Nerds and Geeks: Part II

This is a continuation of the epic and amazing story of my journey with Hawk to the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. In my previous post, Nerds and Geeks: Part I, I explain that Hawk and I aren't total nerds even if we like some nerdy things, mentioned meeting the wicked cool Christian Potenza, and introduce you to my cousin NightMare.


THINGS THAT HAPPENED ON SATURDAY
We'd picked up the official Comic-Con guidebook on Friday, and decided we didn't need to get to the show until noon to see the first panel we were interested in.  


Little did we know, that was a huge mistake.


We wandered from our hotel to Eau Claire in Calgary and dined on eggs and toast and sausage at the Barley Mill, then wandered around some more because it was such a beautiful day.

Me foolishly patiently waiting for my noms at the Barley Mill.

Hawk and I consider our cool factor in the context of Eau Claire. Who's cooler? If you remember these photos by the end of this post, leave your vote in the comments.  

Hawk wasting precious time

Red Panda wasting precious time

Our wanderings finished, we meandered to the C-train and moseyed to the Bow Centre Place Thing for an afternoon of Comic-Con!

We arrived to a complete clusterfuck. People were milling about confusedly. The doors into the main hall were shut. We couldn't find a volunteer, but the coat check lady told us that they had closed the doors and no one was getting in. Hawk and I were pretty annoyed. It meant we were going to miss the Brent Spiner & Co. panel!

That's Lieutenant Commander Data, the android, to you non-fans aka "normal people", if any of you who read this blog can be considered "normal".

There was nothing for it.  We had to leave.  The people around us were ANGRY.

As we left, we saw hundreds of people with "Saturday Only" passes pinned to their chests.  My heart broke for them. Imagine buying a Saturday pass and arriving only to be shut out? I was SO MAD!

Hawk and I decided to go to Chinook Centre, a large Calgary mall along the C-train route, to kill time, and attempt to get back into the convention in a few hours.

While waiting for the train, I decide to turn to Twitter for help. What exactly was going on in there?

The Twitterverse was ANGRY.

The official @calgaryexpo Twitter feed gave all appearances of being a lying liar pants.  They said they didn't oversell.  Hawk and I doubted their story.

Turns out the fire marshal had come along and shut the place down. "If we don't get in later on, Hawk," declared I, "I am demanding one third of our money back!"

Hawk agreed that was a most judicious course of action.

So we went shopping and I'm very glad we did, because it's time for—say it with me—TMI!

"TOO!!! MUCH!!! INFORMATION!!!!!"

I forgot to pack underwear for this trip. Hawk had brought one extra pair, so on Friday night I'd slept in those, hand washed the pair I'd worn into town, and hung them to dry to wear on Saturday (which I did). I thought this was going to happen all three nights of our stay, but luckily, this mall had a GAP with $4 underwear for sale.

I bought three pairs and I was SO HAPPY.

This weekend was the first time Hawk had ever heard of "Steampunk". I knew about it because of Etsy, but mostly because of Regretsy. Hawk was so excited by his discovery that when we saw a dinosaur statue in the mall that was all gear-ey and stuff, we declared it steampunk, completely on-note with the weekend, and took a picture.

Exposed gears?  STEAMPUNK!

By the time we were ready to leave the mall, Twitter was reporting that there was still a line at Comic-Con, but people were being moved in in groups of 50 (or 100) every ten (or fifteen) minutes, depending on whom you believed.  We decided to head back to the convention because there was a panel on developing horror films that Hawk wanted to see*.

Not only did we make it, enjoy it immensely, and learn stuff, we also go to wander around the halls some more, buy some presents for Sandcat and Magpie, and see this!

Star Trek and Star Wars together again!  I love colliding universes!

After leaving, we did some more wandering and did some more goofy stuff.

Like wonder who thought this statue was a good idea.

What are you looking at, Hawk?

Not sure, Red Panda, but it's making me uncomfortable.

There was non-phallic local art to consider, too.

Cow Bench? Calgary, you so silly!
(Its official name is Cow Bench)

We spent the evening wandering around downtown, eating delicious food, earning a free dessert at Joey Eau Claire, and planning out how tomorrow would go better.  I obsessively checked Twitter over the next several hours, trying to get the real story on what went down with the fire marshal earlier that day, and wondering what the heck was going to happen tomorrow with all the Saturday-only passes now set to be honoured on Sunday.  

It turns out pretty much everyone who went to Comic-Con with a smartphone on Saturday was really bloody pissed with how things went down. As for the official Comic-Con Twitter feed? They still said they didn't oversell tickets.

Guess they were just incompetent.

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*This seems to surprise people, but before his MBA, Hawk completed one year of technical film studies at SAIT (very prestigious) and completed his BA in film studies at the U of A.  He doesn't just love creepy movies, he knows what goes into them.  It's pretty rad.