(Scene: 6PM in hotel conference room. Five people sit around a table introducing themselves to an audience)
Girl 1: “I’m from Think Geek. I’m responsible for all of the social media from Think Geek. I also brought awesome swag.”
Girl 2: “I’m from NASA. I work with the NASA blog and Twitter account.”
Guy 1: “I’m from Wired.com.”
Girl 3 (uncomfortably looks at hands): “I’m um…Aunt Becky. From Mommy Wants Vodka. I write a thoroughly mediocre blog.”
(audience stares at her)
Girl 3: “It’s um, a MOMMY blog.”
(audience stares)
Girl 3 (laughs uncomfortably): “Sometimes I write about my vagina.”
(audience stares)
Girl 3: “I have an amazing Band of Merry Pranksters. On my blog. They’re the best people on the Internet.”
(audience glares)
Girl 3: “Except, um, you.”
(audience is beginning to leave)
Girl: “I’m in a bathing suit holding a chainsaw in my Twitter avatar.”
(audience smiles and nods happily)
Works every time.
By the time I arrived in Maryland, I’d already been in the airport for what seemed like eleventy-billion years. Before I arrived – just as I arrived at the airport – my 9AM flight had been bumped to 11AM and I was set to miss my connecting flight. By a long mile.
It appeared, though, that fortune was about to favor the really stupid as I charmed the lady from US Airways into moving me to a straight-through flight from Chicago to Maryland. This was no small victory.
My day seemed as though nothing, save for sitting at the airport terminal for three hours, could touch it. I was invincible. I was brilliant. I was about to take the ride of my life.
(total lie)
And then, my friend Nic picked me up from the Maryland airport, new copy of SkyMall happily in hand, and we went out to lunch. Then? My day just got a hell of a lot awesomer. Because I found THIS:
For 5 bucks, I too, could have a kit for all of life’s unexpected moments. Eagerly, I wondered what could be in this quixotic pink case. A light saber? A NEW copy of SkyMall? A billion dollars? A unicorn on roller skates? I simply couldn’t guess.
I was understandably depressed to learn that all this brilliantly pink case contained was some tampons. Like one. Not even a CONDOM or a copy of “Your STD and You.”
Sad.
After leaving the sad pink case behind, Nic prepared to drop me off at my hotel when we saw this:
And then I spent the rest of the weekend confused.
I drove a shitballs Ford something or another that was probably manufactured well before I was born to learn to drive. And in Maryland they allow – nay ENCOURAGE – students to learn to drive on a Corvette?
I considered jacking the student driver, but I was suitably underwhelmed by Maryland and figured I probably didn’t need to spend the next 8-10 years there in jail. Better to be busted for something in Chicago, where my “mob” connections might land me a really spiffy cell.
The rest of the weekend was spent moaning in a dark bedroom. Migraine. It appeared that Maryland didn’t agree with me.
On the flight home, I got stuck in some southern backwoods airport for an extra hour. An hour I blissfully listened to a couple near me fight about The Bears and a drunken guy loudly complain about people from Chicago. I’d have knifed him with a homemade shiv, but I left my toothbrush at the hotel.
When I finally stopped laughing, I opened my eyes and saw this: something so magical I so as to evoke tears in my hardened heart. Something so magnificent as to require photographic evidence, if only to document that such a time was really, really, really real:
If you, Pranksters, are not weeping at the sight of a man, vigorously playing with his testicles while loudly on the phone with someone, well, your heart is more hardened than even mine.
And so, with a quick tug on his penis, this guy made certain that my trip to Maryland, was, for a moment, perfect.
I walked into InterventionCon this weekend all puff-chested and proud, like, ‘WHO’S A BAD-ASS-MOTHERFUCKING GEEK? ME!” I was practically humming “Eye of the Motherfucking Tiger,” as I waltzed into the hotel, all ready to get my freak binary on. I was all ready to be all, “WHO’S ALL OPEN SOURCE NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS?!”
Imagine the look on my face when I finally opened up my eyes to the strains of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin,’” and realized that half of the attendees were in costumes. It was a COSTUME PARTY. And guess who had no costume?
That’s right, Your Aunt Becky.
I was, for the first time ever, somewhere without a spare costume!
Color me Furious George.
They weren’t costumes I wanted or even recognized, and somehow, I was flaming that I did not, in fact, own one. I could’ve been a wicked Britney Spears (post K-Fed) or even an Oompa Loompa. And still, nothing.
Somewhat dejectedly, I moped to my room – on the 7th floor – and threw myself down on the bed, trying desperately to coax some tears out of my eyes. First, I thought of the saddest basket of kitties with no one to love them. Then I thought about how cruel a world it would be if Uncrustables were discontinued. When that made me simply stabbity rather than tearful, I decided a new tactic was in order. I decided that my next best bet would be to rub them, then poking them until finally, I was able to convince two actual tears to come out of my eyes.
It felt strangely vindicating and utterly unsatisfying.
Next order of business was to get onto the elevator and go downstairs to mope in public. I like to share my misery. I’m a giver like that.
Only an odd thing happened. Even weirder than the full-blown adults in costumes I couldn’t quite place.
Proper elevator etiquette, as explained by my mother is this: you back that ass up while waiting for an elevator to allow exiting passengers to, um, exit. Then, only after everyone who is getting off is off do you board the elevator.
Likewise, once on the elevator, you allow passengers to get off on various floors by moving graciously out of the way WITHOUT BITCHING ABOUT IT, while you wait for your stop.
It’s a simple enough concept that even my pea-brain can comprehend it.
And yet, for the first time in my life, even AFTER living in Chicago and riding 50 floor elevators crammed full of people, I was shocked and horrified by the elevators in MD.
Because, it appeared that the new way of things was this:
Elevator door opens -> stand in a line in FRONT of the elevator doors, ignoring all the empty space behind you -> groan loudly whenever someone dares try to enter the elevator with three goddamed people in it.
On the other side,
Elevator door opens and person behind you wants to get off -> rather than wait for the first in place to disembark -> push your way past the other passengers ALSO attempting to get off.
Because we all know it’s a motherfucking RACE to the fucking FINISH, motherfuckers.
First time it happened, I ignored it. Okay. Fine. Someone was having a grumbly day. Happens.
The second time? Maybe coincidence.
The third? I decided that the non-convention goers were some of the rudest people on the planet and should probably be relegated to the ALOT Island with John C. Mayer.
The moral of this story? ALWAYS PACK AN EXTRA COSTUME. Also? Wear body armor for elevators in Maryland.
P.S. I missed you, Pranksters.
Also, Also: We have an auction up at Band Back Together. You should go visit it.
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