Owing to a change in scheduling and approach, I feel compelled to give another pre-convention update as to what is going on. For a one-day convention, it certainly is creating a huge amount of problems. Thank goodness I didn’t decide to go for a hotel room; I can’t imagine the logistical nightmare that might generate. Also, the parent company for KrakenCon wants me to play up and promote and push this all over the place, as they want to increase the size of it and get more people in (What? With an attendance cap in place?) Well, as Oscar Wilde once noted, “The only thing worse than being talked about is NOT being talked about.” So I guess all ink is good ink (or electronic lettering, depending).

Now, the Big Thing about this venue is that it is being held on an AIRCRAFT CARRIER! Well, that’s different, but doesn’t the flight deck of a carrier have the room for about, say, four football fields? (A football field is about 1 1/3 acres or 57,600 square feet). And you need a vendor’s cap? How big are the tables? The size of the end zone? That’s a huge amount of manga!

Anyway, this is on the USS Hornet. Now, this is not the original Hornet (no way it could be, as THAT one was first commissioned in….1775, the era of wooden ships and iron men.) The one a lot of people think about is designated as CV-8. That one helped launch the Doolittle Raid (first aerial bombing of Japan), did some damage at the Battle of Midway and was finally sunk at the Battle of Santa Cruz on October 27, 1942 (you see, you learn a lot from anime and research, right? It’s not all about big boobies).

THIS one was commissioned in 1943 and its big claim to fame is that it picked up the Apollo 11 astronauts from the first moon landing (and, yes, we DID land on the moon; take your conspiracy theories elsewhere!) Well, any opportunity to step aboard some heavy metal is up on the bucket list. Too bad it was a solo job for me.

OK, remember that the original reason I was going was so the daughter could vend merchandise and I would be emotional and tactical support. Well, talk about snowballing. It seemed that everything else was more interesting to her than making the merchandise: a ‘My Little Pony’ marathon, entering contests on Deviant Art, spending a day at the beach. So, the intent to make a huge series of buttons to sell got further and further away from her. Then, when her digital pen crapped out on her (and I mean crfapped out; that damn thing practically exploded!) and it took a week to get a replacement from Amazon (and I thought those guys worked like maniacs to get you a roll of duct tape in under 30 minutes), a lot of the zeal had faded.

I felt I was lucky in my trials and tribulations with the Press Pass. OK, I sent in the information and waited, like Joe Biden hoping that the DNC comes a-calling for him to pick up the banner. Yeah, that’s a lot of waiting. Considering what Rube Goldberg complications they might put me through, I wanted to stay on top of this. I sent emails and heard nothing. Did they decide I wasn’t worthy? Did they misplace my address? Did they get lost on the USS Hornet? Finally, they sent a notice to say I had been approved and I needed to print off my ticket, although if I was a real technological wizard, I would download the app to my Smartphone and then just show it to the staff to highlight what a far out kind of millennial guy I was! Sorry; hopeless Baby Boomer.

Well, since I couldn’t get my home printer to print it off, that put a kibosh on things. But I had time to jump through some more flaming hoops to get it locked and loaded, so the ducat is at the ready. And as to why my printer hates me, well, you can never tell with machinery what will set them off. I assume kicking it down a flight of stairs might not have been a particularly smart call. Now to The Plan. What am I going to do there? Remember, only seven hours are allotted to me. And I know this violates a personal rule that I have about going solo to these events. To me, it’s a caliber of loneliness. I couldn’t get anyone to come with me. Well, I could get the daughter to be an anime ally, but neither her nor her mother are anxious to plunk down $36 for this escapade and I feel it would depress her severely, as she wanted to come as a vendor and that got torpedoed.

The last time I went to any kind of event like this by myself was when I took in the Cow Palace Labor Day TriStar Card Show and Autograph Sessions, back when Joe DiMaggio was still alive. I bring up that reference as he was there, signing autographs, but he was rather cranky and uptight about things. All I wanted to do was get some cards for my 1970 Topps collection, but all the cards I was missing were all the power, expensive, hard-to-get cards…..and I digress. It’s just not a whole lot of fun to go by yourself to these things.

For me, it would be really a stripped down approach: no need for the laptop, as I would compose once I got home. Don’t have to think about luggage, as I’m not going to any hotel. And I have no idea about after-event parties or activities, but I never was a big fan of those, and because of my current age, I’d be seen as everyone’s uptight dad. Thanks for that Hallmark moment. “And the Wet Blanket Award goes to………”

It’s just the basics: a camera (to take snaps for the two lead photos for the articles I will write), my Bluetooth (man, that thing has saved me so many times. I almost can’t live without it, but ONLY for conventions), money (no ATM is available) and the phone. A thought about the food: should I bring something or trust what they have? Or perhaps I starve as well.

Let’s see who’ll be showing up. We have voice actress Tiffany Grant, better known as the voice of Asuka in “Neon Genesis Evangelion” and the evil Auntie in “The Wallflower”. Not bad. And also voice actress Christy Carlson Romano, who was “Kim Possible”. And….and…and…this is it? I can’t even get a working schedule to see what’s when or who and whatever they did in the Spring Show doesn’t work at all here, as that was a two-day affair in a big convention center. Could we only get the two guests? Nothing more? Nothing else? Nothing matters?

Look, let me get back to you on what’s going down. It may be closer to casting off time before I can get a handle on what is on the schedule of events and what is going to go down. As far as I can see, it is going to be a flat-out sprint the entire day, so, unlike Donovan in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, I must choose wisely.