Originally published April 6, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1429
Fun and frolic at this year’s Florida Megacon, which turned—rather unexpectedly—into my personal convention that simply would not end.
What with one thing and another, I wound up bringing my entire family down for this Orlando-based convention. Why not? It’s Orlando. There’s plenty to see and do outside of the confines of the convention. And this was going to be a nice opportunity for all concerned. During the day, Kathleen and Shana would take Ariel off to fun locales such as Disneyworld, Universal Studios, and SeaWorld (Gwen, as of Saturday AM, was going to be off visiting a friend in West Palm Beach), while I stayed at the convention and signed comic books until my hand fell off. Sounded like a plan.
This year they had me set up at a table in artist’s alley. I was extremely fortunate in having several talented (and consequently high-traffic) artists to either side of me. To the left were the Romita boys, John Senior and John Junior. JR Jr’s work on Incredible Hulk looks to be some of his best yet. To my right was Joseph Michael Linsner of the popular Cry for Dawn. And of course, in the middle there was me, with bewildered fans coming up and saying, “Why are you over here? You’re not an artist.” Thank God there’s never a risk of my not knowing my place.
Positioned one aisle over was Leonard Kirk, one half of the Kirk/Robin Riggs art team on on Supergirl. Leonard gave me photocopies of his pencils for upcoming issues of the title, and in looking them over, it only puzzled me further as to why Leonard is not a fan favorite hot-artist, but also why he’s not winning awards right and left. Not only is his story-telling impeccable; not only does he stick with a book month in, month out (for nearly four years now); but the range of expression he conveys is just staggering. My favorite moment in the material he shows me is one which depicts a concussed Supergirl bemusedly walking through an ER and leaving havoc and destruction in her way… all the while displaying these loopy and confused expressions. Somebody put him up for best penciller, or Robin and him up for best art team, or talent most deserving of wider recognition… something.
Several aisles over were all the surviving members of the cast of Lost in Space, including my frequent collaborator Bill Mumy. But considering our conflicting schedules, for all the time that I had to go and chat with him and the others, they might as well have had their table in Istanbul.
I did, however, wind up running into several of the actors from Pleasure Island’s Adventurer’s Club, guys who had been part of the cast the night that I proposed (through means of “the Colonel,” an exceptionally life-like puppet residing in the upper balcony of the Club). I’ll mention them only by their character names here—Fletcher and Emil—because the last thing they need is wiseacres coming up to them at the Club and addressing them by their real names. Fletcher told me something that completely stunned me, although in retrospect I’m not sure why I should have been so surprised.
When I first hatched the idea to stage the proposal at the Club, I was referred to the Disney Engagement Office. Yes, they have an entire office that arranges engagement “packages” in the park. Except their specialty, I learned, was proposals staged at King Stefan’s Dining Hall, the restaurant situated at the castle in the Magic Kingdom. There was no package for the Adventurer’s Club. So I made contact directly with the AC management, wrote a script for the Colonel, and things proceeded (miraculously) according to plan. Ours wasn’t the first engagement at the Club, but it was certainly the most elaborate and the first one to enlist the cast in such a carefully orchestrated manner.
Well, turns out the success of our endeavors did not escape the notice of the Disney Marketing folks. The proposal, the method through which it was done, and the subsequent response and attention it got (they covered it in Locus, for crying out loud) set off bells in the ears—and dollars signs in the eyes—of Disney. So now any guys who want to pop the question to their intended in the same manner I did can do so with a lot less effort than I had to go through: It’s now one of the engagement packages obtainable through Disney. However, when I did it, it didn’t cost me a dime because basically I put the concept together, and the souvenir t-shirts and champagne they gave us was all on the house just because they got such a kick out of it. You guys, it’ll run between $250 to $300. And no, they’re not using my script, because you can bet if they were, my agent would be in touch.
While I was learning all this, the girls were settling into the hotel—the Sheraton International—for the evening, and Ariel decided she wanted to use Spectravision (or whatever the service is called) to order up a movie to the room. What movie? Why, what would any nine year old girl who just started Kung Fu lessons want to see but Charlie’s Angels, of course. So Shana and Gwen stood by as their little sister deftly manipulated the remote control with the intention of watching Drew, Lucy and Cameron kick butt.
She saw butt, alright, but it wasn’t being kicked.
To the horror of her sisters (well, Shana was horrified; Gwen was dourly amused) onto the screen came the opening scenes of a film called Angela’s Playroom. No, it was not a sequel to Angela’s Ashes. It was pørņ. Solid, hardcore, pørņ, and Angela was apparently a very naughty girl. As a perplexed Ariel stared uncomprehendingly at the TV, Shana shrieked and threw herself across the screen as if leaping onto a hand grenade to take one for the troop. “Go into the bathroom!” she ordered.
“Is this Charlie’s Angels?” inquired Ariel, who had seen the film in the theaters and was reasonably sure that no one was naked and doing strange things in the opening minutes.
“No! Go to the bathroom!”
“But I just went a few minutes ago,” Ariel pointed out, having displayed admirable forethought lest her bladder force her to miss a moment of karate-kicking action.
“Go in there and close the door until I tell you to come out!”
Making an impatient, huffing noise, Ariel stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door. Shana and Gwen, in the meantime, went back to the menu, accessed “Family Fare,” and tried to get Rugrats in Paris. What’d they get? Angela’s Playroom. Shana immediately called the front desk and within five minutes, a technician was in the room. He tried to order up Gone in 60 Seconds. You guessed it. Angela’s Playroom. He sat there and stared it for five minutes while Ariel made her displeasure known from the bathroom. Then the technician, clearly a graduate of one of those schools who have their application forms on matchbook covers, made the impressive observation, “This is pørņ.”
“We know that,” said Shana. When he continued to watch it, spellbound, Shana said, “Fix it!”
“I’m going to have to go to the central computer,” he said, tearing himself away from the screen. And off he went. A half hour later, they tried to order Charlie’s Angels. Yup. Angela’s Playroom. Back went Ariel to the bathroom, and up came a second technician. He tried to get an Aerobics Workout video. There was heavy breathing on the screen, all right, and a burn was being felt, but it had nothing to do with weight reduction. Having apparently just come back from a Mensa meeting, he said, “This is pørņ.”
“We know that! Fix it!” Shana told him. In the bathroom, Ariel had filled the sink with water and was throwing a little plastic killer whale into it as hard as she could so it would splash and she could pretend she was at SeaWorld.
And off went technician number two to the central computer. Neither he nor his predecessor was ever heard from again, the TV was never repaired, and eventually the girls switched rooms, although they almost forgot to bring Ariel who apparently thought that she was going to be spending the balance of the convention in the bathroom.
In the meantime, the storm that was going to strand us in Florida for a week was moving toward the Northeast…
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at To Be Continued, PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)
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