I have to behave myself in this newsletter. The librarians are watching.
Well, reading. That’s sort of what they’re known for, even if the stereotype is completely wrong. Librarians don’t have any time at all to read during the day because they’re running around helping people and granting wishes, although it’s possible I’m confusing them with fairies. I’ll look that up later.
Anyway, some librarians in Amarillo, Texas, subscribe to this newsletter, and they thought it would be a good idea to fly me down for their pop culture convention. Actually, I can’t assume their intentions here. Maybe they brought me in specifically because they thought it would be a very bad idea. Some people just want to watch the world burn. Either way, the move wasn’t without controversy. At the meeting where they picked convention guests, when my name came up, the room erupted. There was shouting and name calling. Someone flipped a table. One guy got thrown through a window. In the end, they narrowly voted to invite me. Oh, and the guy who got thrown through a window was fine. In Texas, they just walk it off.
From now on, I expect all serious banks to be lit up like Las Vegas casinos. No exceptions.
Not knowing any of this, I was excited to get the invitation in my email. Then the convention was canceled two years in a row. They said it was for covid, but really it was because the librarians who lost the vote still didn’t want me to show up. I had already used the travel money they gave me to book a flight to Amarillo when it was canceled the first time. I couldn’t get a refund, only a voucher, so I changed it to a flight to Las Vegas. If you liked librarians already, wait until they start paying for your random vacations that have nothing to do with books. This year, the convention was back on, and after another brawl that exhausted their window replacement budget, the librarians voted to invite me again. I gladly accepted, mainly because I’m far too heavy to be thrown out a window. God help me if they learn to lift with their legs.
The convention was called AMA-CON, and this year, it went down a few days before my appendix exploded. If you wondered why I haven’t mentioned hobbling around after surgery yet, it’s because this all occurred in the final hours before I realized there was a ticking time bomb in my abdomen. There was no better place to spend them than at AMA-CON. Think Comic Con, but cozier, and with a Texas twist. Darth Vader wears a cowboy hat, and the proper response to, “The Force be with you,” is “Yee-haw.” Exactly none of those things is true. AMA-CON is basically nerd church, where a whole bunch of fandoms get together to celebrate all things geeky. My interests fit in perfectly. My outfit, not so much. While most people dressed up as their favorite character from fantasy or sci-fi, I dressed up as me, the guy who doesn’t know what to do with his hands when out in public. I settled for putting one hand in my pocket and randomly pointing with the other. I’m lucky no one lost an eye. The costumes were incredible, even if I usually didn’t recognize what they were from. It turns out I’m familiar with about 1 percent of geek culture. I’m too nerdy to be normal, and too uninformed to be a nerd. I walk alone. When I’d see a particularly elaborate outfit, I had to ask myself, “Is that from a show, or should I be concerned?” For all I knew, that person walked around everyday with a battle ax. I mean, it was Texas.
AMA-CON is a fundraiser for the library and is entirely non-profit. The librarians put the whole thing on themselves, handling a million and one time consuming and demanding duties, the worst of which was chauffeuring me. I didn’t pay for a single Uber in Amarillo, which in a way was unfortunate. If I had used the app, I’m pretty sure someone would have picked me up on a horse. I tried not to make the librarians drive me too much. My hotel was within easy walking distance of the convention center where the event was held, a gas station, and about a hundred bars. I did my best to visit them all, but that’s a story for later.
My only duties were to talk on a few panels. Other than that, I was free to wander the convention, the city, and—if I could talk a librarian into driving me that far—the rest of the state. I felt bad because, for all the librarians gave me, I didn’t have much to offer in return. I’m not exactly a big draw. I have a lot of readers, but the problem is that they read. After the last two hundred newsletters, when I say that I’m going to be someplace, they make the informed decision to stay away. That meant I was mostly talking to people who had never heard of me. It led to many awkward introductions. There’s really no polite way to ask, “So… who are you and why are you here?” I never came up with a good answer to that question. I’m an internet guy, but not the good kind that makes a bunch of money on TikTok or YouTube. My best response was some version of, “I run a Twitter account you don’t follow and write parenting books you don’t care about as well as a sci-fi series you didn’t know exists. Oh, and I have a newsletter.” That went over about as well as you’d expect. I probably should have just said, “I’m a big deal to your mom.” That almost would have been true.
Being a nobody was an advantage. On my panels, I didn’t have to impress anyone. My favorite number of expectations is zero. I did my first two panels with the same husband and wife author-illustrator team. The first topic was “World Domination for Fun and Profit.” The premise was what happens after the bad guys win. My main argument was that taking over the world is stupid and entirely too much work. I don’t want the headache of running an economy and managing minions while also crushing freedom fighters who are constantly trying to bring my reign to an end. If I had the finances to build a doomsday machine or field an army, I’d instead use that money to buy an island and avoid the human race. Hey Lord Killtron, build a water slide and have a mojito. You’re doing it wrong. The Emperor in Star Wars conquered the galaxy and didn’t enjoy it at all. He spent his days in his big spinny chair literally staring off into space. He had two Death Stars and zero fun. That’s a hard pass for me. Neither the other panelists nor the crowd shared my self-interested aversion to megalomania. Instead, we spent forty-five minutes working together to figure out how to take over the world. If someone becomes supreme ruler of the planet in the next few weeks, I had nothing to do with it. Time to delete this email.
The next panel was about whether or not certain beloved movies should have sequels. I said, “Yes,” and then the panel was over. Okay, so there may have been some more back-and-forth than that, but the important thing is I was right. My final panel was a drawing contest. It was a bunch of real artists plus me. During the last Olympics, someone on the internet floated the idea that every event should include one regular person to show you just how good the real athletes are by comparison. I was that guy, but for drawing. It was like five Renaissance painters going up against a chimp on meth. At least I was drawing with marker and not poop. After each prompt, I would sketch some amorphous blob of awfulness and then make up a story about how it fit whatever criteria I was supposed to meet. I can’t draw, but I can lie. That’s a much more valuable life skill. Then we held up our drawings so the crowd could judge our creations. In theory, the drawing that got the most cheers won, but nothing was measured. The whole point of the cheering was to let us know that everybody was roughly equal, except for meth chimp. He just got the pity clap.
When I wasn’t on a panel, I toured the booths. They featured books, vintage toys, and a whole bunch of art. I signed some copies of The Chosen Twelve at the Burrowing Owl bookstore booth. If you are in Texas, you should absolutely buy one from their brick and mortar store to make them think I’m a big deal. The only purpose of this newsletter is to prop up my delusions of grandeur. For souvenirs, I did a full 180 from my approach in Germany. Rather than buying super fragile glass animals, I went with the booth that sold animals carved out of rock. I’d like to see the kids break those. I shouldn’t issue that challenge. Waffle will find a sledgehammer.
The vendor room also had a board game area. Before one panel, I tested out a war game with miniatures. The guy running it spent thirty minutes explaining the rules, and by the end, I still didn’t grasp it. I should have bailed as soon as I saw it required a tape measure. I can’t be trusted with tools. The reason he put so much effort into me is he was trying to build up a group of locals to play it with. Then I had to tell him he’d just spent half an hour explaining the rules to a guy from Indiana he was never going to see again. He was not sad when I left to do my panel.
I wasn’t the only person the library flew in. I met three linguists who also came in from out of town to be panelists. One invented the Klingon language and another created Dothraki for Game of Thrones. I speak one language and have invented none. I went out to a Mexican restaurant with them. Our conversation was thankfully in English. Over fajitas, I learned that making up fake languages for TV shows is a fulltime job. Show writers can’t just have the characters say random gibberish because fans notice, especially with subtitles. TV executives go in assuming they’ll one day have the kind of rabid, high-maintenance fanbase that would riot over that. Getting upset over nitpicky details literally created an entire industry for people who study linguistics. Otherwise, their job options were college professor or… that’s it. It turns out the economy needs trolls. We all owe a bunch of angry keyboard warriors an apology.
After that dinner, our librarian chauffeur took us out to the Cadillac Ranch, which is a bunch of half-buried Cadillacs standing on-end in a random field. We have half-buried cars in Indiana, too. We call that a landfill. The difference with Cadillac Ranch is that it’s public art. Anyone is allowed to walk up and spray paint the Cadillacs however they’d like. Each one looks like that time my pig ate an entire box of crayons. Poop the rainbow. Cadillac Ranch is actually quite striking. It’s also a trap. As soon as I stepped on the gravel leading to the Cadillacs, I was attacked by a huge swarm of mosquitos. There must have been a dozen on my legs at once. I slapped them as fast as I could, splattering my own blood all over my legs. As soon as we walked a hundred feet from the entrance, though, the swarm left us alone. But we had to pass through the horde on our way back out, and the same thing happened. Amarillo used Cadillacs to lure in tourists and tourists to lure in mosquitos. That’s why Cadillac Ranch is way out on the edge of town. They’re protecting the locals. The approach worked. I spent four days in Amarillo and didn’t see a single mosquito anywhere else. Despite all that, I still recommend going to see the Cadillacs. Just be prepared to lose a pint of blood when you do.
Everything’s bigger in Texas—including the parking mishaps.
I did a lot of other fun things in Amarillo, but all of those stories start at bars, so I’m saving them for the bonus Thursday email. I need to hide my worst shenanigans behind a paywall where the librarians can’t find me. Also, it’s only fair since those premium subscriptions paid for my drinks. If you run a convention, you should absolutely fly me out to be a panelist. That way your attendees can also have no idea who I am. I won’t bring in any fans, but I will write an entire newsletter about all the things I did there—and probably a bonus Thursday email about all the things I shouldn’t have done. It’s the yin and yang of all my bad decision making. Just wait for my stitches to heal before you invite me someplace. The good news is I only had one appendix, so it can’t blow up again. The bad news is I have plenty of other organs that can still explode.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you Thursday.
James
Blood And Cadillacs