Freedom City

Eyes pop open at 630am. My brain is on my workaday schedule. We put the card outside the door for breakfast delivery, so as long as some drunk nerd didn’t add some Klingon delicacies to the order, that should be fine.
We’re going to try the official Megacon shuttle this morning. I think Carter’s extremely done with pedicabs.
We’re feeling a little rough. The temperature difference has our systems reeling a bit. My Clinique regimen has a couple baggy eyes to contend with.
For a con that comes a week after C2E2, it’s going really well. The new model of a con that is in essence a controlled press release dump doesn’t appeal at all to folks who just want to go to a con. The esprit de nerd here is palpable and contagious. Standing at one of those endless tables of 5 dollar manga, I watched a lady with a long handwritten list anxiously asking the proprietor about single volumes of different titles and realized I was essentially back at the spiritual inheritor of the classic Chicago Comicon. Next year’s Megacon will be in February, likely to get out of the way of C2E2, which makes no difference to us.
More after we get rolling. See you at 10am!

847am
Two vendors pushed past the nice security lady to get early access to the show floor. Two security dudes with enormous necks just went after them. I’m sure the vendors thought they were pretty badass and all, but after looking at the security backup, I feel pretty good about leaving stuff at the table at night. If I see the two vendors getting frogmarched out, I’ll get a picture.

852am
No frogmarch, but they suddenly left the floor as if it was their idea. Now he’s going on about all the money he paid. Waaaah.
1133am
Selling books, doing well. Spotted an arm tattoo that’s half Billy Jack and half Snake Plissken, as if they were the Composite Superman. I mention this to his great delight. I apparently am the first to nail this. It’s what I do.
1248pm
Lunch! I have discovered the makeshift food court in the far corner. The eight dollar grilled Ham and cheese was made fresh in front of me and the sweet potato chips were included. We still have not reached THE RUNNING MAN’S predicted six bucks for a coke, but we’re getting there.
126pm
Suddenly all the anime poster art girls look like they have Morgan Fairchild’s nose. Am I changing?
141pm
Word has reached us that the Fire Marshall has temporarily suspended one day ticket sales because the place is full to bursting. Take that, other recent cons!
238pm
The place is so full, even Artist Alley is stacked up like O’Hare on a rainy day.
256pm
The cosplay wars are over. I just saw Jesus Christ with a cross strapped to his back.
340pm
I just raised the dork level in the room. A couple congoers were dressed like Apollo and Artemis and they had their names in Greek sharpied on their forearms. I checked the Apollo for the correct diacritical mark (which was there), but alas Artemis didn’t have a breathing mark in front. I then explained how there’s no actual letter h in Greek and before I knew it I was nerding up the place. But they were very nice and listened anyway. The cameraderie and understanding of such things here make it an important con to us.
423pm
Things are thinning slightly in Artist Alley, enough to fool me into thinking I could go for a pee. One step out of AA and whammo, human shield. This of course did not stop me from buying something…a bootleg of the old horror anthology The Darkroom. Scary!
We’ve given out about 350 postcards. Almost every sale came from someone doing a doubletake on the card.
1021pm
We’re back from Disney Downtown. Three hours is all we could take of that. It’s the Parenting Olympics to take kids to that place. We ate at the Irish fish and chips place and saw a lot of exhausted parents slumped at the bar.
We hit a couple stores. I got a huge Pooh bear for my grand niece, plus a Donald Duck stormtrooper figure and some odd Lego bits. It’s a nice night. We called Will to catch up a bit and analyse today’s sales. Jeremy called a bit later too. It’s a nice bit of togetherness.
Now to bed. Sunday awaits!