ECCC 2017 Part 3

After some fitful sleep, I woke up, and realized it was Saturday. This should be the busiest day of the entire Convention, and I would be there before it even started. But I also had plans. There would be a Subway visit, and a Salad visit. I also wanted to check out the LEGO area to see if a friend was there.

The really  big thing was to find an artist for some of the comics I am working on. I don’t have a lot of money, but I could spend enough for a single edition of the Roman Arcades book I am working on right now. If it worked well, I have a story about a lawyer that represents various mythological deities and how they need him to fix their version of facebook. Hint, it involves real souls.

So I intended to do a lot that day, and also didn’t really know how to begin. Luckily, the day had some time for me to make a small peanut butter burrito, and take some pictures.

I drove leisurely to the parking lot. My spare change had diminished too much from the day before’s parking mistake, so I had to use the main parking garage. It was a fairly empty garage, so I parked where I could, and set out quickly.

I arrived right on time for the ferry, and had a leisurely walk on. Someone was playing the Switch on the top floor, and I smiled at it. He was getting really into the game, so I Iet him play alone, and went to read. While riding, I thought about all of the events the day before.

The woman who talked about driving the awesome car hit my mind, and I thought about all that she wanted to do. She wanted the cool moment, where you go out and drive and feel the car and the road as if it were a part of you. A long drive with the feeling of power.

I had done that. Heck, that’s what I did coming to Seattle. I make sure to have a trip like that at least once a year, though it is starting to look like once a month. The small trip to Seattle is about 500 miles round trip. Then we have trips like Portland, where I could do a full NorthWest Loop if I wanted to. Speaking of which, I really want to.

Then I thought about all of the things friends, and acquaintances said they wished they could do. They wanted to live on a tropical island. I lived in Hawaii. They wanted to do things, but did not imagine themselves actually doing it. This came into a striking thought for me.

Much of what a convention is selling is the idea of things we can’t imagine. A convention about owning an arcade machine? Oddly enough, they have people talking about how to do it, yet it seems like something just out of reach. What about comics? I was searching for an artist for an idea I had, from the advice of a panel at LTUE. The entire thing gets weird.

People want to touch or talk to someone who plays a character on their favorite TV show. It makes the world real to them. I’m not saying you can gain super powers, but many of the thoughts and ideas from these shows are possible. Also, if you want to do TV, there are tons of jobs out there, and they don’t all have to be actors.

A book a friend of mine lent me started with a man who had travelled the world, doing odd jobs to pay the bills, but otherwise going where he wanted. At the very beginning he tells of the time a businessman was talking to him at a beach. The businessman was all impressed with himself that he could go on such a trip. The author told the man about all of the trips he had done, and places he had been to. The businessman thought this was insane, and walked away. The book is called Vagabonding by Rolf Potts.

When we go back to the idea of a cultural brane, we can’t imagine a world where traveling or doing things is possible. Instead, we lose ourselves into books, or into the idea that it is possible. Instead of doing it, we imagine a world where we can, and how exciting it feels. I will give the hint that doing things is usually a willingness to do the work. The part most people don’t catch is that it can be a lot of fun.

The idea that we can do non ordinary things, or travel outside of our cultural brane is difficult. People literally imagine it to be some kind of magic. Don’t believe me? Do you know how to edit a book? It is way more than just checking for spelling and grammar. For some reason people know something needs editing, but don’t understand how it works. This creates a real problem when working with a manuscript, and letting a friend read it for problems. If all they suggest is to edit it more, without information on where or why, it is useless.

I think Editing is the same magical word as Hard Work. You need to do something? Well that just takes hard work. You need to work hard, and maybe someday, it will happen.

My buddy had just finished a story I wrote, and had a hard time telling me his problems with it. He thought it would insult me somehow. Instead, it gave me some great information, and honestly I was really glad he could tell me those things.

So, in response to all of this, I wrote it down as a facebook post. I also made up a story about Batman talking to Alfred.

The long ferry let me read, and write to my heart’s content. I couldn’t take pictures, because of the cold, but I was enjoying my work inside the ship. It made me happy to realize all of this, and write about it.

I walked to the convention center and noticed the homeless people asking for things. Some of them had moved, while others had a specific spot. One guy seemed to simply live in a tunnel outside of the terminal. He has all of his stuff there, and rarely ever moves away. That is his house. We are visiting it.  

As soon as I got there, I knew the routine and how to respond to things. The door wasn’t open, so I went to the main area. They said the door still wasn’t fixed, which was ok, I would just keep the door open. The other volunteer showed up, and we quickly had things ready for the folks. Once again, there wasn’t a line.

The day before I had found a bag with a batman comic in it. Honestly, I just wanted to read the comic. We decided to keep it to see if the person would come back and claim it.

Right at the beginning we had some late teens guy who seemed very nervous. He had a small doll with him, which he would pull out of a random pocket to play with, or talk to. Seeing as this was a gathering of nerds, and other socially awkward folks, I paid it no mind. The doll was about two inches tall, and was about the soldier from Team Fortress 2.

I had some extra money, so I decided to grab the salad I saw earlier. The salad place was in the Convention Center itself, and pretty small and simple. There was a dry erase board with prices on the front, and various specials for the day. I had a spinach salad with peanut butter, and some chicken. It needed some extra ingredients, because chicken on its own is kind of bland. This is why they say everything tastes like chicken, because chicken can taste like anything. The peanut butter needed some salt as well. But still, I ate it, and enjoyed.

The best method of selling the arcade show was to get people to try it out. I stood outside, and sent in as many people as I could. I just needed to point at times, or give a 5 second spiel for them to even look at the door. When they looked at the door, they saw the arcade, and thus wanted to go in.

On their way out, I would hand them a flier. It worked way better than I really want to admit. One observer said I was getting about 30-40% of anyone passing by. I wanted more.

Honestly, this was probably a bad move, because there was only 15 games, and I was sending in people by the hundreds every hour. Saturday would be the most populated of the entire time, and I suspect I met a couple thousand while just standing there. Many walked out from the crowds inside.

That is sort of a good bad thing. So many people we didn’t have room to talk or share with them. It means that many more people would be interested in the show, but disappointed they couldn’t play at this one. The larger number meant a plus for us, but also a larger problem.

When I came back to the table, feeling a bit happy for all that I had done, someone handed me the toy the guy from earlier had. I didn’t want him to lose it, because it seemed to mean so much to him. So, we kept it on the table, and I only played with it a few times the rest of the day.

While playing with the soldier, a guy walked in, and told me he was a regular at the pinball museum. He talked about various games, most of which I recognized. The game he loved the most was one I had never heard of. He was shocked I never heard of it, and made fun of me.

“He’s never heard of it!”

I honestly can’t remember the name of the game now. I did look it up later. It was an aiming game with smaller balls, and no paddles. The shooter was in the center of the lower part of the playfield, and the game came out in the 70’s.

A few moments later, I was back at telling people to look into the room.

Honestly, it was pretty much like all the other times, only with different people. Eventually I got hungry, so I walked in, and told them I was going out. I had an extra mission for myself to find a buddy who worked at the LEGO display area, and perhaps find an artist from artist alley. Though to be honest, Artist Alley was more Artist Super Highway with all of the people present.

I was on my way down when I met the folks at the Pinball Museum display. They had a guy who wanted to volunteer so he could get a ticket in. I told him I could help him find the right folks. I took him over to the arcade, perhaps someone there would know. While walking, I found out he was in the Canadian Military. I asked him questions about it, and what it was like. This was his shore leave day, so he wanted to get into the show, but was willing to do the work.

We wandered a little bit, but couldn’t find the folks who run the PM, so he left me to my work. I did some more sending people into the arcade, and then tried to head to subway again.

Subway has specials every day, a six inch sub meal for $5. It wasn’t tuna fish that day, so I grabbed it. Honestly, not a lot happened. I ate, and enjoyed the food, and then headed out. After a while, everything became a routine. I stopped thinking of the Ferry as an adventure, and more like the thing between walking to the conventions. The same was with Subway. I liked it, but there wasn’t anything big to talk about.

Instead of going back to the arcade, I walked across the street of the convention center. Technically, it’s still the convention center. The ECC was still going on, and I decided to check out stuff. There were tons of displays.

My friend wasn’t there, but I did enjoy what I saw.

The LEGO hall also led to the children’s area, with hundreds of toys and models to enjoy. I saw as much as I could, but can’t really show too much. There was a long line for people to enjoy all of the displays, and I sort of skipped it as much as I could.

There were several floors, and a way to get onto the main floor by escalator. I didn’t take it, and walked all of the way back to the arcade by crossing the street. Now that I think about it, that was really dumb. My feelings on the matter were about how tired I felt, and didn’t really want to go through all of the crowds to see it.

It had been several days of the convention, and I was tired. Convention warping is a thing, and I was really feeling it. This is why I made sure to have two full meals, and took things easy. I could go back to the artist superhighway later.

I was wrong. It closed before I got the chance to go back. My entire reasoning was wrong, but I didn’t realize that yet. Instead, I went back to the arcade, and continued to hand out fliers.

The reality is, the amount of artists intimidated me, and I didn’t really know how to look. I decided to ask one of the other arcade folks. They regularly get artists from the ECCC for the big picture for the posters and T-Shirts.

Back at the arcade, the masses were starting to thin, but we expected a large turnout for the main floor closing. Right when I got in, I found out the Soldier miniature had been grabbed, and hopefully by the rightful owner. I also found out someone had taken stuff from the bag with a batman comic, but not the comic itself. So I had claim to it pretty easily. I realized I had lost the chance to check, but there was another day.

I asked about getting an artist, and was given the answer. It was pretty easy honestly.

• Find an artist you like.
• Ask them if they do commissions.
• Find out the price of what I need.
• Get a way to contact them later.

That sounds easy, but I felt really intimidated. I guess I have to admit, some of the artists had things saying they wouldn’t do work for white males, or only did stuff for women or people of color. I happen to be white and male and totally straight. There, I said it. I feel weird even admitting to it.

At the arcade, I heard discussion that there may be a new old guy to set up the arcade. He had helped set it up beforehand, and even had all of the connections to the shows. So he would be better for the job. The first few years, he arranged things so everything happened, but it became someone else’s job after that. So it was given back to him, and he wanted to double the amount of games.

The main floor of the convention closed, and people began to swarm in. I went outside to direct convention goers to the arcade. There was someone trying to yell at the crowds descending the escalator about the gaming floor still being open. Their voices were very quiet.

So I used my loud voice to let the oncoming horde know about the floor. I told them the time for the arcade, and the other rooms. I did this several times. I felt kind of weird doing this, and lost my voice a little. I didn’t see a lot of people change path, so I thought I didn’t do it right.

Later on, someone told me I had diverted hundreds of people, it just didn’t look like much compared to the tens of thousands from the show floor. In fact, I had mixed up something, and they all had the same mistake for the rest of the night.

While doing this I met up with my friend who had been working at the LEGO display. He was volunteering at the gaming area. We chatted, but it was mostly talking about how tired we were. I also met up with the guy who spoke German, and recommended I get a Patreon. He had a 6 hour epic battle the other night, and was pumped for what would happen that day.

With that, I decided to grab the last ferry and walked home. On the way back, I grabbed a picture of someone’s house.

Technically, that’s two people’s house. They use tarp as blankets, and a cover for it. I couldn’t take a picture of them resting, so I took it when I knew they weren’t there. It’s a nice portable house, and fairly easy to find replacement parts for.

At the ferry, the gate let us wait out in the cold, and away from the various folks in the ferry terminal. There were chairs, and I could wait and enjoy the view.

I saw the guy next to me had a large artist portfolio set up. I asked him about it. He showed some of his work, and I enjoyed what I saw. I asked if he did requests, and he said yes. He would charge $20 an hour for his work. Then he gave me some sheets to figure out how to contact him.

He was working on a comic about people with powers. The main character is blind, but powerful. The entire world has been destroyed, and the man protecting the hero wants to sell him to the highest bidder. Then he realizes the truth.

It was good art, and stuff like that. With that, I had an artist.

The ferry ride back was dull. I enjoyed it that way though.

Back at the house, no one was really awake, so I went to bed quickly. It was going to be a really busy day.