Saturday - PAX

I got an instant message at work on Friday morning from Dr. Zoltar.

"Hey, what are you doing this Saturday?" he asked

At the time I didn't think I had any plans, so after checking with Hotness to confirm that I didn't I told him "I'm free. Why?"

"Want to go to PAX with me? I won two free tickets" was his reply.

So after a quick 'what time and where to meet' planning session, we were good to go for PAX the following day.

Deciding on what to wear that day turned into quite a chore.

I mean really... yeah I'm a guy, but who wants to be seen with the WRONG kind of geek pride T-shirt?

You want to make a statement, but you don't want to be too much of a dork.

I thought I'd wear my "I'd 'Tap' That" shirt, but I got it from Penny Arcade and figured they'd be selling it and somebody else might have it as well.

Hmmm... well, how about my 8-bit head shot shirt? A classic for sure, but convention worthy?

"No," Hotness said, "not that one."

Ah! My GTFO shirt! That's the ticket!

Hotness agreed.

We met up in Bellvue and Hotness drove us both into Seattle to the Convention Center so we could spend the day in a gamer's paradise.

After getting our tickets, we went to get into line. I did not know that the crowd would be as big as it was when we got there. There were a ton of people shortly after they opened (10:00 a.m.) and that was just a handful of what it turned out to be later in the day.

Here we are just getting into the line. Look how many people were already there.

The entire Emerald City Comic Con was held in this very room a few months earlier, and PAX was using this room just to line up the crowd. Crazy.

Inside the actual event it was a visual overload. There were game and software companies all over showing their stuff and people glued to screens competeing with one another.

We wandered around to get a general idea of what there was before getting involved in anything particular.

We stopped at one booth that was selling a couple of interesting games.

One was called Redneck Life where you go around the board getting hitched, divorced, re-hitched and having youn'ens all while trying to win with the most teeth at the end of the game.

The other was a card game called Trailer Park Wars and you battle other players with things like surface-to-trailer missiles and molotov beer cans while trying to be the best darn trailer park manager by having good tenants and collecting the most pink flamingos.

These both looked like a a lot of fun, so I ended up getting both of them (plus the expansion pack for Redneck Life) and I plan on bringing it to the next game night when we all get together.

Dr. Z had come looking for game card for another friend and to pick up a book and get an autograph from fan favorite (and really super nice) Wil Wheaton.

We stood in line for a while and when we got to meet him, he was just really cool. We introduced ourselves as volunteers from ECCC and hoped that he was planning on coming back. (He was already invited and did plan to come, but we wanted to let him know that we were already very excited to have him there again!)

We ran into fellow Comic Stop alumni, Technogreek, 2.0, Bogath, and Burnham while we were there. We also spotted comic writer Ed Brubaker talking to folks at the convention, but we didn't go over to him.

We picked up some bacon salt from a guy wearing this cool T-shirt:

They also had a guy in a bacon costume, but he had torn it and it was falling apart when we got to them. So no pictures of Mr. Bacon Man, sorry.

Saw lots of booth babes. Some were very much eye-candy.

Others were.... well.... they obviously looked like they had better things to do than have geeks oggling them all day. (but they were still worth checking out).

I didn't notice any funky body odor from anybody at the convention.

Either all the attendees had bathed or my sense of smell is really getting bad (but I guess that's not a problem considering the conventions I go to. Ha ha!).

Here's Dr. Z trying out Shaun White Snowboarding for the Nintendo Wii:

Other than that, it was just one big game overload.

So many things to look at and it was very overwhelming.

It was fun to go, but I'm not really their target demographic so we'll see if I actually go again.

It'd be fun, but I think one day is enough for me.

Here are a few more random pictures I took with my camera phone: