People buying more copies of books people stole from them.
Day two of the con, and I’ve spent a great deal of time looking out my hotel room window ignoring whatever horrific woman I picked up the night before at the 24 hour Subway happens to be waking up in my bed this time, looking down at the giant Ender’s Game tent they’ve set up down in front of the hotel.
“You promised me sandwiches” the monstrous thing behind me kept asking, but my attention was on something several floors down in front of the fan-filled tent. A man, an older gentleman, from what I could tell, who kept carrying people around on his back. At first I thought maybe it was some grandfather hoisting a kid up so they could see something interesting above the heads of the crowd, but it was soon obvious that it wasn’t just the one kid, it was a whole bunch of people who’d climb up on the old guy’s back and do a few erratic laps around on the grass the tent was set up on. One person would get off, another would get on and it was just confusing the hell out of me until I got dressed and left the hotel to walk to the convention.
Heading out from the lobby, I saw stood in front of the Ender’s Game tent and scanned the crowd for the old man and soon enough he came running out from a mass of onlookers.
It was Harrison Ford.
On his back was a delighted, sweating brick of a muscle man dressed as the Scorpion King. Normally the sight of someone dressing as The Scorpion King in 2013 woulda been what got me wondering, but it was the ruddy-faced, wheezing Harrison Ford that had me asking what the hell was going on.
So it turns out, to promote Ender’s Game, that movie’s studio hired Ford to spend the weekend carrying fans on his back making spaceship whooshing sounds so the fans can know what it’s like to be a space academy student or something. I felt awful watching Harrison Ford doing that, but it didn’t stop me from waiting in line three times to ride him.
At the convention, things went the way they usually do. Pretty fun, but also insanely tiring. One of the things I like to do to keep from going off is to not take requests when people ask for sketches. I’ll usually do a quick little doodle if people ask and they have a sweet rack, but often someone will come up and ask for something really specific. I never charge for autographs or little sketches, so when someone gets super detail oriented and just drops a sketchbook in front of me I usually stop them in mid “I want a GIR wearing a Deadpool mask battling Gypsy Danger in the Bahamas” to tell them what I’m actually gonna draw them. I then explain that I have more fun when I just poop something out that even I don’t know what it’s gonna be. Some of my favorite sketches come out of those moments, but usually it’s something shameful.
THAT’S WHERE THIS SQUEE-HAIRED BEE EATING A PICKLE CAME FROM.
Everyone’s usually pretty nice about getting stuff like that, and it makes me feel good to disappoint people in a way that makes them smile.
I was mostly alone at the booth as far as other artists went, so for most of the time I had a friend sit with me via Facetime on my phone. This made things awkward at times, however, as I had the phone propped up on the table pretty much at exactly the height as most peoples groins, so now and then I’d bend down to address my friend when, to the fans lined up, it just looked like I was talking to their penises or vaginas or peginases. It didn’t help that, while bending down, I’d say things like “You’re looking reeeal good today, my friend!”
I also learned not to ask friends dressed as Harley Quinn to go get lunch with you because you NEVER get to food because people stop them for photos every three feet. Also, nobody looks cool wearing Google Glasses, but this is the perfect place to wear them because everyone already looks really silly here.
FUCK YOU, HARLEY QUINN! I ALMOST STARVED TO DEATH BECAUSE OF YOU.
