My First Ever Embedded YouTube Clip


Bob and I went to Wordstock today.

The first thing I'd like to mention is that the parking situation was clusterfuk 2008. Apparently there were two other events at the Convention Center. Oblivious, I got in line, took my ticket and circled the tiny lot — who planned this thing? No one thought such a giant convention center could use more than — well, the website says 800 spaces with 2500 in the vicinity with street parking and such. I think they lie. Regardless, me and 100 other cars circled the parking lot for a half hour before I gave up and left. The overflow lot was full. By now my wonderful positive attitude was trashed and I decided, screw it, I'm going home. But then I got to the park-n-ride right before the bridge so I decided to park and get on the train and was in the venue 20 minutes later.

So I spent more time looking for parking at the convention center, than I did driving most of the way home and taking the train back in and walking up to the venue. While I walked to my event I passed two storm troopers and Darth Vader cruising down the hall. I have no idea what they were doing there but my inner geek squealed a teeny bit.

We saw Spain Rodriguez who does cartoon stories and then were in perfect seats to see John Hodgeman with Jonathan Coulton.

John Hodgeman is at the same time, nerdier in person, but a lot cuter. He has the best smile. The room was SRO and one of the organizers got on the mic and asked if anyone had empty seats near them to skootch in and then raise their hand since lots of people were looking for seats. "This is Portland, Oregon," he said. "We're friendly here." I've never seen anyone do that before and I thought it was a good idea.

John is completely hilarious and really quick. He was a scream during the Q&A. He joked about how his books are bunches of made up facts. But then he told this fabulous and heart-twisting story about how when you're young you dream about being famous and what that would be like. But eventually you get older and have a family and start doing something and you forget about the famous thing and if you're smart, you're happy with what you're doing. But then, what if one day after you've forgotten about fame, someone knocks on your door and throws you out there with no preparation whatsoever. He told it a lot better than I am. He refered to himself as a very famous minor television personality.

Jonathan Coultan is a longtime friend of his who is a musician and sang some songs. During the Q&A a little girl in the audience asked if he (Jonathan) would do the zombie song and that's how we ended the show. (See above clip.)