Postcards From Across the Pond

I just returned from a fortnight in America. I will write about that soon, but I had to get this out of the way first, especially after my previous post:

While visiting my family in New York, I went with my eldest son to the Jarvis Center in New York City for ComiCon. It was a hoot.

The first step in the journey was the Rensselaer Train Station and, my word, has it changed. It’s huge! There is a paved car park with a multi-story attached to it (when I used to go there back in the day it was just a dirt lot) and the terminal itself had multiple floors, ticket counters, a nice café, and even a bookstore (that sold my books, thank you very much). When I went there for work, the terminal was a simple lobby where you’d walk in one door and out the other, and you’d have to walk down the tracks to get on your train. Now, there is an electronic arrivals/departures board, a ticket office, gates, and a platform, just like a real railroad.

When I ordered a “white Americano” at the café, the clerk smiled at me and said, “You’re from England, right?” He then explained what “white” meant in the US, and I explained what I really wanted, and he gave me a small coffee (that was the size of a medium back home) and told me I could put the milk in myself. Then he asked my son what he wanted: “Coffee,” he said. And the clerk handed him one.

This confirms that Britain is not developing a Coffee Culture, it is developing a European Coffee Culture, which is vastly different from the American Coffee Culture.

We arrived at the Javis Centre around 8am, and got in the HUGE queue, where we stood for a long time. This, however, enabled those around us to geek out about Megatron, Megan Fox, the Black Knight, Blane, and something called Bumblebee from the Transformers. My son, it seemed, had found his tribe. I left them to it. I mean, what was I going to contribute? There were 10,000 nerds in the queue and I was undoubtedly the oldest person there.

When the time came, they herded us in. It’s a massive area, a place I have been several times before to visit or participate in trade shows. The Artists’ area took up the bulk of the space, with the autograph section off to the side. That was where my son went, to get signed photos of his favourite celebrities. So, he cut me loose and I set off on my own, with no adult supervision.

The Artists’ area was a dizzying display of posters, comics, graphic novels, and general artwork, all of it amazing but much of it disturbing in its depictions of graphic violence or prurient portrayals of scantily clad, nubile nymphs apparently aimed at the same audience as the sophomoric inuendoes from View to a Kill (which I had watched with my son the day before).

After walking the entire floor, I finally found the Writers’ Block, which consisted of five vendors. I had no intention of buying anything, but because I stopped and there were only five of them, they engaged me in conversation.

It may seem too coincidental to believe, but, as noted in my previous post, I’ve been re-reading The Talisman series, and I happened to have Book VI – The White Feather with me. During our conversation one thing led to another and, long story short, he invited me to send the manuscript of The Magic Cloak to him. (NOTE: I did, he answered, negotiations continue, so, fingers crossed. Even if his little company has a small platform, it cannot be smaller than mine, and it will include people who actually want to buy books like The Talisman.)

After that, I figured I had seen all I wanted to see, so I went downstairs to the Food Hall, hoping I could find someplace to sit down. I paid for a seat with a bag of CheezIts, M&Ms, and a ginger ale. I wanted a hot drink but, though there was plenty of beer and soda available, there was not a cup of coffee to be had.

I purposely chose to sit outside the room labelled “CosPlay Hall,” where I got some good photos. Then I sacrificed my seat to chase down a woman dressed as Merida from Brave so I could get a photo of her for my wife. After that, I went in search of coffee and a loo without a half-mile queue.

I did manage to find a cup of coffee and a vacant loo, and, although it cost me sixty dollars, it came with chicken enchiladas, a side order of rice and beans, churros, and an eight-dollar bottle of water that I didn’t ask for. Welcome to New York.

By then it was getting on in the afternoon. My son wanted to stay but I was getting bored, so we agreed he could get one last autograph at the queue he was already invested in (he was number 13) and we’d go home.

Being number 13 still meant he’d be waiting for an hour or more, so, when I noticed that someone called Tasia Valenza in the booth next to Cam Clarke (who my son was waiting to see) didn’t have anyone in her queue, I went to get her autograph.

“Hi,” I said, “I have no idea who you are or what you do but I’m waiting for my son, who is in Cam’s line, and I noticed you could use some business.”

She found that funny and thought it was a great thing I was doing for my boy. (“My boy,” I told her, “is forty-five years old.”) We chatted, she signed a photo for me (forty dollars), and I went back to waiting.

When my son finally got his autograph, we went to Penn Station, only to discover that all the trains to Albany were sold out, something that I had never heard of happening. There was a bit of a panic, but I recalled the Port Authority, so we went there and caught a bus.

So, all good. I’ve got a line on a publisher, my son got a bonus autograph, he’ll never go to NYC again without a return ticket booked, and I doubt he’ll ever ask me to go to another ComiCon.

What more could I ask?