085 - I am too old to Comic Book any more

I hate to write complaint posts, despite the amount of them you may see here on my LJ. I delete about 80% of them before I hit the "Post" button, because a lot of the time it's just the typing of the words - getting them out of my head and on to a screen in front of me - that fixes everything.

I'm going to hold off posting a fully explorative post about this complaint, but the long-and-short of it is that for the first time in a VERY LONG TIME, I am not having a good time at the convention. This has only happened to me once before, and it's was a part of the conversation that lead to the creation of the Emerald City Comic Con itself!

All of my complaints, though, I realize break down to the fact that I'm just too darned old. My grievances break down to the categories of Legitimate Complaints, Legitimate Complaints That Are Blown Out Of Proportion By My Being Old, and Curmudgeon Complaints.

More tomorrow, I'm sure.

086 - It Got Better :)

Today was a DECIDEDLY better day than Friday or Saturday had been at the Emerald City Comic Con! Good enough of a day, even, to make me more reflective and introspective about the first two days. Today made it all worth while :)

Next year they plan to expand the convention to FOUR DAYS, which means it will indeed be time for me to scale back my Conventioning though. I think I could probably do two days; three is a stretch, but just the IDEA of four days makes me cringe.

I'm really glad I decided to wait till I had some time under my belt to air out my grievances, as I have forgotten most of them and/or come up with solutions that will eliminate said grievances in the future.

Matter of fact, I don't even want to list my grievances right now, just the solutions that I will (hopefully) remember next year:

• Drive to Northgate Park & Ride, take the bus.
  
• It's okay to leave the rest of the party behind, just make a meeting point at one of the panels.
  
• If there's a panel or event you REALLY want to see, sit in on the one before it to ensure good seating.
  
• Don't plan on seeing any of the celebrities unless you've already scouted for and set up camp at a seat in that room. Thanks to their new "Standing Room Only" policy (still makes me mad*), I had a seat for exactly *ONE* Celebrity Panel (Patrick Wharburton, who was awesome).
  

*SO yeah, the Standing Room Only policy - they took "THE BIG ROOM", The Main Hall, the hall that they put the BIG NAME CELEBRITIES in, and they removed 1/4th of the chairs. Why? Because some of the celebrities can't FILL an auditorium of that size with fans, so when they get on stage and look out at a room with a bunch of empty chairs at the back, they cry. The solution, of course, is to REMOVE those empty chairs and make it a "Standing Room Only" area at the back of the room - so minor celebrities can see nearly every chair filled, and major celebrities can still enjoy a PACKED TO THE RAFTERS ROOM full of uncomfortable fans. Meanwhile, I am a fat old man and regardless of how much I would LOVE to hear Stan Lee talk to the crowd, I'm NOT standing for a solid hour just to do so! GRRRRRR!!!

Tomorrow, all the stuff that made Today a much better day :)