Shit.
Shooting starts today. 6p.m. call time. Got to head into Emeryville first, then to Berkeley, where I get to hang out with the BeanLuva for a bit.
Food Is Not Love will be returning on October first. This does not directly involve me, but I do have interests other than myself... I swear.
On a separate note, I swore up & down that I was going to share stories about the San Diego Comic Convention, but I never really did. So here, for your enjoyment & terror, is a spectacle I witnessed on the first day I was at the Con.
It was Thursday evening, 45 minutes before the floor closed, and the convention was buckling under the weight of record attendance. I'm just trying to get out of the building at this point, which at the lightest points of this years Con was a Herculean feat of endurance; fighting through crowds of hypnotized, drooling geekdom.
I made it to about the center of the convention floor, when I hit a wall. A wall of people. Not just the shuffling morons that are so common, but an amoebic mass. I tried to fight my way around it, but it kept shifting, and growing.
What the fuck?
Finally, I asked one of the members of this mass what they were playing at. "What the hell are you all standing here for?"
He reply was terse, and spoken so quickly that I almost missed it. He never shifted his eyes away from the center of the mass, as though he were homing in on a kill. He said, simply, "Jessica Alba."
Oh for fuck's sake... you have to be kidding me.
45 minutes before they close down & these assholes are bringing Jessica Alba into the dead center of the convention floor?
This won't end well.
I move along, another chunk of my faith in humanity sliced away.
It took me a good ten minutes to find the other end of the mass, and with it my hope for escape. But it was no good. Just as my heart swelled with the knowledge that Outside was near, they brought her out.
Holy fuck... There it was; one of humanities ugliest faces.
No, not Jessica Alba, she's kind of cute. I mean the crowd, as she drew near.
They went apeshit. Fully grown, adult human beings -into their 30s & 40s- were holding their diapered children over their heads, so that the children might gaze upon her.
??????????????
No, I am not exaggerating, I am not making this up for the sensationalism.
These wretched beasts were holding their babies aloft, as though her visage would heal their meagre lives. I couldn't believe it, but there it was.
I just muttered, "People, she's not Jesus; she's a girl with a cute butt."
I would have screamed it, but I didn't have enough will to live at that point.
______________
Wasn't that uplifting bit of joy, eh kids?
Next time around I'll probably tell you a story about the Warner Bros. party, or about Neil Gaiman & Henry Selick.
Now, I've got shit to do.
But my god, Metallica's Black Album sucks. Fuck... it's really horrible.
