Okay, this was pretty good.  Not a whole lot of interest to write about for the last day of the con, which isn’t to say that it wasn’t a day filled with action, adventure, and incredibly bad, hastily whipped up renditions of Heath Ledger as the Joker, but only one thing truly stood out enough to convey without having to mask it in layers of fabrication.

Middle of the con-day, I’m taking a break, and furious over someone having stolen my chair in the tiny enclosure where tiny breaks are taken.  Joe, and Bryon, two of SLG’s most terrible creatures working the booth, J.R. Goldberg and myself are all eating our respective lunches in this small room, surrounded by boxes and curtains, so we’re pretty much sequestered away from anyone on the outside.  We’re chewing and talking in that way that we do, and I start catching little snippets of very impassioned conversation from outside, near one of the booth’s sales tables.  I look through a small slit in the curtain and see Matt, another of the highly trained, deadly booth workers sitting, looking at someone that is mostly obscured by the curtain.  This guy Matt’s listening to is going on about some awful encounter he had with what sounds like a grade-A douchebag.  To the guy’s right, Dan, another booth guy, is also looking on and taking in this guy’s tale of woe, which I soon realize is about yours truly – HORRIBLE LITTLE ME.  

I get the lunchees’ attention and tell them that I am actually witnessing the birth of one of those rumors that ends up staining the internet, a thing I have seen the final results of, but never before spotted to freshly in the wild.  It is a fascinating and scary thing, hilarious and sad all at the same time.

Later on, Matt and Dan tell me that the guy had walked up asking if Roman Dirge was around.  Having told the guy no, they then told him that I was currently signing, to which the guy curled up his face and said no thanks, leading into his tale of terror.

Here is that guy’s tale:

This wounded ass was walking through the crowded hall and spotted me heading in the opposite direction, actually bumping into my shoulder, thanks, no doubt, to how absolutely packed the place gets.  I then turned around to say “Watch where you’re fucking going, asshole!”, flipping him off in the process.  Lots of indignant remarks followed the telling of this encounter, and a lot of postulating on what could make a guy like me act in such a way.

Thing is, none of this ever happened.  Peeking out from the curtain, I had never seen the guy before in my life, and though bumps and shoves do happen in such an enclosed space, nobody every knocked me around that much, and I sure as hell never said anything but excuse me when it happened.

But to this guy, it either really happened, or this was some way of leaving a mark by trying to tell stories about someone he’s never met.

From day one of doing comics or animation, you wonder what it is in people that makes them speak about people they just don’t at all know in a way that makes it sound like they had some connection, even in a negative way, with that person, and I wonder how many other people this guy told the story to.

It doesn’t beat the story about the time I was kicked out of a nighclub for doing coke in the bathroom, because I’m such a fuckin’ hackneyed rockstar, but this time I actually got to marvel at it in action.

It was like turning your head at just the right time to catch a glimpse of that shooting star, only it’s clutching a giant sack of shwag and hoping you remember it.

My first day of signing isn’t until Friday, so I had the entire day free to my amazing self, and since I’m such a crazy fuckin’ party monster, I spent most of it hiding from the phantasmagoria that is the surging mob of humanity here, curled up in my hotel room, sobbing gently in that way that I do.

Not a whole lot to report, con-wise, but here goes. Thought I’d visit J.R. Goldberg who was signing alone today, so Clarence Wong and I went in to pick up our badges and head in. If that name’s familiar to some of you it’s because I used Clarence’s name for an episode of ZIM, in which that drugged out game store clerk says that the last Gameslave 2 was reserved for “Clarence Wong” prompting Iggins to play impostor in light of the real Clarence’s absence. A bit of trivia: Though not specifically stated in the show, but not so subtly implied, the reason Clarence Wong in the episode doesn’t show up isn’t because he has no interest in collecting the much cherished Gameslave 2 like all the other sane kids in the world, but because just mere miles from the mall the car he was riding in with his mother was broadsided by a semi transporting petroleum. The crash didn’t kill the two, and even the terrible fiery explosion that ensued only disfigured them beyond recognition but didn’t extinguish their lives. Their bodies were found several miles from the scene, as they apparently dragged their charred, peeling bodies screaming and wailing from the wreckage in the direction of the mall. Tell a friend, kids.

Anyhow, we found J.R signing there, with a little pink haired thing sitting on the floor in front of the table, staring at her the whole time. When we returned to her a bit later, the girl was still there, still staring. Looking into Jenny’s face for any sign of needing rescue, we found none, so we left her to satisfy Clarence’s need for something called “King Grayskull”, apparently the predecessor to He-Man’s reign of oiled up manliness. It’s possible J.R was fine and enjoying the company of a fan, or simply hasn’t developed the skills to covertly signal to friends “Oh please god guys, help me . This person is scaring the bloody shit out of me and I’m sorry for every bad thing I might ever have done.”

When we finally met up with J.R later, she couldn’t stop crying, constantly rubbing at the bruises on her face and arms, and refused to discuss King Grayskull, constantly interrupting with various pleadings for us to understand some horrible thing she had been through, but it wasn’t funny at all, and it confused me that she would even mention it. Ah, well.

Stay tuned, ya know?

Until the future…