Fernando's Adventure, Part 5

Yes, I know, this is quite the long series of events.

Morning arrived as it usually does and Fernando's alarm evicted him from Morpheus' realm at precisely 8:30 AM. His vision was blurry and sticky and he wanted nothing more than to roll over and experiment with a different sleep position, but rest is for the feeble. There was much to accomplish on this day and it would not accomplish itself.

Fernando swung his legs out of bed and gathered things to clean himself. Ronaldo and Alfonso yet slumbered.

One shower later, Fernando sits cross-legged on the bed. A television remote had appeared in the room at some point between Fernando's personal experience with utter despondency and now, so he watched a rerun of Law & Order and waited for the rest of the world to awaken. Fifteen or so minutes later, Ronaldo stirred to wakefulness, followed shortly by Alfonso.

The gentlemen went about their morning routine while Fernando sat and waited. By 9:30 everyone was prepared for another day of nerdish debauchery, but the first order of business was breakfast. To the restaurant area, which lay on the opposite end of the building! The journey was arduous, aye. The group passed by the LAN party room, a chamber of secrets which had been reserved by the gaming-inclined members of the nerd family, so that they could have 72 hours of unfettered Call of Duty and whathaveyou.

The room smelled pre~eetty bad when the party passed by the open portal leading to damnation. A miasmatic blend of human underarms and energy drink-scented farts wafted out of the LAN room and this encouraged our heroes to hustle past, and fortunately no one failed his save against poison while traversing the stinking cloud. The pungent odors emanating from the consuite paled in comparison.

Breakfast was a splendor and a delight. Scrambled eggs, absolutely delicious American fries, sausage links roughly the same color and texture as human foreskins, and strong coffee. Seconds of the sausages were not had by anyone. Seconds of everything else were.

No panels of real interest were to be had in the morning, so Fernando crossed the country to retrieve his Munchkin boxes. These would be set up in the gaming rooms and people would be invited to play, and then they would be ready and waiting for Mr. Kovalic's pen when he arrived at 1 P.M. When he passed by the LAN room, a fan had been set up in the hallway opposite the door in a brave attempt to forestall the relentless tides of crushing despair.

The only people in the game room when Fernando returned, Munchkin underarm, were Chess Kid and Silent McGee. They played each other while Ronaldo stood nearby waiting for Fernando to arrive. Upon the game's completion and Silent McGee's victory, the taciturn man spoke three of his eight total words over the course of the weekend: “Want to play?” With nothing better to do and nobody else in the game room, Fernando and Ronaldo played chess for the next couple hours or so. Once that got a little stale, Fernando asked the man, “Want to play Muchkin?”

Word Number Four: “Sure.”

Silent McGee had never played the game before, but it is rather easy to pick up and he performed admirably, and was a good sport about losing. Andrés and Alfonso appeared at some point and they joined in the merriment as well. Chess Guy appeared, his disguise still intact, once the game was well underway and he loudly lamented his inability to join in. He was stuck squaring off against Chess Kid

Once the game ended, Silent McGee shared his final words: “That was fun. Thanks.” It was not yet enough to 1 PM that itchy anxiety crawled up Ronaldo's and Fernando's spines, and they needed something else to do. So they joined Andrés and Alfonso for a cigarette break outside in Purgatory, a stone circle a short distance away from the hotel's main entrance where the ashtray was located.

There leaned Kiltguy, except today he was dressed as a pirate. He smoked a long-stemmed pipe and he recognized Fernando when the crew approached, giving him a curt nod. Fernando reciprocated. The four of them bullshitted and the topic of Andrés' life came up. He had once lived in South Carolina and, by some incredible coincidence and fluke, Kiltguy was familiar with that area himself.

It seemed he had held back on Fernando the previous night, for he shared three more tales with all the world: The time he got an entire hotel chain banned from Scotland because he had been evicted from one of the American branches upon being told it was the chain's policy to disallow weapons on their property, among which is included the sgian-dubh (“It is illegal under Scottish law to forbid anyone from wearing their full national costume, so I called up the Scottish police and they immediately marched down to the Edinburgh branch of this hotel and ordered it closed.”). Then there was the time he was visiting a gun show in Virginia and he shared with us the story of the man who tried sticking up said gun show (“The man attempted to hide in the ladies' room, but it turns out that there were five off-duty female police officers in there and, let me tell you, they were not happy to see a man barging in!”). And there was the time the ex-Scottish secret service guy ran a police bar in Richmond and was held up by two out-of-towners who didn't know they were trying to stick up a police bar. “This man was huge, six-five at least, and he bodily lifted the poor thief off the ground by his wrist. The sound they use in movies when bones break, let me tell you, are not at all like hearing it in real life, and all the while he was shouting, 'YOU POOT A GUN...IN ME FAYCE!'”).

Friggin' Kiltguy. But at least he passed the time until it became time for Fernando and Ronaldo to reenter the den of inequity and pay homage to the man who was the sole reason for this venture: John Kovalic. He waited, quiet and calm, in the dealers' room, at a table with two other guys who seemed pissed off that nobody came to the table to see them. Fernando went to get his Munchkin and Muchkin Cthulhu boxes signed, but he came out with doodles and drawings upon their surfaces in addition to the signature.

Kick. Ass.

Next panel was Star Trek vs. Star Wars. That went as well as could be imagined, somewhat similarly to scenes the Wars v. Trek battles from the movie Fanboys except with less humor. Serious fucking business, people. Ronaldo was as unimpressed with the panel as Fernando. 5/10.

The next panel sounded as though it would be more phenomenal than the previous one: “The Hobbit After 75 Years.” It was advertised as a retrospective on the book and a discussion on the forthcoming movie. Ronaldo and Fernando were on pins and needles.

Four old pedants, all of them active in the local Tolkein Society and all of them with a professional background in teaching collegiate English, shared their personal anecdotes about what made The Hobbit awesome. There was a significant amount of reading directly from scholarly works written on Tolkein's legendarium. Ronaldo up and left after about ten minutes. Fernando stuck it out, hoping things would get better. He'd suffered through boring lectures in his university days. He could survive this.

Nope. Fernando tried injecting a bit of life into the listless plodding verbosity by bringing up Peter Jackson's video blogs when it seemed relevant. That didn't work. Ninety minutes after it started, the panel thankfully ended. Fernando grudgingly rates this panel a 1 out of 10 only because the panelists showed up and it actually started on time.

Dinner time! Away to the Chinese buffet across the street, with its crab rangoons and its sweet and sour chicken and its pad thai and its distinct lack of anything resembling heat in its food! Still, for 11 bucks it suited Fernando just fine and Ronaldo outdid all of them by chowing down on four plates of real food and another two of dessert. Well done, sir.

The time drew nigh for Fernando's moment of triumph, but there were still three hours to go before the seeds of his victory would be planted, and all the world would tremble in awe at his might and splendor.