Summer 1997 convention travels

digresssmlOriginally published September 5, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1242

Assorted thoughts and incidents picked up from this summer’s convention trail, during which I set an all time personal best (or most exhausted) with a series of conventions including Chicago Comic Con, Orlando MegaCon, San Diego, Shore Leave (Maryland), Stellar Occasion (Texas), RebelCon (Massachusetts), Heroes Con (North Carolina). Or, to put it succinctly, this is how I spent my summer vacation…

* * *

I’m not entirely sure why people will run up to me at the end of a convention and say, “I’ve been chasing you all over the convention (or some previous convention) trying to get you to autograph my books, and it took me this long to (or I was never able to) catch up with you.” Every time I do signings at conventions, the times for the sessions are always posted well in advance. Don’t people read? Can’t they mark it in their schedules? I just find it a little disconcerting because, more often\ than not, there’s an almost accusatory tone to the comment as if I’ve been aggressively leading them a merry chase, trying to stay one step ahead of them. At San Diego, for instance, there I was Saturday, doing a (fully publicized) two hour signing at the Marvel booth, followed immediately by another (fully publicized) two hours at the Claypool table…and during the next five minutes after I started walking around on my modest free time, half a dozen people came up to me and said, “Are you doing any signings today?” This was three in the afternoon—had they all just arrived? Sheesh.

* * *

I was very interested to discover that, according to the fan rumor mill, I have a girlfriend. Not only that, but she’s underage. This apparently arose from the fact that, at the Orlando MegaCon, there was a charming young lady with me who sat with me much of the time at the autograph table, who seemed amazed and fascinated by the crowds lining up to get my signature on stuff, and who clearly was very fond of me. It’s not as if we were necking in public or anything–we definitely weren’t–but her very presence was enough to get tongues wagging. When I related this to the lady in question, she found it most amusing considering that (a) she’s not underage, she’s 29, and (b) she’s my sister, Beth, who has just started getting interested in conventions and accompanied me to a couple this year. Upon learning this, she said, very disconcerted, “Do I look like I’m underage?!” To which I replied, in my most consoling big brother tone, said, “Sure do. You look like jailbait to me.”

* * *

At Shore Leave, I participate in an annual sketch that was founded by DC editor Bob Greenberger, Star Trek author Mike Friedman, and myself. We call it “Mystery Trekkie Theater 3000,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. The three of us sit in front of a screen, our silhouettes cast upon it, and we tear apart an episode of Star Trek. When we first started doing it, we stayed with original Trek episodes which were available on film. Clunkers such as “Turnabout Intruder,” “The Apple,” and even the episode “Shore Leave” itself (Kirk’s nemesis, Finnegan, runs away from Kirk and shouts in our version, “He’s after me Lucky Charms! They’re magically delicious!”) We are usually joined by Brad Ferguson and Bob Pinaha (and this year T. Alan Chafin substituting for Bob) as the mad scientists.

We also do a sketch/invention exchange at the top of the show, and this year we carried off the single most involved bit we’ve ever done. It went like this: None of us were on stage. Then the audience heard an announcer (me) warn over the PA system, “Attention…attention people sitting in the first three rows. You will be… assimilated. Resistance… is… futile.” This caused a ripple of nervous laughter; they knew that something was coming up that was Borg-related, and that at least some audience members were going to be victimized.

Ominous Borg music began to play, and the announcer intoned, “They think… with one mind. They move… with one purpose. You’ve seen them terrorize the Enterprise. You’ve seen them pursue the Voyager. But you’ve never seen them… like this!”

The recorded music suddenly made a hard cut from the Borg music to the drum-slamming pounding of Irish stepdancing. And the announcer bellowed, “The dance sensation of the Delta Quadrant, now on their galaxy-wide tour! It’s… Riverborg!

Out onto the stage hop/skipped two young ladies (daughter Gwen and a friend of hers) dressed in black with little skirts, their faces Borgified. They met at the middle, danced as the audience roared… and then Bob, Mike and I stepdanced (or at least some vague approximation of it, since none of us have taken a stepdancing lesson in our lives) up the middle aisle, dressed as the cheesiest looking Borg you could ever hope to meet. We did a bizarre sort of hopping about on stage for a minute, and then were joined by the Borg queen (Beth again) doing the Flamenco. She hauled a sucker out of the audience, proceeded to assimilate him by dancing around him, and suddenly Michael Flathead, the Borg of the Dance (a guy named Danny Coggins, who is a semi-pro skater) leaped up onto the stage and proceeded to do some really nifty steps with the Borg queen. In the meantime the rest of us shuffled, Frankenstein-monster-like, into the audience, hauled surprisingly willing victims onto the stage, spun them around, and formed a long line across as the music reached its climax.

Only time we’ve ever done a sketch that got a standing ovation. As for me, I’d love to see what a group of people who have really good-looking Borg costumes and can actually dance would do with the concept. So anyone who wants to, go right ahead.

* * *

Also making its debut at Shore Leave—a couple of fans, at the Saturday night dance, introduced a little number they called “The Imperial Death Macarena.” It’s a terrifying simple concept: The Imperial March (or as others refer to it, “Darth Vader’s Theme”) from The Empire Strikes Back is exactly the right beat and cadence for dancing the Macarena. Try it, right this second. Hum the basic march to yourself. You know it… dah-dah-dah, dah-DAH-dah, dah-DAH-da, etc. Do the hand movements, the hip pivot. It all times out perfectly, doesn’t it. Isn’t that scary? Fans could start doing it at showings of Empire as if it were The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

A guy saw me dancing with my sister at the party, by the way. He asked me if she was my teenaged daughter. I gleefully related this to her, and she rolled her eyes and insisted she doesn’t look like a teenager..

* * *

I was working late one night and had the TV set on. I saw an ad for one of those psychic phone services. They tried to encourage me to call, that they could help me with my problems. That they wanted to, they were most anxious to. This wouldn’t be a bad idea, because I could use all the help I could get. But I don’t understand something. If they’re really psychic and they really want to help… why don’t they call me? I mean, wouldn’t they just know? Isn’t that kind of the point of being psychic?

It makes me most suspicious.

* * *

Fans were all up in arms about Nicholas Cage as Superman, and I think they expected me to be. I’m sorry, I’m just not, for the following reason:

I was at a convention some years ago on a panel, and the announcement had just been made that Michael Keaton was going to play Batman. And fans were asking the panelists what they thought about the fact that the director of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure had cast Mr. Mom to play Batman. Every single panelists railed against the concept and was roundly applauded. And I said, “Uh, guys, look… I hate to say this, but I have no intrinsic problem with this. I mean, he’s an actor. Actors act. Just because Keaton and Burton are known mostly for comedy doesn’t mean the film is automatically going to be campy. Maybe it’ll be good.” It was the first and only time I’ve ever been roundly, and loudly, booed.

The fans later changed their tune. But I refuse to change mine. I have no intrinsic problem with Nick Cage playing Superman. None. Yes, his nose is more angular than we’ve come to expect, and his eyes are oddly set. But then again, if you look back at the beginning, so was Superman’s back in the beginning. What he does seem more than capable of projecting is a guy who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, and if that’s the direction that Burton is going–a man with superhuman powers and, consequently, superhuman responsibilities that are weighing heavily upon him–it could be pretty thought provoking. A return to the roots of Superman beyond Action Comics #1, back to Phillip Wylie’s superb novel, The Gladiator. Can he carry off the classic blue and red tights? Probably not. And Michael Keaton couldn’t carry off gray, black and blue tights, so they changed them and it looked good on screen. They’ll probably do the same for this as well. I’ve love to join with the hullabaloo, but—ol’ dopey me—I think I’ll hold off on demonizing the film until I actually see it. Just this quirky thing I do.

* * *

At San Diego I was part of a contingent of Comics Buyer’s Guide folks who went to see next year’s Hugo award-winning best dramatic film, Contact. I thought it was absolutely breathtaking. The dead silence during the opening two minutes, with the steady pullback into infinity (and beyond) is probably the single most convincing feeling of outer space travel I’ve ever seen. To say nothing of answering the eternal question of, If there’s intelligent life on other planets, why haven’t they made contact with us? It’s a question based on the same sort of human egocentricity that once inspired mankind to think that the sun orbited the earth. The answer is best summarized by Douglas Adams who wrote, with deceptive obviousness, “The universe is big. Really big.” Trying to find us is like trying to find a heavily populated microbe.

What’s a little depressing is that the opening depends entirely upon having a good audience. We did, but when my eldest daughter Shana saw it some weeks later, the dopes in the theater decided to fill the quiet with their endless and extremely unclever chatter (“Space, the final frontier” they called out and laughed loudly at their own wit.) Very annoying.

* * *

I totally psyched out Mark Waid at Chicago.

One morning I ordered up breakfast from room service. In handing me the bill to sign, the room service guy handed me the wrong check. It was the bill for Room 534, and the signature at the bottom was “Mark Waid.” I looked over what Mark had had to eat, and the next time I saw him I said, “So, Mark… how was your omelette this morning you had from room service? Good orange juice?” Mark stared at me in complete befuddlement and said, “How did you—?”

Putting on my best Hannibal Lechter voice and demeanor, I said, “Oh, I know everything that goes on in room 534, Mark.”

He looked like I’d smacked him in the face with a 2 x 4. It was great. Best thing is, I never told him how I knew.

So none of you guys tell him, okay?

* * *

One of the guests at RebelCon was actor Stephen Furst. Beth (who accompanied me to that con) was excited to hear this, because she’s a therapist and knew him from a film called The Dream Team. I told her that was unusual: When it comes to films, most people know him as Flounder. Having almost no recollection of Animal House, she said with surprise, “You mean he was that animated fish in The Little Mermaid?”

Beth and I had breakfast with Stephen Sunday morning at RebelCon. During the conversation, Beth made passing mention of her ex-husband. Stephen stared at her, stunned. “How long were you married?” he asked. “Five years. Why?”

“Because,” he said in amazement, “I thought you were, like, seventeen.”

I’ve never seen her slam her head on a table quite that way.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. He’s forty and looks it.)

 

9 comments on “Summer 1997 convention travels

  1. And now we see the dangers of waiting to see a film before judging its quality. Since the Burton/Cage Superman film never materialized, PAD missed a perfectly good opportunity to form a strongly held, completely uninformed opinion. Let that be a lesson to us all.

    1. My objection to Cage was never his casting, period, but to Burton’s started rationale: that he thought Cage could perfectly capture “Superman’s darker, more murderous side.”

      –Daryl

  2. At San Diego, for instance,

    I wonder if PAD’s opinions has changed at all in the 15 years since. Especially with the way SDCC has exploded and how it can take 15 minutes or more to get from one end of the convention floor to the other.

    Fans were all up in arms about Nicholas Cage as Superman

    And rightfully so; Cage would’ve been an awful choice.

  3. I didn’t think Michael Keaton was bad, but thought his costume was camp as were the Burton films which got steadily worse.

    I’ve yet to see a (non-animated) good Batman film… (and don’t get me started on Peter Jackson and his Hobbits from Eton)

  4. Every time I do signings at conventions, the times for the sessions are always posted well in advance. Don’t people read? Can’t they mark it in their schedules? I just find it a little disconcerting because, more often\ than not, there’s an almost accusatory tone to the comment as if I’ve been aggressively leading them a merry chase, trying to stay one step ahead of them.

    This sounds familiar. Why does this sound familiar?

  5. I was there for Riverborg, and I can honestly say it is probably the funniest thing I’ve ever seen at a con. Its probably on the list of funniest things I’ve ever seen ever.

    Years later, when I won a position in a large fan club, I was telling my non-geek parents and sister. My dad asked me if this meant I was “Lord of the Geeks”? My sister immediately replied “What is this, Riverdork?”

  6. “When it comes to films, most people know him as Flounder. Having almost no recollection of Animal House, she said with surprise, “You mean he was that animated fish in The Little Mermaid?””

    Ha, that was my first thought, as well (I also have almost no recollection of Animal House).

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