Monday, July 21, 2003

Because Folks Are Asking...

Next year's Comic-Con International is July 22-25, 2004. Same place, same exhibit hall, higher prices, probably more people. If you're driving there on the 405, leave now.

• Posted at 11:32 PM · LINK

How Big Was The Convention?

My friend Tom Galloway just did the following computations. I don't guarantee the math but Tom is usually right, and it sure felt this big...

This year, there were 52 aisles on the Dealer's Floor at San Diego. That doesn't include the Art Show area at one end.

From the floorplans at the convention center website, each hall is roughly 100 yards wide. Let's assume the .25-.33 mile distance from one end of the Dealer's Floor to the other (which took me 7.75 minutes to walk late Sunday afternoon...and that's without stopping along the way) gets lost in the noise of aisles that don't go all the way from one side to the other. And we'll include the Art Show area in that noise as well.

So that means that to walk the Dealer's Floor so that you went through all of every aisle, you'd walk 5,200 yards. Since a yard is three feet, and there are 5,280 feet in a mile, to see everything in the Dealer's Floor, you'd have to walk 3 miles.

And that's not counting how far you'd have to walk to get something decent to eat. Or to find a men's room. Frankly, I think they need to install a monorail.

• Posted at 9:10 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Paul Krugman discusses the notion that it's said to be unpatriotic to question our leadership in wartime but apparently not unpatriotic for them to "cook the books" with regard to intelligence reports.

• Posted at 9:02 PM · LINK

Public Appeal

About eight thousand people (it seemed) took photos at some of the events I hosted at San Diego, most notably the gathering of Ray Bradbury, Forry Ackerman and Julie Schwartz, as well as the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. A couple of folks on those panels would love to have copies of such photos, and I wouldn't mind posting a few here myself. If you have such, please send them to me. The e-mail link is at the top of this page. Thanks.

• Posted at 7:52 PM · LINK

Red Dress Run

Early Friday evening at the Comic-Con, you may have encountered a mass of people, mostly male, running through the streets wearing red dresses. Amazingly, this had nothing to do with the convention. This was The Original Red Dress Run.

• Posted at 11:40 AM · LINK