Sunday, July 23, 2006

Sunday Morning Con Blogging

I managed to avoid the main hall for most of yesterday...my reward for doing all those panels upstairs. But reports of people jammed together like (make up your own analogy) were common. Reportedly, the convention closed off registration at 1:00 PM and radio stations began telling folks not to bother showing up if they didn't have advance registration.

Apart from the crush, everyone seems to be having a very good time. The only unpleasantness I've witnessed in 3+ days here stems from people who are hired to direct traffic (foot traffic within the convention center, the automotive kind outside) and somehow turn into screaming, power-mad maniacs. You could almost forgive them if they actually seemed competent at controlling that traffic but the ones who yell the loudest are the ones who are making the problem worse, not better, especially at the intersections outside the con. Something about donning an orange vest seems to drain civility and I.Q. points from a man's mind.

I was very happy with my panels yesterday even though the most memorable part of the Golden/Silver Age gathering was probably Irwin Hasen, the artist responsible for Wildcat and Dondi, telling of how a gangster once got him a prostitute. Talk about your Secrets Behind the Comics.

Got a business-type meeting at ten so this will have to do for now. Stay cool, everyone.

• Posted at 9:39 AM · LINK

A Brief Comment

From the National Weather Service...

What a day Saturday! Highs were between 108 and 115 in most valley locations. Woodland Hills (formerly known as the Canoga Park/Pierce College site) reached 119 degrees...an all-time record since records began there in 1949. After a preliminary look at weather records...it appears that this may be the highest temperature ever recorded at an official observation site in Los Angeles County.

Amazingly, after abnormalities like this and Katrina, I still get "form" e-mails from Conservative friends telling me that there couldn't possibly be such a thing as Global Warming because Al Gore says there is, and Al Gore's the guy who said he invented the Internet and was the model for the hero in Love Story. That and a few quotes from scientists on the Exxon payroll seem to be the entire counter-argument, at least in my mail.

One of the things that really annoys me about politics these days — to the point of my doubting the moral integrity of those who pull this scam — is this rush to spin everything an opponent says as a lie, even if you have to misquote them a little to do so. And worse is when they make the leap to "And if he lied about this, we can presume everything else he says is wrong." I don't even believe that about Bush and Cheney and, God knows, many of their public utterances could be easily classified as falsehoods.

Supposedly, we had to invade Iraq if there was even a 1% chance that terrorists had Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's setting the bar pretty low but if we buy that, we have to take the threat of Global Warming seriously if there's even a 1% chance that it's valid. And does anyone think there isn't even a 1% chance of that? If so, I bet they weren't in Woodland Hills yesterday.

• Posted at 9:19 AM · LINK