The Comic-Con Experience, Chapter V: The Pilgrimage

When he was twelve years old, Ray Bradbury went to a carnival and met his destiny. An energetic performer named “Mr. Electrico” worked the crowd with bravado, backed with a dazzling electric lightning show. When he spotted young Ray, he drew his electric sword and knighted him on the spot, commanding him to live forever. Bradbury went home and started writing stories, and never looked back.

He took my dad along with him. Fifty-two years after Mr. Electrico gave Bradbury immortality, my dad added a copy of “Dinosaur Tales” to his already impressive collection, and introduced me to the most influential author of my youth in the process. He’d been a fan since childhood, and I’d noted all of the exotic Bradbury titles on the bookshelf in our den. But until I saw this strange book with an astronaut facing down a Tyrannosaurus Rex on the cover, I’d never cracked one.

Twenty-three years down the road, the “World’s Greatest Living Science Fiction Writer” was still making the most of his gift of immortality, and when my sister Katie discovered he’d be making a cameo appearance at Comic-Con 2007 in San Diego, we knew it was time for a road trip.

Like George Lucas and J.R.R. Tolkein, Ray Bradbury possessed a mastery of imagination that resonated in everything creative I did, from my primitive monster drawings at age five to my graduate thesis at age twenty-seven. I’d even loaned a copy of “The Martian Chronicles” to my eighth grade English teacher in my zeal. For years I’d read and re-read his tales of Mars and rockets and aliens and goblins, astounded at the way he wove nostalgia and horror and science fiction, all with the same enthusiasm he took to meet Electrico at age twelve. If there was a chance to meet him, I had to take it.

So Katie and I packed up my car and drove a thousand miles into Southern California, braving Death Valley heat, gouging gas prices and hordes of comic book geeks to see our hero. We packed copies of our favorite Bradbury books, hoping to bring them to the feet of their creator and tell him how much his work had influenced us.



Our only concern was that our $30 registration fee only got us in the door of the conference. Individual forum attendance was first-come, first-serve, and so we spent the day in a state of semi-paranoia, only wandering so far to explore, careful to stay within striking distance of Bradbury’s scheduled afternoon auditorium.

We tried to keep our hopes modest, but when we won two of the hundred passes to actually meet Bradbury after his presentation, we suspected that all the pieces were falling into place, but we still didn’t relax until we saw him wheeled into the conference room just after 4PM.



When he rolled onto the floor in his wheelchair, the audience spontaneously erupted into a standing ovation. I was immediately struck by how different his presence felt than that of the other conference guests I’d seen. Bradbury seemed more like everyone’s grandfather, or even a beloved religious leader, so much more than a regular celebrity.



He shared the stage with longtime friend Ray Harryhausen, the mastermind behind “Clash of the Titans” and “Jason and the Argonauts”. The two met when they were eighteen, and celebrated a friendship of nearly seventy years.

Over the course of an hour, the old friends took turns updating us on their current projects and the anecdotes behind some of their old ones. Bradbury waxed nostalgic on encounters with Walt Disney and Katherine Hepburn, while Harryhausen told us about his efforts to restore and improve some of his pioneering monster movies from the 40’s and 50’s.



Bradbury went on about the Paris club he used to haunt with all of his science fiction writer contemporaries, outcasts who’d been warned against publishing in magazines like Weird Tales and spending their time on topics of fantasy, shunned dreamers who gathered with each other because no one else wanted them around.

As he began addressing audience questions on the inspiration for “The Martian Chronicles” and “Farenheit 451”, Katie and I slipped out to get into our autograph line, hoping that in spite of his 87 years of age, Ray would be up to the task of meeting all 100 of the drawing winners.

Within minutes Bradbury emerged onto the conference floor in his wheelchair to a second ovation, and he was quickly wheeled around to a signing table and given the first of many treasures to sign while his fans looked on.



Katie and I nervously waited as the line shuffled forward ahead of us. We waited with baited breath for the accursed words, “Mr. Bradbury is not feeling well; he has to go”, that would cut our pilgrimage short by mere inches. I had painful flashbacks of getting within inches of meeting my childhood basketball idol Darrell Griffith of the Utah Jazz, only to have his publicist pull him away from the autograph table just as I reached it.



But Ray plowed on through the line with the same vigor that has pumped out a new story every week for 75 years, even though his signature poured so slowly out of his aged right hand that we felt almost ashamed to put him through the effort.



Finally, Katie and I arrived at the head of the line, and delivered our books almost as an afterthought to the chance to meet our muse. Even in his advanced age, his enthusiasm still shone through his bright nasal voice and gleaming eyes that still peered through those same horn-rimmed glasses I’d seen in photos for over two decades.



After he finished signing my brand-new copy of The Martian Chronicles, he looked up at me as I mouthed “thank you” and extended his left hand, almost as if he knew that I secretly wanted him to tell me to live forever too, just like Mr. Electrico had done for him so many years ago. I took his hand and shook it delicately, feeling no bolt of lighting aside from the simple satisfaction of getting to say thanks to a man who’d touched my life for so many years. It was a moment that never could have taken place without a sister’s sharp eye and a father’s enthusiastic influence.

And at that moment, the pilgrimage was complete.

The Comic-Con Experience, Chapter IV: The Autograph Paradox

I’ll never forget the time I saw Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band up at the Dee Events Center in Ogden back in 1999. it was incredible to think that the short fellow in sunglasses hopping around a stage a few yards away was a real, living Beatle. Even if it was just Ringo.

At the same time, it was kind of sobering. Instead of a face on an album cover or a figure in old footage from “Help” or “A Hard Days Night”, Ringo was suddenly mortal, a regular guy like me, only with a lot more money and much larger nose.

Meeting your heroes seems to be a mixed bag, and getting their autographs can be uncannily awkward. As my sister and I collected a few signatures at this year’s Comic-Con, this point was driven home loud and clear.

A large portion of the upstairs section of the San Diego Convention Center was partitioned off into little booths where various guests could camp out and wait for dedicated fans to seek them out. According to the conference program, each special guests was obligated to sign one attendee item free of charge. If the attendee chose, they could purchase an 8X10 glossy photo of the guests for them to sign as well.

This had a strange effect on the proceedings. Instead of just approach a celebrity and ask for an autograph—already an odd gesture now that I’m thirty years old—there was also an awkward moment where I made eye contact with the celebrity and had to pass on one of their glossy photographs, basically telling them that I enjoyed their work, but only as long as it was free.

In most cases, these celebrities are not hurting for money, at least as far as I know, but some of them are obscure enough I wondered if this is the only way they are milking out a profit from a long-passed career, and so my admiration became mixed with guilt.

This situation was enhanced by the extensive lines to get to certain celebrities, and the complete absence of fans clamoring to meet others. Given the age of most attendees, the hottest signatures are coming from celebrities who’s shows/movies/comic books are current, while the heroes of yesteryear sit quietly at their booths with an agent or a friend, stacks of 8X10’s in front of them, waiting for an interested customer.

Sadly for my conscience, but luckily for my feet, most of the people I wanted to meet fell into that latter category. While dozens of patient fans waited in line to meet “Spawn’s” Todd McFarlane, I walked right up to the guy that played “Boomer” on the old “Battlestar Galactica” and got his autograph in less than fifteen seconds.

I wondered for a moment whether to tell Mr. Jefferson that as I child “Galactica” was one of my favorite shows, and how in my infant ignorance I chose to refer to the show as “Battlestar Galac-alac-alaca.” I could have told him that at the age of five I decided to change my name to “Starbuck”, but that seemed asinine, so I gave him a sincere thank-you and moved on.



When I met Erin Moran—“Joanie” from “Happy Days”—I wondered whether I should ask her about Scott Baio, and see what she thought of his new VH-1 program “Scott Baio is 45 and Single”, but the question struck me as strangely too personal and I didn’t want to insult her, so instead I moved on and got the autograph of Cindy Morgan, who played the love interest in “Caddyshack” and “Tron”, barely getting in a “Thank you very much” before scurrying away quickly.

Elsewhere I met up with Irwin Keyes, who played “Wheezy Joe” in the Coen Brother’s film “Intolerable Cruelty”, and all I could really say was “Hey man, I loved you in ‘Intolerable Cruelty’.” I told myself that I didn’t have the money to spend $20 on each of these people for the sake of my conscience, but the truth is that even if I did have the money I don’t think I would have laid it down. These people were attached to bits of my youth, but they weren’t really my heroes. I approached them because they were familiar, and they were accessible. I almost felt ashamed asking them for their signatures.

Then I walked up to Brande Roderick, the former Playboy Playmate who famously dated “good Mormon boy” and ex-BYU placekicker Owen Pachmann, and got her autograph. I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask her if she was still dating good Mormon boys, but when I did, she didn’t get the joke, and now I don’t know whether I can say I was rejected by a Playboy Playmate. I didn’t hang around to ask her, or her two kids that were hanging around with her. It was just too weird.

Later in the day Katie and I went down to the expo floor in search of memento’s, and discovered through trial and error that if a celebrity is a guest of a vendor instead of the conference itself, you have to pay for any autograph at all, which is how I wound up spending $30 to have Darth Vader’s body (David Prowse) sign the cover of my program. When I found out that the signature on my program was not free, I was confronted with a choice: suck it up and move on, or stand around arguing with the guy that played Darth Vader’s body.

I moved on.



After the Prowse experience, Katie and I knew better than to impulsively ask LeVar “Geordi La Forge” Burton for his autograph. Instead Katie asked if we could get a photo with him, to which he replied, “Sure, it’s ten dollars.” This left Katie with a choice of her own: get the photo and cough up ten bucks, or tell Mr. Reading Rainbow that with all due respect, a photo with him wasn’t worth that much to her, and that he didn’t have to take her word for it, cause her brother didn’t think he was worth it, either.

But you know what? Katie and I are good people. Good, guilty people. So I hopped into the picture so we could split the cost, and the two of us helped LeVar pull a little more action out of his day in San Diego.



Ironically, I had to pass up the one autograph on the expo floor that I would have paid for: George “Mr. Sulu” Takei, who I spied earlier in the day as we were wandering the floor. I was recently miffed to find that the Red Iguana had taken down his autographed photo from their “Wall of Fame”, so a shot of my own would have been nice. But his line was too long, and we were pressed for time, so I took a clandestine photo paparazzi-style and cruised for the exit.



However, one of these encounters made the awkwardness of the others worth it. Scanning the list of guest signers, one jumped out above the others: Marc Singer. It was too ironic, too perfect. Only a month ago a group of friends and I had made our way through two “V” mini-series from the early 1980’s, both of which starred Singer as Mike Donovan, token hunk and leader of the human resistance to the alien invaders. Now here was I guy I really wanted to meet.

When Katie and I found his booth, he was just kicked back on his own while a line had formed to meet the “Blade Runner” producers a couple of booths over. With a big grin on my face, I strode over and stuck out my hand. He responded with an equally big grin and a firm handshake. Then I introduced my sister and chatted for a moment before pulling out my program for a complimentary signature.

But as I looked through my program at the free autographs I’d already collected, I realized that Marc Singer was different. Screw it, I thought, I can’t just get a free scribble on some random page from Marc Singer. This guy was the “Beastmaster”, for Pete’s sake.

I picked out the best “V” 8X10 he had, and was more than happy to hand over the $20 for his personalized signature. Well, actually Katie handed over the $20, because I was almost out of cash. Then both of us got photos with him and made small talk about whether there was going to be a new version of the mini-series coming out next year.

Looking back at it now, I wish I had hung around and shot the bull with him for a while longer. He was such a cool guy, I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded. Besides, he seemed to think my sister was cute, so I don’t know why I was so bent on hustling off to have another awkward moment somewhere else.

Coming face-to-face with a celebrity reveals in no uncertain terms that the hero in question is a real human being, for better or worse. This I understood going into the conference. What I didn’t understand was that I would feel a stark conflict of admiration and pity when I’d meet many of them.

Maybe I should have just approached the people I really admired, like Marc Singer. Maybe I should just skip the autograph thing altogether, because meeting someone is more meaningful than getting a signature on some picture. Maybe I should get famous myself and sit on the other side of the table for a while.

If I do, I hope I greet everyone with a smile and a handshake, free of charge.



Next chapter: The Pilgrimage.

Four movie reviews in 300 words or less…

Transformers
One star out of four

The first time they made a “Transformers” movie they killed off all the main characters and introduced a whole new line so parents would get stuck buying their kids new toys. It was a harsh introduction to the world of marketing, and sad to say, the brand-new CGI version hasn’t restored my faith.

In the time that has passed since I saw this film (three weeks?), I’ve come to a realization: it sucked. At first I tried to convince myself that I enjoyed it, kind of like how at first I tried to convince myself that I didn’t hate the Dave Matthews Band. But eventually I had no choice but to be honest with myself; therefore, “Transformers” sucks, and so does the Dave Matthews Band.

Thing is, I knew going in that I was paying for a Michael Bay film, which meant lots of slow-motion action, overly-dramatic music, dumb one-liners and an explosion/dialogue ratio of about 7 to 1. For a while it was fun, but after a point I just couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe I was just angry that they turned Bumblebee into a Camaro instead of a Bug, and Jazz into a Pontiac instead of a Porche. Maybe I was steamed that Soundwave looked like a tinker-toy version of the Terminator endo-skeleton. Or maybe it was just that I couldn’t buy the idea that a 20-year old cover girl blonde with heavy makeup (and an even heavier New Zealand accent!) could get a job as a high-security CIA analyst.

“Transformers” is rated PG-13 for tons of CGI violence, bad dialogue, a ridiculously scantily-clad leading “lady”, and the methodical alteration of most of what I remember about the “Transformers” of my childhood.


Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Two and a half stars out of four

I’m betting that if I hadn’t read the book before seeing this movie (a first for me), I would have given it three stars. “Harry Potter 5” is a lot of fun, and well worth seeing, but after cruising through nearly 900 pages of source material, I wanted to see more than two hours and twenty minutes of screen time.

This is a perfect example of what’s in is good, and what’s missing could have been better. Part of the problem as well is that after finishing book five, I forged on into book six, and was more interested in seeing “Half-Blood Prince” on the big screen. Just have to be patient I guess.

One thing I will say, though, is that this is the first Potter movie I’ve seen where I enjoyed the back nine as much as the front nine. Usually I’ve enjoyed the first two acts, but lost interest by the time the obligatory good/evil showdown took place. This time the showdown fit the bill.

“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” is rated PG-13 for general moodiness and excessive British accents, not to mention some scary bits and periodic cringes every time you remember that Harry has a nude scene in some play he’s doing in England.


The Simpsons Movie
Three stars out of four

Confession time: I’ve probably only seen two or three brand-new Simpsons episodes over the last five years. From ’89 to ’95 I watched the show constantly, loyally, and kept on going for several years after returning from my LDS mission to Chicago. But in the last few years, I’ve gotten a bit bored with the show, and, dare I say it, suspected that I was seeing the same storylines played out in new clothing.

That being said, the movie more than delivers, and is worth the wait. Ultimately it’s nothing you can’t already see on TV, but if nothing but for the novelty, it’s worth seeing on the big screen. The writing may be getting a bit redundant from week to week in TV land, but Homer and the crew brought their “A” game for the movie.

For some reason, my favorite part of the movie is a quick clip of the "cat lady" rubbing a bunch of disoriented felines on a washboard next to a toxic-waste infested lake before tossing each in a laundry bin with the obligatory "mmrrew!". I really don't know why.

“The Simpsons Movie” is rated PG-13 for slightly amplified examples of the stuff that got half my parent’s friends to forbid them from watching the show back in 1989. Plus they show Bart’s animated wee-wee.


Live Free or Die Hard
Three stars out of four

In all seriousness, “Die Hard 4” may be the best movie I’ve seen this summer. And I’m not saying that because it’s been a bad summer. It’s just that good.

“Live Free or Die Hard” works best in the “Rundown” and “Walking Tall” category of films: movies you watch just because you want to see the lead guy beat up everyone in the room and destroy everything in sight. “Transformers” could have been that, but was just too stupid. “Die Hard” is certainly stupid, but the difference is it wants to be. “Die Hard” embraces stupidity, and revels in it. And the audience loves it.

It’s good to see Bruce Willis playing Bruce Willis in a character that is appropriate to the mold. I still don’t like it as much as his David Addison on “Moonlighting” (nor do I want to see a big-screen adaptation of “Moonlighting”), but it’s still a lot of fun. And without giving too much away, let me just say that in act three Willis may just out-Jack Bauer Jack Bauer.

Best part: I watched “Live Free or Die Hard” at a Drive-In. There was something undoubtedly American about the whole production. What a great night.

“Live Free or Die Hard” is rated PG-13 for non-stop mayhem, gunfire, explosions, mid-level profanity (except for the obligatory franchise catch phrase), excessive Bruno coolness and a touch of sorrow that they didn’t bring back Roc from the first movie to play a cop again.

The Comic-Con Experience, Chapter III: Less Comic, More Con

When people ask why I hate Carl’s Jr., so much—and they constantly do—I tell them, “false advertising”. Every ad shows a burger that looks like it would be about six inches high in real life, but every burger I’ve had from Carl’s Jr. looks like Paris Hilton ran it over with that car she was washing.

Granted, I am well aware of the fact that advertisers stretch the truth when constructing visuals for their ads, say, by substituting glue for milk in cereal commercials and dubbing vocals for athlete spokesmen who we know can’t really speak English. But the Carl’s Jr. ads, for some reason, just crossed the line.

I don’t hate Comic-Con—far from it. At the same time, the biggest surprise I had from attending this years conference—other than running into Marc “Mike Donovan” Singer from “V”—was realizing that hardly anything at Comic-Con has to do with comic books.

Of course, the very reason I was going in the first place was to see Ray Bradbury, a world-renowned science fiction author who, to my knowledge, has never put out a comic book. But I was still surprised to see how little of the conference was rooted in the comic tradition.

Many of the booths on the merchandise expo on the main floor were dedicated to comic companies or individual artists, but there were plenty of other booths that had nothing to do with comics whatsoever, like the row of custom painted Darth Vader helmets. (My favorite was “Carmen Miranda Vader”.)



It seems that over the years Comic-Con has grown past its roots and become more of a general pop culture conference, which is fine. I’m not going to complain about a group of people who’s combined efforts give me the chance to see my favorite childhood author.

It was also fun to get sneak previews of some of the upcoming events in the pop culture world, even if my sister and I stumbled onto them by accident. Immediately after arriving and registering, Katie and I cruised over to the room Bradbury was scheduled to speak in, not knowing whether we’d have to stake out a spot in the room from 9AM on in order to assure our attendance. When we entered the room, we found ourselves watching the pilot episode of the “highly anticipated” fall TV show from the creator of “Heroes”: “Pushing Daisies.”



We sat down and I promptly began digging through my program to start strategizing, but eventually I turned my attention to the screen, and in no time was enjoying what looks like a really fun show. “Pushing Daisies” has a very fairy tale-esque feel to it, much like “Amelie”, which also happens to be one of creator Bryan Fuller’s favorite films.



Halfway through the showing, a guy turned a TV camera on my sister and I, and I quickly tried to stop Katie from text messaging. I figured we’d been busted. It turned out the entire cast was sitting right in front of us.

Once the showing was over, the cast—along with Fuller and producer Barry Sonnenfield—took the stage to answer questions. The first question came from one of those guys I figured this conference would be swarming with, a short fellow who dropped a bomb of an existential question on the cast about the style of the show, inventing the word “symmetricality” in the process.



In the afternoon, we caught the “Family Guy” presentation in the same room. To be honest, I don’t really like “Family Guy”; it has it’s moments, but for the most part I see it as a pale imitation of “The Simpsons”, trying too hard to be shocking rather than putting the focus on the social satire and letting the shock happen naturally. But they did show a clip from this season’s premier episode—featuring a cast re-enactment of “Star Wars”—which was pretty funny, and creator Seth McFarlane seemed like a pretty cool guy, so I humbly agree to disagree.



The “Family Guy” forum was followed by a similar spot for “Supernatural”, which from what I could tell is basically an “X-Files” knockoff with two beefcake brothers substituted for Mulder and Scully. This might explain why I have yet to watch the show.

My only real exposure to the comic scene was later in the day when Katie and I tooled around the expo floor trying to find souvenir gifts. There were a lot of artists who’d staked out individual booths to show their personal work, though I really couldn’t tell if it was published stuff or just stuff they wanted to get published. I didn’t feel much like striking up any conversations, mostly because I was still in shock from having spent $30 for David “Darth Vader’s Body” Prowse’s autograph (more on that in the next chapter).

Comic-content or no, the convention was no Carl’s Jr. In fact, given my initial reaction to the notion of attending a comic book conference, my visit was more like seeing the flat burger on TV then getting the six-inch specimen in real life.

It’s all about symmetricality, you see…

Next chapter: The Autograph Paradox

The Comic-Con Experience, Chapter II: Confronting the Inner-Nerd

Once you pay money to attend a comic book conference, the denial phase of your nerdiness is pretty much over. It cost me $30 to come to grips with my condition.

I have always accepted the fact that I’ve held a long passion for a number of things considered “nerdy”, as evidenced by my choice of Halloween costumes as a child. Even so, I still hesitated to embrace a total nerd identity, partially because I didn’t think it was accurate, mostly because I thought that would officially kill my chances of ever scoring a pretty wife.



My problem with the nerd moniker is that I think it’s too limiting. The image is of a scrawny, google-eyed kid with bad hair and a nasal voice that spends all of his free time buried in calculus books and X-files episodes, feverishly taking notes on continuity errors that he will promptly post to his self-managed web forum. Apparently this guy never exercises, talks to girls, or bathes.

I do all three of those things on a regular basis, so how can I really be a nerd?

The answer is that nerdiness is not a condition as much as it is a series of degrees. The stereotype comes from a full-blown degree reserved only for the chronic nerds, but in reality, everyone that has any semblance of imagination can lay claim to at least a small degree of nerdiness.

I recently had to face the fact that I’ve embraced a slightly higher degree of nerdiness lately, as is evidenced by the clip below:



But Harry Potter fixation aside, I was still hesitant to walk headlong into a convention center full of what I assumed would be a rabid herd of high-degree nerds, dressed to the hilt in super hero costumes and drooling incessantly. It was kind of like the way I felt before starting grad school in USU’s English Department, when I worried that I’d be spending the next two years in classes full of depressed girls who dressed in black and had lots of scars on their wrists.

As my sister and I approached the convention center, we started to take notice of the increasing number of costumed people on the sidewalk. The first one we spotted was dressed as a Stormtrooper from Star Wars, and he proved to be indicative of the general trend of the conference. This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the first film, and I’d say three of four costumed attendees were paying their respect to King George of Lucasland.



The convention seemed to be evenly divided between the two floors of the center, with the autograph booths and group meetings on the second floor and the merchandise expo on the first. There was plenty of action upstairs, but the high-degree nerds seemed to favor the expo primarily. The floor was a chaotic mess of toys, statues, TV monitors and booths, with thousands of people milling between them like red blood cells in a capillary system. The booths themselves were dedicated to specific artists, toy manufacturers, film companies, and general vendors, many of whom were handing out random free gifts and promotional items.



Through this network of walkways strode a number of high-degree nerds, dressed in what must have been painstakingly created costume renditions. I felt conflicted at the sight of them, torn between my culturally engrained “man what a geek” impulse reaction and the sheer admiration of the detail some of these people managed to work into their outfits. Most of these people put the folks at the Harry Potter book release party to shame.



Some of the vendors seemed to be conscious of this uber-nerd atmosphere, and almost seemed to be fighting to make it appear cool in a more traditional sense. At least that’s the impression I got from Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, who signed autographs while several “Spawn Girls” distributed promotional materials dressed in short shorts. Because obviously tanned girls in skimpy outfits flock to comic book enthusiasts.



Sorry, Todd. You’re not kidding anyone. We all know that none of those girls have ever read any of your stuff.

It would be dishonest for me to neglect to mention that I actually saw “Return of the Jedi” 19 times in the summer of 1983 (even if I was six at the time), and I was in line for hours with everyone else to see the prequels. But I shuddered to think of how far beyond my level of interest many of these people had taken their mania, and I wondered if somehow by embracing their nerdiness so fully, perhaps they were being more honest with themselves than I was.

Every once in a while, though, I’d be reminded that I was in the midst of kindred spirits. The best costume of the whole affair went hands-down to the guy that wasn’t satisfied with a mere Stormtrooper costume, and instead integrated his own Elvis Impersonator element to the overall design. If I ever decide to dress up for one of these things, I hope that is the route I take.






The truth of it is that there was a lot of cool stuff to see, from the original Batmobile to the pink R2-D2 (dubbed “R2-KT”) that was designed to promote breast cancer awareness. Hey, nerds get breast cancer, too.

My original feeling was that I was going down to meet one of my all-time favorite novelists, who just happened to be appearing at a comic book convention. But I soon discovered the same thing I found at USU and the Harry Potter party: a few eccentrics, but mostly kindred spirits. Heck, if I’d brought my football with me, I’ll bet I could have got a game going.

Well, maybe not.

Next up in Chapter III: The lack of "comic" at Comic-Con

The Comic-Con Experience, Chapter I: The Road to San Diego

If there’s one part of Americana that is deeply ingrained in me (other than Drive-In double features), it’s the classic all-American road trip. I’ve been a fan of road trips ever since I drove to Island Park with four friends the summer after I graduated from high school. Since then I’ve cruised the Pacific coast highway, driven to Chicago and back, and made numerous swings to Vegas and back.

That’s why the notion of driving to Comic-Con 2007 instead of flying didn’t deter me in the least. Even with gas prices as bad as they have been, a trip to San Diego would cost less than half as much in gas as it would cost to snag two airplane tickets for my sister Katie and I to make our destined pilgrimage to meet Ray Bradbury.

So about 3PM last Thursday afternoon I pulled into the parking lot of Equity Title in Salt Lake and picked up Katie after working a partial shift. The car was all packed and ready to go, and following a quick stop in Alpine to drop off a DVD of my Harry Potter piece to my producer, we hit I-15 and made for the southern horizon.

Our initial plan was to wait until Friday morning and drive all the way to Los Angeles on the first day, where we would stay with my old friend Fabian Jakins in the north LA suburb of Canyon Country. But at the last minute we figured it might be smart to break the jaunt in two and crash in Vegas with my longtime friend Steve and his family.

On the way down, we passed the sights I’d gotten used to seeing on the way through Southern Utah, and looked forward to getting into a state where people know they’re supposed to yield the left-hand lane. Other than a pickup truck packed to the rim with boxes of Hostess desserts (and a driver behind the wheel who honestly looked like he was passed out—at 75mph, no less), nothing too extraordinary crossed our path. It was just good music, good conversation, and open road.

In an effort to get past our usual habit of grumbling about dating and career frustrations, Katie and I tried to stick to more topical conversations. I suggested we come up with our five favorite vocalists, along with an explanation for each.

Here’s my list:

1. Sam Cooke
2. Aretha Franklin
3. Steve Winwood/Ray Charles
4. Simon and Garfunkel
5. Janis Joplin

Finally around 11pm we pulled into North Las Vegas, and found ourselves relaxing on Steve’s leather couch while discussing the virtues of the latest Harry Potter book with his wife Sarah. Steve is one of my oldest friends. My earliest memory of him is the two of us watching “Gilligan’s Island” with another neighborhood kid—JC Lee—while sitting on a red shag carpet in my parent’s basement shortly after making the move from Centerville to Bountiful when I was four years old.

We spent much of the next several years playing Star Wars, GI Joe, and Transformers, as our interests gradually evolved from outer space to basketball to girls. We even got our Eagle Scouts together:



After graduating from Southern Utah University, Steve moved down to Las Vegas with his new wife Sarah and started having energetic kids. These days they’ve got three of them, and the last two times I’ve been down to see them, watching the kids has been as entertaining as anything else I did on the trip.





Instead of doing anything inherently “Vegas”, Katie and I had lunch at a local Mexican restaurant named “Viva Zapatas” the next day before hitting the road again. Zapatas was a good spot, partially for their good salsa, partially for the restaurant décor, which consisted mainly of guns hung on the wall.

We’d already endured a lot of hot weather on the way down, but as we drove south out of Nevada, things went from bad to worse. In the Death Valley area, Sunny California boasts a landscape that is far from anything the Mamas and the Papas would ever be dreamin’ about. Long stretches of desolate rolling terrain, peppered with sage brush and the odd Joshua Tree, eventually rises into mounds of dirt and rock that I suppose would be considered mountains. The God-forsaken environment looked a lot more like a desert than the place I grew up at, in spite of what people told me.



After a quick rest stop, things just got weirder. Eventually we started to pick up elevation, and I figured that soon we would cross over into the beautiful paradise so many native Californians are always bragging about. But MapQuest had other ideas.

Once we reached Victorville, our directions took us off of I-15 and onto a rural highway headed due West. Palmdale Road eventually turned into Peachtree Drive, but the scenery remained the same: a long two-lane highway with almost nothing but dirt roads peeling off of it. Hand painted address signs tacked up next to the entrances to obscure trailer parks and ramshackle houses, and everywhere sagebrush, dirt, and dust. For a long time we questioned whether we were going in the right direction, but eventually we met up with the southbound Highway 14, and found ourselves on a much busier highway heading south towards Los Angeles.

Around 6pm we hit Canyon Country, and after unloading our bags at my friend Fabian’s place, we found ourselves in an In-and-Out Burger Drive-thru getting burgers and fresh fries. Fabian and I got to be friends while attending the 32nd Ward together two years ago. We both have an interest in film, so we spent the evening watching each other’s recent short film projects before Katie and I decided to crash on his couches around 11:30.

Following a borderline-miraculous rise from bed at 4:30am, Katie and I got our stuff together and got onto I-5 for the last leg of our drive to the conference. People drive very fast on southern California freeways, but at least there weren’t many of them out that early on a Saturday morning, and by 8am, we arrived safely at Qualcomm Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers and the Green Line stop of the San Diego Trolley System.

Qualcomm Stadium was serving a double purpose that day: hub for Comic-Con folks, and headquarters of American Idol auditions. As we stood on the dock waiting for the train, Katie and I looked out at the crowds in line to get ripped by Simon, and wondered what our lives would have been had we been steered onto that path rather than the one we were on.

Maybe they really aren’t all that different.

Candy Resurrection

Sometimes it's the little triumphs that see you through the dark times...

Last weekend I picked up some snacks/munchies/garbage/junk food to take on the road down to California, not realizing that anything chocolate left in my car longer than 13.5 seconds would soon be relegated to a misshapen mess. Over the course of the first leg of the journey, between Bountiful and Las Vegas, a bag of Deluxe Grahams, a Twix bar and a Three Musketeers bar fell victim to a solar transfiguration experiement.

Convinced that the candy bars were a loss, my sister suggested we cut our losses and chuck the unsightly candy bars. The outer wrappers had been twisted and mangled by the ebb and flow of the melted chocolate inside, resulting in a pair of choco-treats that looked like they may have been cooked up by the inbred family on the old "Home" episode of "X-Files". Even Mulder and Scully wouldn't touch them.

But I would. Rather than give up, I stood firm to my well-ingrained cheapness and demanded that they be spared a trash receptacle grave. I put them back in the food bag and waited until the end of our trip, when I promptly stuck them in my freezer, hoping that the extreme cold would generate the necessary separation of chocolate and outer wrapper. After leaving them overnight, I set them on the counter to return them to room temperature.

Today, while preparing my fifth taco meal in 14 days, I curiously withdrew the Three Musketeers bar and peeled open the wrapper, hoping a generous layer of chocolate would not come stuck to it. Suddenly I found myself holding one of the ugliest candy bars ever known to modern man. But in spite of its ugliness, it was whole.

Triumph.

B All Over sketches now on YouTube!

OK, I finally broke down and got a YouTube account. I'm gradually uploading all my sketches onto my account. Here are the first four:

English Re-Education 930:



Potter Syndrome:



The Merriweather Stone Pilot:



The second Merriweather Stone episode:

The Comic-Con Experience

In other news, last night I just got back from my road trip to San Diego, where I attended Comic-Con 2007. Yes, in eight days time I managed to hang out at a Harry Potter release party, wait in line for an hour at WalMart to buy the seventh book, and drive to California to attend a comic book convention. There's really no way to deny the nerd thing anymore.

At any rate, too much happened at Comic-Con to sum up in one column, so I think I'm going to have to do it in chapters. That way I can focus in on specific aspects of the conference, like the geek aspect, the autograph aspect, and the "pilgrimage to see Ray Bradbury" aspect. Of course, since I already still need to write columns on the Jackson Rodeo, Country Music, and the 2007 Days of '47 Parade, you can expect the Comic-Con pieces to be finished by sometime next year.

Probably while I'm attending Comic-Con 2008.

My only excuse is that it's been hard to write for the blog (an unpaid job) while working on pieces for KJZZ (wait, that's an unpaid job, too). Maybe I'll try to buffer the void by posting YouTube links!

OK, this is a special one...on the way to the convention, I stayed with my old friend and collaborator Fabian Jakins in Canyon Country, California (north LA suburb). He showed me this link to a short piece he did with his friend Stacy. Enjoy.

AMBER ALERT...DOH!

As I announced previously, my Harry Potter segment aired on Saturday's "final" episode of "B All Over". The original thirteen-episode run is now complete, and in the next week or two we'll find out if I've still got a comedy sketch job. Unfortunately, halfway through my piece, an Amber Alert flashed over the top of the screen and effectively muted the rest of the segment, so anyone who did watch only got half the "story".

Kind of puts me in an awkward position...I'm annoyed that my segment got geeked up, but I can't really complain about an Amber Alert, even if half the announcement was constructed of incoherent electronic beeps, static, and buffer junk. My solution, then, is to once again post a link to my own Web site, Planet Venison, where all my segments (B All Over or otherwise) are posted. They're all located in the pulldown menu at the bottom of the page, or you can just click the direct link here.

Shameless Family Plug

Time to welcome my sister to the Blogosphere!

Katie has finally hopped online as a blogger, penning a site called "The Bird Refuge". It's named after her favorite spot for photography/meditation up in Farmington, though from what I've seen so far, her commentary won't be limited to nature.

Here's a shot I took last time I swung out to the refuge...



Go check it out!

Harry Potter Sketch to Air Saturday

This Saturday night "B All Over" will be completing its initial 13-episode run at 10pm on KJZZ. The future of the show is still quite clouded, so this may be the last opportunity for me to get one of my sketches on the air for a while.

This week's contribution is called "Potter Syndrome", and auto-biographical examination of how one can dive headlong into Harry Potter Mania without even meaning to. I put it together using footage shot on my own, as well as with material gathered at last weekend's book release party at the Salt Lake City Library. I got some valuable help from family and friends, as has usually been the case. As is also usually the case, there are compressed Quicktime versions of my sketches available at Planet Venison.

Here are a couple of photos from late Friday/early Saturday, after returning from my 1am visit to WalMart to go buy book 7.





Tune in (or TiVo, I'm headed to SoCal to see Ray Bradbury) this Saturday at 10!

English Re-Education Sketch

Here again, in case you missed it (or didn't know about it), is the link to my most recent spot on "B All Over".

English Re-Education 930

Merriweather Stone Episodes 1 & 2 Available Online

Just finished compressing the original, uncut versions of the Merriweather Stone episodes for online posting. As you may recall, KJZZ had to combine and cut the broadcast of these two episodes for time reasons, but here are the original separate episodes in their entirety. (I've just posted links to them since I haven't figured out how to stop them from automatically playing yet.)

Episode One: The Interview

Episode Two: The Bear Trap

"Accent" Piece to air this Saturday

Still struggling to get a lot of writing done with this dumb splint on my finger, but I can still manage to make a couple of token announcements...

This Saturday at 10pm on KJZZ I've got another short film appearing on "B All Over". This one is a parody news piece about an adult education class that tries to help Utahn's speak without accents. It turned out really well, so enjoy. As usual, I'll probably post a smaller version of it on here once it airs.

Posts on the Jackson Rodeo and Country Music are still forthcoming, as soon as I can start typing with more than six fingers. Until then, I will leave you with a killer YouTube find. My friend Abby turned me on to these guys, and this is my favorite video so far:

!!!STITCHES!!!

JUST SO YOU KNOW...THIS POST IS A TAD MORE GRAPHIC THAN USUAL...IF YOU CAN'T TAKE THE SIGHT OF STITCHES, DON'T CLICK ON THE LINK AT THE END.

Looks like I've got a built-in excuse to slack off on writing for the next couple of weeks...I've got a big splint on my right index finger to go along with nine stitches. Last Tuesday at the Stake Sports Night activity I went up to block a Volleyball spike in a typical effort to be a sports hero. I met the ball at the same time as my opponent and caught the ball at a bad angle, hitting it with my fingers instead of my palm, spraining my right middle finger and dislocating and lacerating my index.

When I came down, I could feel that my fingers weren't lining up the way they normally did, and I could tell it was more than a sprain. Plus sprains don't usually bleed all over the place. Looking down at my right hand, I saw my index finger bent upwards after the first knuckle, the rest of it crooked into a little hook.

Instinctively--or maybe just channeling Jim McMahon--I grabbed my index finger and immediately popped it back into place as more blood squirted out. I was relieved that my finger was now able to move and flex normally, but I knew I was still in trouble from the flash of white I saw during the process.

A friend from the ward swung me up to University Hospital, and four hours and several nurse cringes later I had my nine stitches and a splint. The laceration wound 180 degrees around my finger, though it didn't go deep enough to cut any arteries or anything. Plus I managed to avoid an open fracture; turns out it was just one whale of a dislocation. From the right angle, it looks like the whole thing was lopped off and sewn back on.

In fact, if you can stomach it, click HERE. It's really not a very graphic photo, but I figured it would be wiser to link to it rather than give any casual surfers a nasty surprise.

Enjoy!

A Pair of Independent Memories...

Whenever the Fourth of July rolls around and firework shacks start popping up in parking lots all over town, I fondly remember a pair of childhood memories from growing up in Davis County.

The first of these gems took place somewhere in my mid-teens, while still attending church with my family at the Bountiful 19th Ward. On the Sunday nearest the 4th, sacrament meeting would always feature one or two patriotic hymns like “America the Beautiful” or “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

One year Bishop Bob Carling got up halfway through the meeting and announced that he’d arranged for a special musical number for our holiday service. Seems a few weeks earlier he’d come across a little-known patriotic ditty called “The Liberty Bell March” by John Phillip Souza, and had been so inspired he’d persuaded our organist to learn it for the day’s meeting.

Our organist was Rob Nish, a kid my age who’d morphed from a head-to-toe Utah Jazz superfan into a sophisticated organ-playing classical music guru in six months time. When Rob sat down at the organ to start pumping out the march, my family thought little of the situation. Rob’s Sunday recitals had become fairly commonplace even by that time. But when he started playing, my family’s ears perked up quickly.

Something sounded familiar.

Mom, Dad, Katie and I looked back and forth at each other wide-eyed as grins gradually spread across our lucid faces. Rob was playing the Monty Python theme in sacrament meeting.

When it comes to Python, most of the general population has only seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. But before the grail, there was “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, a half-hour TV sketch show that started them down the road to infamy. Apparently the Python boys had used the “Liberty Bell March” as their theme song.

I sat back on my bench and beamed as Rob continued to toot and wail his way through the song, which to everyone else in the chapel just sounded like any another patriotic tune. But to four grinning Mormons on the left flank of the pulpit, visions of waving banners and patriotic powdered wigs were replaced with dead parrots, effeminate lumberjacks and giant cartoon feet. The performance was a watershed moment in my religious upbringing, a dramatic crossing of the streams reminding me that God most certainly had a sense of humor.



My second fond memory took place a few years later, the summer after I’d returned from my mission to Chicago. After spending the previous two summers pounding the pavement in Illinois, I was anxious to return to our family’s traditional Island Park retreat near Yellowstone National Park. My loyal cohort Mike and I had just finished my triumphant return trip and were making our way south through Jackson Hole, Wyoming when inspiration struck.

Back before Mike joined the ranks of the married and domesticated, he was a semi-mischievous fellow who was always up for some offbeat fun. He was also the kind of guy that liked blowing things up, so as we got ready to leave Wyoming, he suggested that we pick up some fireworks while they were still legal. Our last option before crossing into Idaho was a lonely bar off the side of Highway 89 about a quarter mile shy of the border. Unlike the Evanston superstores and lavishly-colored parking lot shacks dedicated to pyrotechnics, this sullen bar just had a small hand-painted sign reading “fireworks” in the window. But we were still in Wyoming, which meant the place was good enough for Mike.

Even though we were both legal at the time, Mike and I felt a bit odd walking into this remote bar at 2PM in the afternoon. As our eyes adjusted to the dim light, we saw that the only person inside was a squat bald bartender in his 50’s who stared at us curiously while polishing a glass.

“Can I help you boys?” he asked us in a gruff, unwelcoming voice.

“Uh, yeah”, started Mike. “We saw a sign that said you had fireworks.”

The bartender raised his hand and pointed a thick index finger over our shoulders.

“Behind you,” he rasped.

We turned and saw a vast glass case that stretched from floor to ceiling, filled with a who’s who of fireworks. Mike moved in for a closer look, peering with the purposeful inspection of a seasoned veteran.

“You looking for anything in particular?” came the voice again.

“You got any M-80’s?” asked Mike.

The bartender smirked. “Come here,” he said. “I’ve got something better.”

As we crossed the room, the barkeep secretively reached down under the bar. In the movies, such a motion usually triggered a shotgun shootout. But instead of a sawed-off shotgun, this bartender pulled up a handful of small cylinders, each the size of a roll of quarters. Far from gaudy, each cylinder was wrapped in what looked like cheap 1950’s wrapping paper, with an inch-long fuse sticking out of one end.

“$1.25 each, or four for five dollars,” the bartender said.

Mike beamed at the insider product while I tried to decide whether the bartender realized that four for five dollars wasn’t a better deal than $1.25 a piece. But five dollars later, we walked out of the bar with four quarter-sticks of dynamite, quickly forgetting any questions of economics.

Mike wound up taking three of the cylinders, leaving me one triumphant artifact of the black market explosives underground. He took his contraband up to some family property in Morgan, where he managed to blow some 12-inch holes in the ground once he’d figured out a way to safely extend the fuses. Mine rested safely in an old Los Angeles Raiders coffee mug waiting for the proper time to do its thing. It rested there partially because I thought it was more valuable as a reminder of the story itself, but mostly it rested there because I suspected that if I ever actually lit it I would be swamped by a team of undercover ATF agents and thrown in the slammer to do hard time.

It was a typically paranoid fear, augmented by memories of prison scenes in movies like “Cool Hand Luke” and “Shawshank Redemption”. For better or worse, fear is an effective motivator, and eventually my mother convinced me to chuck the thing, probably because her paranoid fear had the firecracker mysteriously self-lighting in the middle of the night and blowing her only son to unfulfilled smithereens.

Nine years later, the regular firework displays are still pretty fun, as long as there are some cute girls watching with me, but I still wonder if I should hop in the car and cruise north to see if that old bartender is still around to cut me a deal on the kind of merchandise even Wyoming dealers keep out of plain sight. I’d probably bring along a fair assortment of Simon and Garfunkel for that killer drive up Logan Canyon, but at least once, I’d have to pop in a little John Phillip Souza for good measure.

Bishop Carling would be proud.

Rocky Anderson Follow-Up

Once again, for all those that either don't get KJZZ or actually had social engagements last Saturday, here's my follow-up piece to the Rocky Anderson interview:




Click to view!

WARNING! Until I start loading these on YouTube, they will automatically start downloading whether or not you hit "play". For that reason, you may want to scroll down the page and pause the original Rocky Interview post, which is no doubt streaming at the same time this new one is.