CONvergence Remembered (hazily).

Another year of CONvergence is gone and while I’ll miss it terribly, I’m so glad it’s over. Between performing in ten shows and working the Stand Up! Records party room I didn’t get to see much of the convention but I was able to get a lot of the late night experience and here’s a few impressions that I’m left with about the convention and nerds in general.



Nerds are all a bunch of goddamn pervs.

It’s true. Remember the Convergence Cosplay Bingo Board square that just said “Bondage gear that probably has nothing to do with sci-fi fandom”? That one was pretty easy to fill.

Only one person brought the board back to me with coverall. I taped it up to the wall of the party room. Apparently “Waldo” was the hardest one to find. No joke.

Here’s another example. I went to craigslist personals and typed “Con” into the search bar. this is just one of the ads that came up.

CON .. – m4w – 26

Date: 2012-07-09, 9:37AM CDT
Reply to: 9jcds-3127839842@pers.craigslist.org

You attempted to whip me.. I know you couldnt let loose but I forgive you and thank you for the good time
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 3127839842

If that ain’t enough, here’s a little ditty from my Friday night wanderings. I was waiting to go to the bathroom by the pool area. This particular bathroom was in a hallway a bit out of the way from the room parties next to the sauna. While I waited an employee or CON volunteer (they were all wearing CON shirts and headsets) rushed past me and shouted into his headset “can we get somebody to lock up the sauna? People keep having sex in there!” So there’s that.


When nerds party, they party like it’s the goddamn end of the world.

Since I had to perform and work the party room and blah blah, most of my partying happened after we closed up shop in the SuR room on Saturday (don’t get me wrong, I did my fair share of drinking while performing and working as well). Saturday night was goddamn madness. People were drinking and dancing like they were about to go to war the next day. I’d love know exactly how much booze was consumed because at our party room alone we handed out 20 cases of PBR Tall Boys and like a case and a half of Schwartzhog Liqueor –

It’s like Jag but better and not just because they sponsored our room and this might show up if they do a search on their product.

Seriously. These people were drinking like they had bionic livers. Vikings fresh off a pillage don’t drink like these people. I’ve been to every type of party you can imagine in my adult life and never did people down alcohol like they did at CONvergence. I tried to keep up and my hangover lasted for two solid days. I may as well have just hit myself over the head repeatedly with the bottles of booze rather than drink it because the end result would have been exactly the same. I drank so much I saw my spirit animal. Either that or a furry that I thought was a spirit guide.

I salute you, fellow nerds.


Everybody is awesome.
Everybody I interacted with was incredibly friendly and helpful. The convention organizers, volunteers, guests of the party room and audience members for the shows were just amazing. I met a lot of new friends and complete strangers came up to me and told me they like the blog (thanks!). The boozing and making fun of pervs is all well and good but this is the reason I’ll keep coming back.



My wife is the most awesome.
Jena Young is the person who got me my first pass to CON (not counting the one time I went briefly for The Scope podcast). She’s the one (along with the also great but less sexy Gus Lynch) who organized and ran the SuR party room. She’s the one who allowed me some time to sneak off from my party room duties for a while and run around. I owe a lot of people for the fun I had last weekend (special thanks to Dan Schlissel for producing the SuR party room and Gus for the HarmCon shows) but Jena made this happen for me and for that she deserves nothing but praise and footrubs.


So that was my CONvergence experience. Feel free to tell me yours in the comments. What did you love/hate/etc.?



See you nerds next year!


You Have Amazing Taste in Blogs.

I really have to hand it to you. You’ve got exquisite taste. Choosing to read youngnotions.com shows that you will settle for nothing less than the most sophisticated in poorly informed political satire, fart jokes and pictures of potatoes that look like butts.


Now you may think that I’m just kissing the ass of you, the reader because this is the last day you can vote in the 2012 city pages readers poll and it’s true.


You can either click this picture or the hyperlink above. Your choice.




It shows how clever you are that you were able to see right through me. It’ll take more than mere flattery to impress somebody as intelligent as you. I get that now. How about this? Rather than beg you for a vote, I’ll show you why you should vote for youngnotions.com for “best blog” or any other category you see fit (best villain?). I’ll take you on a trip down memory lane and link the most popular posts on the site because that’s way easier than coming up with something new (it’s like a clip show!).


1: Guess Who Just Sold Me Ten Boxes of Girl Scout Cookies?
This post is, to date the most viewed one on the site. I guess I hit the perfect activism/gluttony ratio on this one. I tried to see if there was any follow up on the whole “girl scout cookie boycott” but the girl removed the video like a day after she posted it. The website honestgirlscouts.com hasn’t updated their website since the whole debacle went down and their facebook group is closed (you can’t even see the posts, much less comment on them, unless you ask to join the group and are accepted). Protip: If your viewpoints can’t stand even a little outside scrutiny, they might be shitty viewpoints.

On a completely unrelated note all comments for new users on youngnotions.com are moderated.


2: So I Went to Jail Last Night.
This one was the 2nd most viewed and by far, longest thing I’ve ever written (the story even spilled out into a second post the next day. Ever since I saw the reaction those posts generated I’ve been hard at work plotting a crime that will put me in jail for a long, long time so I’ll have way more to write about. Stay tuned.


3: That Girl in the “One Weird Trick to Stay Asleep All Night” Ad.
Okay, I’m not saying this one sucks but it really doesn’t deserve the #3 spot. This one has gotten popular solely off of pervs googling “That Girl in the ‘One Weird Trick to Stay Asleep All Night’ ad”. One perv even commented because he was mad that the girl in the “one weird trick” ad I had on the post was a different “one weird trick” girl than the “one weird trick” girl he was looking for.
Joby PERMALINK
March 2, 2012 1:15 pm
I have checked on the somnipure model about six times (though Im not the everyday guy but you must be exagerrating anyways or the number would be more than thirty).
I seriously doubt you have the right model. That is one nasty looking girl and something happened to her hair.
I would gladly send you a pic but not sure it would do me any good. You could certainly benefit from using a bit more brainpower when making silly blog entries. They do have about five different models; why assume its that freakazoid?

Sorry my shoddy research isn’t helping your stalker-like obsession with some obscure model. Hey, speaking of pervs –


4: Hey, Kids! Fuck You!
Here’s another one that got a lot of hits from search engines. This post specifically got a lot from two words in the title. The words were not “hey” and “you”. The post was about a news story on how some restaurants are now going “kid free”. Imagine the pedophiles’ disappointment when they click the link only to find a story about restaurants 86ing their favorite menu item. Oh well. Thanks for reading, creeps!


5: Here’s My Excuses
The only explanation I have for this one being popular is that making fun of the disabled always works. Always.

Honorable Mention: Scourge of Trees and Americans Everywhere.
This is the least viewed of my 203 posts. Seriously. It got fewer hits than when I posted a blog about not posting a blog because I’m sick. Lesson learned. Don’t fuck with Paul Bunyan.


There we go. Five wonderful reasons to go ahead and vote for youngnotions.com because without validation I’ll wither and die!