Friday, July 23, 2010

San Diego - Day 2

There are people made out of bubble-foam flying over the convention center. There are women wearing flatscreen TVs on their backs. There is a comic book series about super-hero cows produced by Chik-Fil-A. Welcome to Friday at the Comic-Con.

One thing I have noticed is a tendency towards merchandising overkill, particularly in terms of manpower. Red Faction does not have a single tanned booth-babe in logo'ed tank top and hot pants - they have 20 of them. A horde of hula-skirted young women are promoting Hawaii 5-0. A mass of Dharma agents are all promoting something "Lost" related. They move through the crowds like alien gangs.

My own maneuverability is limited, since my feet are still throbbing hunks of meat. I have started relying on the pedcabs (nice in this weather) and the shuttle (slow but you get to sit down AND get air conditioning), and finding places to sit down. I'm doing a lot more video interviews today, which increases the chance that I will say something Joe-Biden worthy with every passing moment. Talked to Game Revolution and Ten Ton Hammer, and did a standup with The Daily Transcript. Not bad for a man who firmly believes that he has a face made for radio and a voice made for mime.

The signing went very well, will an almost-equal mix of number of books available, number of people interested, and amount of time. We had to turn a few away, but will be doing another signing tomorrow. These things can be a roll of the dice sometimes - you can just enough or too much or nothing at all. I was ably aided and abetted in the signing by Rich Anderson, who did the cover of the book.

Managed to actually take a nap in the afternoon before dinner, which had the added benefit of keeping me off my blistered feet. Then a long and pleasant dinner (with various strangenesses of reservation numbers and size of the table) with Stan! and Cindi and Hyrum and several cool artists and writers, the subject matter of which I shall not bore you with save to say that at one point we were talking about a penis museum in Iceland. A veritable Algonquin Round, that was.

And so to bed, as we have another signing on the morrow, and a panel and a couple more interviews. I am practically getting into the swing of things, here.

More later,