Booth Babe

I'm back from Comic Con.

And tired.

And kinda happy.

Comic Con was an experience. I remember why I haven't been in eleven years. The crowds are ridiculous. It doesn't help that I hate crowds.

It started ominously on Thursday with the Drive to Hell.

There was a HUGE accident on the I-5 near Camp Pendleton at 5am where the entire southbound freeway was shut down. They didn't reopen any lanes until 11am, and didn't get the rest of the lanes cleared until after 3pm. We didn't leave LA until 12:30pm, so we thought by the time we'd get to the affected area, everything would be back to running normally.

WRONG.

Traffic was backed up over 20 miles.

Ugh.

So we stopped at one point at a Dennys in the depths of Orange County after sitting in said hellish traffic for at least an hour and a half, and ate for about another hour, and that gave us enough of a break to get back into the slow-moving traffic mess that was the rest of the commute to San Diego.

Frustrating.

Then we get to the hotel, unpack our stuff, and take our bicycles to the convention center to hurriedly get our convention badges before registration shutters up for the rest of the day.

I now know that Comic Con is like Vegas to me: I need a reason to go.

I don't go to Vegas unless it's for Rollercon or a wedding. I won't go to Comic Con again unless I continue to be associated with a booth or manage to pimp something while there. To be in either place just existing would make me absolutely miserable.

So, being with the GirlsDrawinGirls booth made my Comic Con visit manageable and even fun. Especially since I brought Malibu rum in a Scooby Doo water bottle and the GDG founders had a drinking game to gulp down said rum all afternoon with the other GDG artists in attendance.

The game was called the Comic Con Mile and it resembled a scavenger hunt. The idea was when we got off our booth shift, we were to start at one end of the convention center and start meandering to the other end, taking a shot of rum from the water bottle every time we spotted something from the list.

The list included:

• Fat Batman(any era)
• Heath Ledger Joker(either gender)
• Fat Princess Leia
• V for Vendetta Mask
• any Sailor Moon/Sailor Scout character
• a couple dressed as Steampunks
• Darth Vader or stormtroopers with their helmets off
• anyone partaking in a hot dog and cup of coffee(the Official Convention Center meal)
• walking through a fart cloud
• a group of at least four attractive people who weren't working the con
• a farting fat female stormtrooper eating a hot dog and carrying a cup of coffee

I know there's a couple I'm missing, but that's the jist of it. With this list, we would've had to be carried out on stretchers due to alcohol poisoning.

We made it through the first half of our four-hour booth shift on Friday before we couldn't take it anymore and decided to start the Comic Con Mile at the booth while people slowly shuffled by. We quickly found out that the V for Vendetta masks are entirely too popular. We also learned that it's a good thing we didn't have fairy wings on our list, as they were as plentiful as the damn V for Vendetta masks.

Needless to say, by the end of my shift on Friday, I was toasted.

That was the highlight of my day, as we had the worst service EVAR at a local restaurant that evening, and it threw me into such a foul mood, we had to ride our bikes back to our hotel room to decompress for the rest of the evening.


Then there was Saturday.

The day I was to be Booth Babe for the GDG.

For the occasion, I decided to take last year's Halloween costume. You know, the Austin Powers Fembot costume.

Holy hell, that turned out to be an interesting decision.

Now, I know that Comic Con is full of nerds, some of whom don't see attractive women in the flesh on a day-to-day basis. But I got swamped by nerds as soon as I stepped out in the fembot outfit. I imagine that there are literally hundreds of photos of me in my goofy outfit out there in nerdland.


The weird part?

I'm NOT an attractive woman!


But in the alternative universe that is Comic Con, just put on a wig, throw on some high heels, glue some sparkly false eyelashes on and POW! Instant Nerd Magnet!

I have to admit, it was a helluva ego boost. Until my feet started hurting in the damn shoes.

I spent four hours luring in the masses to the GDG booth. People bought stuff. I got my photo taken a bunch o' times and got minorly groped a couple of times in the process. Ummm, EWWW.



Some of the coworkers came by during my shift. Two were very nice, and the third laaaaaughed at me, not with me. Ah well. A couple of guys dressed as Scooby and Shaggy happened to wander by and we all got our photo taken with them. That should be a great source of extortion in the future.

I think I may have sold all ten of the Puss N' Boots magnets that I had. Yay!! Didn't really sell any of the ten roller derby magnets. Boo!! Sold a couple of roller derby buttons. Yay!! The company that helps GDG with their art needs, ACME Archives, made some giclee prints of Puss N' Boots. Yay!! Didn't sell any of them because they weren't on display. Boo!!

All in all, a hilarious experience.

I ended seeing almost nothing of the rest of the convention and so I didn't buy a damned thing other than food all weekend. Great for the pocketbook, since the money for the hotel room was extravagant.

Saturday evening was spent with Scooby friends at the nearby Hyatt, where we sat and drank and ate and talked a lot about stoopid stuff and generally had an easy-going time. After awhile we found out that the Hyatt is the default spot to go to when you have nowhere else to go. The downstairs bar areas filled up with nerds, and our friends started wandering off, so the Dear Husband and I went up to a nearby balcony and started throwing paper airplanes on the crowd below.

And didn't get caught.

Then some of the GDG girls came trickling in so I took out the trusty Sharpies that had been unused all weekend and drew on them. That got things a-buzzin', and next thing I know I'm drawing on some guy's bald head. Then I drew on another guy's neck, but he started getting really flirty and borderline stalker, topped off with him shoving $10 in my shirt. The DH didn't like that, and said he wanted to leave NOW. OK, not a problem!

Bicycled back to the hotel, went to sleep, got up early, and got the hell outta Dodge. Made it back home in just over 2 hours. WOOHOO!!

So to recap, I'd go to Comic Con again if circumstances booth-wise are similar to what I had this year. And I'll take into account traffic reports much more seriously.

Now I need a nap for a day or three.