“My question is, how soon will you return to Agents of SHIELD, and how many LMDs did they make of Agent Gonzales?”
This weekend Indianapolis has not one, but two conventions returning to town: the Days of the Dead horror show is bringing several notable movie slashers to the west side (Jason! Jigsaw! Phantasm Guy! Joe Bob Briggs!), while the second annual Indy Pop Con once again overtakes the Indiana Convention Center downtown. I’ll be honest: my wife and I thought about attending neither one. Skipping two geek-fests in our very backyard seemed wrong, but I’m not much into horror these days and she never was in the first place; and most of the Indy Pop Con guests are either anime voice actors or YouTube all-stars, which, y’know, I guess those are great for viewers under 25 and I hope they have a total blast this weekend.
For a while I thought our reluctance was the first sign that perhaps we’re getting too old for this stuff. I mulled over that grim prospect for weeks. Then Indy Pop Con invited the legendary Edward James Olmos. I had to think about that one for another while longer. Then I remembered he was in Blade Runner, and I bought our tickets that same day.
So we’re in. We’re hitting Indy Pop Con on Saturday, when Olmos will be signing autographs, doing photo ops, and has a Q&A scheduled at 1 p.m. EDT. It’s Indianapolis’ best chance to ask him all our great burning questions, pry some choice anecdotes out of him from the span of his forty-year career, and make Indy Pop Con 2 one for the record books…if we can all agree to make the most of his panel and not ask him anything stupid, embarrassing, or overused on every convention guest at every convention ever. Pretty please, you guys, BE COOL, won’t you?
I had been looking forward to last week’s new episode of Community, “Conventions of Space and Time”, which invited us into the inner workings of an official Inspector Spacetime convention, a place where Troy and Abed could meet other fans of the obscure British TV series, indulge in a few hobby-related purchases, and generally be themselves. As someone who’s been to C2E2 twice, Wizard World Chicago four times, three GenCons so far, two Star Wars Celebrations, and several local Trek conventions, I was curious to see how the generally geek-approved series would approach such a setting. I tried to keep my expectations modest — without creator Dan Harmon around anymore, this season’s first two episodes were a little shaky. I’ve stuck with the show and keep hoping for the best.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 