Modern Primate

San Diego Comic-Con is coming up in just a few short weeks and everyone’s getting really excited. After all, it’s four days of unadulterated geekiness with movies, TV shows, video games, toys, celebrity signing, and, yes, comic books. If you’re not going, you’re missing out on being with all the cool nerdy people. Well, I’m not going. Not everybody can go. For us poor souls who won’t get to make it down to San Diego this year, I’ve devised a list of things we can do to pretend our boring, drab life is just as awesome as being there.

1. Dress up like your favorite superhero, in their secret identity guise – You’d probably get laughed out of the office or at least asked to change if you came in dressed like Batman, Superman, or Spider-Man. However, if you came in dressed like Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, or Peter Parker, you’d be golden. To most people, you’d just be wearing a suit or jeans and a button-up, but you’d know who you really are.

2. Pretend everybody you see is a celebrity – You know how sometimes you see someone and think, “Oh, that looks like Tom Hanks,” or “That could be Scarlett Johansson?” Well, today, it IS them. Saying you saw someone who looked like someone famous is boring, but telling everyone you saw Mark Wahlberg in line at the Jack in the Box is a great story, and only you need to know that this Mark Wahlberg was 5’3” and ponchy.

3. Round up a bunch of your friends and stand really close to each other without moving – That’s basically what the bulk of SDCC is like. Being the largest gathering of its kind in the world makes for some tight spaces at the ol’ convention center. So get like six of your friends and stand half an inch apart in the corner where you have your Indiana Jones posters. That’ll be the same.

4. Go to the mall – Yeah, malls are crappy, but you can walk around and look at stuff you won’t buy. Going into any memorabilia store, that’s what it’ll be like. If there’s a comic book store, go in there for sure. Walk around for two hours pretending like you know anything about which edition of Tomb of Dracula is the best, then just hunker down and buy The Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen like you were going to anyway.

5. Watch Star Wars, Batman, Cowboy Bebop, etc. on different TVs – Get all of your different TVs, computers, and media devices playing different sci-fi/comic book/anime movie or show. If you walk slowly enough between rooms, you’ll feel like you’re walking into a different display area, or at the very least that there’s a meet-up of various fandoms. Invite some friends over otherwise it’s just a waste of electricity.

6. Put on DVD commentary to pretend you’re at a panel discussing your favorite movie – One of the best parts of Comic-Con is going to panels discussing movies you love and part and parcel to that is hearing stories about the making of that movie – stories you’ve heard a million times and basically know by heart. Now, you can listen to the DVD commentary you’ve probably listened to more than watching the actual film and smile and nod to yourself when the director says that thing you knew. “He got it right,” you’ll think to yourself.

7. Stand 100 yards from a building you’d like to enter and get incrementally closer over the course of three hours – If there’s some big panel you’d like to see at SDCC, you have to be prepared to stand in a line for basically your entire day. “Queuing,” as the Brits call it, is one of the biggest parts of the con itself. Buy a ticket to a movie you want to see for the 10:00pm show, but show up at 7:00pm and get ever-closer over that three hour span whilst you snail through the parking lot. People will give you weird looks, but they do that anyway.

8. Buy a sandwich from 7-11 and give the guy 4x what it’s worth – Once you’re at the con, they got ya; you’re sort of trapped in buying their overpriced food and drink, but because you’re there, it’s somehow okay. Is it particularly tasty or nutritious? No it is not, but it’s “con food,” which is its own food group unto itself.

9. Do all of this for four days in a row so by Sunday you’re a pile of tired – Comic-Con has its own rate of time and it’s simultaneously slower and faster than anywhere else in the world. You’re having fun (or waiting to have fun) for 20 hours a day so by Sunday, you’re a zombie with a backpack. There is such a thing as overload and SDCC gets right to the point of no longer enjoying it, but never quite gets there. This will be the hardest thing to fake, but is perhaps the most important.

10. Take whatever money you might have left and throw it at passing dog – You’re not seeing that money again.

So basically, I’m jealous of everybody going to San Diego Comic-Con because all of this stuff just sounds sad and pathetic. I’m not gonna do it. Ignore what I’ve said.