I told him we were ComicBase, not Comic Con, but he explained to me their site had gone down, and he was wondering if we, as regular exhibitors, had any kind of in with the organization to help him buy a badge.Certainly, I thought to myself, it shouldn’t be that hard to get a badge 8 months in advance. While I was on the phone with him, I checked out the Comic Con site myself and was thoroughly surprised to see the 4-day badges had sold out in July at the 2010 Con. And due to massive demand for the remaining badges (which might only give access for a day or two), Comic Con had had to shut down its purchasing site until further notice. It was a revelation to me, and unfortunately, all I’d be able to do is get him in touch with exhibitor services–who’d just put him on a long wait list for a booth he didn’t need. Since some badges are still available, I assume he eventually got in, but I can’t help but wish he and those like him had had a shot at the 4-day passes, without the worry about whether he’d be able to see the show at all. I remember watching agog last year as the badges sold out 5 months in advance of the show.

We had our own moment of panic last night. Getting a hotel room within San Diego during Comic Con has become increasingly difficult, and I still wax nostalgic about the far gone years, when one could get a hotel room within a mile of the convention center without having to join in a frenzied panic on the day reservations open. The Con has made it somewhat easier for exhibitors (who need to be at the booth before the show opens and remain there until after the close) by letting them list their top ten choices in a lottery in advance. This year, the lottery was supposed to open on December 7, but just as it was about to, Peter received a note letting him know the system was still down, and to hold tight until he received further notice.

Further notice never really came, unless you count the email Peter received late last night that the lottery was closing that very night, and Comic Con couldn’t help but notice we’d yet to put down any choices. If we didn’t have them in my midnight, we’d have no other chances to book a room until March. It put the adrenaline into what had been an otherwise rather calm day. I rushed to put in our top ten choices, but accidentally put down one less room than we needed. As it was, we had no confirmation and no way to go back and correct it, so I had to go back in and enter another request, which means we’ll get no rooms, not enough rooms, or too many rooms. We won’t know until February, when we may or may not be able to fix it. And even that doesn’t guarantee you the number of beds you need. Last year, Joe and Carl called me upon arrival telling me that the twin (2-bed, 2-people) room we’d book the November before, had only one bed in it. Despite our reservation request, the hotel had only received a Priceline-type reservation calling for a room, number of beds not specified, and booked our guys into a single room instead. Peter sweet-talked the hotel manager into switching our staff to a 2-bed room, but I’m sure we weren’t the only people encountering that surprise.

But given that enthusiastic fans can’t even get a 4-day pass, I’m up and awake at 5 am, with the horrible fear that we may only get our number 10 choice–a hotel six miles away in Hotel Circle, or worse yet, no hotel at all, due to every room we wanted being booked out before the travel agent even looks at our requests. I’m not even going to Comic Con—I checked out on it at my last con in 2008, when I had the most minimal of responsibilities, and only went into the convention hall for a few hours at the beginning or end of the show. And Peter and Neil are, if anything, more enthusiastic and jazzed about Comic Con. Despite its nuisances, it is also a pop culture phenomenon, with massive multi-media theme-park-like ever-changing promotions for upcoming movies like a Harold & Kumar pavilion, a Tron experience, and Thor himself. It’s filled with celebrities, and passionate fans cleverly dressed up as their favorite characters. And there’s always a new surprise, like last years David Hasselhoff bus coming down the street, led by Knight Riders and flanked by beer maids and Baywatch-type beach babes. Peter (as well as Neil) would think nothing about getting up at 5 am to battle gnarly traffic for an hour and a half to get to the convention hall in time to chat with others like him until 8 pm, spend 2 or 3 hours hunting down an available meal within the throng of other out-of-towners, and crash at midnight or 1 am, to get up the next day and do it all over again for 5 straight days. But it’s not worth it for me,and just the thought of it makes me hope he–and the rest of the staff– do get a hotel within walking distance so that those who do need to collapse in a pool of exhaustion may do so easily. I guess we’ll know where we’re at (and where we’re not) 2 months from now….

For instance, this convention proves that no matter how fanatic you are, there’s always someone more fanatic than you. Last year, I was boggled that fans were lining up at 4 am for the Heroes panel at 10 am that day. I suspect this year, predawn lineups are standard; and now those fans have been shown up. This year, pop culture groupies started a line for the Twillight panel, not scheduled until 1:45 p.m. on Thursday, on Tuesday night, choosing to camp out for two nights for a studio presentation in order to guarantee they’d have a seat. On a related note, comics news blogger Heidi Macdonald reported more hotel rooms than usual opened up in July, as some attendees gave up their reservations. Hey, what do you need a hotel room for when you’re going to be camping out every night in order to get into the panels you want to see?

The con has become so big it’s now a vortex that sucks in people you’d never expect would even know about it, and then becomes a trap hard to get out of and into. A dancer I knew vaguely in college wondered if she was the only person in L.A. not going to the con. (Yes, Leigh, only you and essential emergency workers are left.) Soon Nevadans and Oregonians will be wondering whither their towns are emptying in late July. Despite my best intentions, I almost got sucked in myself, due to a booth emergency. Since Peter was out with flu, he couldn’t oversee the packing of the van, and a crucial component of our booth stayed home. I packed it up, packed my bags, and told my client I wouldn’t be available on Thursday, so please, please move any conference calls to early Friday morning when I could take them from a hotel room. Meanwhile, Peter tried to save me by rigging up a substitute at a friend’s house in suburban San Diego. And then, while trying to get back to the convention center just as Preview Night was beginning, he was stuck in near-immobile traffic for 2 hours. However, eventually (it seems), the fix worked (knock on wood), so I’m still home, today.

I don’t know if I’m yet safe from the Con. But there’s certainly a competitive fanaticism in play already. I wouldn’t be surprised if within a few years, people start lining up for panels within minutes of the Comic-Con announcing their times and places–weeks in advance. When the end of the line reaches the bottom of San Jose, I’ll tell you I told you it’d come to this.

Right before our second (or third?) appearance at Comic-Con, Peter’s car got some front-end damage that made it undrivable, so we managed to stuff all the contents for our booth into my sub-compact 1990 Toyota Tercel. It was a tight fit, and we did have to tie down the trunk over the booth panels, which hung out of the back all the way from Sunnyvale to San Diego, and back again. Then, during set up, one of the computers fell down onto the concrete floor and stopped working, so we scrambled to find a Macintosh repair shop in San Diego. We found one, which diagnosed the problem as just a loose cable, and moments before the show began, we were ready to go.

Years later, I was driving with Loretta and my then-two-year-old son up Grapevine (the mountains on the northern edge of the Los Angeles basin) when the thermostat on my car gave out and the engine started to overheat. Loretta, who then had more experience with P.O.S. cars than I did, knew what to do. We turned the heater on to pull heat off the engine, and pulled off the road to let the car cool down (which by the time we reached Orange County took an hour) when the hot engine light went on anyway. We were in Los Angeles rush hour traffic in 80 degree summer heat in a black car with the heater on full blast. But we finally did make it to San Diego, where an auto mechanic replaced my themostat. My car was still a P.O.S. without air conditioning though, so on the way back Loretta taught me to put a car into lower gear when the gear it’s in can’t make it up a hill, and sprayed all of us with a water bottle to help with the heat.

After that, there was the year Peter and I had to fix our new light panels, which arrived at our house smashed to pieces in transit. We found a welder to create new cases, and a plastics manufacturer to quickly produce more stressable plexiglass panels instead of fragile plastic. The expensive custom-made cases they original panels had come in were worthless, since we couldn’t fit them into our vehicle. When he arrived in San Diego, Peter struggled to haul the panels in to the show floor, and one of the facings gave loose and mightily cut his fingers. Later, a doctor friend of his asked why he hadn’t gone to the emergency room to get such a horrible cut stitched; but Peter just didn’t have the time.

This year, like many other years, Peter was sure he’d have everything done early, so he could actually relax before diving into the outrageous extravaganza that is Comic-Con. Then I came down with a quickly-manifesting, especially vindictive stomach flu on Friday. It passed to Kelly on Saturday. It slew Peter on Sunday. And today, Neil, who we thought might have escaped the family fate by having been at Boy Scout camp and becoming almost compulsive about washing his hands, got wiped. Peter and Kelly have massive constitutions, so as soon as they’re finished being down, they’re right back up again. Neil and I have the constitutions of soap opera heroes, which means we linger on the verge of being admitted to the I.C.U. and recover gradually, bit by little bit. So I think Peter will once again miraculously pull through. And Neil, who like the other attendees who still brave that prodigious show, would be despondent if he had to miss it. So I suspect he’ll be there, albeit travelling in a fragile state.

Somehow we manage to pull it through every year. But really, I wish, just for once, that we didn’t have the perpetual last-minute drama before we had to be on.

I reiterated my love of capitalism when Shiaw-Ling called me that night. We shorted our staff for the San Diego Comic-Con, so she and Loretta are off duty, though I was happy to pass the room reservation and badges on. Shiaw-Ling and Loretta are a little flummoxed at going to the Con without having to do booth duty, but I reminded Shiaw-Ling this is one of the privileges and benefits of capitalism. You pay for it, you can do whatever you want. If Shiaw-Ling wants to be with the crazy fanatics spending all day in a panel room just to see that guy from that show, that’s her privilege. No longer will she have to suffer an angry booth Nazi calling her and texting her about her booth duty, ever. She’s working hard for someone else now, and Comic-Con is her vacation.

Capitalism is a massive step up from socialism and communism, and I say that having experienced all systems. In communism, anyone smart spends all their time trying to establish a circle of power and influence while simultaneously trying to avoid getting the attention of anyone in another circle of power and influence, lest they get you thrown into a gulag. This also means there are no consumer goods of any value to be had, because everyone who wants power and influence grabs everything there is, in order to build power and influence by being the person who distributes any goods of any value.

Socialism is a little bit more controlled, but just as pernicious. The only job worth having is a government job where you can simultaneously not work and complain all the time about how hard you have to work. Everyone else who’s smart lives on welfare. Those who can gather enough funds (welfare or otherwise) for a visit to a capitalist country have to make sure to self-righteously note the capitalists’ country supposed lack of social services as they carry home an extra suitcase filled with clothes and DVDs which cost 30% less than they would have at home.

But when I hung up on Shiaw-Ling, I realized how much of a hypocrite I was praising capitalism. Because frankly, I consume tax-paid services more shamelessly than a recent immigrant to western Europe. My children and I go to the library (and all and any story times) multiple times a week, and I can’t even tell you how many books Kelly has currently checked out. 40? 50? I don’t know, but it didn’t cost me anything up front! As homeschoolers, we’re also using city parks en masse three and f0ur times a week.

County-wise, I had no objection to using the taxpayer-founded county health services, and state-wise, I’m at our state parks (especially the beaches) multiple times a year. The Santa Clara County Office of Education has been fabulous in loaning me preschool educational tools and letting me review textbooks, and if Kelly actually gets in to the charter or magnet schools I signed her up for, the state will be paying our way in yet another way. I dare say I even love (much to Peter’s amusement) public transportation and PBS.

In fact, my most recent use of taxpayer-provided services was a special library storytime funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It was actually very good: about 16 children received a classroom-like lesson on the new food pyramid, complete with interactive learning including games, crafts, and quizzing, with five librarians on hand as teacher proxies.

Kelly immediately found a new BFF, Pearl, for which her mother was grateful, because Pearl is as shy as Kelly is outgoing and friendly. However, while we capitalists were distracted, the mommies  who’d immigrated from communist countries grabbed multiple copies of the nice hardback book-and-CD sets meant as giveaways and left with their children before anyone noticed, leaving us capitalists surprised when we looked up and saw all the books had disappeared. The storytime had been deliberately set up to be by reservation only, because there were a limited number of books, and they were to be given out as one per family. But if you’ve been brought up commie, you grab whatever you can when you can, no matter where you’re at. I’m a capitalist: I can buy the book back from eBay (or if I feel like going commie, suck up to the more-on-the-ball commies). After all, I didn’t really want a book: I just wanted another social occasion to please Kelly. But it was a reminder than no system is fair: there’s just different rules to each.

Of course, being an American capitalist, despite my free health care for children and free books, I’ll whine about the taxes I have to pay for the services I’m consuming. But if I had to choose between going my own way and not paying taxes; or getting all the wonderful services I’m taking advantage of and having to pay taxes as they are or at an increased rate, I’ll still opt for the former, because, as someone willing and able to work, I think it’s more fair than any alternative.

One thing I eventually came to dread, so much that I’m prone to waking up from anxiety nightmares about it is the day hotel registration opens up for hotel room space in San Diego during the convention. It used to be mildly stressful when we had a preference for a hotel that was within walking distance and only $89 a night, and to get it, you had to be sure to call within the first hour of availability. But one year we made our reservations months later and ended up a mile away; and another year, there was a snafu, so we made new reservations at a slightly more expensive hotel further away, and it ended up being just fine too.

But around the time San Diego built a sports stadium next to the convention center, things devolved into complete insanity. For the past few years, just getting a hotel room at all has been a miracle, which might only be achieved by repeatedly speed dialing and refreshing web pages. My nadir was the year our staff ended up in Mission Valley (5 miles away from the convention) which required renting a mini-van for transportation and rousing the entire staff at 6:30 am to get into the van for a day of work that typically didn’t end until 9 or 10 pm. Peter and Neil (and their ilk) can sustain up to 48 hours of pure energy from simply having been in the presence of some crusty old comic book writer and that guy from Heroes. If they had to get up at 5 am or 4 am to do the show until 1 or 2 or 3 am, they would cheerfully do so (and judging from the ever-earlier opening times to ever-burgeoning crowds, this may yet become the case.)

I, on the other hand, am a mere mortal. After that year, I organized a calling ring in which the entire staff pounded the system trying to get the rooms we needed, and Loretta became a hero by getting us in a room on the bus line. Unfortunately, if there had been the slightest mistake in booking, we wouldn’t have been able to get a hotel room anywhere within San Diego, because within an hour the entire city was booked out. By this time, the booking process had been dubbed “Hoteloween” by blogger Heidi Macdonald, and it was marked by triage and moaning by all those who had tried and failed to book any room, even at $400 a night.

And so we get to this year. I was more on-edge than ever, but I did get rooms for our staff, thanks to the fact that exhibitors can book slightly earlier. I still have one detail to work out, but I suspect it’ll be ok (knock on wood). Everyone we know managed to get a room: more than one had hedged their bets by using multiple ins. In all cases, though not all methods worked, all ended up with the hotel of their choice, which is an unprecedented outcome, at least within the last few years.

So maybe our friends were extraordinarily lucky (or especially deft at the speed dial) but perhaps the con isn’t as completely recession-contrary as I’d thought. That said, it’s still a fact that the San Diego Comic-Con is sold out of their 4-day passes and every inch of exhibitor space–a full five months before it begins.

This last week has been one of great anxiety.

Charybdis and Scylla was in session for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Inaugural Day (a new holiday for San Jose Unified, at least this year.) It left me feeling weirdly out of touch with the hordes of people weeping with joy and dancing in the streets as our new president took office.

My client had me return some hardware I was using for my writing gig, and I have yet to get a replacement. I tell myself to just be patient, but I have a collapsing economy around me, and it just makes me nervous.

I put Kelly on the list for a charter school in another district. They were very nice, and best of all, it has parents sign an agreement, i.e. if your child can’t show up for class on time, or is disruptive, he’s out. Unfortunately, her odds of getting in are long, because (reasonably enough) the school gives priority to families within the district. But once again, I was reminded that in our local district’s magnet school, Kelly is unwanted.

A few days later, Kelly told me she got time out in her dance class because she tired of dancing and watched the other students in the mirror instead. I despaired as to whether I’ve ruined her for elementary schools already.

On Friday, I tried to book rooms for the San Diego Comic-Con, a process which has freaked me out for years. I think it’ll turn out ok, but once again, the hotel rooms have nearly doubled their room rates again since just a few years before. I can’t argue with the rules of extreme demand and limited supply, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.

So now I’m back to work. Hopefully my gig will continue well.

In March, we drove to LA in my new car to a really awful comic book convention. But the children got to see LA and I got one of my favorite new shirts there.

Then Peter went to Germany, to a comic book convention, just as gas prices climbed to an outrageous level that put me on a driving strike.

Human Computing moved into new offices downtown, which are ever so much nicer, and better located, than where he used to be, in the office building purchased by, er, Ray. I’m sure I mentioned the new offices are across from the basilica, and I didn’t get around to mentioning that the new office building management put up spectacular Christmas decorations, on a level to match those at Christmas in the Park.

Neil found a boy scout troop to join, and I officially became a homeschool teacher. At the beginning of the summer, Neil found some neighborhood friends, which lightened my concerns about his social life. Little did I know that by the end of the year, I’d be homeschooling my daughter, too.

I also saw the San Diego Comic-Con again for the first time in several years, took full geeky pleasure in seeing Jim Butcher and Steve Coogan, and managed to keep myself sane by taking it in in only small portions.

We took an epic cross-country journey which let us see friends and family, as well as see and understand our fellow countrymen, plus get to know some of our most important national monuments. While we were traveling, the economy apparently decided to go to hell. But at least we knew all our other countrymen were in the same situation, no matter their situation or philosophy.

I have to say that I never expected that the fallout from Happy Happy Lenderman would be as dramatic as it turned out to be. I figured the banks were eating their lending mistakes, but it turned out the whole mess gave them massive indigestion–and the rest of us have to pay up now, too.

Our presidential election went well, but I’m not as excited about our president-elect as some other people are. Frankly the over-the-top adoration of him creeped me out, and I see a ordinary (perhaps egotistical) man who’s facing a tough situation, with an awful lot of overly-high public expectations. This tongue-in-cheek article from the Onion probably encapsulated my view of Barack Obama’s victory best.

But I go into 2009 in good health, with my family, and with a good freelance writing gig. For myself, I know 2009 won’t be as exciting as 2008, but it should be a’right. I hope all my friends and family will have a great new year, and if there are any rough spots that they’ll sail through them quickly.

The show didn’t just require energy during it, it required energy beforehand as we were caught up in a flurry of last-minute preparations; it required energy around it, as we struggled to move and get food to eat while within the press of thousands; and it required energy after it, as we had to clean up and fix everything that had been ignored for weeks in favor of Comic-Con.

When I left for the show, I watered my vegetable garden heavily and chlorinated my pool. I thought when I returned, my plants would be dead and my pool would be dirty, but I had the opposite surprise. My plants were thriving, but my pool was all-too alive with a green color that wouldn’t go away, no matter how much chlorine I dumped in. It took me a week (and an industrial-strength algicide) to put my pool back in order. I’d planned to get Charybdis and Scylla back into session by Wednesday or Thursday, but my lesson plan is still undone, and next week will only have some informal “unschooling”-type activities. Through sheer force of will, Peter and I managed to do the grocery shopping, laundry, and catch up on some correspondence, and, oh yeah, celebrate my birthday. I also managed to come home with some sort of a cold, which took the form of extreme exhaustion more than anything else.

I wondered if my age was catching up to me, because I never remembered being this wiped out by Comic-Con before. But Peter reminded me it’s always been this way: I’ve just forgotten. Personally, I think an pre-Comic-Con exercise regime seems like a neccessity.

Better writers than me have already commented the cult of personality type of imagery that’s evolved among some Barack Obama supporters. Though I don’t think Obama is the dictator type, the syncophantic following he has does give me the heebie-jeebies. I’m all over 20th-century totalitarianism (it’s my horror fascination, and Peter teases me about my gulag books), and it’s unusual, at the very least, to see a presidential candidate getting iconized like Mao or Stalin. I’m just saying some Obama supporters need to wipe the stardust from their eyes, and not put Obama on such a high pedestal, because at best, that kind of idolization can only lead to disappointment.

The shirt, however, was quite popular, and I can understand why. Even if you don’t idolize Obama, and whether or not he becomes our next president, the shirt is emblematic of our time. It may actually even be more wearable if Obama doesn’t win the election, because personally (really fanatic Obama supporters, don’t knife me!), I don’t think he’ll look as heroic a year into his presidency as he does now.

But if you have any questions about the artist, Alex Ross, who created the image, and his political leanings, Peter pointed out to me that he’s also created several images vehemently opposed to our current administration, like this one, which was also for sale at the con:

The images for both shirts came from Stylin’ Online, so if you wanted either one of them (or want to see some of the other t-shirts with Alex Ross’ other anti-Bush images), you can get them there.

But as I’ve said earlier, I generally prefer my politics separate from my art.

This really gave me pause. It had a decapitated head and various disembodied body parts hanging off the front, to promote a film that is obviously meant to be more about gore than plot.

Now I don’t believe in censorship, especially in artistic endevours, but most of the art venues I go to have the taste to let me opt out of things not for the faint-hearted, like the Holocaust exhibit at the British War Museum, or the photos-of-suffering-European-children exhibit at the Legion of Honor a few years ago. I can’t even read Steven King books without being disturbed, so I am grateful for the warning, and those who can stomach grittier images can see it.

On the other hand, there is ugliness in the world, and whether I like it or not, I will see it sometimes. On the other hand, I’d rather my children didn’t have horrifying images pushed on them. And I’m glad my children didn’t see (or at least notice) this truck.

So did it belong at Comic-Con? The show does have a lot less children (or at least a smaller percentage of children) attending than it used to. A fair percentage, if not the majority, of the audience is young adults, and some of those enjoy gory movies. But wouldn’t it be nice to have known that if my children were out on the streets of downtown San Diego on Sunday morning that they’d probably see a truck with blood and body parts all over it driving past them? Or should I really start putting Comic-Con in the category of an adults-only show?