Nerd Prom 2008: You’ve Got to Go Through Hell…

Behold, non-smoking, overly friendly Southern Californians: I Am Arrived.

Given the experiences of the past two years, I was apprehensive when my girl and I arrived at Logan Airport yesterday. Historically, TSA Security tosses my bags, seizes my lighters, and exposes my hip flask to chemical analysis and bomb-sniffing dogs. Yesterday however, the line was short, the screeners friendly, and my fire and liquor paraphernalia only garnered the lightest of gentle tsk-tsking. Therefore, I should have known that the flight would suck.

First, we were informed that heavy weather in the New York area would require a flight plan diversion, adding another 30 non-smoking minutes to the project. Then I found myself seated behind a gentleman of Indian descent who clearly traveled to America to experience the majesty of our reclining airline seats.

He shifted that fucker back and forth every seven minutes for six and a half hours, saving his life only through my ability to convince myself that his actions were knocking blood clots out of my knees that would otherwise leap to my brain when I finally was able to stand, which would prevent me from hunting him down and slaughtering him later.

I began to curse my failure to upgrade to first class, which was a tantalizing three rows in front of me… until I heard The Child.

I have been fortunate in my limited traveling not to have encountered The Child before, but my number was up. Clearly, based on her having her Osh Kosh-swaddled ass in my first class seat, this was a Child used to being accommodated by her adoptive parents (I can only assume she was either adopted, or that one pasty-white parent is extremely forgiving of the other’s taste in the darkest of Africans)… and accommodated she was.

The Child expressed extreme displeasure at the sound of the engines, the degree of any pitch and yaw, and the substandard nature of the foie gras served for dinner (I ate a handful of Combos. Coach sucks).

“If that kid starts running the aisles, I’m giving the little bitch a piece of nicotine gum,” I said to my girl. “She’s clearly never been admonished in any way, so I’m betting she hasn’t been warned not to take candy from strangers. When the nic hits her nervous system she’ll be bolted to the spot, and then she’ll shut her foie gras hole. We’ll just tell everyone she must have been hit by lightning over New York.”

“Why don’t you have a piece of that Nicorette and calm down,” my girl replied, “The sounds of your teeth grinding’s beginning to make the dude in front of you look uncomfortable again.” So, alas, the child remined uninjured. My knees didn’t.

Eventually The Child tired, and the remainder of the flight was uneventful, save for muttered complaints that my movie choice on my Archos – Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story – might not be appropriate for a public airline, what with it’s simulated sex and long, casual, lingering shots of male dangling. These complaints were quickly resolved when I offered to amuse myself instead by bitching loudly about the foie gras, and we eventually landed without incident.

When we arrived at the hotel, we were informed that our room would be facing the city, and as you might remember from last year, that would mean constant, clanging and grinding sounds by public transportation, which would not do. So we upgraded to an ocean-facing room for the low, low price of $250, on top of the original room booking (Which was, in fact, requested as ocean-facing in the first Goddamned place.)

As we walked toward our home base for the next six days, I said to my girl: “Yup, now I know we’re at Comic Con.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve been in town ten minutes, and they’ve alread found a way to suck 250 clams out of my wallet.”

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Comic Con Preview Night starts at 3 p.m. today. Freak pictures will be forthcoming after that time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to enough coffee to convince my body that it’s not 4 a.m., and that I’m not in Guatemala.

[tags]San Diego Comic Con 2008, Nerd Prom[/tags]