ECCC 2010 Part 6: Seattle Geekly Trek Trivia Meet-Up

Day TWO started with the pre-convention Seattle Geekly Star Trek Trivia Meet-Up, featuring the awesomely awesome Larry Nemecek (author of Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion as well as being generally accepted as THE authority on all things Trek). There were prizes involved, but that wasn't the best part. It was like... have you ever been to a Star Trek Convention? You know that part where they start up the slide show and tell you stuff like "Here's a picture of Walter Koenig right before the 1975 Star Trek Convention... not many people know this, but the tie he was wearing that day was actually given to him by Leonard Nimoy just a week before the event when they were shopping in Tijuana together"? It was like that, only face-to-face instead of in a converted ballroom of the Red Lion Inn with 1700 of your closest friends. Very intimate, very friendly, very awesome :)

Matt & Shannon (of the Seattle Geekly Podcast) were great hosts for this event, and every bit as Matt-n-Shannony as they are on their podcast (trust me, it's a good thing). They're not super-geeks who talk over your head with obscure references and techno-babble, they're not business-minded non-geeks trying to make a quick buck off of the sudden popularity of Nerd Culture... they're just average people who really like geeky stuff and have taken it upon themselves to promote the lifestyle they love in the best way possible - with a PODCAST! Each episode is like sitting down with a couple of friends to talk about geeky stuff. It's warm, comforting, and very easy to fall asleep after :)

So anywho, at the Trek Trivia Competition? Some of the folks had been to the competition the night before and were still playing by those rules, some folks were still shell-shocked by Convention combined with Daylight Savings Time... whatever the reason, I TOTALLY cleaned-up taking approximately HALF of the prizes home with me! I felt so guilty, especially since a good chunk of those prizes were won due to process of elimination and/or blind luck. Not guilty enough to give back the prizes or anything, but guilty none the less!

Molly's favorite thing I won is the Kirk & Gorn Bobblehead Set... she's been making them fight for two straight days now!

So there I was, with 15 minutes till the convention even opened, and I already had a duffel bag FULL of Star Trek stuff. It was gonna be an awesome day :)

ECCC 2010 Part 7: Hung Punisher

The one person I wanted to meet during the convention but never got the chance to was Thomas Jane. He was The Punisher in the movie that featured John Travolta as The Villain, which is THE BEST of all the attempts to bring The Punisher to the big screen. He's also the star of the Showtime Original Series "Hung", as well as being a writer/director/producer/hair-stylist/concubine/barrista.

Every time I went to his table, he was gone :(

So there I was, hanging out at the Crater on The Moon Booth (my favorite Local Indie Comic) when up walks the handsomest man I've ever seen in my entire life.

Let me tell ya when this guy comes walking up, just a bit taller than me but obviously *cut*... manly 5-o-clock stubble all over his perfectly chiseled jaw... retro-70's brown leather jacket hanging off his ever-so-wide shoulders... jeans that look like he was born in them... and smelling like a day-old shower covered in Brut aftershave? My bread ain't buttered on that side (if ya know what I mean) but for a man like THAT I'd be asking "please pass the JELLY!"

(Not sure what that means, but I think it got the point across)

Anywho, he asks me what this comic is all about and I *instantly* know that it's Thomas Jane. I swallow my Fanboy desire to fawn over him and start explaining the book to him better than the guy behind the booth could ever do (not the creator or the star, just some guy who was handling the money). He ended up buying some of the books, and we walked and talked for a while after that about generally geeky things; never once did I scream YOU ARE MY FAVORITE PUNISHER which is good because I'll bet that when taken out of context that might have sounded kinda Gay...

ECCC 2010 Part 8: Day 2 Odds N' Ends

• Bought $150 worth of 1970's Adventure Comics for $10. The guy was asking $50, I started the counter-offer at $10 AND HE TOOK IT! That was QUITE a rush!
  
• Random girl came up to me and said "Do you like these?" indicating thehttp://www.livejournal.com/download/ 4 booster packs of Hero Clix she was holding. Ends up she won them at the Spin-N-Win thingee back in the Gaming Area and she didn't actually want them, so I gave her $10 for all 4 boxes.
  
• Perfect moment to bump in to Neal and Kristen, got to walk and talk with Neal as he was freshly exuberant from signing on to write for Nightmares of The Macabre (details on that can be read at his website).
  
• Made Angus Oblong giggle by asking him to "Fill my autograph book with two dollars worth of Original Artwork, please".
  
• Got to tell Marvel EIC Joe Quesada "You don't know me and I'm not gonna come after you for stealing my ideas if this ends up in a Marvel Comic, but... LATVERIAN BUREAU OF TOURISM. Use it! You're welcome"
  
• Sold my box of Magic: The Gathering cards (donated by the ever lovely Jeremy) to these two kids of approximately 12 years old for $50. They had never played before but got EXTREMELY interested by the free starter deck in the "Swag Bag" that everybody got, s I feel god about having fed their new found addiction :)
  
• Matt (of the Seattle Geekly Podcast) returned my lost Water Bottle to me at the EXACT moment I was talking about my lost water bottle to Troy! Servic e with a smile provided by Seattle-Geekly.com Podcast!
  
• Impromptu "Incredible Hulk Vs. Godzilla" debates everywhere I went, instigated by *me*!