Team Joe's Basement: August 2006

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Long Lost Brother? Real Dad?

We had been joking with him about it for a long time and now the moment had finally come. Some time on friday between the sicko circus and the Accepted keg party I had Gump come to the Image booth where Brian Posehn was signing a book he co-wrote, The Last Christmas.

When Gump approached Brian I think the conversation went something like this :

Brian : "Woah... What's your mom's name?"
Gump : "Hyuck hyuck. Derpy Doo."
Brian : "You must be.. what? 6'7" "
Gump : "6'6", actually."
Brian : "Woah... that's the same as me."
Gump : "I loved Mission Hill."
Brian : "Yeah... they're talking about bringing it back."
Gump : "Yeah..."

Well, Gump can probably give a more accurate dialogue, if he would ever sign up to post on here!

Such meetings happen only once in a lifetime. I'm proud to say I witnessed it.

~Adam

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Accepted Keg Party (Day Three part 5) - Adam

It had been an eventful and exciting day, but around 6pm or so we were getting pretty tired and hungry. Gump and I met up at the designated spot and sat down to wait got Joe and Laveall. As we waited a girl sat next to us and a few guys that were with her dropped thier stuff next to her and ran into the bathroom. She turned to us and said : "Hey, do you guys want free food and beer?" (It doesn't get much better than that) Our eyes opened wide and we excitedly said " Hell yes!" She handed us a laminated pass on a lanyard and explained that there was a big barbaque party across the street in the yard of the Hilton Hotel. When her friends came out of the bathroom we got two more passes from them. We decided we'd just call Joe and Laveall and headed directly over.
There were a ton of people there. Lots of free food, beer, ice cream. Skateboarders on a halfpipe. And some band playing. We eventually got Joe and Laveall in and we all just hung out for a while until we were full.

A great way to end an awsome day.

Sicko Circus (Day Three part 4) - Adam

After we got back into the convention center we split up again. I had no real direction and just began wandering. I ended up at the Last Gasp booth where a small crowd had started to gather because someone was putting on a performance, of sorts. I missed his first stunt, but as I got there he was claiming that he would eat a lightbulb. So he tries to pop this whole thing in his mouth, and of course the bulb is much to big to fit. So he puts it in a ziplock bag and smashes it on the ground, then takes the shattered glass and begins chewing it, as seen here :

Pretty crazy. I'd see this stuff in videos before and always figured there was some trick to it. But this guy was standing 10 feet in front of me and I couldn't see anything but some dude chewing on broken glass. He then said he wanted to swallow fire, but the convention center had rules about fire, so the next best thing : Dry Ice. He takes some out, wearing gloves and explaining how dangerous it can be to touch because of it's extremely low temperatures. He proves to us that it is actually dry ice by dropping it in some water.

After that he just tries to break of some more and seems frustrated trying to handle it with gloves and just takes them off and tosses them to the side. Grabs some in his bare hand and pops it into his mouth. Again, I couldn't see any tricks. This guy was just nuts.

His next trick was some sword swallowing. I'd seen this before at the renaissance festival so it wasn't quite as shocking as the other things. But still crazy.

(This next thing got pretty graphic, I still get a little shiver when I look at the pictures. So I'm not going to put them right in here, but you can click the links to see them.)
The last thing he did was something else I'd seen in videos. I didn't really think there was any trick to it, but it has a completely different impact when seen up close and in person. He took some kind of needles (the looked more like skewers) and put them through... things. First his forearm Then his bicep, this one was particularly nauseating, I thought. And finally one through the bottom of his mouth, and out the bottom of his chin.

A unique experience to say the least.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

It's a Small Small World (Day Three part 3) - Adam

After admiring lots of hot chicks in skimpy costumes I once again made my way back to Any Lee's booth. There were a couple of guy with him that I had not seen before, Stephen Antczak and James Bassett. The three of them had put together a Beowulf graphic novel and were there to promote it. I was excited to see what Andy's work might be like in comic book format so I bought one to read through later.

I wandered about some more then met up with Joe and Laveall for a Marvel Civil War panel that we all wanted to see. We got some pretty neat teaser in there, then headed off to lunch. (Gump ate by himself) We started walking up the street with nothing speciific in mind, we were just going to see what we came across. As we were walking Heather (the one with Andy) passed by us. We said hey and she decided to come along with us, she was looking for some food also. We found a pizza-by-the-slice place and went in, and there was Toby along with his co-workers. Of the 150,000 people attending the con, what are the odds that I'd run into 2 of the only one's I know within 5 minutes of each other? As a thank you for buying one of thier books, Heather even paid for my lunch. She had to head back right away to give Andy his food, but Joe, Laveall and I stayed and talked with Toby for a while.

Costumes Everywhere! (Day Three part 2) - Adam

After cheating some poor turkish exchange student the four of us entereted geek land once again.
I don't know why, but I decided to take lots of pictures of costumes this day. There were plenty to be seen each day of the Con, but I saw some of the best on Friday. Lots of Star Wars costumes including some clone troopers, a Darth Maul, and a hot metal-bikini-clad Princess Leia along with others.