Friday started out with the first Cookie Brigade meeting in the lobby of the Westin. The Cookie Brigade, for those who don’t know, is a volunteer group that raises money for Child’s Play. We bake and distribute cookies for free to people at PAX, then take a (strictly optional) donation to Child’s Play. This year…spoiler…we raised $9,600. Aside from just being generally amazing, this total also blew away last year’s total and even beat the total amount gathered at last year’s PAX Prime! (where the Cookie Brigade was born) After dropping off the Cookie Brigade flag that Becca and her mom made with VT, I picked up some supplies for the day, double checked my cookies and headed off to the convention center to start working some of the lines. I got over to the convention center and, not being very familiar with it yet, actually ended up working the line for the Penny Arcade Merch booth. Recognition of the Brigade was much higher this year, I’m sure partly due to the several shout-outs we received throughout the year, especially from the awesome folks at Loading Ready Run. I was only able to work the line for an hour or so before I had to meet up with Becca and get to the Main theater for the Keynote address, but by the time I booked it up to the third floor, I had already raised over a hundred dollars, so that was a nice start.
I won’t spend too much time speaking about Jane McGonigal’s Keynote address, other than to say that it was incredible. I’m sure that if it’s not already available on Youtube, then it will be shortly. As soon as it is, I recommend that you watch it. Her main theme, which was how games can be used to genuinely improve our lives, struck very close to home for Becca and I. She went through a pretty serious head injury a few years ago, and to ease the mental trauma of her recovery, she made a game out of it. Seriously, as soon as you can watch it, do it. At one point, it even made the members of Team 9 all smile to ourselves simultaneously and text each other with comments of support. (Since Becca and I had the medical badges and Steph and Andrew didn’t, we were in different parts of the theater.) The Keynote also kicked off the three great conspiracies of PAX East.
- Make sure Becca cries at least once every day of PAX.
- Make sure Jeff and Becca eat very poorly for the duration of PAX.
- Make sure Jeff and Becca get not nearly enough sleep.
Becca got her tears out of the way early on Friday, crying a bit (several times) during the Keynote. It was definitely a trend that would continue.
We stayed in the main theater after the Keynote for the first PA Q&A which was, as always, hysterical. I have to say, I admire Mike and Jerry during these Q&A’s for being as patient as they are with some of their fans. While most of the people that get to the microphones have legitimate questions or requests (sign this, sing a song, etc), there are some…shall we say…less mature fans. Whether they’re actual kids or they just have a similar mentality, they feel the need to blast out some vulgar joke or request. Mike and Jerry, to their credit, handle it all in stride, calmly brushing it off. I tip my hat to you, gentlemen. (and it’s a nice hat, too!)
Aaron C, who I’m pretty sure is the leader of the Special Forces branch of the Enforcers, informed us after the Q&A that if we were planning on attending the Blamimations Alive panel, we could just hang out here, as it had been moved to the main theater. Aaron was just one of the many Enforcers who were just awesome throughout the whole event. Scott and Kris, not surprisingly, arrived a little early for their panel. Scott must have just bought a copy of Pokemon Black (or white, I’m not sure), and he openly invited anyone that wanted to trade Pokemon to come up to the stage and trade. A line immediately formed, and didn’t completely dissipate until moments before the panel was to begin. Kris did a good job of looking frustrated and left out, not being into Pokemon and having no one on his side of the stage. Graham, of Loading Ready Run, was in the audience and must have felt bad for Kris. He walked up on to his side of the stage, waited for him to turn around, then calmly talked to him for a minute or so, reassuring him, I can only believe. After that, Kris leaned down to his mic and suggested that if anyone had any real stuff they’d like to give him rather than the…and I’m quoting here…”fake bullshit.” Amusingly, a line started up on Kris’ side as well. If you watch the videos of the panel (that feature the lines before it started, you can actually see Becca in line delivering Kris some cookies!) Once both lines were dealt with, and the proper time rolled around, the panel actually started. Scott and Kris were a little hesitant at first. You can tell that, down inside, they’re still a bit insecure, and not sure whether or not they’ll meet everyone’s expectations. As it turns out, there was ABSOLUTELY no need for that concern. Their panel was possibly the funniest hour of PAX, absolute genius, through and through. As I mentioned, the panel is already up on Youtube, I recommend that you go watch it, though I’m sure it won’t compare to the actual experience of being there.
The last panel that we ended up seeing on Friday was called “Gamers Doing Good,” and it was all about how gamers are combining their love of gaming and their desire to do charity work. With our involvement in the Cookie Brigade, not to mention future plans to raise even more money for Child’s Play, we were very interested. This one was slightly disappointing. I think I was just expecting something different. While I went in hoping for instructions on how to set up your own charity event, or tips and tricks on such a thing, this panel primarily just discussed charitable events that the two groups running the panel had already run. It was useful, if only to get their contact info, but just not what I was expecting.
By the time we got out of that panel, it was 6:30 and we hadn’t had anything to eat since some pastries in the morning. We met up with some friends for a quick dinner, then went back over to the convention hall to hit the lines again. Cookie Brigade duty never stops! Becca and I have a very effective distribution of duties for our Cookie Brigade work. She is an incredible baker. As many people can attest, she is a baking machine. Not only can she crank out impressive numbers of cookies, she’ll show up with some pretty bizarre, yet strangely delicious recipes. This year, unfortunately, we didn’t have quite as large a variety as last year, but we had more than enough cookies, and they were all damned tasty. My job, on the other hand, is to be like the old time carnival barker. As we walk up and down the line, I call out “Free cookie from the Cookie Brigade! Chocolate Chip, Toffee Chip, all benefiting Child’s Play!” or something similar. I’ve got it down to a science now. I can spot the faces that look interested or curious, then target and convince them. Once one person gets some cookies, the others around them begin to see that it’s for real, and two or three more people say that they’d like some. Usually, we’d get one person in each bunch that didn’t even want any cookies, they just wanted to give some money to Child’s Play. For them, we’d have one of the little buttons that VT had made, looking like an 8-bit cookie with a number eleven on it for PAX East 2011.
When we had finally burned through our supply of cookies for the evening, we retired to our room at the Westin and invited our friends Stephen and his wife Tina over to the room to hang out, talk, laugh and generally experience the community high that is PAX. We must have been up until 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning, laughing with friends that we don’t see nearly often enough. As with every PAX, we agreed that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to only meet once a year, and I think that this year is the one when we’ll hold one (or more) “Mini-PAX’s,” either here or abroad, where we can laugh, chat and have fun with our extended PAX family.
Tomorrow should be an interesting day, with the Make-a-Strip panel and the Loading Ready Run extended Panel-o-rama! Hope this is coming across as somewhat coherent. There’s just a lot of data to share, here. :)
5 months ago
