This final time we ran into him occurred at something called I-Con. It's an internationally known Science Fiction convention held at The University of Stony Brook here on Long Island for the past 27 years. Over the years it has grown to include anime, medieval re-enactments and comic-book related events.
It's fun to just people watch at this thing, or maybe I should say Klingon watch or something. There are always those dressed up as their favorite alien from their favorite sci-fi show or movie. And the guest stars are always fun. Slyde, particularly, had a great run-in with pre-outted George Takei that he wrote about a while ago on his site. I can't link to it but it is the first story in November 2005 on his archive page, if you are interested.
Anyway, so on this one Saturday afternoon, we decided to attend a lecture on "Women in Comics". I'm not talking about Wonder Woman or She-Hulk, but the ladies who create comic books and their unique take on the past, present and future of the genre. One of the guest speakers was Louise Simonson, wife of legend Walt Simonson, and a fairly big-time legend of her own. Not only had she broken through some of the early male-only barriers of the industry, she was also a role model for many up and coming female creators of the present day.
We get there 15 minutes or so before the lecture is set to begin. The guests weren't even present on stage yet. And out of nowhere, Slyde starts to reminisce about Moriarty. He wondered what happened to the guy, did he drop out of collecting due to his over-the-top bullying from the year before, etc...
It's as he is talking about this that I notice an extremely unattractive woman in a black Punisher t-shirt that looked all too familiar. I start looking around because I'm sure where there is smoke, there certainly must be fire.
Now the following events all happen in the matter of micro-seconds:
- I take a deep quaff of some kind of soda or seltzer.
- I find Moriarty and he is a mere 5 or 6 rows directly in front of us.
- I'm about to swallow and let Slyde know that he is here, when Slyde abruptly stands up and shouts:
"THERE HE IS!!!!!!"
Then a whole lot of things happen all at once. Most of the crowd falls silent and turns to look at the maniac screaming at the top of his lungs like Capt. Ahab spotting the great white whale. This includes Moriarty and his evil sidekick, although I'm really not sure if they remember/recognized us at the moment. The guests from the panel started arriving at this exact moment as well, which must have been quite a shock to them since they were all women and they entered to a shout of "There HE is".
But the funniest thing that happened is that I started busting out laughing. Which wasn't a good thing, because I had a mouthful of soda that was about halfway down my throat at time. Yeah...the folks in front of me got the old Gallagher treatment as my soda came spraying out of my mouth and my nose (yeah...that hurts) at warp speed. Splech!!!
Slyde recovers and sit down only to find me hiccuping and crying like a baby. Some of the tears were from the soda exiting my nasal cavity, but it was mostly hysterical laughter that was doing me in. So much so that I couldn't contain myself. I'm covered in soda, snot and tears and I have to get out of there. So I exit my seat and I run blind up the stairs and out the door in search of a bathroom.
Bad timing, because as I am running out the door, Louise Simonson is walking in the door. I run directly into her, but I somehow manage to avoid doing her any permanent harm. Must have been my ballet training as a young adult kicking in. I had to have been quite a sight to her. Soda-soaked and covered in bodily fluids, I probably resembled Jodie Foster after her bad night out in The Accused. I was a mess!
After cleaning myself up in the bathroom and getting rid of my hiccups, I find that Slyde is waiting for me outside the lecture hall. We just didn't have the energy to go back in at this point.
To this day, he doesn't think that what he did was that funny. But it was the sequence of events that really did me in, almost as if it all happened in slow motion. That was the last we ever saw of our friend and his gal-pal. A year or so later we stopped attending conventions all together. But I have to say that we had our share of good times at those things and a part of me misses those weekends.
I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Moriarty are still out there. Doing there thing. Wearing Punisher t-shirts. Annoying the masses. God, I hope so!
Question: Can someone tell my why the spacing gets all fucked up in Blogger's editor after you use bullet points? Happens to me every time. Fuckers!
