Florida MegaCon 2001, continued and continued…

Originally published April 13, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1430

Continuing fun and frolic at the Florida MegaCon in March…

Bill Mumy brought the convention program book over to me as I sat at my table and, looking perturbed, said, “According to your biography, you and I co-created Crusade.”

I blinked at him, giving my best deer-in-the-headlights impression. “What?” I said, displaying my customary ability to cut past subtlety and go straight for the obvious.

“That’s what your bio says,” he said—and handed it to me.

Now, just for the record, there’s a section of my standard convention biography that reads as follows:

Peter is the co-creator, with popular science-fiction icon Bill Mumy (of Lost in Space and Babylon 5 fame) of the Cable Ace Award-nominated science-fiction series Space Cases, which ran for two seasons on Nickelodeon. He has also written several scripts for the Hugo-Award-winning TV series Babylon 5 and the sequel series, Crusade…

I’m not entirely sure what happened. I don’t know whether lines somehow dropped out in the transmission, when I emailed my bio or someone simply lost of couple of lines of type when pasting the program book together or what sort of mishap caused it. All I knew was that my bio in the program book read as follows:

Peter is the co-creator, with popular science-fiction icon Bill Mumy (of Lost in Space and Babylon 5 fame) of the Cable Ace Award-nominated science-fiction series Crusade…

Mumy wasn’t the only one to bring it to my attention. Several fans also said to me, with earnest confusion, “I didn’t know you co-created Crusade.” This is, of course, how rumors start. The last rumor to come out of MegaCon was a few years ago, when fans reported that I was attending the convention with my under-age mistress in tow (the “under-age mistress” in question being my sister, Beth, who not only wasn’t my mistress [neither of us being major fans of Greek tragedy] but was also pushing 30 at the time and so was hardly under-age.)

This year I was attending with all three daughters and Kathleen, whom the girls have taken to referring to in stentorian tones as “The Wife… of the Fuuuturre!” as if they were narrating 1950s news footage about a new robot kitchen appliance. So I wasn’t concerned that rumors about my personal life were going to be forthcoming. But here was something brand new: “Hey, didja hear? Peter David was going around at MegaCon claiming he created Crusade. I hear he did it just to annoy Straczynski.” Admit it: You can just hear fans saying it. I wound up emailing Joe about it. Joe was sanguine about the mix-up; he seemed cheered because, he sardonically claimed, he could now blame me for creating a spinoff that didn’t last.

Friday evening was the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund karaoke, For $20, you could request the comics pro of your choice to go up to the mike and serenade the crowd. A little-known aspect of this was that for $40, people could request that I be kept away from the microphone for half an hour at a time. This, however, was insufficiently publicized, so I kept making an idiot of myself voluntarily throughout the night, except for once when Paul Jenkins forked over 20 bucks to compel me, and I wound up serenading Kathleen with “Can’t Help Fallin’ in Love with You.” Paul then got up and did a blistering (and fairly practiced, I suspect) rendition of “Mack the Knife,” dropping that phony-sounding British accent he’s always putting on. Of course the vocalizing star of the night remained George Pérez, including his requested rendition of “Summer Lovin’” from Grease.

But as fundraisers go, karaoke night couldn’t begin to touch the art auction the following night for ACTOR, the fund created to provide financial support for comics artists in their senior years. I gotta say, I was flabbergasted. I’ve done CBLDF auctions at various conventions, and some of the audiences we get, they sit so tightly on their hands that you’d think we were trying to cram Styrofoam packing chips up their rectums. This ACTOR thing, though—I don’t know whether it was the crowd or the cause or what, but I sat there picking my jaw off the floor, as bidders were practically throwing money at auctioneers Jim McLauchlin and Mark Waid.

While we browbeat people to go from $30 for $40, here bidders were leapfrogging $300 to $400 in a heartbeat. Some of the biggest-buck items included a beautiful Tarzan rendering by Joe Kubert at $2,500 (which was more than pieces by both his sons went for combined, so the old man sure showed those young whippersnappers), George Pérez’ promo illo for the JLA-Avengers team-up bringing in $4,100, and a Joseph Michael Linsner Dawn portrait fetched a cool six grand. All in all, the auction grossed $71,250. Which, of course, leaves me with the question: Where the hëll are all these people when I’m beating the drums for the CBLDF?

We’ve simply got to start getting cooler stuff for our auctions.

In the dealer’s room, I found a retailer who was selling the exact James Bond attaché case I had had when I was a kid… the case which provided the recollections and mindset I drew upon when scripting Spyboy. But it was $300. I just couldn’t bring myself to spend $300 on a toy to relive my childhood. It was still cool-looking, though, although, curiously, it was a lot smaller than I remembered it.

Sunday night we ventured to the Adventurer’s Club and stayed until well after midnight. When you remain that late, things tend to get kind of whacked. At one point one of the “members,” Emil, was trying to perform a demented song about toast, and a buxom co-ed who’d had waaaaay too much to drink wanted to grab the microphone and start singing her own tunes. Despite the audience interaction of the AC, it’s still ultimately a show with actors, and the actors sometimes get cues.

In this instance I noticed a cue being sent to Emil from a guy whom I took (correctly, it turned out) to be the manager: a throat-cutting gesture that basically signaled the actor, No way in hëll do you let this girl take the mike. God only knew what the soused sweetheart of Sigma Chi might have started saying, and there were kids present, after all. Fortunately, Emil managed to talk her into simply participating with his song, her participation being limited to bouncing up and down for the duration of the ditty. She did not appear to be wearing a bra, and she was dámņëd lucky she didn’t give herself a black eye. It was all in a typical evening for the cast of the Adventurer’s Club. (It’s a place shockingly bereft of cool merchandise, I must point out. No shirts, no jackets, no nothin’. A horrifying lapse. Usually Disney’s money-making instincts are quite keen; how it missed the opportunity here, I’ve no idea.)

And then, the next day, things began to go slightly haywire—because we learned that our Sunday flight home had been canceled. Weathermen had been predicting a gargantuan storm front moving in from dámņëd near every direction, and consequently airlines had been canceling flights right and left. As it turned out, the much-predicted two to three feet of white stuff turned out to be more like two to three inches, if that, but by then the damage was done. With several days’ worth of flights canceled, we weren’t able to get a flight home until the end of the week.

Now, make no mistake: It wasn’t as if we were stuck in the ninth circle of Hëll. If you’re going to be stranded somewhere, there’s tons worse places than Orlando.

Monday, while Ariel and Kathleen went to SeaWorld, Shana and I hit the Florida State Fair. When one lives in urban and suburban areas for as long as I have, one forgets what life is like in—well, in every state that voted for Bush, I guess. We were captivated by it. Over here was a whole organization of parents who home-school their kids, putting on a talent show, while little kids sat in the front row and played with pet chickens. Over there you could have your picture taken with an alligator. And on the main stage was a male-female vocalizing team who seemed to have stepped straight off Saturday Night Live: The guy, making Bill Murray’s lounge singer look like Sammy Davis Jr., sang everything exactly the same, whether it was the blues or the BeeGees, while the woman accompanying him played keyboard badly and attempted to harmonize but failed. But the mostly senior-citizen audience applauded with as much enthusiasm as if they were watching Vegas headliners.

We also took in Cirque de Soleil on Monday night, and that was seriously cool. Going to see Cirque is like dropping acid and then watching a solid 90 minutes of the most bizarre circus acts that ever appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. You just sit there saying, “Whoooaaa… duuuuude…” Ariel was absolutely captivated by four little Asian girls who did stunning tricks with what I can only describe as two-handed yo-yos.

Tuesday night we went to a mystery dinner theater called “Sleuths,” where a murder mystery is played out for you while you eat a surprisingly good meal. The place was absolutely packed, and I managed to work out a considerable portion of the mystery—and still got it wrong, which torqued me tremendously, because I thought my solution made more sense than what they had. Either that or I’m just a sore loser. Or both.

Wednesday we hit Universal and had a bizarre bit of bad luck that turned into good luck. One of the first rides we wanted to do was Twister. Except we arrived only to discover that it was out of order. So there we were, a bummed-out-looking family, if there ever was one, and a guy who worked at the park in the capacity of customer relations said, “Are there any other rides you’re interested in going on?” In short order, to our astonishment, he escorted us onto some of the most popular and high-volume attractions in the place (including the absolutely killer Men in Black ride), walking us past massive lines and through staff-only doors, easily saving us 45 minutes to an hour wait time on each ride. We were flabbergasted. People were gaping at us, getting this first-class treatment, wondering who the hëll we were. Egomaniac that I am, I thought it was because he recognized me, but no. Universal simply provides this kind of personal service that I can only surmise is aimed at families who look like their vacation isn’t going the way they’d hoped. This guy’s job is to spend the whole day going around and taking families on rides at the park. Nice work if you can get it.

Thursday was Disney/MGM, but by that point we were anxious to get home, not to mention nervous. We didn’t want the girls missing any more school, or Kathleen or I any more work. Fortunately enough, however, by this time the non-existent snowstorm had subsided and the convention that wouldn’t end finally ended. I came home, logged on to AOL, and discovered that my AOL folder had accrued over twelve hundred messages in my absence.

I don’t think I can afford to leave home again for any extended period.

Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.