Iron Fist

In no particular order:

Thanks to Eve and Dave3 from the Geeks of Doom for watching Iron Man with us in New York, and for showing us where to find the best dessert in the Village. If you guys ever make it out here to Portland, drop me a line. I know where to find some great vegetarian food.

Thanks to Dave2 for letting me crash with him in the Blogography Bunker for the entire trip, and for showing me more cool stuff while we were in New York than I could have ever hoped to see on my own, and all while nursing a swollen foot. Getting to see the behind-the-scenes magic of what goes into making a DaveToon was a real treat, and seeing the Murakami exhibit and learning how he influences your work was eye-opening. I feel like I crammed more living in during the time you helped me play tourist than I had in the previous two months. Thanks also to Dustin for stepping up to the plate when it came time for us to recognize the people who made TequilaCon possible, and for being my wingman in the hotel bar, even if this consisted entirely of us performing a hastily executed retreat. You guys are the best traveling companions a guy could ask for, and I’m glad to count you among my friends. As far as I’m concerned the whole weekend was a non-stop ride in the FunVee, and never the HumDrumVee, even if our conversations have made it impossible for me to communicate with regular people lately: I keep classifying everything as either a FAIL or a WIN, and nobody seems to know what to make of me right now.

A big thank you to Jenny for pulling the whole thing together (again!). You’re one of the most fantastic people I know, and my life is richer for knowing you, even if you are pretty quick to offer your opinion on who ought to be my GIIIIIIIRRLFRIIEEEND. (She’s totally not, by the way.)

Thank you to everyone who showed up at TequilaCon and made it such a blast. Next year I will drink less* and get around to talking to more of you. I think I’ve just about finished piecing together all my memories of the evening, and fortunately I don’t remember doing anything that will get me sued or even anything assholish, which is a nice plus.

Thank you to our awesome server Victoria. If you’re reading this (which you might be, I know I gave you my last pin), we took a vote back at headquarters and decided that blog or no blog, you need to be at next year’s event. Call us!

A few quick discredits, unfortunately: first of all, Newark Airport — EPIC FAIL, especially the men’s restroom in terminal A. And Philadelphia, what’s the story with your trains never going faster than five miles an hour? For the lose**, SEPTA, for the lose.

It turns out that the Internets don’t take a few days off just because I do, so if I haven’t been around to comment on your blogs lately it’s because I came home to find 1600+ posts backed up in Bloglines. I have a lot of news feeds in there, which I think counts for the bulk of those, but at least three hundred of that number are from the blogs that I follow. So…I’ll get around to you. Honest!

I think this concludes Tequila Week; we return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. In the meantime, completed sets of both New York and Philadelphia are up on Flickr.

(*this is probably not true.
**Dustin gets credit for coming up with this turn of phrase in New York, not long after declaring his desire to cock-punch the local weather.)

Comments(11)

Oh, North Bowl. You had no idea, did you? No idea at all what was about to happen when we walked up your stairs with arms full of swag to survey TequilaCon’s latest home. No idea when the tweet went out to put the world on notice that aught-eight’s event had begun.

Lisa was the first to arrive, and I got a chance to sit down and talk with a woman who radiated such courage and gratitude in equal parts that she gave me hope for the future, and I think all my tomorrows will be a little brighter for having had the chance to meet her. She and Dude helped us to defend our claimed couches, and it wasn’t too long before the next blogger came up the stairs. I was probably a little intimidated, but black belts are so good at their art that she was able to disarm me using only her dazzling smile and engaging wit. (Mr BBM deserves a lot of credit, too, for being such a good sport, because the Internets can be a little intimidating when they all show up in person).

I figured that with TequilaCon underway it was time to start offering to give people tattoos, and Christine one-upped me by flashing her real tattoo, but ultimately I gave one to both her and Jan. People started arriving in droves about then, and I suddenly realized that any hopes I’d had of being felt up by Karl were probably going to go unrealized because he already had people lined up for just that. My spirits were lifted, though, when I ran into my favorite cupcake and when I asked her if she was ready for a tattoo, she showed me exactly where I could give it to her, and she decided to pay it forward by giving Becky one in the same place. I picked up a cool piece of swag from Avitable, and later he told me that if it didn’t work out for me I could name my first child Adam.

People were arriving faster than I could greet them at this point, and it looked like pandemonium, and I asked around to see if anyone knew who was responsible for all this. Dustin told me he knew exactly who, so I tapped on my glass as he stood up on a chair and told everyone that Jenny was the reason we were all here. I think this really struck a chord with Dave, because then he pulled Jenny aside and told her to take a look at what she’d done, but she only kicked up her feet in defiance. I didn’t think she was taking taking this too seriously, so I stole one of her curls and then challenged her to game of pinball. This didn’t work out so well, because it turns out she’s pretty good at pinball when she doesn’t have a scarf over her eyes, and I suffered an epic defeat, and the worst part was when she racked up the last ten million points with one hand while she chatted with Shari. (Asia, if you’re not worried yet, you should be.) I figured I couldn’t do much worse so I tried my hand at Ms Pac-Man, but Dee-Dee demonstrated how lacking my skills were in that department, and then after all this abuse I think Sir must have taken pity on me because he told me I could go ahead and call him whatever I wanted, and then Farnsworth became my new best friend by buying me a vodka.

I think this is the part where The Collective arrived (minus one, but three out of four is still pretty good), and they brought their A-game and their exclamation marks, and I probably went a little fanboy on them, especially when they wanted to start doing shots right away. Kat! was every bit as bad-assed as I thought she’d be, because I didn’t see anyone else get a hat-trick at Buck Hunter that night, Jennie! showed me the secret to playing MASH so that you always wound up with Jake Gyllenhaal (and then I let her down right away by not remembering who did that space cowboy song), and Abigail! let the DJ know that he was working for us, and not the other way around.

Things start to get blurry about this point, but I do remember that I finally found out what a Delmer looks like, and I shared a few words with Dawg while he watched over us, and I’d heard Shiny’s voice before but this was the first chance I’d had to shake his hand, and Dan, I may just have to drive down to this Chucklehut of yours because I didn’t get nearly as much time in to talk to you as I did last year. I probably got a little sentimental on Shelli when she asked for one of my buttons, and although I never actually heard Britt say ‘woo hoo! fuck yeah!’ her dance moves spoke volumes more. Avitable called me over then because Poppy needed a tattoo, and she probably had the sweetest smile of the night and she told me she loved her mermaid, but she was probably just being kind because the room was spinning so fast at that point I’m sure I must have put it on crooked.

This is about the point where the living embodiment of tequila appeared in a flash of light, and called for someone to bring him the head of Brandon, and it was all pretty scary so Sandra showed us all that it was probably best to bow to Tequila Man’s wishes. Sarah got a hold of Brandon’s head, and she took him to places I can’t talk about here, and come to think of it Heather probably got a little fresh with him, too, and it was all getting a little crazy so I ducked away for a minute to exchange text messages with my partner in crime, and I’m sure I told her that I wished she was here because I really did.

Things started to wrap up after we had the last call for fake mustaches, and there were hugs aplenty and hand shakes as people started to leave, and I don’t remember much about this part of the evening but I know that Jill was the last to leave, and then we were left with one last Tequila Duty to perform so the four of us visited the photo booth, and then we were well and truly done for the night.

Good old North Bowl.  You had no idea, did you?  But I think we all left you better than when we found you.

Comments(21)

I just did the math on the time change and figured out that I have now been awake about twenty one and a half hours, roughly, and had a little under four hours of sleep before that, and then I don’t want to do the math anymore because then I’ll figure out how many hours I’ve been awake since Saturday and the answer can’t be good.  So, you know what? No recap today.  But I did get my photo set up, and hopefully that will buy me some time.

Comments(8)

TequilaCon was a colossal success, judging from the epic headache I have today.

It was great meeting all of you!  Pictures and more tequila-related posts coming when I get back to Portland on Monday.

Comments(14)

TequilaCon. For the win.

It’s finally arrived. And although it won’t be quite the same without the rest of the crew from the PacNW (you know who you are), there will be plenty of photos. It’ll be just like being there, but with less jet lag. And fewer cigarettes.

Comments(4)