Day Two Hundred and Ninety-Eight - BiMonSciFiCon

It finally happened...although it very nearly almost didn't! Yesterday afternoon in a bit of a panic I discovered that this weekend was the Fan Expo - which is a big nerd convention. As terrified as I am of large crowds of nerds [or anyone really] I have been wanting to go to one of these for a few years now, and this year I have kinda developed my own real geek interests and the special guest list included frakking ADAMA...so today I went to a sci-fi convention! It was also a comic book, horror, videogame and anime convention, but for me, it really was the BiMonSciFiCon. I made lots of new friends, including my Stormtrooper friends pictured below.


I posed with a wide array of Star Wars people including my Sith friend [guess who] and a Jawa [I was taller than the Jawa - yeah!]. I also met Edward James Olmos and Aaron Douglas from Battlestar Galactica - got one autograph, one photo. I kinda made an ass out of myself twice as I didn't realize that EJO wouldn't be an ass. I have been to signing type things before and the celebrity is always rude, distracted and really doesn't care about the fans. This was not like that. EJO was very charming and seemed like he wanted to talk...but I didn't have any prepared material so I just kinda stood there and stared blankly [it's what I do best]. I then related this story to Chief Galen Tyrol who had a good laugh @ my expense and called EJO "Eddie." He was also very nice and quite tall [I tend to assume that all actors are short, actresses are tall]. In addition to meeting real BSG people and staring @ them, I also got some cool BSG merchandise [it's so hard to find] - a Starbuck glass for when I go a-drinkin' and some fancy buttons. Sadly, I didn't crash into/knock down any of the celebrities...and Sean Astin was totally asking for it.

So...that was my sci-fi convention. It seemed as though most people were there for the comic books and anime - the line-ups for sci-fi things seemed the shortest and there didn't seem to be a huge interest in the videogames, even though they were doing tournaments like in The Wizard. But oh - the fans...I was witness to an amazing conversation between nerd vendor and consumer vendor - it was like something out of the Trekkies documentary - I had to stand @ that stall for ages and listen to them - it was like a dream! I overheard another t-shirt vendor saying that he reserves all of his size XL to XXXL shirts for conventions...and how the huskier nerds are always so appreciative because they can't find anything elsewhere. And yes...the costumes - I suppose they must be mentioned as well. They were...about 90% either scary, exceedingly lame or entirely unrecognizable. So much eye bleach needed. I find the whole taking pictures of complete strangers to be completely creepy, so I didn't. It was however, nice to see all of the geeks together and happy and nerding it up. Warmed my cold, black heart it did.