here. If you want the same subjects actually in focus and with proper lighting, I’d check these out instead. There are even a few where I look stunningly non-hideous.

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