So I’ve been considering doing something like this for a while.  After talking about it with a friend of mine on Twitter, @arennorman, a really awesome person and I highly suggest following him and watching his podcasts, I decided on making a part of my blog devoted to specific stories that occurred during my convention journey.  Especially since the reviews, I make focus primarily on how well the conventions execute their attractions I actually put very little of my own personal experiences in them.

Naturally, the first entry will focus on convention number one which was Fanboy Expo in Knoxville, TN.  I think the year was 2013 but I”m not honestly sure, this was before I started writing up anything about them and was doing a lot of stuff on IGN at the time. This was an event close to home and a friend of mine planned to spend the day there and wanted people to tag along.  I noticed that the guest list was William Katt star of a show called The Greatest American Hero.  One of my oldest and closest friends Samuel, who you can follow on Twitter @TSCNSam, had the entire series on DVD.  I called his mother and explained that my plan was to sneak away the DVD case to get it signed, but I needed her help to do so.  She happily agreed and I managed to swipe the case without him knowing it.  Which was really hard to do on her part because he was in the middle of binge-watching it.

Come convention time I was pretty overwhelmed at the whole experience and it took me a while to get used to it.  Lost my travel partner in about five minutes and wandered around on my own for a few hours haha.  The first thing I did was get the autograph for my friend Samuel and Katt was nice enough to sign a print to go with it.  Really nice guy, hated the suit on the show though.

After that, I just wandered aimlessly and I think this is where my odd luck with traveling started honestly.  I eventually found my friend and we went to a panel where we did a work out with wrestlers Diamond Dallas Page and Jake the Snake.  Me being about a foot in a half shorter than everyone else in the room I couldn’t see a thing and Jake the Snake showed me personally how to do the workouts, much to my friend’s bewilderment.  After that, we went to a few panels, did some shopping and called it a day.  But not before I found a flyer to what would be the second convention I ever attended, Fandomfest.

To end this story I surprised my friend with the autographs and that actually kickstarted his interest in conventions as well.  My first convention experience wasn’t the most exciting one but it wound up being one of the more memorable experiences because it was a huge slap in the face with entertainment that I was not expecting.  Furthermore,an action that was intended to be a friendly gesture for a dear friend of mine proved to be a rather life-changing moment as from that point onward I was completely hooked on the convention scene.