Comic-Con was beginning to take it's toll on me by Sunday morning. I've got horrendously flat feet and a trick knee (the "trick" being it can and will slip out of position with the right combination of pressure and twisting, causing incredible pain and a horrific bulge), so four days (counting Preview Night) of marching up and down the entire length of the massive San Diego Convention Center with my 20-pound backpack had me tottering along like a little old man by the weekend. But there was one day left, one very important day: spreading the Gospel of Joystick Division on the sidewalk like a street prophet.
I had a ton of Joystick Division buttons made up for the trip, about a hundred each of 6 different designs total. As I talked about in past posts, I was giving away complete sets of buttons in a more targeted way the first days of the show. When I talked to the Konami people, I gave them buttons; when I talked to the EA people, I gave them buttons.
Even though I was talking to people the entire time, that still only amounted to maybe 20 sets of buttons passed out over the Convention. This last day was to cast a wider net - the average joe (or jane), the Convention attendee, the attempt to invite in new readers who might never have heard of Joystick Division otherwise.
So that morning I separated out two big freezer bags full of assorted buttons, about 150 in each bag, one for me, one for my partner-in-crime, my girlfriend. She'd never attended a Comic-Con before, and seemed to frown when she saw the size of the bags, clearly not believing me when I said all 300 buttons would be gone within a half hour.
Then she saw the mobs in front of the Convention Center.
"Just ask people passing by if they want a free button," I said. "And let them have as many as they want."
"What do you want me to say if they ask what they're for?"
"Hmm. Say they're for Joystick Division, a new gaming blog... that's already the greatest and most heavily read gaming blog in the world."
She rolled her eyes. "Joystick Division, a new gaming blog, then."
I didn't like her attitude. This would come up on her quarterly evaluation.
We took opposite sides of the thoroughfare where mobs of attendees were arriving from the crosswalk, barking "FREE BUTTONS!" and "JOYSTICK DIVISION!" to the passing potential readers. After about 45 seconds, a security guard appeared.
"You can't do that here."
Too early to get arrested, I was polite and respectful. "Oh, I'm sorry sir. Where is it okay to do this?"
"Across the street, there."
"Thank you sir, I'm very sorry." Asshole. I rounded up my girlfriend, who I saw was actually fanning out buttons in her fingers like a hand of cards to display them to passers-by.
"We have to move," I said.
"Says who?" she said incredulously. I liked her instinctive defiance of authority; her quarterly eval was improving.
"A security guard. He said we can do it across the street."
As we crossed, I chewed the side of my cheek thinking about her flashing buttons in people's faces. "Don't be too pushy with them," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, don't hand people buttons; invite them to take buttons."
"What are you doing?"
"I hold the bag open, and if they want some they fish them out."
She looked at me like I was insane. "I would never reach my hand into a strange man's sack! You might as well ask them to reach into your pocket!"
I hated that she was right. We split up to opposite sides of the mob again, this time across the street.
I feel sorry for the saps having to pass out fliers and coupons in front of the 'Con - nobody wants that shit. It's no coincidence they get the prettiest girls in the shortest shorts they can find to pass out that garbage, because if some scruffy-looking freelance writer (like me) approached strangers with a happy hour ad, he'd likely end up knifed and bleeding out in a nearby dumpster.
Me, I had buttons. I had actual flair. They went as fast as I predicted: some people didn't even let me finish saying "FREE BUTTONS?", their hand was already in the bag and grabbing some. I mean come on, they're big (2.5"), glossy, colorful buttons, for free. Of the hundreds of people who passed me, I'd say 90% just took some without even thinking about it (of the remainder: 5% shot scary glares at me, and the other 5% politely declined).
I was down to about a third of my supply. My girlfriend appeared next to me, dropping a handful of buttons into my bag. "I can't pass these out," she said, the entire handful the infamous Ikari Alien buttons. "I just accidentally gave a couple to a family with little kids."
"What? Where? Did they say anything!?" I panicked, bracing myself to be coldcocked by some outraged father.
"No, but they're going to look at them later!"
"Okay, well just give 'em to the demographic. Adult men."
"Hey, I'm already done, they're all gone!" she grinned triumphantly.
"WOW. Well you're a pretty girl, people trust pretty girls over bearded weirdos."
"Especially when the bearded weirdo is asking them to reach into his sack."
"I'm not confrontational, I feel weird about just handing a stranger stuff."
She grabbed a handful of buttons out of my sack and started passing them out to everyone around us, even a few homeless people. Five minutes later they were all gone, save for the 6 or 7 Ikari Alien buttons she refused to pass out. I wadded up the bags. "Okay, let's get the hell out of here before we're arrested."
As we walked, she asked: "Do you think passing out those alien buttons is illegal?"
"I don't know. No more illegal than distributing pictures of Michelangelo's David."
"But that's art," she teased. Smartass.
"I've seen Cartman's penis on Southpark, so I'm not sure what the problem would be. It's not like it's erect. Besides, it's not even a person. It's an alien." I thought about it quietly for a bit. "Let's just walk faster."
Home Again, Home Again
The drive from San Diego to Phoenix is tedious, made worse by my little 4-cylinder Honda which - with a passenger and a load of baggage - tops out at about 60 mph on the uphills, the engine temp spiking if you even try to squeeze another couple miles per hour out of it. But eventually we made it home. The trip had been just long enough (5 days) that the house looked vaguely strange to me.
All in all, Comic-Con was a blast. To anyone who's never gone: you must. You simply must, there's nothing else like it. And to those gamers who lament they've never attended the industry-only E3: seriously, you're not missing anything. E3 is a fucking nightmare. Comic-Con - which is open to anyone - actually has everything that's good about E3 (you can play games early, talk to PR people... hell, almost every booth or game build is the exact same thing we press see at E3), but better: Gaslamp, the downtown San Diego bar and restaurant area just north of the Convention Center, is amazingly fun, San Diego is easier to get around than LA, and then Comic-Con has all that other awesome shit for geeks: comics, artist signings, movies, anime, hot chicks, you name it. Of course it's not as cool as Chris-Con, but then again, what is?
Sign up now. And buy comfortable shoes.
Two last anecdotes for the road. Not gaming related at all, but I wanted to share them just the same:
Sideshow Toys
I swear, I need to send a letter to Britany Spears' dad asking him to manage my money too, because I can't be trusted with it - especially when it comes to Sideshow.
Here's a quick list of the items shown at their booth I had to preorder. I refuse to total up the expenditure in my head; I know it's too much, that's all that matters.
Where will all these go? I'll level with you: no idea.
Tiffany Taylor (Playboy's Playmate of the Month November 1998)
Tiffany Taylor is attractive.
So when I noticed she had a booth at Comic-Con, I couldn't resist but browse the pictures she had for sale, toying with the idea of getting her to sign one for me. The whole plan was absurd, since of course I could never, ever do anything with a signed 8x10 of Tiffany Taylor. What, frame it and hang it in the living room? I'm sure my girlfriend would love that. But I thumbed through her pictures anyway while she signed photos for other guys.
I focused on one, one that was probably from the same shoot as this one here:
But racier. As in fewer clothes.
I like the schoolgirl thing. I blame a decade of Catholic schooling, surrounded by girls in pleated skirts and white blouses as I entered (and then stomped around in) adolescence. It marked me forever, to the point that now, almost 18 years since last setting foot on a parochial school campus, I was standing in front of a Playmate's booth at Comic-Con salivating over a picture of her in a plaid skirt.
I steadied myself for the humiliation of asking Miss Taylor for her autograph, which in my mind is indistinguishable from introducing myself in the following manner:
"Hello, Miss Taylor. I am a masturbator. In my masturbating, I've found pieces of paper with your image on them most enjoyable. Would you please sell me a picture of yourself for future masturbatory material? Thanks so much."
Another guy was in front of me, though. He looked a bit like an anthropomorphized bean bag chair; a lumpy, shapeless man slick with sweat wearing Coke-bottle glasses and a crew cut. He had razor bumps on the back of his neck, and his t-shirt had been washed a thousand times too many, making it semi-transparent.
He handed Miss Taylor a copy of the same picture I had picked out. "I love your schoolgirl stuff," he grunted in a weird monotone.
Taylor forced a smile, staring at her someday killer. "Oh. Thanks."
Self-loathing and disgust overwhelmed me, and I put the picture back and moved on.
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