Posted by I'd rather be in Red Bank at dialup-209.245.41.178.sandiego1.level3.net on July 21, 2000 at 00:10:05:
This year I was lucky enough to get a job working for Elite Show Services at the Con. My friend Jess and I were gonna type up these badge sticker thingies. Our first day of work was on Wednesday just when the Exhibitors were showin up. You shoulda seen all of these freaks. But it was pretty cool typing up some famous peoples' badges. For example, I typed up Bryan Singer's, everyone from Oni Press (I called one of the editors a tracer and asked why the lost scene took so long), the SCI FI Channel (they explicitly told me to type it in all caps with no dash), IGN.com, Ben Edlund (creator of The Tick), I sat next to a girl who typed the Graphitti badges, and these two guys who make 37 In A Row Magazine (they said I am the only person to correctly guess the origin of their name). That was Wednesday. Thursday started off terribly, but ended nicely. Jess and I were supposed to report to work at 5 fucking AM! We get to the Center at 4:30 and the goddamn parking garage is closed, so we go park at an ACE Parking lot and fork over the 4 bucks. We walk inside and literally stand around for an hour and a half. In that time, we moved one box and typed 4 badges. Soon enough business was picking up, though. When it was slow, Jess and I kept ourselves awake by thinking of what would be the coolest thing that could happen. Jess immediately says if Kevin were to walk by. I said it would be even better if Kevin walked by and gave us donuts. Our shift ended at 11 and we were eager to enter the Con. We walked back to car, grabbed the camera, Banky hat, etc., then returned to the Con. We just walked around for roughly an hour. We stopped by the VA booth and saw Bryan, but no Kevin yet. I then went to the Tick booth and got a comic signed by one of the writers, Marc Silvia. He was pretty cool, he didn't think of spoon though. We then were about to leave and saw that Kevin was signing stuff, so we quickly got in line. I just had my Banky hat, but that was enough. I talked with these guys in line about VA 5 and Fletch, and past Cons. Some guy was complaining about the line clogging up the aisle, so the format was pretty weird. Bryan and Walt took care of it though. I soon reached the front of the line. Kevin could not have been any cooler. He wrote on my cap: "Matt, From Banky's head to yours. Kevin Smith" I then got a picture with him and that was it. We left on a high note and then bought some breakfast burritos.
Matto