All I really have to say about the "Ground Zero Mosque" debacle

...can be said in my friend Daryl's photo essay.

Also, it's not a Mosque, it's a community center, and the outrage is over something equivalent to putting a YMCA near the Murrah building in Oklahoma City.

End of story.

Milo Ventimiglia Is Dangerous With An Easel

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was when I got to meet Milo Ventimiglia. Of course, in true Stapler fashion, it happened in an...odd way...



He was lovely afterwards, however, and apologized to my friend and me. And then he took a picture with me!

NY Comic Con: Well Done.

Oh my.

I count this weekend a success. I slept a total of nine hours the entire time, the alcohol gods blessed my liver with imperviousness (not always a guarantee), my mother demonstrated a level of fierceness I can only hope to achieve, and I had an absolute blast.

I saw so many people who I never get to see.

I got to people watch at a convention, which really? Is one of my favorite things to do. The beauty of conventions is that people totally let their id out. Or at least, their inner Spiderman. Or Indiana Jones. Man, there were a lot of Indiana Joneses. And even though I personally have no problem with it, I know many people will be overjoyed to hear that I saw more normally-dressed Princess Leias than Slave Bikini Leias. (Leia choked Jabba with her chain. If that's not owning it, I don't know what is.)

I was pretty impressed with this show. Each year, Reed Exhibitions gets the hang of running a large scale comics convention a little more. They needed more floor space, yeah, but hey, even San Diego could use more floor space. The only problems I saw this year were a shortage of people managers and bad panel scheduling.

A friend of mine was in line to meet Milo Ventimiglia on Saturday, at a booth near Aisle 1500. I stood with her for a bit, and was appalled at both the way the line was completely blocking the aisle we were next to, as well as the sheer rudeness of the people trying to get through. People pushed, shoved, and knocked us with bags, with barely a mumbled apology. I stood with her for a good fifteen minutes, and it was only towards the end of that time when a member of the Con Staff showed up with some volunteers as she struggled to explain line control and traffic management to them. (Really? It's that hard to understand the concept of "Separate the line from here to here so that people can get through"? Seriously, the kids she had with her totally didn't get it.) I'd had enough of that particular shenanigan, so I moved on when the other friend who I'd directed to my location arrived. I have a sneaking suspicion that line control was an issue in a lot of places.

For instance, I also almost got caught in the Saturday 4pm Panel Kerfuffle.

I was hoping to hit the Quickstop Entertainment panel, not for the Kevin Smith content, but to see Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Storm. When I got downstairs to the hallway, I made it only so far before I was told I could go no further. No explanation was given.

I walked around to a different area, and discovered a potentially dangerous situation. The hallway was being blocked off, and the escalators were not running. Behind the escalators was about 20 feet more of hallway, and then walls, and the security team was barking at the amoeba of people I was in to "move back! move back!" This made me nervous, as there were easily about 30 people around me, and not much further back to go. I made the executive decision to go back upstairs to the con floor, because it was too easy to imagine that situation getting worse. I got more nervous on that point when the security guard told me I had to get back as I was trying to get around the escalator to walk back up on it. Thankfully, he let me pass when I said that was my intent, but well, that could have gone pretty badly, you know?

I didn't find out what had caused the problem--bad panel management--until today. Much as NYCC wants to be, it's not SDCC yet. I'm not sure it can ever fully be so. I don't know the full offerings of the Javits Center, but it doesn't seem to have its own version of Hall H or Ballroom 20. One of the saving graces of the SD Convention Center is that by having several such large spaces, it removes a few thousand people from the traffic flows with each panel. Furthermore, the center's staff, as well as the convention's staff have traffic flow down to a science. I know that neither the Javits' nor the convention's staff have the experience to handle that yet. The larger issue, however, is that I'm not sure that the Javits even has the layout for such specialized crown management. You can't simply just go in one door and exit the other side like in San Diego.

So uh...I guess maybe scheduling two "Women in ______" panels against each other was the least of the worries?

COMIC CON AHOY!

Soon, it will be out the door with me!

If you see a 5' brunette with a red stapler tote bag, hey! That'll be me!

Feel free to say hi. :)

Tragedy Tomorrow, A Debate Tonight!

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: “Is Muslim Immigration a Threat to Democracy?

I'm not making this shit up, folks.

Come on out. It's gonna be a DOOZY.

Lolita Bar.

Corner of Allen and Broome.

8pm.

Admission is free, the booze is not.

Tell 'em Stapler sent ya.

We Are All Nerds

We are currently witnessing a paradigm shift.

Comic book movies are breaking box office records.

Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction are becoming more and more popular.

Fashion trends have otherwise stylish people wearing the shirt you threw out fifteen years ago.

The Geek are truly Inheriting The Earth.

And I plan on documenting it.

Every non-geeky person I see reading a comic book, a science fiction or fantasy novel, wearing a genre t-shirt, or sporting any other trapping of a geek, I will photograph and publish here. (With their permission, of course!)

I give you J, my first example...


23rd St, 8/29/07

This has been simultaneously posted at the official We Are All Nerds blog!

How To Compliment A Lady

My hair is streaky pink and blonde with ever-emerging brown roots. I know that this marks me as Other in any number of ways.

It also looks interesting, artistic, and if I may be so egotistical, fucking cool.

I received two comments on my hair in the last 24 hours, and while the actual words used did not match my emotional reactions to them, the ways in which they were given dictated such.

Yesterday, I went to a fancy tea with some lovely fannish ladies I know.

Outside the hotel, a late-30s/early-40s woman said, "Oh wow, excuse me, how many colors are in your hair?" There was a note of awe in her voice that suggested that even if she didn't like pink hair, per se, she appreciated the uniqueness that two-weeks-out-from-dyeing hair can have. She even said as much.

Her comment, while not explicitly a "I like the way your hair looks" comment, was said politely and with a tone of respect, and it made me feel good for the rest of the afternoon.

This morning, as I turned the corner to get to the subway, a dude called out at me, "Ooh baby, I love the way your hair looks like that, yeah!" (Or some similar Smarmadon sentence.)

I found myself wanting to shout, "NOT YOURS!" at him, as he seemed hipster enough to know LOLspeak when he heard it.

I contented myself with musing on the differences between what had been said to me, and how the less "complimentary" of the two comments had felt so much better.

My City Keeps Bleeding

"Remains of 9/11 Victims Were Used to Fill Potholes, Contractor Says"

One day, I'll sort out how I feel about September 11th, 2001.

I'll sort out how I feel about how the city and the nation has changed since that day.

I'll sort out the guilt I still feel, almost six years later, that I was upstate at college, and not here to comfort my family, or even do anything immediately to help.

I'll sort out the horror and panic I felt when I accidentally took the Path train right into the site, totally unaware that Ground Zero is the terminus.

Today, however, is not that day.