The Grey Days And My Trip To Philadelphia

This morning as I drove to Philadelphia I thought back on dreams I had last night. Good dreams, odd dreams, but good nonetheless.

When I got to Philly I met up with Goldberg and headed over to Wizard World. Five minutes in the door I had caught a glimpse of one of my favorite sculptors Clay Moore. Five minutes later and I had made my first purchase a 1970's Captain Britain Bust and The Iron Man Hulkbuster Armor both made by Bowen. I wandered back over to the Moore booth and picked up one of the famed Magdalena AP's. Clay and a woman (his wife?) were the only ones working the stand, there wasn't even a crowd. I asked sort of hesitantly because I couldn't see his nametag and had never actually met him before, "Are you Clay?" When he said he was I said that I was a big fan, that I really liked his stuff. He looked down at the Magdalena statue and said, "I didn't sculpt this one. Dene did." I knew that already, but said "Oh yeah, but I really like your stuff too." Shook his hand, thanked him again, and took off. He seemed like a real cool guy.

A few minutes later I met Brandon Shiflett. The Shiflett Brothers are really cool too, I don't actually have any of their stuff yet. But that's because most of it is either kits (which I have no talent for), or really expensive and not in one of the areas I collect. But I've had my eye on an Ol' Scratch Bronze for a few weeks now. They'll only be making 18 of them, they're pretty pricey, but they're cool. Small, but cool. Brandon was real nice too, he told me they'd only sold three of them so far. The first one to the design head at WETA and the most recent one to Peter Jackson himself. I had wanted one before, when I saw it I knew I had to have one. Oddly enough they didn't take Visa, and I certainly wasn't about to lay out the total in cash, so I told him I'd shoot of an e-mail as soon as I got home and if the number 4 was available I'd pay for it with paypal. We'll see what happens.

I also met this really cool artist who was doing these odd pieces as people watched. It had the biggest crowd of Artist Alley and no one knew who the hell the kid was. I spent a few minutes talking to him, and ended up buying one of his full size pieces. He was sort of at a loss as how to package it (I get a feeling a lot of these artists and sculptures go to these things not expecting to sell anything), he framed it right there and I took it back to my car immediately.

I also began to buy what will soon be an army of Cylon busts. Diamond Select made something like 2,000 of them and while I know I won't be able to get all of them (they've already sold them all and it would also cost me like $100,000) I do intend to get quite a few of them, and then maybe a very long time from now get the life size one by Barton.

It was a real good day. Expensive, but good.

On the ride home I could see the sky getting darker and darker. It was clear a big storm was on the way. Then I could see the rain, and though I expected to hit it any second, I didn't. For a little over a minute I watched as it rained on the cars in front of me, but not on mine. It was like I was chasing the rain up the highway at sixty miles per hour. It only lasted a minute, but it was sort of wow.

Really sort of wow.