Cons in other countries don’t separate comics people from the celebrities. So you often spend a week between two cons, getting to know actors, wrestlers, and other famous people.

We always found nearly all of them lovely people.

Guess which group consistently wasn’t?

:)

1/

It wasn’t actors. In general, they have nearly all been really sweet people.

Guess again.

2/

It wasn’t wrestlers. I have had zero bad experiences with any of the wrestlers I’ve met and quite a few were above-and-beyond lovely to their fans.

Guess again.

3/

It’s not musicians. They always seem anxious, and they keep to themselves, but I never saw any being jerks in a green room at a con.

Last guess.

4/

It’s not novelists, artists, or comedians. Good guesses, but no.

One group has been so consistently loathsome, have so tortured staff and promoters, that I would say it’s probably a 90% likelihood that any con guest in this category is just awful.

Ready?

5/

You know what I don’t miss? Parent teacher conferences.

Most of Rocketkid’s teachers were lovely, but we had two that still stick out in my mind as sad/hilarious.

The first one, he was in elementary school. The teacher said it was ‘important’ for us to come in.

1/

So we worried about that for two days until the meeting. What could be wrong? It’s scary for parents to be left hanging like that.

So we meet his teacher, goatee and sunglasses...we live in the boonies and yet there’s something here like he’s trying to be a player.

2/

Not like a lady-player, like he’s got an image of himself in his head. We like teachers, but this guy’s manner is just weirdly kind of pushy a little bit.

Anyway, we sit does in the kid chairs, he’s behind his desk, again, weirdly focused on ‘power,’ somehow.

No idea why,

3/

We ask about our son, he acts as if he forgot that’s why we’re there, says some random stuff, all normal, nothing at all worthy of a conference. I mean, contact and communication is important, but thus just feels off-the cuff entirely.

4/

So then suddenly he gets really intense, but pretends being casual. Like it just occurred to him.

And he says to me, ‘So, I hear you’re a writer.’

What?

I tell him yes, I write comics and some animation and stuff.

He says. ‘I looked you up.’

5/

I have a theory about 2020.

Bear with me...I’ve done the math and it checks out, but I have no way to prove it, so it’s purely theoretical.

At this time.

1/

Here’s the thing...it wasn’t supposed to be this bad.

There are safeguards, you see? Many times when things were going dark, heroes, mostly reluctant heroes, would appear from elsewhere to save us. To set things right.

But this year, they didn’t...why?

2/

When things go bad., it’s because someone messed with the timeline, and someone else has to set it right.

A thousand alternate timelines have been stopped before they could happen, because these chronsl plumbers showed up to fix the leak before it floods the house.
3/

The general public never knows what they have fixed because the alternate timeline has disappeared, vanished, into a limbo none of us ever touch.

But this year, something happened.

4/

You can’t break the laws of reality forever.

Eventually, the gatekeepers find you.

And their revenge is terrible.

5/