(no subject)
This weekend was PAX. It was my second year there, first as a non-enforcer. Last year ended early, due to pinkeye. So that doesn't even fucking count. Got it? We won't count that.
PAX is… well, I won't say PAX is like home, although some of the advertising would argue that point. My home isn't several square blocks of downtown Seattle, and full of hour+ long lines. The lines at my home are mostly a few minutes long, tops, and usually for the bathroom, not to watch Wil Wheaton, Gabe, Tycho, and Scott Kurtz play D&D. But I digress… While it's not home, PAX is my people. Every one of those goddamn motherfuckers is "one of us". It certainly makes standing (and sitting) in those 90 minute lines a relative pleasure, when you can instantly open a conversation with a complete stranger, and automatically have common ground to work from. Shouts of "Mario Party DS!" would echo down the line, letting you know that someone was starting a game, and you could join in wirelessly. There were card games (not poker), board games (not monopoly) and smoked things (actually someone was sharing their homemade bison jerky with the surrounding members of the line).
These were my people, and it felt really good to be immersed in my culture in a way that I never really had been before. For three days, Kim and I were there, we watched the panels and the games, we played and talked and participated. It was wondrous! I've been to cons for an afternoon before, but each of them represented a vertical component, a subculture of geekdom. PAX embraces the much broader spectrum of geeks.
Out in the real world, we're respected.
Among our own kind, we're understood.
PAX is… well, I won't say PAX is like home, although some of the advertising would argue that point. My home isn't several square blocks of downtown Seattle, and full of hour+ long lines. The lines at my home are mostly a few minutes long, tops, and usually for the bathroom, not to watch Wil Wheaton, Gabe, Tycho, and Scott Kurtz play D&D. But I digress… While it's not home, PAX is my people. Every one of those goddamn motherfuckers is "one of us". It certainly makes standing (and sitting) in those 90 minute lines a relative pleasure, when you can instantly open a conversation with a complete stranger, and automatically have common ground to work from. Shouts of "Mario Party DS!" would echo down the line, letting you know that someone was starting a game, and you could join in wirelessly. There were card games (not poker), board games (not monopoly) and smoked things (actually someone was sharing their homemade bison jerky with the surrounding members of the line).
These were my people, and it felt really good to be immersed in my culture in a way that I never really had been before. For three days, Kim and I were there, we watched the panels and the games, we played and talked and participated. It was wondrous! I've been to cons for an afternoon before, but each of them represented a vertical component, a subculture of geekdom. PAX embraces the much broader spectrum of geeks.
Out in the real world, we're respected.
Among our own kind, we're understood.