Excess in Abundance, San Diego Comic-Con 2013

This tale may or may not be true, and the names have most certainly been changed. So do not only take it with a grain of salt, please consume the shaker. Or perhaps, just as likely this is a toned down version of the exact events that took place, dumbed-down with the intention to protect myself and my not-so innocent compatriots. Guess you have no way to tell, but then again, who ever does with writing?

Wednesday:

Bike Cleaned For Con

We took off on a Wednesday afternoon and the idea was that I would follow my buddy and his wife down to the Con on my motorcycle. I assumed we would become separated and that I wouldn't be able to stomach the traffic and would begin splitting lanes to make up time, of which I was correct. The idea still being, that if anything were to happen to me along the way, they would be behind me at some point to pick up the pieces of either my bike or I.

About an hour and a half in to the two and a half hour ride I regretted this decision. I was safely (as safely as you can) splitting the car-pool lane at about 40 MPH as traffic was slowed down to around 15 MPH around me. Suddenly, a man crossed the quadruple yellow without signaling and came into the lane of which I was occupying and grazed my tire before even looking to see where he was merging. He almost immediately realized his mistake and hopped back into his lane but the momentum shift of my bike threw my front tire off of balance and began to skid around the road.

Now, the rest of this is my assessment of what happened because I had to piece the event back together due to it all taking place within about 5 very unclear seconds. Which upon retrospect felt like an eternity. I regained control of my front tire by wrestling it with my arms but had inadvertently locked up the back brakes and my ass-end began to slip and slide wildly. I instantly disengaged the brake but my bike was already all over the road. I plowed down my right foot to regain balance and upon doing so, threw the bike in the opposite direction to which I corrected with my left foot.

Eventually this process of ping-ponging back and forth resulted in my not going down, but it severely hurt my already weak (another story in itself) left ankle. The driver then waved apologetically at me to which I returned his gesture with a middle-finger and drove on to the next gas station where I sat for a half-hour and re-examined the all-too-late idea of riding to San Diego. Inevitably I got back up, dusted myself off, and went back on the road. I met up with the rest of my crew once I got there and immediately went to the most important task: Drinking. I checked my bags and headed off to the hotel bar to knock back a few before attempting the mile long walk to the con.

If you've never been there, the size of this convention can not be overstated, and it is rumored to double next year. The eye cannot help but dart back and forth between over-weight men who have never had a lay in their life, to amazing bodied cos-play girls showing less clothes than they do skin. The place somehow encapsulates both what it is to be a true basement-dwelling, masturbatory nerd, as well as the now embraced "geek culture" consisting of heavily CGI'd comic-book adaptations and video games. It is truly two sides of one weird coin, and somehow they both achieve some strange symbiotic existence.

Waking In Car

Wednesday night was child's play. We went out drinking, ran around town with our friends, ran into people we would rather avoid, made new friends, created a few enemies and generally pursued the most aggressive destruction of our livers possible. However, with our personal excess never being enough, the rest of our crew winded down early for an easy first night. The pussies. So my buddy and I took the whiskey and beer and headed to have our own private party in his car located in the parking garage. We laughed, we over-talked one another, got stupidly sentimental, and ultimately passed out for the night in the front seats. To many, this must sound like a weird, terrible thing to do.... to us, it seemed second nature.

Thursday:

Crazy Christians

I woke up that morning with a hangover... go figure. Upon sweating our asses off at 9AM, my friend and I separated and returned to our hotels rooms to shower and prepare for the next days offerings. He went to his hotel directly outside the parking garage, and I went off to my hotel a mile away. To say that I stunk was a colossal understatement, but that did not stop the crazy Christians outside from hounding me with "Get Out of Hell Free" cards. One of them must have smelled me because he turned to me on his megaphone and uttered "I'd never turn my back on one of those stinking homosexuals, you never know what they might do behind you". Way to represent your lord buddy. Bigoted asshole.

Eventually I got cleaned up and made my way back to the show floor where I had to wait outside for my credentials. Now, I look a bit aggressive with my tattoo'd arms and punk-vest with leopard print on it, but with that said, the many, many ways that this is interpreted to outsiders is often hilarious. For example, I was standing in line for my badge when I notice a couple looking at me and whispering. No biggie, happens all the time, however... they were in hardcore bondage gear. The male ventures over to me and asks, "Hey man, do you like Adult fun?". He fully had my attention, after-all, what a way to introduce yourself to a human being. "Sure, why not?" I replied. He then explained to me how he was the head of a club that sponsored "Discreet Adult Parties" and invited me to attend. I of course asked, "Wait... is this an orgy?". "Well", he replied, "We don't use that word, we just get together in a group, wear protection and see where the night takes us." I laughed and said "It IS an orgy!" of which he did not seem to find quite as funny as I did and he moved on.

How I Ended Up Frozen To a Dock

One random Winter day during my 14th year of existence, I woke up on a dock in Cave Run Kentucky with very little memory of how exactly I got there. What I do remember is that it was freezing cold, my head hurt, and it seemed to be early in the AM hours of the fog-laden lake. After taking a moment to analyze my lot in life, I tried to raise up and rub my weery head, but I could not... my arm was stuck. I rolled over and looked down as to see what had taken hold of my stuck arm. It was when I viewed the devastation to my arm that I began to question exactly how I had gotten myself into this situation.... and slowly, partial-memories flooded back into my consciousness.

My first thought was the last thing I could fully recollect which was riding in the back of my fathers Ford Expedition, sat directly behind my then step-sister and her boyfriend, and sitting next to his brother Mike, while my father was driving the beast with an attached cigar boat trailing wildly behind. We were on our way to his house boat. Dearest Dad was weaving maniacally between trucks while doing 85 as we all sat in the back passing back and forth a bottle of Apple Pucker and chasing it down with a case of nut brown ale that we had just bought for the trip.

By the time we had completed the 4.5 hour trip, we were all loaded, save for Father who was only half in the bag due to his being "responsible" and drinking only during the final hour-long leg of the journey. When we finally got to the house boat, we quickly unloaded and shortly thereafter began an impromptu game of "Up and Down the River". Now, I'm sure this game has rules in some book, and I'm sure someone cares about them... however we did not, we played the Jack Roush way. This consisted of passing out five cards per person involved, then turning the remaining cards up one at a time, and anyone that had a pairing card had to take a shot of Pucker. Generally most people would get 3/4 through the game before relieving the high-fructose inebriate from their churning stomach. Good times.

However, we were old hat's at the game, and managed to put two games of it under our belt.... and then came the whiskey... Jim Beam precisely. After about 4-5 shots, my father who had been at work all day went back into his private bedroom and crashed. That's when the fun began, Mike and I heard some faint yelling across the lake, the more we listened, the more it began to sound like females... so naturally we went to inquire as to what they were doing.

When we finally found the sources of the squeels down a random dock, we were disapointed to see that there were only two females and they both were taken, however the other 3 guys with them seemed to be drunk frat boys and down to drink with Mike and I... which my being 14 probably doesn't say much as to the caliber of human beings they were. We were drunk and I was once again drinking people nearly twice my age under the table... a talent that has lasted my entire life. It was around this time that I noticed a few of them were on another "plain" so to speak, I asked the guy to my left what was up with them and he informed me that they were tripping on ecstacy... it was around this time that I really began to lose my grip on reality, but I was later informed that I didn't in fact take anything that night besides smoking a little grass... but I honestly cannot tell you what happened in the next 4 hours. To hear the tale though, it involved me pissing off of what I thought was their boat onto the dock, when in actuality, it was the other way around and I got kicked off for my pissing on their boat.

So there I found myself the next morning, still-drunk, frozen to the dock... in what was apparently my own vomit. My arm literally a vomit-sickle containing a gross combination of last night's steak and my own bile. I tried to pick up my arm, but it was met with strong resistance. It was obviously early AM, and though my father didn't mind my drinking, I knew that I had to get to bed before he got up, for if he found me in this state in front of his neighboring house-boaters... he would be none too pleased to say the least. I briefly considered throwing water to melt the vomit-sickle encapsulating my arm, but I had no way to get it. I even considered pissing on my own arm to melt it, but I didn't feel like dealing with the explanation that may come along with being caught in such an act. So I held my breath, looked away, and ripped my flesh off of the dock.

Not as much of my skin was removed as I had feared while enduring the pain, matter of fact only a small patch was noticeably seeping with blood, most of it just looked as if I had a massive rash. It was the huge rush of endorphins that accompanied the pain combined with the fact that I was still drunk from the night before made me fall back to the ground as soon as I stood up. It was due to this momentary lapse of consciousness that caused me to not realize that my Dad was standing there on the bow of the boat. "Hey boy, what'd you get sick or somin?" I looked down, the vomit was beginning to glisten and thaw in the morning rays of sunshine, enough to where I felt safe in acting as I had just spewed it up. I stood up, hid my arm behind my body, mumbled "Yes sir, it was a rough one", immediately took a shower, drank a beer, and started attempting to imbibe enough whiskey to force the pain away.