SPX REPORT PART 01 :: Hotel Room Party Expo 2009
Oh man, holy mackerel, SPX was amazing, my best experience ever at a convention as a cartoonist. Also a great kickoff for my new "full-time" cartoonist status, a real confidence-builder. Speaking of which, I'm super behind on that this week, not only from recovering from SPX, but last night I hosted Liz Baillie, MK Reed, and Gabby Schulz, who stayed in my house en route to Asheville as part of their Punchbuggy Tour. Super fun, those guys, we had a good time talking and making breakfast, and they were very kind about the fact that my dog kept sneaking into their bags and noshing on their noshables. Anyway, I say all that just to point out that I'm going to break my SPX report up into three chunks--I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on, plus stuff for Heroes, answering email, and more. One of the side effects of an amazing SPX is a bajillion new readers and emails and Facebook requests and Twitter followers. And a lot of blushing! But I love it, don't let me fool you. Anyway! So I left about 3 hours later than planned on Friday, which means that I rolled into the DC area just as rush hour was beginning. Dummy. But I finally got to the hotel, got hotel room supplies (hotel food/drinks are wildly expensive, and I'm on a budget these days), and met up with my superbro Scott Campbell. I love that guy so much. THEN the two of us met up with Kate Beaton--I love her too! The weekend was already off to a good start, so much loving and laughing! We were all going to drive over to the Nerdlinger Awards, along with new friends Meredith Gran and Steve Wolfhard, but destiny was keeping us at the hotel! Good thing too, cos as it turns out I had run over two nails en route to DC on my bald tires, so we would have surely ended up on the side of the freeway putting my half-flat spare on. But regardless, Steve showed up late and it turned out there was no way we could get there in time, as it was about an hour away. Which sucked because our fivesome was composed of two past recipients/present awarders (Nerdlinger recipients choose the next year's recipients), and three present recipients! Kate had picked Meredith for an award, although I'm not sure what it was, and I had picked Steve. Holy cow, if you haven't read Cat Rackham, it is so amazing, super nuanced, just a well-made, well-conceived little comic. Anyway, so we didn't go to the Nerdlingers. But:
We did have a brief modern dance party in the hotel bar, beginning with this little number, then progressing through a medley of favorites, including Kate's own "The Shower", and my "Washing My Hands In The Public Restroom But There Are No Paper Towels", which dance was created by Matt Fraction way back in the day. We met up with a bunch of friendly people, including past buds Jeff Newelt and Brian Heater, and together we retired to our hotel room for the first of three nights of hotel room parties.
I haven't been to a lot of hotel room parties; I'd always assumed that they'd be too crowded, too insular, too weird for me. And they probably would be, truthfully. But the quality of the cast throughout the weekend was SO INCREDIBLE there was never a chance for anything to get lame! It was just a bunch of new and old friends relaxing and ripping it up, to the chagrin of the rest of the hotel (judging by the noise complaints we received).
Here I am enjoying the party, while Kate looks on. You can't imagine how hard it is to hold that face for an entire hotel-room party, but I am a trooper, oh yes, a veritable Spartan. Katie ended up missing Liz and MK (they were all supposed to share a room), because of the Nerdlinger thing, so Scott and I welcomed her to our bro-nest, gallantly giving her one bed and arranging ourselves in the other. Guess how many of us were snorers? NONE! I know, I don't think that's ever happened to me before, so pleasant, I slept all the way until it was time to stop sleeping, which was too early considering our 4am party breakup. Why do you think the party broke up, I wonder?
Anyway. You can click on any of those pics to go to the Flickr photoset, where I'll be adding more pictures over the next couple of days (there's like 8 or something now.
Part 02