Funko Pop! Vinyls are all over the place. Three booths side-by-side are guts overflowing with the generic looking figures. Turn again and another booth is chockas with the stuff. Blank eyes for all the aisles to see.
Beyond teeming to the gills we’re standing still hinting at the notion of moving forward. It’s a whole weekend of costumes, get-ups and cosplay seeing how long you can shuffle on a mosey before needing to go to the toilet again.
Corrals are everywhere. The lines to the lines are lined with rope after rope. The registration and ticket pickup area, from at least the Thursday, has no trouble making snakes of the situation. The entire building is decked in black and yellow. Up from just a quarter.
Trinkets tinkle from the bottom of the tote bags. Let’s call them keyrings, for the plastic they’re made of do not look like they’ll hold onto anything under the lightest of strain. A fantasy novel where the spine meets a cracking margin leaving a visible sign of opening past the first page. A starter comic, that first taste of a series. These specific contents are gender-aligned.
Two bacon butterburgers for the price of one, bulldozing both into a single time slot. In those cardboard boxes and already cooling to the touch. Stack them nigh high to make full use of the box height. We're paying for calories here, and we'll get them in before the sluice is loose.
Lines into the convention are short to nothing. Unless you're in the morning throng baying at the doors before they open. Then you're in the crowded snake that worms its way around the food court and chokes the tables with the stench of ATMs sweating at the capacity, hoping to not fail or squander the bank too quick. They hold up. None showing signs saying they were tapped or broken. At least, not for long if they were.
Physically there are many empty seats in the ballroom. Sparse rows and columns. What takes place fills up the spirit and air, taking a breath and holding it with a conviction. They're still filing in, but the clock runs to the minute.
Parkinson's Law plays a side game at the 2014 Lexington Comic and Toy Convention. They may have twice the floor space to last year, but when twice the heaving masses turn up to shuffle through the aisles and booths you'd think otherwise.
Sitting large on a table, a pile of programs wait just outside the field of vision to the entrance. Lining up in the morning shuffles you right in front of it and thus, more likely to pick it up. Walk directly from the registration booth and chances drop down dramatically. The one thing missing from last year was knowing what was on and when if you didn't have a smartphone or a printer at home to sketch out the schedule. Large hold newsprint in your hand with the details and times, it's open to being missed this year because of placement. By the end of the second day just as many sit there as the Saturday crack.
With no less than five actors from the Zeo Eulerian circle it makes this convention a Power Rangers reunion. Jonny Fairplay is on his smartphone for the entire day and a man with haemorrhoids makes sure everyone gets a good look.
Someone has ripped off the nipples from one of the specimens. The photo shows one thing, the naked man in his skinned state shows another. That is, two spots on his bare chest where his nipples used to be. You can clearly see the recesses. Other than dust from other patrons, the base of the display is clean, void of any extra skin bits. So that's a souvenir someone's adding to their soup.
Compose a slithering skillet of the spinal fortitude as 12°C drops a load of ice palms outside before a minor rise to 15°C along and the across the escalators into the Lexington Convention Center. Empty tables in a ballroom lobby void of food and guts lays waste to those sitting, faces beat and done, this is only the afternoon and we have barely the undead braining it.
Scavenging meagre food scraps from the midnight meal crossing the Pacific Ocean to entertain the gut for the hours long layover fails to sustain the dancing attention-seeking portions of your brain. The Culture Beast needs a chomp. One fix is at the far end of the International Terminal of SFO.