Fear and Loathing at FAN EXPO 08

This past weekend i worked at a large convention in Toronto. It was called FAN EXPO 08 and for Friday Saturday and Sunday thousands of comic, anime, horror and science fiction fans all gathered in one giant room to buy things, meet celebrities and dress like fucking assholes. It is a display of everything that disgusts and shames me as a comic book fan about the culture and industry that i feel (for the most part) produces extremely relevant and socially important media . Every year i spend time reading under ground and indie books and regarding them as serious litterature and researching artisits and illusrators trying my hardest to hide from the social perspective of being lumped into the same category as the people we see at these conventions. The nerds. the ones we mock in movies and televison. The Ones who care about bullshit. More concerned with collection and condition and signed copies rather than good narritive story telling coupled with percise and interesting art. Every year i spend my time telling myself that i am not part of this demographic. That comics are a mature medium. And every year at FAN EXPO my confidence is shattered. Into 50 000 peices by fat fucks in skin tight spider man costumes. I could go on for paragraphs about all the things that go on at a convention. And to be honest i wouldnt scratch the surface. Instead while i was there i took note of the funnyest things i was whitness to.

1) A guy who bought a replica ninja sword from me took out his wallet from a fanny pack that was literally under neath his stomach. He had to lift up his fat to get at his fanny pack.
2) A girl dressed up as Princess Leia pretending to give a hand job and lick the balls of a guy dressed up as Darth Vader.
3) Bald guy with glasses wearing sweatpants cut off into shorts, socks pulled up to his knees, stark white reboks and a tattered wolverine t-shirt straight up sneezed all over his hot dog before eating it and spilling a combination of mustard and snot on his right tit.
4) Really creepy looking girl walking really slowy by herself down an isle sucking a wooden spoon.
5) 35 to 40 different vagina's eating 10 different kinds of colored spandex.
6) Five or six hairy fat guys (who didn't come together) dressed like sailer moon. Make up and skirts. The whole sha-bang. They looked like Russian hookers.
7) Super Mario taking a piss while a janitor try ed to un-clog a toilet mere feet away from him.
8) A hundred person line up to meet some broad from star trek: Deep Space Nine and a ten person line up to meet Buzz Aldrin, who has actually been in space.
9) A mother who clearly dressed up as an anime character to please her 12 year old daughter (who was dressed in the same fashion) looked me right in the eyes with sheer desperation and asked me for a cigarette.
10) Some fat creeper going around taking pictures of all the 14 years old girls who dressed up CLEARLY had his boner not only tucked up in his sweat pants waist band but also the black clip on strap of his fanny pack.

This is just the tip of the ice berg. I don't ever want to go back for fear that if there is a god and he is indeed vengeful and decides to send a message to the scum of the earth with a plague of locusts and a volcano, that is the first place that is going down.