All I have to say is, “woot!” Well, really I’m going to say a bit more, but my cell phone and email have been blowing up with pals who assume I am at the San Diego Comic Con. But I am not and I am quite pleased that I am not. We had a lot of fun last year and I didn’t want to criticize in advance because I didn’t want responsibility for people deciding not to go, but . . .

The cons I initially loved were these amazing (at least for my teenage self) events. Authors and artists I looked up to would share their wisdom on panels during the day and hang out and socialize at night. There were masquerade balls for really doing it up, but lots of people, myself very much included, would run around in crazy costumes all weekend. There was a sense of fun and community and I met tons of new people every time. Occasionally, a convention hotel would give me less than stellar service for wearing (hypothetically) nothing but pins with clever sayings on them over my nipples or not peace-bonding my weapon. But there was always a chick in a corset and elf ears or a guy in painted black leather with a mohawk to agree with me that the hotel was totally unreasonable. Friends of mine who worked con security may recollect slightly differently, but only slightly. The important thing was that the events were extremely social. There was always a dealers room with unusual hard-to-find (especially pre-internet) wares. Eventually, I acquired a lot of items I treasure from exhibitors and BLT and Blue Blood both exhibited at many of those conventions, so I don’t object to a dealers room by any means.

But the San Diego Comic Con is just such a store. And it feels very stratified. I think part of the problem is that San Diego is so close to Los Angeles and comic book tie-in movies are hot at the moment. So Comic Con attracts various people who feel they are movie stars or big wig producers, who feel they should have a portable velvet rope between them and the great unwashed at all times. It is like there is this huge dichotomy between people who are trying to sell movies and people who are expected to empty their wallets. There is not even that much conversation between attendees or between guests. I think fandom should be more sociable and open and more about community than that. I live blocks from Whiskey Bar and similar haunts, if I want to have to go through a doorman. Frank Miller or Alan Moore could walk the Comic Con floor and go completely unnoticed. But Rob Zombie will bring a security detail and Steven Colbert will have a four hour line for people who want to get his autograph to sell on eBay. What actual fan wants to wait that long in the heat for a two second interaction?

Which brings me to the next reason I’m not crazy about the Comic Con. It feels like every year it gets a little bit more uncomfortable in the weather department. Maybe it is global warming. I don’t know. But last year was unbearable. It was insanely hot outside. It was impossible to park any place near the convention hall. After walking a long distance in the heat, there were huge crowds of sweaty people. Either the convention was too cheap to spring for properly air conditioning the hall or the San Diego Convention Center is simply not capable of properly cooling the building during the summer and that is why it is cheaper to rent it then. Needless to say, the weather, combined with lack of technology used to combat the discomfort caused by the weather, makes costuming less than thrilling. Additionally, all the snack stands had absurd lines and kept running out of basics like water. The convention discourages bringing in outside beverages, however. I was literally ill from dehydration at the end of the show and Scar and I both broke out from how generally scungy it was.

The show has gotten to an unwieldy size. The San Diego Gaslamp District is simply not big enough for it. Not only are hotel reservations difficult, but even finding a restaurant with food and a wait time of less than three hours is a challenge. The convention center actually sold out on the Saturday of the show last year and pre-sold out for that day this year. It makes sense that people only attend on Saturday because the event is essentially just a big store. Who would take a weekday off of work to go shopping, when they could just go on the weekend? And last year, although Comic Con supposedly frowns on this, a ton of vendors and exhibitors totally closed down and shipped out early on Sunday. This irritated me, partly because we stuck it out and partly because this meant there were booths I’d intended to see which were totally closed by the time I wandered by. There were a number of friends of mine at the show who I never saw, even when they stopped by the booth multiple times. Cell phone reception is not so good there either. And the sheer size is so overwhelming that we were all pretty frazzled when we did meet up.

So, don’t get me wrong; I had fun at Comic Con 37. It may have been mildly productive, although I’m better about contacting cool people I met at a show when I am less worn out getting home. But I am sitting at my desk now, with the central air going, drinking water, getting ready to post this article, and thinking “woot, woot, I’m not in the sweltering heat and I’m drinking water whenever I feel like it and life is good!”

Universal’s Accepted Keg Party Photo Gallery

Estimated opening weekend gross for Accepted is around $10 million, which is hunky-dorey for a movie with a production budget of only around $23 million. I don’t know what percentage of those movie-goers also attended Comic Con or talked to someone who did, but Accepted did the most brilliant promotion at the convention.

Comic Con is the largest convention of its type in the U.S. This year, significantly more than a hundred thousand people showed up. Which is significantly more than the forty thousand or so the city of San Diego could probably handle. It was impossible to park anywhere near the convention center and it was approximately one billion degrees and the food in the convention center concessions started tasting kinda rancid by the second day. And, even for pretty literally nauseating food, the lines were likely to take an hour or so. Which cuts down on one’s collectible-browsing time. So, by the end of the day, everyone was sort of running on empty, streaming out of the San Diego Convention Center en masse, hungry and a long way, under a hot sun, from their transportation.

So the promoters of the Accepted movie threw a collegiate-style beer blast and barbeque across the street. The basic concept of the flick is that an enterprising young man is rejected from every college he applies to, so he creates his own institution of higher learning called South Harmon Institute of Technology. Yes, that acronym is what you think it is. The star-studded event featured a skateboard ramp and a giant banner reading “Welcome SHITheads” with the San Diego Gaslamp district as a backdrop. While waiting in a refreshingly fast-moving line for food, I was standing a couple of feet from James Duvall. While I wouldn’t talk to someone at my local supermarket, I’m generally in outgoing and friendly mode at a show like that. So I’d normally have told him that I like his work, but all of a sudden I got this horrible mental flash of the appalling scene where he’s castrated in Gregg Araki’s Doom Generation and I didn’t want to encourage my brain to keep going in that direction when I was about to eat.

The burgers and hot dogs were shockingly good and generously handed out. There was water and soda, in addition to beer, despite the kegger theme, but I think vegetarians might have been stuck with cheese and toppings. There might have been veggie burgers too, as I admit I was pretty transfixed by the yumminess of my own carnivorous fare.

The party had a fun and light-hearted vibe. A nicely straight-up rock band, called The Ringers, with a pleasingly sleazy sound kept the energy level up. I got bashed in the head when some of the actors from the movie got up on the stage and started throwing free T-shirts into the crowd. The gentleman who hit my noggin gave me the T-shirt he’d just caught, though, so it was all good. It says, “Ask me about my wiener.” Because I didn’t have enough lewd shirts already.

The trailer for the movie looks humorously promising and Lewis Black who I love from Comedy Central’s Daily Show is in it. If Universal knows how to throw a fun keg party, odds are good that they know how to make a fun movie. Best theatrical release promo ever.