Marathon Men

Thursday morning found me waking up a bit before 8 AM – which is considerably later than I normally get up on Thursdays – showering, dressing, and getting in the car to make my way to Tysons Corner.
Whenever I have to drive someplace unfamiliar, I always run into the same problem with my car’s nav system.  Basically, it presents me three options, but the view of the map is zoomed out so far that I end up picking some random route that has me going all over creation even though it looks like it’s pretty close to a straight shot.
In this case, I had mapped out a route earlier on my phone that involved taking 267 most of the way, getting on 7 for less than a mile, and then boom, I was there.
That’s what it looked like on the nav system in the car, but, in fact, I learned shortly after I got onto the Greenway, that it wanted me to take the Greenway to 28, and 28 to 50, which, just…no.
All along the way, after I failed to take the exit to 28, it kept hectoring me to take different exits, until I finally got to the one that the route on my phone had told me to take.
In any case, the trip took less time than I had anticipated, and I arrived about 2 hours before the marathon was set to start, and about a half an hour before the box office would open to allow me to pick up my pre-purchased ticket.  (I wasn’t able to use the kiosk to get my ticket because I had paid for it with my PayPal account rather than a credit card.)
At that point, a line for the marathon had already formed.
Eventually, after I wandered around for a while, the box office opened and I got in line to pick up my ticket.
There was a woman in front of me who did the thing that women always do when they’re in line in front of me:  continually turning and straining to see something in the distance behind me.
Seriously, if there’s something over there that’s so important that you have to keep looking at it, just get the hell out line and go over to it.
Worse, once it was her turn to pick up her ticket, she, naturally, had to turn something that should have been a simple and straightforward process into something that was needlessly complex.
Of course, that was my fault – I emit some sort of field that forces people in front of me in line to make things complicated.
(I have the worst super powers ever.)
It seems that sometime after she purchased her ticket, her credit card got stolen, so she couldn’t use that to confirm her purchase.  The power of the “Pretzel Wagon Effect,*” as I called it, rendered the woman working in the box office incapable of processing this information on the first, second, third, and fourth attempts by the woman to explain the situation, and ultimately she had to find someone else to come over and listen to the story three times.
Eventually, the other person was able to understand the situation, and asked, “Do you have your confirmation number?”  The woman said no.  The man said, “It should have been e-mailed to you when you bought the ticket.”  The woman dug around in her purse and pulled out a piece of paper.  “Is this it?”
It was, and that was all she needed.
Well played, Pretzel Wagon Effect; you added at least ten additional minutes of standing in line to my day.
Scott arrived shortly thereafter, and we got in the line – which had expanded considerably already – and were soon told how it was going to work:

1. We would be allowed into the theater
2. We would make our way to a table where we would be given a lanyard with a badge, a promotional comic book (which was just an extended ad for some hotel chain), a poster, and our choice of one set of the collector’s edition 3D glasses.

Badges?  We don't - oh, we DO need badges?

Once we got to the table, a woman working there said to me, “Oh, you’re going to be so disappointed.”
”What?” I asked, in a small voice, fearing the worst.  “Why?”
”We’re all out of Thor glasses.” (I was wearing a Thor T-shirt.)
Not really caring that much about the glasses – mostly because I don’t particularly care for 3D anyway – I shrugged, and went with the Hulk glasses.

Hulk smash puny third dimension!

We ended up getting fairly decent seats, which was surprising, given how many people got in ahead of us.
Sometime before the first movie started I went out to get some snacks, and, of course, the Pretzel Wagon Effect struck again, despite the fact that I had gotten in the line that contained no children and very few couples.
Of course, I wasn’t terribly concerned about missing anything anyway.  As I told my boss, in response to her text telling me to be sure to get up and move around a lot, I’d seen most of the movies multiple times already, so I was free, for example, to get up and pee whenever I felt like it.
The movies themselves were enjoyable, of course, despite how many times I’ve seen them.
In between each movie there was a brief intermission during which they had activities like trivia contests.  After the first one, when it became clear that A. the prizes weren’t all that great and B. they were going to give the majority of them to kids, I opted not to participate further.  (On one of the questions mine had been the first hand up, but the guy running it picked a kid instead, despite the fact that there was a large section of the audience yelling at him that I was first.)
The “events” actually got pretty annoying, and the crowd tired of them early on, until finally, during the last intermission, the guy just gave up and said he’d give free posters to anyone who wanted one and didn’t bother with the rest of it.
During the first intermission it became clear that one of us had to stay in the theater at all times to protect our seats.  There was a group of kids dressed up as the Avengers, and when they left during the break, some lady took one of their seats.  When they returned, she wouldn’t move.  “Captain America” appealed to the crowd to try to convince her to move, but she refused, despite the fact that everyone present was booing her.  Eventually the manager had to come in and get her to move.
I just can’t imagine what was going through her head to make her think that was a fight she was going to win.  I mean, you don’t steal a seat from the Avengers…

Assembled.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with the crowd.  No one was ever particularly annoying when the movies were actually playing.  Even the annoying kids sitting next to me managed to STFU for the most part.
Because I wouldn’t be getting home until around the time I”d normally be getting up, I consumed truly massive amounts of caffeine to keep be going.  It didn’t keep me from falling asleep when I got home and went to bed, but it did prevent me from staying asleep for very long, and I ended up waking up after a scant four hours.
I went out into the world and did a Costco run, then came home and watched some recorded TV.  I had been toying with the notion of taking in a matinee of the movie so that I could see the 2D version, which I assume would be less blurry and dark, but I was just too wiped out, and ended up taking a couple of naps instead.
And that was my Ultimate Marvel Marathon experience.  Overall it was a good time, and I’m glad I went.

*So named for the episode of The Simpsons in which Marge opens a “Pretzel Wagon” franchise and begins selling pretzels – and only pretzels – from her car.  At one point, she’s selling pretzels at the nuclear plant, and Lenny stands in line indecisively trying to figure out what to order.  “I’ll have uhh….one…uhhh….”  Carl, standing behind him impatiently, tells him to hurry up.  Lenny finally decides to buy one pretzel.  At that point, Carl moves into position.  “Let’s see now, I’ll have…uhh….”

The Trifecta

Typically when I'm standing in line for any significant amount of time, one of three things will happen, usually in some combination, though it's kind of unusual for all three to happen.
Today was kind of unusual, so I got to experience the trifecta.
The first thing - and this one pretty much always happens - is that I get identified as the weakest link in the chain, the point at which people who are trying to cut across the line feel they have their best shot at breaking through. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe because I'm by myself? It certainly can't be because I look friendly and accommodating, because, srsly, I'm Jon.
The second thing that happens pretty reqularly is that there will be someone - usually a girl - in front of me who is even shorter than I am and is constantly turning around, getting up on her tiptoes, and trying to look over the crowd to find someone, shoving her face right in mine and nearly tipping over and against me in the process.
The third thing is dependent on there being some sort of technology involved in what I'm standing in line to get to, which was the case today, as I stood in line for the machine to buy my Metro pass: being behind old people who have no business trying to make use of technology more complicated than a rotary phone.
The girl who kept turning to look for someone finally found who she was looking for and got out of line, which left me directly behind three old people who took ten minutes to puzzle out the process of buying a pass. Then, after finally stumbling upon the right combination of random button-pushes, it took them another five minutes to remember what they did in order to buy the additional passes they needed.
Meanwhile, once I finally got my turn, it took me a grand total of fifteen seconds to get my pass.
(Again, while it was annoying, I was glad to see a lot of older people showing up for the Rally.)

"People Were Talked To And Rules Were Bent"

So I went to the National Book Festival today with Scott and Stacy (as well as Vicki, Zoe, Scarlet, and the as yet unamed bun in the oven).
We went there pretty much just to see Neil Gaiman, and were largely uninterested in any of the other authors in attendance.
(Brad Meltzer, who has also done some work in comics, was there as well, but I didn't know that until today and didn't care after I found out - he's done some interesting stuff in comics, but he's done far more bone-headed stuff, so I'm not what you'd call a fan, and I don't think I could have held back from spewing some vitriol his way if I'd encountered him. Really, Brad? Terra was only bad because she was drugged? That's retarded. She was rotten to the core; that was the whole point. How could you miss a point that obvious and that sharp? Oh, you just didn't like the point? Too fucking bad.)
We took the Metro in to D.C. and got there in time for me to pick up two copies (one for me, and one for Scott) of Neil's latest, The Graveyard Book, which, in terms of high concept, can be best described as The Jungle Book set in a graveyard instead of a jungle.
The book isn't actually supposed to be released until Tuesday, but Neil pointed out that it would be silly to launch a book tour three days before the book comes out and not actually have copies of it available for purchase, so an exception was made for the Book Festival, the process of which is summed up in a quote from Neil that serves as the title of this post.
No one other than those of us who were at the Festival - or, as Neil put it, "you lot" - can get a copy before Tuesday. So we're special!
In any case, we had enough time after picking up the books to get a standing room only position where Neil was doing a reading and Q&A session, and then we joined up with Stacy who was holding our place in line for the signing.
(If it isn't already, a video of his reading should be up at the Festival's Web site.)
When we went in 2005, we ended up standing in the signing line for a couple of hours, and when we got up to the front, Neil noticed that Stacy was pregnant and was very annoyed with the event staff for making a pregnant woman stand in line.
As Stacy was pregnant again this time, we were hoping we'd be able to ride the pregnant lady wave up to the front of the line (Note: Pregnant Lady Wave isn't some sort of euphemism for her water breaking). However, we didn't need to worry, as Scott managed to stake out a good position for us in line while I was buying the books, so apart from the time spent waiting before the signing actually began, we didn't have to spend much time waiting in line at all.
When Scott went up to get his book signed, he mentioned the 2005 experience to Neil, who looked at Stacy and said, "She's still pregnant?"
To make things easier for the author, people waiting to get books signed are given Post-It notes on which to write what they want the authors to say with their signatures. I had written, "Look, I wrote what Jon told me to!"
However, in recent travels Neil fractured the middle finger on his right hand, so while he was nice enough to sign books today, he wasn't really up to the task of writing anything too complex. He apologized and said that normally he'd be happy to write what I told him to write, but that he just wasn't up to it. I told him that wasn't a problem at all and I understood perfectly. In addition to signing his name, though, he did draw a quick sketch of a headstone with my name on it, which was cool.
While Stacy had been holding our place in line, a lady behind her told her that she remembered Stacy from 2005, and, in fact, had taken a picture of her back then because of Stacy's (at the time) purple hair.
As Stacy didn't have anything of her own to be signed, she took some of the lady's books up to be signed to help her get around the limit. Once again, "people were talked to and rules were bent."
After the signing we went to the PBS tent for a little while so that the girls could engage in some of the kids activities going on there, then it was back to the Metro. We stopped for frozen custard on the way back to Scott and Stacy's house, and I hung out for a while so that Scott could show me the Lego Batman game.
Because it was supposed to be cool, overcast, and rainy today, I decided that, given that it's so seldom the case that I so these days, I should dress all in black, both as an acknowledgement of my nature and in honor of Neil, who still dresses all in black the way I used to.
However, it was pretty muggy out, and there were various points at which the sun came out and beat down on me mercilessly, proving that I'm clearly out of practice when it comes to the all-black lifestyle.
Ah well.
In any case, I'll post some pictures from today's events in my next entry.