008: Go to a nerd convention

Most of the main tropes of nerdery are lost on me. I don't like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, or science fiction. I was too old for Pokemon and Dragonball Z and too young for Doctor Who. For some people, these are enveloping subcultures and rallying points, and it was one of these points I visited on Sunday.

Immediately upon entering I knew I had to start a reverse scavenger hunt; that is, write down all the things I saw that would be, in the regular world, difficult to find. Here is my list:

Kid in a bowtie
VHS tapes, for sale, for actual money
Gay Tigger
Troma DVDs
Grown woman wearing a child's backpack
Plastic axe
Japanese cartoon porn
Star Trek costume; wrong ethnicity
Fake assault rifles
Mother/son costume combo
Pikachu pyjamas
Fat princess
Ironic internet hat
An uncomfortable celebrity
Obese samurai

The uncomfortable celebrity was David Faustino, better known as Bud Bundy from Married With Children. He sat alone on a stage fielding questions from a small but enthusiastic audience. One man gave a five-minute précis of an episode before asking his question. The object of adoration stumbled through an answer. It was clear that not only had he not watched his own TV show, he was probably doing massive piles of drugs during the filming and operated at a fundamentally different level of awareness.

Rather than wait on further pearls of wisdom, I headed back into the main hall to see what basement-dwellers do with their hard-earned cash. Video games seemed to be a big draw, as did film merchandising. I bought a T-shirt that declared that in the timeless battle between sparkly imaginary monsters, I was clearly in the Jacob rather than the Edward camp. My allegiance was heartfelt, and also there was no Team Edward shirt in my size.

There is a particular brand of person that I like to call the 'Sad Bastard.' The Sad Bastard mood hung heavily in the air at the convention, clinging to particular people like potato chip crumbs cling to the front of a Dungeon Master's shirt. The saddest thing about a Sad Bastard is the glimmer of hope submerged below several layers of failure and shame. Obvious Sad Bastards moved fitfully about in samurai and military costumes, the stubble on their second chins glinting in the halogen lights. Less obvious Sad Bastards trailed behind their children, new recruits in the subterranean-dwelling, World-of-Warcraft-playing, figurine-having, animated-character-impersonating subculture of outcasts.

Spectacle was never far from view. Here went a Lady Gaga costume; there was an archery booth; further on appeared a missile, a soldier, a racecar. In keeping with the general mood of ultimately disappointing fantasy, the Army and Air Force were there, as was a constant string of professional wrestlers catapulting one another around a ring. A Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and a slightly-too-fat-to-be-sexy-Miniskirt-Star-Wars-Captain girl posed for photographs.
 

Here, my compatriot Rob threatens me with paperwork and cellphone radiation.

After selecting the least cancerous of the food options available to me and sitting not as far away as I would like from a table of what appeared to be Sheriff of Nottinghams from Space, I concluded that the convention could offer me little else in terms of gawkery or schadenfreude. It was time to go. I trudged past a line of extremely fat teenagers and an ogre wearing a tutu.
I didn't understand any of this.