MichaelandChrissy.com

Aiden had such a good time at C2E2 in April that I had planned to take him to Wizard World Chicago later.  Wizard is a declining force in the comics industry (they were huge back in the 90′s), so they changed the name of the event back to “Chicago Comic Con” this year.  This con was arguably bigger than C2E2, but the difference in bulk was made up by comic vendors.  There were hundreds of crates of comics and no shortage of old fat guys to paw through them.

There were some good costumes, but I honestly expected to see more people dressed up.  The place was crowded, but mainly with collectors, not cosplayers.  Maybe because we showed up on Sunday morning?  I later read that there were a lot more people in Star Trek garb on Saturday because Bill Shatner was there.  We were busy on Saturday…  Either way, Aiden had a good time.  We did run into some people in costume, and Aiden took plenty of pictures with them.

We were happy to see that the 501st Imperial Garrison made an appearance.  Aiden and I make it a point to find Stormtroopers.  And the 501st guys are top notch.  However, they only had a couple of troopers, a trio of Boba Fetts, and a decent-looking General Grievous.  Even the Mandalorians were talking about their lack of a Darth Vader.  How hard is it to get a Darth Vader to one of these things?

Aiden wanted to go home after about an hour, but I think that he was just hungry.  It seemed like we were there much longer, but it hit me during lunch that we we only there for an hour.  We had all-day passes, so I wanted to go back! However, we were already eating at the oasis over the tollway when bailer’s remorse set in.  Oh, and Aiden loved the view from the restaurant!

Anyway, it would have been very difficult to turn around on the tollway, and then pay for parking again, just to wander around the convention floor for the hour or two before it closed.  We’ll go back next year, only next time we’ll go on a Saturday and eat at the convention.  It’s cheaper to eat at McDonalds, but it’s a lot harder to make your way back to the convention floor from there when your boy decides to see more heroes.  And next year Aiden will go dressed as a Jedi!

Aiden used to love “Thomas The Tank Engine”.  We watched the show all the time and had tons of the plastic tracks to build railroads with.  However, Gavin soon became mobile and started trashing the sets.  So the tracks went into storage until Gavin was old enough to play with them too.  Now is the time to get Gavin acclimated to Thomas.

The annual “Day Out With Thomas” at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois, was held this weekend.  Just in time too, since we recently pulled the Thomas tracks out of storage for Gavin to play with.  We also went last year, but Gavin was just along for the ride.  He’s old enough to really enjoy it this time though.

The whole family took a ride on Thomas, or at least a train with a Thomas engine at the front.  We got photos taken with Sir Topham Hatt (he’s real!).  The boys played in a bouncy house.  Aiden and Gavin saw plenty of trains, and we all rode in a vintage trolley, which was in much better shape than the not-quite-restored rail cars pulled by Thomas.

On the way home, we ate lunch at the Wild West Steakhouse just down the street.  The Railroad Museum is seriously out in the middle of nowhere, so it’s surprising that there is a Wild West Town in the same area.  The food wasn’t bad, and the boys got to meet the Sheriff, so maybe we’ll stop by there again next year.

Although our family has an annual membership to the Brookfield Zoo, this is the first time that I’ve been back since the Spring.  The last time I was there, the “Great Bear Wilderness Trail” was still under construction and the dolphin stadium was being renovated.  Both are now completed, so we wanted to get back to the zoo at least once before the end of the summer.

The new bear habitat was smaller than I expected it to be, but there’s plenty of room for the three polar bears and one grizzly bear that live there.  One of the polar bears jumped in the water to play and eat, and the boys loved watching him swim.  The wolves were also relocated to a new den up on a hill so you can see them better, and the bison got new housing in the habitat as well.

Unfortunately, we missed out on the dolphin show.  We showed up about a half hour early, but that wasn’t good enough to get tickets for the first show.  Next time, we’ll get tickets as soon as we enter the zoo.  However, we did go to the underwater viewing area beneath the stadium while the show was on.  We watched the dolphins do their tricks from under the water for a little while, and were able to leave a lot easier than if we had actually watched the show above.

Aiden and Gavin love the zoo, so we re-upped our membership for another two years.  We stop in four or five times a year.  We like to get there as soon as it opens.  That way, we can check out the animals until about lunch time and then find ourselves a nice place to eat.  Then the boys usually sleep on the way home.  It’s a nice trip, and we think that the experiences are good for our boys.

Alice Cooper comes to the Radisson Star Theater about once a year.  I’ve seen the advertisements on the giant animated billboard next to US 30 about a dozen times over the last decade.  And every time, I say to Chrissy that we should go see him since we’re both big fans of his music.  We don’t get out to see many concerts anymore, since we’ve been going to plays in Chicago the last few years.  But we decided that we should go see Alice Cooper before he, ah, dies.

Chrissy is really good at buying tickets online, consistently finding great seats.  We got the fifth row behind the Celebrity Circle, which consists of the first seven or eight rows in front of the stage (so, roughly twelfth row).  She got these seats as part of a dinner package.  There’s a restaurant in the Radisson that serves a decent buffet (prime rib was the main course), and if you get the buffet you get the better seats.  The only way to get seats in the Celebrity Circle is to buy an overnight package, and we didn’t want to go that far.

We got to the restaurant a little early and got seated before the rest of the concert goers arrived.  It was interesting to see the different ages when people started arriving.  When we first came in, Chrissy saw a small group of teenagers with black t-shirts and figured that the entire concert would be filled with kids.  I told her that most likely the audience would be made up of older people who would have been fans since the 70′s.  As it turned out, we were not the only “old people”.  The median age was about forty, I would say.

We got to the theater early and waited by the doors to take our seats.  We were some of the first ones in and sat down in our seats.  We could see the stage very well and were pretty happy with where we were.  But then the people next to Chrissy sat down.  The lady next to Chrissy had no regard for personal space, which was only made worse by the fact that she required two seats due to her large size.  To make matters worse, this woman had seriously not bathed in several days.  Being nudged and stunk out of her seat, Chrissy was not happy.

I offered to trade seats with her.  So as not to be too obvious, we both walked up to the stage to take some pictures.  We also ran into some friends who had scored Celebrity Circle tickets and took their pictures as well.  When we came back, I put myself into Chrissy’s chair and let her take mine.  I was able to scootch over in my seat so as not to be touched by the stinky woman.  Alas, no good deed goes unpunished, as my own problems would be arriving at that point.

As the theater began to fill, the row in front of us became occupied.  Chewbacca sat in front of me.  Directly in front of me.  Chrissy became concerned that I couldn’t see the stage, and honestly I couldn’t.  However, once Alice Cooper made his entrance, the entire audience stood up anyway.  This wasn’t as bad as it would seem, because I was able to position myself in between the two giants in front of me so that I could pretty much see the entire stage from there.

The stinky lady had a similar problem.  The gentleman who sat next to Chewbacca was easily twice her width, if that can be believed.  To alleviate this problem, she again invaded my personal space in order to see between the wide guy and the tall guy.  Not a big deal, I just scooted closer to Chrissy, which was fine by me.  This was, after all, our anniversary gift to ourselves, so cuddling was allowed.  I’m not sure if anybody behind us could see, though.  I didn’t ask.

This was a no-smoking concert, which I thought was great.  Chrissy and I basically quit going to concerts a long time ago because we didn’t like sitting in a sea of smokers.  Lately, concert venues and bars in the area have gone to a “no smoking” policy, which makes it easier to go out without smelling like an ash tray once you get home.  So now I can see and I don’t have to worry about potheads in my vicinity, so I can enjoy the music.  And I did, as the concert itself was pretty good.

Alice sang mostly old classics, including four songs from “From The Inside” (one of my favorites) and many songs that Chrissy also knew all the words to.  I had only ever heard these songs recorded before, never live, so I was surprised to hear that they were performed in a more modern manner than I was used to hearing them.  I think maybe this was because the recordings were done in the 80′s or earlier, and bands just don’t play like that anymore.  There were a lot of costume changes, and some “fatal” stage theatrics.

Alice died no less than four times on stage.  The first was by beheading, they wheeled a giant guillotine out on the stage.  The second was by lethal injection, but the syringe was comically large.  The third was by hanging, with his battered “girlfriend” (played by his daughter, I think), kicking the stool out from under him.  And lastly by impalement.  I couldn’t help but feel that GWAR did on-stage murders better, but I was very happy to finally see Alice Cooper in concert.

Katie called to say that her friend Julie got a block of tickets to see Choo Choo Soul at the Radisson Star Theater in Merrillville because she’s interning at Radio Disney in Chicago.  She had about forty tickets to give away and asked if we could help her distribute them.  The boys liked Choo Choo Soul on the Disney Channel, so we decided to go.  We had previously gone to see the Imagination Movers, another Playhouse Disney property, and we enjoyed it very much.

The concert, if you could call it that, was about a week away.  Chrissy called around to see if others would like tickets too.  Since we had free tickets, several of Chrissy’s friends brought their young children to see the show with us.  In all, we used about thirty-two tickets and filled up three rows at the theater.  We picked up the Choo Choo Soul CD at Borders so that we would know all of the songs ahead of time.

The show wasn’t terrible, but I kind of expected more from Disney.  The television show centers around Genevieve, the shapely conductor on a cartoon train, and DC, who is the engineer.  The show has a train that kind of grooves its way along the track to different locales while Genevieve sings about numbers or letters or colors and DC drives the train.  The stage show was completely different.

The biggest difference was that there was no Choo Choo.  We got to see Genevieve in her conductor outfit.  DC was there as well, and he had a turntable on a podium, the front covered by a Choo Choo Soul banner.  I was wondering what he was going to do, since he had no train to drive on the stage.  He was doing something like performance art that you would see in a public park, with some breakdancing, beat boxing, and doing the robot, complete with voice vocoder.  But no Choo Choo.  As it was, I had seen similar shows on Hollywood Boulevard.  You toss quarters at people doing this type of thing in Grant Park.

Considering that the show is about the Choo Choo, I would have expected to see the train there.  But there were only two people on the stage against a black backdrop.  The Imagination Movers concert had a large projection screen against the back wall where are the Warehouse Mouse made a virtual appearance.  I would have expected to see the same thing with the Choo Choo at the very least.  The train could have made an appearance that way, if not in a real physical way.

The boys loved it.  Aiden was dancing in the aisles along with all the other kids that came along with our group.  The performers actually encouraged this from the stage.  Katie and Felice had come with us, so there was no shortage of people to hold onto Gavin and Aiden when they got tired.  The boys seemed to have a good time and were excited to see Genevieve and DC.  Overall, we were happy that we got to take our kids to the show, but we would have been upset if we had paid for it.  We saw that the tickets were being sold for $20-$30 each online, so we were happy that we saw it for free.

Sometimes there’s just too much to do on Independence Day.  Different friends having barbecues, different towns having fireworks displays,  and then there are the family gatherings.  Sometimes we miss things, but we always do something every year.  This year, the holiday was on a Sunday, so some towns were having their fireworks events on Friday or Saturday instead.  Bonus days!

We decided to see the Schererville event on Friday night, which was awesome, and go to my Aunt’s house on Sunday.  We missed the family fireworks show last year because it was past the boys’ bedtime (again, can’t do everything).  This year, Gavin was sick, so Chrissy stayed home with him, but I wanted to at least take Aiden because they rented a huge bouncy house, and he loves those.

Every year, my cousin Dave puts on a Fourth of July fireworks display at my Aunt’s house.  Every year, his fireworks display gets bigger and better.  Dave had a huge amount of fireworks stockpiled in the garage.  He prepared by nailing dozens of rocket tubes to a four six-foot two-by-fours.  In addition to these, which he situated along the sidewalk, Dave also had a huge stack of boxes that were self-contained displays, each with a hundred or so smaller rockets in them.

The sun went down, and we all lined up our folding chairs a good distance away to watch the show.  Dave has gotten very good at timing the launches, and the fireworks were very nice.  We didn’t see the Portage town fireworks the night before, but many people there said that Dave’s were better.  However, the neighbor across the street also had a lot of fireworks, which he lined up in front of his house.

Ordinarily, this would have been fine but we were kind of competing in that he wanted to fire his rockets at the same time that we were firing ours.  Hey, bigger show, right?  The difference was that Dave had nailed down his fireworks, and the neighbor neglected to do so.  This would end badly for him, but would be unexpectedly cool for us.

While firing, one of his rockets fell over and shot into a box of eighty other rockets, igniting all of them.  The resulting conflagration would not have been out of place in the sky, an aerial finale of sorts, but was instead on the neighbor’s lawn.  It was awesome.  Beautiful.  Epic.  And it made all of us across the street back up one pace.

The ground-level pyrotechnics were over in minutes, but the neighbor’s house didn’t remain unscathed.  His bushes had caught fire, and Dave and his friends ran over to help them put it out.  We applauded.  I was surprised to see that the guy still had more fireworks after that.  We did too, of course, so the show went on for at least another half hour.  And Aiden loved it.

When we found out that Botcon was going to be held in Disney World this year, we decided to bring the whole family.  We confirmed that Chrissy’s mom and sister Cassie could come with us.  But that was six months before the actual event.  So it kind of snuck up on us, kind of like your birthday.  You barely know it’s coming until it’s already the day.  At least it felt that way to me.  Chrissy, on the other hand, had us packed and ready to go a week ahead of time.

We got to Florida a week before Botcon so that we could spend a few days in the Disney parks.  We had a lot of fun, but it was tiring because the weather consisted of 95° heat and 88% humidity the entire time.  Besides the heat, Harry Potter World had just opened across town at Universal Studios, so attendance was down in the Disney parks.  This meant that we got to try lots of fun rides that we had never been on before because the lines were really short.  So it all worked out.

Botcon was fun, but there were some downsides.  I missed the autograph session with Peter Cullen because I only showed up for the line one hour early.  The line started at 5 AM and it was completely filled long before I got there.  On the bright side, I did get a couple of chances to speak to Hideaki Yoke during the convention.  This is the guy that designed the original Megatron toy.  He has had a hand in every Transformers figure since Diaclone.  I have met Peter Cullen a couple of times in the past, but meeting Yoke-san was a real treat.

I met a lot of celebrities of the Transformers world over the weekend, but I also caught up with lots of friends.  This was the first year that I socialized with people at Botcon, mostly with people that I met on Twitter or Facebook.  It was nice to meet everyone in person.  Usually I just go and hang out with Chrissy for a couple of days and buy some toys, but this time I hung out with some people while Chrissy went out to the parks with the boys.  I took pictures of almost everyone that I met and put them on Twitter.

I like to hear what new stuff is coming out next year during the Hasbro panels, but mostly I go to Botcon to buy Transformers.  I have most of the modern figures, but I still need to fill in parts of my vintage collection.  This year I neglected to bring a Visa or MasterCard.  We only brought the Discover card to spend on, and of course none of the vendors accepted Discover.  I could still buy some of the figures from the ’87 and ’88 lines that I needed, but I could have easily blown another thousand bucks in the dealer room if I had brought a Visa.

We also attended an Awards Dinner on Saturday night.  This was designed to honor real people and fictional robots into the Transformers Hall Of Fame.  The dinner was pretty good, and we saw induction speeches from Peter Cullen, Hideaki Yoke, and Bob Budiansky.  I was surprised that music by Stan Bush was not used during the introductory videos, or that Scott McNeill was not asked to speak after the Fan’s Choice character was announced, since he was the voice of Dinobot in the Beast Wars series.

During the dinner, they announced the location of next year’s Botcon.  It will be in Pasadena, California again next year.  This is the same place as last year, but they’ll have a new movie to promote again.  Michael Bay and several actors from the movie made appearances last year, so I assume that plans are in the works to do something similar for Transformers 3.  This is the first time that Fun Publications has re-used a Botcon location, however, so I think that lots of people were upset (at least those that don’t live anywhere near California, like us).

The next morning, all of the hotel rooms in Pasadena were booked.  If I recall correctly, the problem last year was that convention hotels did not have enough rooms to accommodate all of the Botcon attendees.  Chrissy heard at Disney World that the Disneyland parks were completely different, so we might stay at the Disneyland resorts instead.  This means that I would have to rent a car and drive the twenty five five miles to Pasadena every morning in LA traffic.  I suppose that’s all right, but I’ll have to wake up extra early in order to make the Peter Cullen autograph line.  At least I’ll be able to spend the rest of the week at Disneyland with my family.

I almost completely skipped “Free Comic Book Day”.  I knew that it was coming up and I had planned on taking Aiden to the local comic book store to get some comics.  I was even reminded of the date (who keeps track of the date on a Saturday?) when I picked up my sunglasses from the optometrist today.  But I lost track somehow during the day.

So it came to be 5:30 PM when I noticed that someone on Twitter mentioned their #FCBD haul.  For non-Twitterers, that’s a hashtag notation for “Free Comic Book Day”.  Gah, I forgot!  It wasn’t too late though!  However, Chrissy was leaving at 6, so I would have to bring both Aiden and Gavin with me.  Ehhh, OK…

So I packed the boys into the trailer on my bike and rode them over to Coruscant Comics.  It seems like we only come here on FCBD.  As luck would have it, we ran into Gavin’s Godfather, Nick, and his girlfriend while we were there.  Wasn’t expecting that, but it was a pleasant surprise.  We talked for a bit, and Aiden picked out some comics.

I helped Aiden pick out a Batman comic, since he loves Batman lately.  I grabbed a Transformers Animated comic that I think was leftover from last year and a GI Joe comic, since those are the only lines that I follow.  Gavin got to visit with Nick for a bit, but he didn’t get any comics.  And the ride home didn’t kill me.  So overall, it was a nice trip.

I used to collect comic books in college, somewhere in the mid-nineties when comic collecting was becoming a main-stream hobby.  I was really into Dark Horse comics, Tim Vigil and Joe Linsner.  At one point, I owned every appearance of the Punisher (my addictive compulsive nature at work).  Then I stopped.  I think that I ran out of room.

I’m only passively interested in comics today, but I heard the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo was coming up.  The last time that I went to a comic book convention was in 1993, but I thought that Aiden might like to go.  I debated taking Aiden to one last year.  I’d go just to see his reaction, but I wasn’t sure if it was worth the trip.

There were several problems.  The admission price to C2E2 was $30, and that didn’t include the $19 for parking.  I don’t collect comics anymore, and we wouldn’t be attending any panels (interesting, but not to Aiden).  My boy is only three and a half, so he wouldn’t want to stay very long anyway.  But, Aiden would see super heroes.

I asked Twitter about it.  I quickly got about half a dozen replies, all saying that Aiden should definitely see this.  Convinced, Aiden and I drove to Chicago after his nap on Saturday.  I had heard in advance that the show floor was not very crowded, so I opted to bring a stroller for Aiden.  Since he didn’t have to walk, we managed to hang out for over two hours.  Aiden was very well behaved.

We did see a lot of costumed people, and Aiden got his picture taken with every one we saw.  I said Hi to some of my favorite web comic artists, David Willis and Danielle Corsetto.  I saw a lot of new artists that I recognized, like Ben Templesmith, but I also met some of my old favorites, like Dave Dorman and Joe Linsner.  We had a great time, so I think that Aiden and I will be going to Wizard World in August.

Greetings, this is Michael Wilson, coming to you… FROM THE FUTURE!  In honor of Geekcast Radio Network’s Toycast fiftieth episode, I decided to call in from the year 2034, the fiftieth anniversary of the Transformers franchise.  Why go through all the trouble of trans-temporal communications?  Because I have to tell you — Takara-Hasbro-Sony has pulled out all the stops for their 50th Anniversary Robot Companion Optimus Prime.  He’s a human-sized replica of the original Optimus Prime, like a big-ol’ Masterpiece Prime in your living room.  He’s five feet tall, can transform by himself AND he talks in Peter Cullen’s voice.  Listen: “One shall stand, One shall fall!“.  They have Peter on ice so they can record his lines for Transformers forever.

To preface, Sony started marketing their consumer robot line, the “Robot Companions”, in 2019.  They’re old hat by now, used as butlers, dog walkers, and house keepers — but then the very vocal Transformers Party started demanding a Transformer version.  After the Transformers Party took the Senate in 2032, Sony finally acquiesced, partnered with Takara-Hasbro, and built one that actually transforms!  I have little need for a three-foot tall semi truck in my house (With wheels, no less! How quaint!), but Prime still functions as a consumer-grade household appliance in robot mode.  I’ve got him answering my holo-mail now, cooking me pancakes in the morning, and battling spam-bots in the front yard (they come to your house now!).

But here’s the best part (been waiting 25 years for this):  No more buying Prime repaints!  The nano-paint on Robot Companion Prime can actually change colors when you touch the Matrix in his chest.  I’ll just pop open the chest panels (whoosh!), and there’s the Matrix!  You can’t see it, but it shines with its own inner glow, and it’s big enough for an adult to hold up, Rodimus-style, to light their darkest hour.  There, now he’s white and pale blue for Ultra Magnus.  And now he’s Black and Teal for Scourge.  And now he’s green and yellow for Chupacabra Buster, that’s when Prime defeated the Chupacabras.  Well, that hasn’t happened yet for you, but just know that things get bumpy for the human race around, oh, 2015.

No, I’ve already said too much!  I’m risking quantum paradoxical synergies by just calling back like this!  Just know that this is the Transformers figure to wait for!  Try to stay alive long enough to own one of these (remember, 2015 is the rough patch!).  He was almost too expensive to afford on my retirement account, but he’s well worth it!  With any luck, the designer for 50th Anniversary Prime will hear this and make it their life’s work to build it, or else, y’know, this future might not exist.  So, this is Michael Wilson, signing off, FROM THE FUTURE!

– For a recorded version of this contribution, please listen to episode 50 of the GCRN ToyCast podcast.