I recently went to Comic-Con. It was fun.
Way too many people, but that’s how it goes when around eighty thousand
people, which would equal the entire population of Ogden, Utah, decides they
need to go be geeks with everyone else.
There were some serious flaws with the setup and crowd control, but
overall it was a good experience. I was
able to go to a number of writing panels which I hope actually do some
good.
While I was there I saw there was a Sci-Fi Speed Dating
thingamajig. Now, initially I thought to
myself, “Gus, you aren’t that desperate.
Don’t do it!” I said this out
loud next to a portly gentleman dressed as...well, I don’t know what he was
dressed as. It looked like he had
decided the best costume was one involving trash bags and an overdose of LA
Looks Gel on his thinning hair. Anyway,
he was munching on a churro and sort of looked at me funny. Since it was already awkward enough, I
snorted loudly and huffed away as if I had somewhere important to go.
After talking with my friends I decided I had nothing to
lose. At best, I would meet someone
interesting. At worst, I would lose two
hours of my life, hours that I could never get back, unless I developed the
ability to warp time. I tried that once
though, the warping time thing. I think
I passed out and broke my computer chair and destroyed a small village in the
Amazon. It’s all really hazy.
Anyway, I decide to do it.
Now, the first clue that I should have backed out was the notice that
guys had to pay money and the women didn’t.
This sort of fit the stereotype that all guy geeks and nerds are
desperate to pay cash for the possibility to meet interesting women. I was tired though, and probably needed food,
so I plopped down my ten dollars to a gentleman that fit the mold of the super
overweight nerd dressed in some sort of World of Warcraft outfit. In my head he became Captain Rotund, or Mage
Rotund. Anyway, he told me to come back
in two hours. So I wandered around some
more, bought some cool art, ate a protein bar and meandered back to the room
and got in line.
So there I was, in line with a bunch of other guys down a
corridor in the Salt Lake Convention Center.
It was at this moment that a second clue into the waste of time I was
about to partake in came into focus.
There were no air vents down this corridor. A bunch of guys – some fat, some creepy, some
skinny, and some normal – started sweating.
To top off the clue sundae, someone ripped a fart.
Stinky, sweaty guys trapped in a corridor with no air, and
now it smells like shit. At this point I
pulled out my phone and posted something along the lines of, “Either that is
the smell of desperation, or someone farted.”
To be honest, in that group of guys the smell could have easily been
mistaken for desperation instead of gas.
As I gasped for air, I started to look around at my
competition. I was dressed plainly in a
pair of jeans with a t-shirt that said “The Expendables,” which has the movie
cast dressed in red shirts from “Star Trek.”
I actually got a lot of positive comments on the shirt. Anyway, as I looked around I quickly began to
feel sorry for some of the women, which we could not see yet. There was the trash bag guy from earlier
behind me. He was sweating profusely,
mopping his brow with the back of his hand.
In his hand was some sort of staff or wand thing, which looked
absolutely ridiculous. It looked like he
took a BIC pen and taped a bunch of cardboard around it to form a triangle, and
then colored it black with a Sharpie.
There was the older guy with the creepy guy mustache and gigantic
glasses wearing jean shorts, long socks and a TNG (The Next Generation)
captain’s jacket. There were the skinny
kids next to me dressed as Booker from Bioshock Infinite and Batman. There was another overweight guy dressed as..
I can’t remember, but it looked hideous.
Now, I say this with a hint of self-satisfaction, but I am
happy that I have lost a great deal of weight.
Being around these other guys reminded me of why I lost all that
weight. I started to think to myself, I am perfectly normal compared to some of
these guys. I smiled and waited for Captain
Rotund to let us in.
Finally, after suffering through a few more minutes of
stench and sweat we were rushed into the room.
We were directed to take our seats across a woman and pin the nametag
with a number to our shirts. As I did so
it became glaringly obvious there was no way I was going to be able to speak to
all of the women. There must have been
seventy-five pairs, and you were only allowed three minutes to talk to someone.
So Captain Rotund lays out the rules and reminds guys to be
polite. He makes some awful jokes not
worth remembering, and then says, “Go!”
Now, imagine you are in a room with 149 other people who
immediately start saying “HI” at the same time.
It quickly became apparent that there was going to be little talking and
lots of yelling. Every conversation I had involved yelling and straining to
hear the other person. It would have
been funny if it wasn’t intentional.
I started yelling at the woman next to me, who didn’t seem
interested in me at all. Dressed in
jeans and simple Star Wars t-shirt, her blue eyes couldn’t be any more annoyed
that I was there. Still, I figured I might as well yell at her and start the
conversation.
“HI!” I screamed.
“I’M NUMBER 24!” She screamed
back at me, and we had some small yelling about the convention. After what seemed an eternity Captain Rotund counted down and we switched chairs.
What became apparent was that some women were not there to
do anything other than stare at you and not engage in questions. I would start by screaming a question about
their costumes, or what their favorite part of the Con was. They would answer, and then not ask me a
question in return. It was so
awkward. This is also a phenomenon I’ve
noticed with meeting women from dating sites.
I’m not saying all women are like this, but it’s so damn bizarre. Even if you aren’t physically attracted to
me, at least try to have a conversation, you know?
The worst was a really big woman dressed as Ursula from The Little Mermaid. It took me a second to remember the name, and
once I figured it out I told her that as a kid I loved that movie, but as an
adult I didn’t care for how Ariel was portrayed, and that in general most
female princesses are nothing but stereotypes of the bimbo girl who can’t do
anything or protect themselves. This
must have hit a nerve, because her purple eyes glared at me, and she crossed
her arms above her rolls. She stopped
engaging me at that point and stared around me.
Realizing I hit a nerve, I stopped yelling at her and decided to wait
out the awkwardness.
There was the woman dressed as Wonder Woman who couldn’t
remember if Wonder Woman was a DC or Marvel comic (a normal person wouldn’t
care about the difference, but to us geeks/nerds, it matters), there was the
cute woman dressed as a Final Fantasy character, the woman dressed in wings and
leather, another woman in a simple t-shirt with a tattoo of some sort of squid thing
on her arm, the woman who had to be in her fifties, and some others. I didn’t find a great deal of them
interesting or engaging, so I jotted down their numbers and hoped that this
would end quickly.
What I found extremely annoying was Captain Rotund’s lack of
an ability to count. I swear there were
times where I only screamed at a woman for a minute or two. It eventually felt like a chore, the
screaming and the yelling. I asked a
woman who was dressed as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock what her favorite part of the Con was, and I swear I
heard, “Grabbing Q’s ballsack.” Knowing
that couldn’t have been the correct answer, but not polite enough to ask her again
what she really said, I just nodded politely and responded to her question
about my favorite part of the Con.
Finally, it was over.
I had yelled at about thirty women in the span of 60 minutes. Of those thirty, I only jotted down the
dating number of about five. The low
number of those I found interesting was the realization that the more
attractive women most likely wouldn’t respond to me (being brutally honest
here), and the rest I had no desire to ever yell at them again. Still, I jotted down my name and number on
their corresponding dating sheet at the opposite side of the room.
It was at this point the creepiest guy there decided to show
his true colors. While the rest of us
sat down and waited to be free a middle-aged guy with a Hawaiian shirt, jean
shirts and long socks was writing down his number on every single woman’s
dating sheet. I didn’t think it was
possible to get creepier than the guy with the Trent Lott glasses and jean
shorts wearing the TNG jacket, but I was wrong.
Everyone looked over at him awkwardly, and I cringed, feeling even more
sorry for the women who might have been normal.
To top off the awkward cake, while we were waiting for the
dude to finish, Captain Rotund decided to do some “impersonations.” I quote the word because he didn’t
impersonate anyone well at all. He
called himself an amateur comedian, which would have been a polite thing to
call him. Imagine if Robert DeNiro tried
to do impersonations of Gollum and other famous Sci-fi characters. It was a complete failure.
Then it managed to get worse. How, you ask? Well, I will tell you. Someone asked him to impersonate Barack
Obama. Instead of impersonating Obama,
he decided to impersonate a badly informed talking head. He began to rail on immigration, the “Kenyan”
president, and the budget. It went on
for minutes, as the crowd groaned. The levels
of awkward jumped to 11 as Captain Rotund turned into Captain Asshole. Finally someone told him the creepy guy was
done, and he finally shut up. We were
told we could pick up our dating sheets and could leave.
So I picked up my sheet.
To my lack of surprise, there were only a few numbers and names on
there. Sadly a few of the numbers were
women that I didn’t find interesting or attractive, but one the Final Fantasy
character put down her #. A woman I
didn’t even get a chance to yell at also jotted down her #.
So was it worth it?
Did any positives come from the experience? Yes and no.
It was worth it because I get to write this blog post about it. It was worth it because it boosted my
confidence. It was worth it because it
reminded me that all the weight I’ve lost separates me from those who don’t
treat their bodies like the temples they should be worshipping at. It reminded me that I am not that
awkward. It was not worth it because
nothing came from any of the numbers.
The one woman who I didn’t talk to lives in L.A., and the Final Fantasy
woman was 23, a little too young for me.
Would I do it again?
I don’t know. If I could get down
to my goal weight, perhaps. I’m not
saying that it matters as much as it used to, but it certainly helps. Given a choice between a bunch of nerds and
geeks who have similar interests, a person can choose between those who are fit
compared to those who aren’t.
If I go next year I would LOVE to dress as The Joker from
The Dark Knight, but that would require a purple suit. Maybe I can find a cheap one. At this point I would only go to get more
writing material.
