Todd Terwilliger

Sunday. The last day, the final hurrah, the end. I set the alarm early. We had stayed up too late last night watching The Wire. You simply cannot watch just one episode of The Wire. It gets on top of you too fast. Before you know it, the clock has jumped ahead six hours and you’re laying akimbo on your couch half-naked with a belt tied around your arm, held tight by one end, the end which is clamped between your gritty teeth. You’re looking down at a throbbing vein in your arm and you don’t know why.

It was inevitable that, having compiled the list of events at comic that I most wanted to attend, I would actually participate in almost none of them. Inevitable, perhaps, but not tragic. The convention grounds were so carpeted with pageantry, pomp, and circumstance, the air so thick with geek pheromones, that the panels and screenings, not undesirable by any means, were out of sight and thus out of mind.