In 2020, FanX Salt Lake (formerly Salt Lake Comic Con) got cancelled because cramming thousands of people into an indoor space was frowned upon during COVID’s most spreadable spell. However, last fall the con happened, and of course we had tickets. How did it feel to place my body in crowded hallways and exhibit halls after 18 months of staying at least six feet away from the one-person crowds at the grocery store? How did others feel about having their bodies packed into hallways and exhibit halls? Read on and all herd attitudes will be revealed.
Although masks were required at FanX Salt Lake, which was at least as protective as a fortify spell, being in those throngs of people made me uncomfortable and anxious. Was this because of the ongoing threat COVID’s Delta variant posed? (Omicron was just a twinkle in its hosts’ RNA at that point.) Was my apprehension due to the lingering misgivings associated with avoiding people for a year and a half? Or had the crowd calluses I’d built up for years to protect myself from the claustrophobia and irritation kindled by swarms simply softened over COVID’s isolation?
William Zabka, the villain from The Karate Kid, now anchors the Cobra Kai series with his awkward, outdated coolness.
How about the masses? Were they willing to put past precautions aside? According to FanX organizers, ticket sales for the 2021 event were within 5% of those from non-pandemic years. (That’s a real term now?) There seemed to be less attendees than normal, but there were thousands more than I’d seen over the last 500 days, so I felt like I was roaming the corridors of Gideon. We were surprised how filled the exhibit hall was, not much different from a typical Friday afternoon at this convention. Yet, the Grand Ballroom was much emptier than usual. Were attendees reluctant to sit close to others, or were the panels just less interesting to most?
We didn’t stay at FanX for an extended time as we were worried exposure to hundreds of people might ruin an upcoming trip to Hawaii, but we were around long enough to get a picture with William Zabka, do a little shopping, and attend the Cobra Kai panel from an empty corner of the ballroom.
This was our shortest FanX experience of all time, but I’d like to think it helped me acclimate back to normality. And yes, hairying up my feet, stringing the One Ring around my neck, gluing on hobbit ears, and adventuring around a massive conglomeration of booths and people all fit under my banner of normality.
Ready to have a heart attack? Jason and I attended FanX in
Salt Lake City this fall. Anyone need a defibrillator? Maybe a hypospray of
vasopressors for the shock? No? Was FanX nerdy? Yes. Was it nutty? Yes. Here’s
how it fanned out.
Notwithstanding many of the characters he’s played, Kiefer Sutherland was incredibly nice and personable.Pearl Mackie was easy to relate to and amusing.
The two of us got pictures with Megan Follows, Pearl Mackie,
Matthew Lewis, and lost boys Kiefer Sutherland and Jason Patric. From the likes
of Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Jason Isaacs, and Charles Martinet we
acquired autographs. We attended panels featuring the rowdy characters of Evermore
and approachable stars like Pearl Mackie and Matthew Lewis. We found the
celebrities we interacted with this time to be real human beings, even the ones
who regularly portray aliens.
Nerdiness need not be fictional. It was cool to climb into a real cockpit.Matthew Lewis was endearingly humble despite the multitude of girls drooling over him.
We embraced cosplay on two of the con’s days. On one of
those we dressed as Strawberry Shortcake and the Peculiar Purple Pieman of
Porcupine Peak. Those that recognized us, and there were more than we anticipated,
were treated to one of the Peculiar Purple Pieman’s pastries… well, Hostess’
really, but that shady pieman was happy to take crust credit.
It’s a Mario!
We met up with friends who were also attending at J. Wong’s
Thai and Chinese Bistro. Eating drunken noodles and discussing which comic
artists billow capes correctly all while donning an Auror’s wand and wig- that’s
the stuff the finest temporal causality loops are made of.
FanX always has surprises rolling around every corridor.
Tickets for next fall’s FanX just went on sale. It’s sure to
tickle your ear lobes. You may find us there along with over 100,000 other
caped crusaders and masked troopers.
Jason and I hadn’t been to San Diego Comic Con for a few
years until this July. To be honest, we hadn’t pined for it much due to the raging
current of humanity we had to ford the last couple times we attended. This year,
we tried for passes without being terribly committed to the notion of going.
When we acquired Sunday-only tickets the debate continued. Eventually, I
pointed out that we both like San Diego and suggested Comic Con be just a
paragraph in our San Diego visit. What an excellent plan! That paragraph is
below.
We stayed in La Jolla for the first part of our trip. La Jolla is a charming town to walk around with lots of yummy food and cute shops. It’s even more charming when its 70-something weather is nearly 30 degrees cooler than what you left back home. We sampled as many of its culinary offerings as gastrointestinally possible via Puesta, Catania, Cove Point, and NINE-TEN.
Brown Pelicans faced extinction in the 1970s and were only taken off the endangered species list in 2010.
Our wanderings went beyond satisfying our spoiled stomachs to
satisfying our curiosity. We meandered on the shore from Shell Beach to the La
Jolla Tide Pools searching for, you guessed it, tide pools. Predictably, we
found shells at Shell Beach and tide pools at the La Jolla Tide Pools. I
suppose whoever named the beaches in La Jolla had the creative capacity of a
piece of carpet. At the tide pools, chiton, hermit crabs, anemones, shore
crabs, mussels, limpets, little fish, and snails enjoyed their comfy homes in
rock channels as we gawked from above. I find these glimpses into the workings
of a watery underworld typically unseen absorbing.
At the Children’s Pool, we encountered a striped shore crab that agreeably let me take pictures of it being bubbly.
We also spent some time in San Diego proper starting with Balboa Park. In all our trips to San Diego, Jason and I had never explored Balboa’s 16 museums and 1,200 acres beyond the zoo. This time, we took on a tiny fraction of what is available at Balboa through the Japanese Friendship Garden and the Museum of Photographic Arts.
La Jolla’s cliffs are cratered with caves and other scenic gaps.
The Japanese Friendship Garden is peaceful and aesthetically
balanced making use of a steep ravine to create layers of living display. Its koi
pond contains the biggest koi I’ve ever encountered. These “show-quality”
specimens make other koi look like Goldfish crackers. Did you know that koi are
a symbol of longevity because they can live over 200 years? Nope, I didn’t know
that either.
La Jolla Cove is a marine refuge area. Apparently, it gets quite fetid at times due to an overabundance of bird feces.
Being a photographer and photography nerd, I loved the
Museum of Photographic Arts. Its collections aren’t extensive, but I found the
exhibits on Contemporary Photography from Australia and Hidden Worlds fascinating.
The section on spirit photography, a popular form of shooting back in the 1800s
expressly for capturing the images of ghosts, was particularly intriguing. You’ve
got to give those photographers props for successfully tampering with negatives
and using double exposures to create fraudulent phantoms over a century before
Photoshop could turn fat rolls into nothing more than apparitions.
The Japanese Friendship Garden fuses San Diego’s climate with traditional Japanese garden ideals.
One evening after dinner, we hurried off to the Torrey Pines
Natural Reserve to do a short hike on the Guy Fleming Trail. In true Sabin
fashion, we finished this one right before darkness set in… with maybe a little
running at the end to beat the state rangers locking up for the night… maybe.
The U.S.S. Dolphin had a crew of 27. It felt too cramped for even one me.
The rest of our evenings, we spent back in La Jolla in the
company of a cozy fire as waves hurled themselves onto shore boulders with
crushing repetition. Those booming breakers, the sharp call of seagulls, and
the grainy gusts of the ocean followed us throughout our stay in La Jolla.
The Star of India, the oldest merchant ship still sailing, began her career as the Euterpe.
For one last pre-Comic-Con outing, we visited the Maritime
Museum of San Diego. The Maritime Museum contains nine boats and two
submarines. Its collection of vessels is diverse and pleasing to board. The U.S.S.
Dolphin, a submarine with nearly 40 years of service and the record for operating
depth, was the first we embarked. I barely survived 10 minutes in its constricted
passageways. I guess I can check sonar technician off my list of possible occupations.
The San Salvador, the first European vessel to reach America’s West Coast,
may be a giant by historical standards, but it certainly wasn’t a giant by
dimensional ones. A full-size replica of this, the first Spanish galleon that
sailed into San Diego in 1542, left me in awe of the big things that can happen
on small boats. The Star of India is the star of the Maritime Museum. It
is the oldest active merchant sailing ship in the world. It was built in 1863
and is still taken out at least once a year. In its 150 years, this craft has
circumnavigated the globe over 20 times and accepted such diverse roles as
carting immigrants to New Zealand, transporting lumber, and functioning as both
a salmon fishing vessel and cannery. Ships ahoy!
Our transporter experience was fun, but I’m not convinced it was worth the opportunity cost.
That brings us to our San Diego Comic Con day. This year was Comic Con’s 50th anniversary and something like our fifth time attending. Traditionally, Sunday is a bit slower day at Comic Con, but it was breaking down conventional barriers with human bodies this time. We waited in line over an hour and a half for a transporter experience, which was maybe worth the wait? I’m still not sure. Somehow, we bought a significant number of items for only having hours in the exhibit hall, like a special-edition Halloween hobbit hole and an articulated, 1:6-scale Picard action figure. It’s common knowledge that everyone needs a Halloween hobbit hole and Picard Barbie. As soon as we got back to our room, I fell asleep on the couch as determined to avoid any further human interaction as the Loch Ness Monster.
Going to San Diego for more than just the most famous comic
con on the planet meant we were bombarded by the saline and sweaty nearly
equally. Since I got a Picard Barbie out of it, that’s an equivalence I can
live with.
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