-

Convention Time!

Today, the ever-affable Eric G. and I will be headed into Philly for this year's Wizard World event, a comics, gaming and entertainment convention we've managed to hit together every year back through 2004, making this the sixth for us to hit together. As I've often noted in various places over the years, these events require good traveling companions to really enjoy them, and Eric's a fine choice.

Sometime later this weekend I'll aim to add a proper post (or two or three) about it - I've let that part slide most years, but I don't want to this time.

Being held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in the heart of Philadelphia, excellently positioned with respect to train stations - I all but refuse to drive within the city limits of Philadelphia or any other major city - and, aside from a variety of restaurants and pubs in the immediate area, it's two minutes walk from the Reading Terminal Market.

The Market has an international array of restaurants in a mart setting. Believe me, having been stuck in the armpit that is Rosemont, Illinois, where Wizard has been holding the Chicago comic convention for years, I absolutely appreciate having a convention in the thick of a city (as opposed to a business park on the outskirts), with many options of where to quickly step out for something to eat or drink or even just to have a look around. One absolutely does not want to be at the mercy of a convention center's concessionaires with their so-so to poor quality and stroke-inducing prices. If one's come to a major city it shouldn't be necessary to drive to a decent place to eat.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
Insurance Company-Driven Propaganda Storm It's almost heartening to see them go to these lengths - they're getting a little scared - though I worry how many wingnut media outlets will reference the report as if it's substantive..? ( From the Washington Post ) The Insurance Industry's Deceptive Report by Ezra Klein In the hallowed tradition of the tobacco and energy industries, the health insurance industry has commissioned a report (pdf) projecting doom and despair for those who seek to reform its business practices. The report was farmed out to the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has something of a history with this sort of thing: In the early-'90s, the tobacco industry commissioned PWC to estimate the economic devastation that would result from a tax on tobacco. The report was later analyzed by the Arthur Andersen Economic Consulting group, which concluded that "the cumulative effect of PW’s methods … is to produce patently unreliable results.&qu
Read more

Oct.13-19 - More Returns and Changes

-
Image
      Even though I've already watched the pair of debut episodes of Frasier (see next paragraph), and this week's Star Trek: Lower Decks (which continues to do a stellar job of mining  previous Trek series for character, episode and extraterrestrial culture lore and deftly applying them at breakneck speeds), I still have multiple things I'm looking forward to catching up on, including new eps of Gen V (Amazon Prime), Loki (Disney+), and both Archer and Welcome to Wrexham (both on Hulu), along with the first two episodes of a final six for Doom Patrol over on Max... and that's just off the top of my head, so getting this week's streaming post out of the way brings those one step closer for me.       I've watched the two episodes of the new Frasier series that arrived on Paramount+ this week, and while it was a mixed bag it was good to see the character back, with him attempting to move into his third act by returning to Boston, where we first met the ch
Read more

The Tease of Things I Don't Need

-
Image
     The lure of things we don't need, could easily find greater needs to apply the cash to, and which we may not even have the space for, is a very First(ish) World Problem, to be sure.        HasLabs is a special projects division of Hasbro, that occasionally pitches large and/or elaborate items - oversized figures and/or vehicles - essentially crowdfunding each project. They set the price, and a funding line - the number of people who need to pledge to buy one (or more -- up to five) at the announced price, then collect the names and information of interested parties for a period of 45 days. Once the number of pledged buys hits the target, the project is greenlit.      A couple years ago there was a HasLabs special build project aiming to fund a production run for an oversized (32" tall), elaborately-articulated action figure of Marvel comics' Devourer of Worlds: Galactus. Back on July 18, 2021 I posted a piece on the project, which at the time was just two days
Read more