Recalling PAX East - Day 0
By trace 12 Comments
Introduction
"The truth is, Dave, when it comes down to it...I just don't like people."
I merely intended it as a joke, a response to make Dave Snider laugh when he wondered aloud just why I wanted to become a moderator. Perhaps it isn't exactly what I said, but the gist of the joke is there.
Now, as I sit here nursing a tremendous post-PAX sinus infection, coughing up phlegm that can only be described as eldritch horrors from beyond time and space, the quip keeps repeating in my head. It's not because it's true, but rather because it would be such a perfect excuse for so many of the petty little problems I had at PAX East 2011. That's not to say I had anything less than a thrilling time, but as I describe my time at the show, you'll probably notice some points of surprising negativity, many self-inflicted.
Truthfully, I like people. I just don't like some of their habits.
In short, this was PAX East for me: Fantastic, pleasantly overwhelming, slightly awkward, and video games. Lots of awesome video games.
Day 0
The Boston Hustle
Naturally, after months of planning, problems have to occur within a day of heading to Boston.
I was one of many people who thought they had a room reserved at the Westin Waterfront, a hotel right next to the convention center for PAX East. As it turns out, the Waterfront had grossly overbooked for the weekend, and through some great foresight on their part, I had been dropped down to a single bed room to accommodate four people.
One bed, four people. Yeah, that totally works out.
There was an offer to switch to the Westin Copley Place, three miles away from PAX East, in exchange for a proper two-bed room and a comp'd day. As much as the whole matter disgusted me, the offer was a must given my scenario. The fact the booking agent thanked me for "voluntarily opting to switch" was almost laughable.
Regardless, I found myself sitting in the bustling confines of the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, thinking over my plans for the whole weekend that had now been complicated by a more distant hotel room. Most of my routes and pre-planned directions, all neatly printed out and bundled in my backpack well ahead of time, were now completely worthless. All I had to rely on for making my way around Boston was my Droid 2 and the help of others.
Smart phones are wonderful, I'll say that much.
The hour delay on my flight into Boston was a mere inconvenience by comparison, basically ruining my chances of making it to the screening of Heavy Metal before Rock Band Night at the Brattle Theatre. No big loss, there, but I was hoping to make it well ahead of time for Rock Band Night. I did have the luck of discussing travel plans on the plane with another PAX-bound guest, who was apparently an Ars Technica user. He wanted to attend the Rock Band festivities, as well, but wasn't able to acquire a ticket before they sold out. Telling him I had bought the second-to-last ticket probably wasn't all that nice.
I should also mention that somewhere around this point, I noted (via Twitter) that Marino and Dave Snider were both in Boston, and Dave had begun scoping out potential bars for the Whiskey Media meet-up. If only I could have booked an earlier flight -- drinking sounded awfully good at this point.
Dreams of afternoon drinking aside, my flight landed in Boston around 6:30 PM, and I started following the advice of my smart phone to make my way to my new hotel room at Copley Place. The MBTA, Boston's mass transit system, has a decent website that gives suggestions on best routes to take from point to point around the city, and this planning tool became my obsession for a short while. I rushed from bus stations to train stations with bulky rolling luggage, dealing with conductors with the most Boston-like accents I heard on the entire trip, as I moved from one concrete and steel-clad station to the next. I'm sure that there was a beautiful city to admire amidst all the exhaust fumes, but I was too busy glancing constantly at my phone for the next set of directions.
After a few missteps and numerous cases of my luggage getting in the way of normal pedestrians, I checked into the hotel around 8:30 PM. My fellow guests weren't due in until about 1:00 AM, so after sending out a few quick tweets to Marino and Snider and taking a quick breather, I knew my next stop was the Brattle Theatre and Rock Band Night.
Drunken Songs and Ramblings
It's at this point where I feel I should mention that one of my main goals at PAX East was to introduce myself to all of the Giant Bomb staff. Sure, I enjoy Rock Band, but I'm terrible at it, so my aim was to sit back, drink a little, enjoy the show, and see if I couldn't introduce myself around when the opportunity presented itself.
After more smart phone obsessions and a rather straight-forward trip through Cambridge, I used my phone's GPS to walk in the general direction of the Brattle Theatre. It's rather discomforting to walk through a crowded city street with a valuable phone so exposed and rife for swiping, so I ended up walking with a quick, angry pace. I'm used to such silliness from my times in shadier areas during my early college days, so even if it's somewhat anti-social, I felt much safer.
What I didn't expect is the Brattle to be located in a little nook along the sidewalk. I expected a logo as flashy as the website offered, with a neon blue angled logo illuminating the streets above a traditional movie theater entrance, but alas, I settled for a plain red canopy bearing its name.
My imagination tends to make hyperbole of the future for me.
The Brattle might be a little large to call quaint, but on first entrance, it evoked that feeling in me, the two men with tattoos and beards manning the lobby notwithstanding. I quietly made my way up to the theater itself and slid into a seat on the left side of the room, looking for Marino. He said he'd have an Atlanta Braves hat on with an N7 hoodie, but I didn't see anyone fitting his description. My smart phone came back out like an unhealthy obsession, and Twitter clearly showed he had just checked in.
This seemed like a time more appropriate than any to fire a message Marino's way, joking that we were sitting in the very same theatre but couldn't find one another.
That didn't last, as Marino approached me, we introduced ourselves, and began talking about the trips, Giant Bomb, and moderator life. To be short, you're not going to hear about any of that. Along with Marino's friend, who I think is named Alexander, we made our way to the front of the theatre for a better view.
I'd like to describe the entrance of the Giant Bomb guys as a magical celebrity sighting, where I began to scream like a little girl as my Fab Four (and the rest of the Whiskey Media dudes) entered the room and left my heart all a-flutter in a puddle of love and desire. For one, that's a little creepy, but more importantly, it was little more than a confirmation of all that I had seen online. These men were all real, and they were no different from the demeanor they took on daily for an online audience of thousands upon thousands. There's a real comfort in that, where distant men you want to deem as cool, chill folk appear in reality and do nothing to break from this character.
Many in the audience got up to introduce themselves to Giant Bomb and sign up for the Rock Band festivities. I did nothing of the sort, wishing to leave all the guys alone until afterward. I still think this was the wisest move at the time.
Rock Band Night itself won't get enough of a discussion from me here, but I assure you it was every bit as awesome and crazy as the pictures and videos taken as evidence of the revelry that night. I drank and sang from the crowd, and even before the first song was over, my ears were ringing, and my loud singing had ripped my throat hoarse like a tissue meeting a fire hose.
It might be important to note at this point that I have a weak voice and crappy hearing. I blame my mostly silent personality and hanging around race cars without ear protection in my youth, respectively.
The singing and drinking continued into the night, with delicious beer coaxing my easily-strained vocal chords. I don't think I knew half of the songs all that well, but when you're staring at a video game that's displaying the lyrics and tones in perfect timing, it's hard not to want to sing along. Most of the performances were entertaining, or entertainingly bad, but I will take note of a certain band and singer that thought it appropriate to bring their own spin to Du Hast by Rammstein.
My advice for anyone who thinks they can sing Rammstein songs in a style better than Rammstein: NO. YOU. FUCKING. CANNOT. I was enraged by this terrible performance, tempered only by the truth that there was no way in hell I could sing in better in my condition.
Thankfully, the music that followed brought the revelry back to its proper level, and although I've neglected to mention it until now, Giant Bomb did a wonderful job ripping every group properly to shreds, praising the few stand-out performances that existed.
The night ended too soon, and as a reward of sorts, the Harmonix staffers presented us with gigantic piles of Green Day Rock Band t-shirts, on the condition that we were to take them all and leave none behind. I ended up taking five shirts of various sizes to help my gracious hosts, and then meandered about, looking for Giant Bomb and Whiskey Media people to meet. Marino seemed more interested in leaving and catching public transportation before it shut down for the night, but I was worn out and buzzed. Meeting at least one of the men who made Giant Bomb possible had to happen.
Luckily, Dave Snider had shuffled down a few rows behind me, and with t-shirts still awkwardly in hand, I approached him and introduced myself as Trace, or "seg" on Giant Bomb.
Blank, confused stare.
"...or pee-seg."
The eyes lit up, and his response was much warmer then! This would be a bit of a trend with my online name. Maybe I just need to accept that I've been pronouncing it wrong even since I came up with the stupid anagram in the first place.
Snider is a polite and chill gentleman, and I've no doubt that he thinks I'm a bit of a weirdo given the looks I received from him over the days. I'm sure clutching five shirts didn't help in that initial first impression, though it did seem to amuse him multiple times over the night. He was going drinking, and I'm not sure if he invited me along, but I followed. I was interested in meeting him and all the other Giant Bomb names that followed, including Kessler, Matt/Pascual, Kat/Turbo_Toaster, and to my realization soon after, all the big name Giant Bomb guys.
I wasn't about to pass that opportunity up, even if I did completely fail at introducing myself to more than a couple of the men that night.
Drinkin' Force
I kind of feel sorry for Drew. You'll soon understand.
Somehow, the Giant Bomb party I had attached myself to found its way into a small bar/diner, and walking inside, I managed to amuse Snider yet again with my awkward pile of shirt. He made reference Forza Race Night, a certain regular who had apparently lied and claimed he was taking Race Night from me (*cough*), and then somehow the discussion switched to my quest stat Excel graphs. I'm pretty sure Dave asked me if I could put together stats of something. I gave him a blank stare because my ears were still ringing from all the Rock Band, and I had no clue what this something was. My hearing continuing to fail me, I finally announced that I could put together stats of anything about Giant Bomb onto an Excel graph.
That's not a fabrication -- I probably can, even if it's highly inaccurate. I still don't know what stats Dave was looking for, though. My hearing kind of sucks, to be blunt.
Somehow, through this awkwardness, I managed to wrangle a beer and my t-shirts into a booth, and ended up sitting with Drew, Matt/Pascual, and perhaps someone else. It might have been a sign of my inebriation, or perhaps it was a sign of just how much I ended up focusing my strange rambling conversation points on Drew. Somehow, though, I had pegged him as a racing guy, due to his DiRT 2 love, and damn it, I was going to talk racing.
I babbled on about racing games, Dirt 3, DiRT 2, Forza Race Night, how Drew or any of the guys should join Forza Race Night even though I know you guys are probably busy during that time but man it'd be awesome, racing in real life, rally, the site, how much I love the site, how awesome the videos are, no seriously I love Whiskey's business perspective, and at some point Matt wisely shifted into another booth as I engaged Drew in serious rambling conversation.
Don't get me wrong. I have a lot of respect for Drew, and I think he's an awesome and often-unsung hero at Whiskey Media. When retrospect came knocking after I sobered up later in the night, I felt really bad for bothering him so much with my halfway-inane ramblings. My conversations with him were brief from then on at PAX, for the fear of annoying him or coming across as a complete stalker.
There were glimpses and brief conversations with a few other gentlemen, by which I mean Matt. Small talk, mainly. Soon enough, last call came, and I stumbled into the first available taxi, which was in fact the only good taxi driver I encountered the entire weekend. Small talk about how nice Boston was followed, and in great time, my hotel room welcomed me with-...wait, my keycard doesn't work.
Reading up on old messages on my phone, it looks like the fellow guests arrived and had my keycard deactivated. Great!
Thankfully, they weren't dicks. I knocked, they opened, we introduced ourselves to each other and made small talk, and then we all passed out and slept in exhaustion, eager for PAX East to start for real.
PAX East hadn't even started, and already a tremendously long day in Boston had become a great introduction to a convention weekend. Can't ask for better than that, even amongst all the potentially awkward moments.