Shipshape, Bristol fashion

I'll start with the coolest bit rather than going chronologically, because I want the memory people to read it and they'll get bored with it if they have to wade through a lot of talk about a comic convention. So, talking with Kurt Busiek (wooo!) this afternoon about memory techniques, and he said "I do something like that, actually. Say if I want to remember the number 2083, I'll think 'well, Avengers #20 had Power Man and #83 was the first appearance of the Valkyrie', so I'll remember it as Power Man and the Valkyrie." How cool is that? He uses memory techniques based on his encyclopaedic knowledge of Avengers comics from the sixties! See, this is how you get to be my hero.

By the way, that was a paraphrase. I thought I shouldn't use the actual number he quoted to me, in case he was inadvertently using his PIN number or something. I'm sure he wasn't (you don't get to be my hero by being stupid), but just in case.

Anyway, it's been a very fun weekend. I didn't take my laptop with me, only to find that my stupid hotel had internet access via the telly and one of those infa-red keyboard things. At three quid an hour. But I nobly refrained from using it too much, and £6 isn't anything I'm really going to miss. Anyway, I did manage to leave the hotel room for extended periods in order to check out the expo. It was extremely cool in every way. I spent rather more money than I probably should have done on cool comics that I saw or that were forced on me by pushy creators. I got a signed copy of a book by someone I've never heard of that really isn't very good, I saw Jamie Smart and told him at unnecessary length that I think he's great. I got the latest Y: The Last Man collection signed by Brian K Vaughan AND Pia Guerra. There were expo staff people dressed as storm troopers, biker scouts, a tie-fighter pilot and Boba Fett. There were normal people dressed as Batman, the Silver Surfer, Rorshach and others.

Then today I had Ravinder filming me hanging out with Kurt Busiek at length. Seriously cool. We were walking up and down between the dealers' tables in front of the camera, exchanging conversation (not very sparkling from me, as I predicted, but I did get more coherent as the day went on). When someone stopped to talk to him, I took the opportunity to say to another passer-by "I'm walking around with Kurt Busiek!"

I also took in an audience with Brian K Vaughan, in which he was brilliantly witty and entertaining in answering questions from the crowd. I asked the last one - who would win in a fight between Agent 355 (from Y: The Last Man) and Old Lace (the telepathic dinosaur from the future from Runaways), and he replied, after some thought, that it would be a draw. And then they'd make out.

Then I had a lengthy private chat on camera with Kurt, encompassing a wide range of topics. And I got him to sign my copy of Thunderbolts #1. And just as he was leaving, he mentioned that he'd read my blog post of the other day. Seems that since he's got an unusual name, he puts it into search engines to see what people are saying about him. Very cool guy.