Fernando's Fourth Quest

Breakfast at the hostel was a bleak affair compared to the wondrous glories of impeccable hash browns and scrambled eggs of days gone by. Fernando found some Raisin Bran and milk and some lukewarm yogurt. The coffee was too bitter to reasonably enjoy without diluting it through three or four cups of liquid creamer, thereby defeating the purpose behind it being coffee, and the orange juice was a watery pale mess.

Maybe Fernando was just cranky. He'd spent around six hours of the previous day around more people than he sees come through the Dominion in probably two months...and most of the people visiting the store are the same people Fernando had seen time and again previously. He missed his cave of introverted shame and safety already, but had no choice but to forge ahead.

The plan for this day was to get there bright and early for the convention's opening. The crew visited the front desk to ensure they reserved a spot on the shuttle for around 11 A.M., as the convention would open its doors at noon. When the shuttle arrived, a little late, the Company was saddened to see the man behind the wheel was not Cool Driver Jim, but a different man who spoke with some variety of Slavic accent.

Slav Driver Andy opted charisma as one of his dump stats. He did not engage his passengers and spent much of the time muttering under his breath in the mother tongue, presumably about the wretched traffic they were forced to navigate. He took an alternate path to the convention center, one which did not use of the freeway system but instead skulked through a labyrinth of traffic lights and pedestrians.

The roads' congestion grew larger as the bus crept closer to the convention center, and about a mile out traffic stopped completely. Cop Dudes in reflective vests stood at the intersection, two on opposite corners and one in the middle of the street. They gestured at the backed-up string of cars with white-gloved hands, letting one vehicle at a time merge or creep forward as soon as an opening appeared ahead.

Slav Driver Andy cursed and pounded his palms on the steering wheel, then addressed the passengers, “This is not good.”

Macombo, brave Macombo, told the man, “You know, you could drop us off here and we could walk the rest of the way. It's not that far.”

Slav Driver Andy pushed a button on his console and bus's folding doors whooshed open. “You are fine with this? Okay.”

Fernando and Co. exchanged a look, then as one clambered out and began their sojourn. Walking a mile is nothing to people who live in the middle of nowhere. Fernando needs to walk nearly that far just to reach the post office from his Dominion's front door. The other people from the hotel who had ridden along proved less courageous and stayed in Slav Driver Andy's company.

Even the foot traffic was monumental. People lugged along full-size, framed posters and improbable costumes and red wagons full of swag. The party pressed onward, moving swiftly around the knots of humanity who walked somewhat less than briskly. Well, Fernando and Ronaldo and Natasia did, at any rate. Teodor and Macombo ambled along like sloths.

Fifteen minutes later, they reached the convention center's front doors. Yellowshirts stood by to funnel people in the appropriate directions. People who needed to procure their tickets or wristbands were shunted in the direction which Fernando & Co. were yesterday. For those who had purchased weekend passes, they were directed to stand in a long long long line, a line which dwarfed the previous day's. For the Thursday line experience had just consisted of those men and women who wanted to enter the convention right at opening time.

This line consisted of all the people who'd swung by on Thursday for weekend passes.

Doctor Wily's hair, there were a lot of them.

The crew was escorted into another cattle chute delineated by duct tape on a cement floor. Fernando and Ronaldo, who were closest to each other, decided to make a game of things by counting the number of Harleys Quinn they spied. They made out three before the snaking crush of humanity blotted out vision of the room's entrance.

So the group waited for about twenty minutes. They had been at the end of the line, with perhaps five, six hundred people ahead of them. After the twenty minutes had elapsed, they stood in the front quarter of a line of thousands. And, remember, this is the line of people who had weekend passes, not the separate, unseen line of people who'd come in for just the day, and also not the line for people who'd shelled out an extra two hundred dollars for a VIP ticket and the promise of early entry.

As noon drew nearer, some jackass had the bright idea to put a dickhead on the building's intercom and drum up excitement. You know the sort, the obnoxious hybrid of a sportscaster and a morning radio jockey who indulges in things like, “Heeeeello Chicago Comic-Con! Are! You excited to be here today?” then tries goading the audience into shouting and cheering when he “can't hear you!”

Motherfucker, it's eighty-five degrees, there's no air circulation, and we're standing in a line surrounded by people with an average body temperature of ninety-six degrees. Everyone is sweaty and grouchy and above all a nerd. Nobody needs that shit, especially not when you're doing it at five after twelve in the afternoon and we just want to get inside the actual convention.

Though some of the 501^st milled around looking awesome as shit, and that made things a little bit better, it was still twenty after noon by the time the portion of line in which the Company dwelled was broken away and guided by yellowshirts not up the escalators as yesterday, but into the downstairs showroom, where autographs and meet-n-greets were to be held in the future.

“Let's never do that again,” Fernando said, and no one disagreed with him.

The party split off again, with Teodor just outright vanishing while Macombo and Natasia headed off to do their own thing. Fernando and Ronaldo wandered the lower level's vendors. They found someone who sold fedoras with built-in sparkly LEDs and considered, however briefly, procuring one for Teodor, who is well-known to favor that style of headgear (Fernando is more partial to the Derby bowler). But twenty-five dollars was too much money to spend on a novelty that would make Teodor look like a buffoon, so the idea was scrapped.

Fernando did take a picture of Ronaldo next to a TARDIS. Ronaldo was overjoyed.

The autograph area was mostly barren. Lou Ferrigno was there, surprisingly, for he had been advertised to attend a panel the previous day on real-life superheroes. That was a great big disappointment, for not only did The Hulk not show up, but the superheroes up on stage did things which did not, in fact, require dressing up and maintaining a secret identity. Secret identities are needed to prevent retributive acts against yourself or your loved ones by allies of the villains you thwart, not because you go to a soup kitchen and volunteer or hand out condoms. Unless, of course, you do such things for pomp and attention, in which case your deeds might be noble but your intents fly in the face of everything which might be considered altruistic.

The whole thing was rather a bit of a farce, and not at all unlike the Stephen Lynch composition “If I Could Be a Superhero.”

Anyhow, Ronaldo tried to sneak a picture of Mr. Ferrigno but one of the yellowshirts waved him down and pointed to a “no pictures within the designated area” sign which was affixed, rather ironically, behind a line of tape delineating said designated area, in which Ronaldo and Fernando undeniably did not stand.

Ronaldo shrugged and took a grainy long-distance picture anyway when the yellowshirt's attention was distracted by some other convention-goer. No way was he going to pay fifteen dollars. Word to the wise: if you market your body and self as a commodity and product, you surrender privacy when in a venue specifically meant to market that product, as long as the photographer isn't being a dickhead and putting you or other people in some sort of harm. If you value your privacy, think ahead and maybe don't become famous.

The rest of the day proved rather humdrum. Ronaldo and Fernando split up as soon as the first Doctor Who panel reared its head, so the Keeper did his own thing. The high point for Fernando was attending a Q&A panel featuring the affable and endearing Wil Wheaton, who actually gave a little talk on exactly the sort of privacy concerns Fernando described above, and who reached roughly the same conclusion as he did: When you're wearing your public/business pants, you give up the right to bitch and a be standoffish dickhead, as long as people are not a jerk about things. Without them, you wouldn't be anybody.

Michael Shannon could do well to learn this lesson. He was to give an hour-long fireside chat. Fernando and Ronaldo both looked forward to it because the man is an impressive actor who brings a lot of gravitas to his roles, and Ronaldo much enjoyed his character in Man of Steel. A pity he's a shithead of a human being who clearly did not want to be there and whose Q&A (such as it was...he answered two or three audience questions before he scampered off) was cut down to about twenty minutes because he can't schedule his life worth half a damn and overlapped other obligations with the time at which he was to attend the convention.

The following Zachary Quinto panel was much better. Mr. Quinto cared and was affable and joked with the moderator and the people asking questions. He even requested that a one girl not cry when it was clear she was a nervous wreck just talking to him from fifty feet away over a microphone. Kudos, Mr. Quinto.

After the convention ended, Cool Driver Jim again arrived to pick up the crew and deliver them swiftly to their destination at the hotel, where discussion over foodstuffs took place. Consensus was reached: Natasia and Macombo were to head to a bar/eatery near the hotel while Fernando, Teodor, and Ronaldo would cross four lanes of street to a Burger King, as the bar/eatery looked a mite skeevy to Ronaldo's eyes.

While at Burger King, Teodor's food was stolen by another man because he did not stand right by the counter to pick it up. Good old thieves. Oh, and everyone was pretty sure they had seen someone pick up a prostitute in the drive-thru. The lady was wearing a slinky reddish dress, had her hair artfully curled and coiled, and milled around on the sidewalk near the burger joint. Once someone pulled into the drive through, she sashayed over and leaned down to solicit him, which seemed to go well enough, though when she climbed into the passenger side of the vehicle her face was dead and without expression.

So congrats to Anonymous John, I guess. Truly you are a master of the seductive arts.

Upon return to the hotel, Macombo and Natasia dropped by the room to have a few beers. Macombo played another game of Munchkin with the crew while Natasia sat nearby, blessing everyone not with a ruthless playstyle, but with honeyed words and sparkling personality. The crew also haggled out their schedule for the next day. The convention would begin at 10 in the morning, and they did not plan to be there for that time. No way would they deal with line bullshit, not on the day which promised to be the biggest of the weekend. This was the day on which all the Walking Dead panels, especially that of Mr. Norman Reedus, would take place, and the crowds would be, as the expression goes, “off the hook.” No, they would schedule their arrival at around 10.30, hopefully after all the torturous herding had come to an end and they could just walk through the doors, flash their wristbands to Shouty Black Lady, and go about their business.

It promised to be a fine day, indeed.