Things I Have Learned About Geeks

This is only They Might Be Giants related by association but some of you might be interested anyway. Plus it explains the pictures currently streaming in the slideshow at the top of the page. We went to PAX East on Saturday (for anyone who doesn't know, PAX is a huge gaming convention put on by the people at Penny Arcade). We partly went for all the gaming convention fun and partly for the huge concert on Saturday night featuring Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm.

I should start by saying that I have never been to a convention like this before. I have been to one convention previous to this (it was a Harry Potter one) but it was spread out all over the town of Salem, MA and was almost all women. This was all confined in one giant convention center and was a pretty good mix of women and men. Probably about 40,000 of them. Geeks everywhere!

We spent a large portion of the day standing in line for one thing or another, about 5 and a half hours all told. We saw the 2nd round of the Omegathon video game competition being contested. We went to a panel where they used a (supposedly) scientific method to determine the 10 best video games of all time. We played some old arcade games, rather badly. We attended a Q&A panel with the convention's musical guests, including JoCo, Paul & Storm, MC Frontalot, some of the ProtoMen, a couple of members of Anamanaguchi, Metroid Metal and the creative director of the Video Game Orchestra who I felt bad for because he never got to say anything. The panel was both informative and very, very funny.

In between things we wandered around the Exhibit Hall where all the game companies were demo-ing new things. I wasn't as excited by this as I thought I might be, mostly because none of the companies had brought games I really cared about. The Nintendo booth only had Pokemon, the Disney folks only brought a racing game, the Traveler's Tales people weren't even there and the Harmonix stuff was off in a different area that was so crowded we didn't even go in.

Wil Wheaton (the key note speaker) walked past me while we were watching some people play Rock Band, basically in a hallway. Total geek moment.

There were some fantastic costumes. I saw most of the characters from Mario, some Fall Out people, a whole bunch of anime style folks that I didn't recognize and some crazy costumes that I have no idea who they were. There was a wookie that I never saw with his head on, a guy in a chicken outfit, a person who as far as I can tell was dressed as a slice of lime, a person in a green skin suit. There were also a bunch of guys wearing utility kilts. I find these amusing. Paul and Storm also made fun of them later (one guy in particular actually). I had on one of my TMBG shirts and my boyfriend was wearing his Road Crew hoodie and we got multiple comments from people who were also fans of the band. There was even a guy who stopped me to show me that his baby was wearing a TMBG onesie. Too cute!

We didn't arrive early enough to get the guaranteed entry wristbands for the concert so I wanted to make sure we lined up early so we could get in with the first come/first serve group. They weren't starting the line until 6pm but people were unofficially lining up to get in line at about 5:30. The PAX people tried to discourage this but only succeeded in getting everyone to move back about 10 feet. Then when the opened the line everyone rushed the doors anyway.

The best part of waiting in this line was that they gave out pipe cleaners for everyone to build things with while they waited. There was no particular purpose other than so they could get pictures of what we built but people made some amazing stuff. There was a guy who made an excellent Katamari character with a ball. Someone constructed a blue shell hat with wings. There was a Portal companion cube, a Zelda Triforce, multiple crowns and tops hats and tiaras and such. Some girls made a one-up mushroom, a guy made an awesome T-Rex and some other little orange dino. Someone spelled out "PAX East hearts pipe cleaners" on the floor. I built a little dragon and a sheep for him to eat. I attempted a Moogle too but he didn't come out very well. Anyone who has to have a large number of people waiting in line for any purpose should seriously consider something like this because it kept people entertained and passed the time really quickly.

The concert was epic. It started with the 3rd round of Omegathon which was a Rock Band competition. Then there was a long wait during which so many people were trying to link their DSs to play Mario Kart that the connections all pretty much crapped out. The Video Game Orchestra started the concert portion of the evening and they were amazing. They had brought a "chamber group" to PAX because their whole orchestra wouldn't fit on stage but it still had a complete string and woodwind section as well as electric guitars, keyboard and percussion. Who knew that video game music could be so much fun. They did a song from Castlevania with just the "rock band" members of the group that rocked so hard we might as well have been at Guns N Roses concert or something of that ilk. At the end the audience wanted an encore but they hadn't prepared anything so they just played a song again. And nobody minded. It was really cool.

Paul and Storm started by punking the audience. They did a re-enactment of a weird video that's been going around that people are calling the Russian or Communist Rick-roll. They had Wil Wheaton with them and were wearing silly wigs. People were laughing their asses off. It was great. When they came out to sing they did Opening Band and not only had panties thrown at them but also some pipe cleaner panties and a fruit pie which wacked Paul in the face. They did one of the songs from their Christmas project of songs in the style of TMBG (see I worked TMBG in there :-)

They had MC Frontalot join them for a song but all he did was stand on stage and bop his a head to the music a little. That too was great. The whole concert was probably the most I have laughed at anything live in... well, probably ever. They might as well of been doing a comedy act. I guess they kind of are. They got the audience going on mock displays of sympathy saying, "Awwww" after everything and then couldn't make it stop. And it worked in every situation. They asked everyone to hold up their lighters or Lighter apps, or cell phones or DSs for one song and wave them in the air and there were more people with DSs than anything else. There was even a guy holding up a laptop who had managed to get "awwwwww" to display on the screen.

They finished with their pirate song and lots of people saying "Arrrrr" which continued right through JoCo's set. JoCo started with Ikea. Yay! It's like he knew I was there! (For the record I do not believe this was anything more than coincidence). He did most of the songs he played while opening for TMBG, including the most amazing version of Mr. Fancy Pants I have ever seen. The stage was really bouncy and when he put the Zendrum down after the song it kept playing when he stepped on the floor near it. So he did some bouncing and running past it and made a whole other mix with it completely by accident that was almost better than the song.

He did Curl with Paul and Storm which I was very excited about, and another song that I don't think I had heard live before. Then he had the guys from Metroid Metal come out and join them and they formed COLTRON. Awesome, awesome, awesome. I really hope they make this concert available on DVD as they have with past PAX shows because I will buy it in a heart beat.

So at the end of this day these are some things that I have learned that geeks are really good at.

10. Embarrassing themselves in public and not caring.

9. Laughing at themselves and each other.

8. Finding the most awesome t-shirts in existence.

7. Making incredible/silly costumes and wearing them with pride.

6. Turning their geeky hobbies into careers.

5. Pretending to be zombies.

4. Pretending to be pirates.

3. Keeping a joke going way after it should have stopped being funny.

2. Building things with pipe cleaners.

And the number one, totally under-appreciated geek skill:

1. Waiting in lines.


These are my people.