This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - Thoughts on Volunteering at Planet Comicon 2025

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Mike talks about his experience volunteering at Kansas City's Planet Comicon in March 2025.  Mike did two days there - one day shooting video, and one day helping out with the board gaming area.

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Can't you see there's so much more laughs and tales you can't ignore A journey that will leave you floor In the night or in the day Just press play we're on our way Hello, nerds. Welcome to the podcast, our special thoughts on playing Comic-Con as a volunteer. So a few things about this. So I learned from a article that's 2013 was the first year that at Pine Comic-Con was actually held at Bartle Hall, which are our big convention center here in Kansas City.

But the years before 2013, it was actually held in the suburbs in Newfound Park. I mentioned that it is the 2013 Comic-Con that I went to. And I just think I recall only half of that building was being used for the convention. and that was also the same year that friends of the podcast Sam Tottie and Bill Butts did their playing ComCon

video which you can still watch today on the YouTube and that once I think it was the next year so 14 to get

John Ratsenberger's signature as part of a punishment on a winning side for getting some picks wrong I forget which picks I got wrong but I know it got picks wrong because I paid money to get that

autograph and John Ratsberger, Cliff Cleveland on Cheers, very nice guy and it was the following year that Tim Crippin friend of the podcast and former Wingside co-host he too lost

a bad lost on picks and had to be punished and he got not one but two autographs that year I think it was Carrie Ellas Princess Bride he played Wesley

and Aaron Gray I think were the two that he got and okay that's it we did that that punishment twice in a row so we are retiring it

so But the effect of the Marrius Planet Comic-Con just keeps in more and more expensive. It's already expensive to purchase a ticket. I have the official program here with me. I don't know if they have the ticket prices listed. If they do, I will tell you what they are, but oh boy, it was not cheap to attend. The only cheap way to attend these things anymore is just to be a volunteer. And that's what I did this year.

I hadn't been in years. So I missed out on a lot of Star Trek guests. And that bones me out, being a Trekkie and everything. But the reality of the situation is you have to pay so much to get in. Then you have to pay to get autographs. or even meet the celebrities that they bring in. And then you have to pay for stuff, because there are vendors all over the place selling their merch and all that.

And then you have to pay for food. And convention center food ain't cheap. It's not usually the highest quality of food, but it's certainly not cheap. And, of course, the parking situation, the big P word. So a couple things to point out here is that Barneyas Plaza, underneath which was a big parking structure that led directly into the convention center and municipal auditorium right next door and technically part of the convention center.

as well. That's been Tordana's being rebuilt and you could see it from the convention center escalators everything and so you have to find other parking options

I think they set up that for the volunteers this year that they could park at Kemper and take a shuttle to and from I chose to a park over at Union Station

you know I'm still having some car issues and yeah that was the scene of the crime for the beginning of my most famous car issue which I finally got resolved thank goodness but still having some car issues as of this recording by consciously parts at unit station and not crown center even though

it's playing across the streets and everyone who's bitching about the royals uh looking at washington square park which is uh in that little park in between a shut the fuck up about parking because there's still plenty of it you will have to pay for a while you you have to pay for anyway at the ballpark so yeah and uh and uh and uh number two and this is going to get to the crux of why i had decided the park there i hopped on the street car um next year i might just park on the plaza hop on the street car and uh do that so hopped on the street car and uh went to power and light stop got off there walks two blocks west up a hill to get to where i needed to be for the convention center and i did this both days i was there i was there friday and i was there on

sunday friday i was there doing the media team doing some video and sunday i was there to work with the board gaming side of things so yeah that's another that's another thing at the set of conventions is especially the geeky ones like playing comic con would be they have an entire room set up for board gaming and and I'll talk more about that when I get to that part of the story but for now let's talk about a Friday doing the media team so I check in they gave me a bag really cool bag by the way I think I'll be using it from now on for stuff it's snacks available and in the bag they had a t-shirt because I was doing media they gave me a black t-shirts to wear went upstairs the media team has their own room

no one else is allowed in the first part was basically just you know the whole stereotype of working media is you show up early to sit around and wait and that was definitely the case here so we sat around waited we were given a brief talk and then we're given a tour of the place me and everyone else in the media team who by the way all got little assignment cards telling them where they needed to be at what time for their different assignments

I think but I did not get one and you know that's fine because I found that because I'm a video guy and these people are all doing still photography that they were a little loose with what I was supposed to get as introduced to my the video supervisor Drew whom I actually kind of had a run in with before so now's a good time to talk about smoke break smoke break is a you can find this on YouTube Still, it's a 115 episodes, all very short, directed and produced by my friend Kendall Sin.

Kendall, we need to get you on the podcast at some point. And it's just a, we shot it, it was shot in the crossroads at a law firm there that happens to have a central patio area. I said we get Skindle's project but he invited me there for one day to to behind the scenes stuff and did nothing with it but the

series itself is he got a bunch of local actors and Drew was actually one of them to basically play a bunch of employees at this firm we're not quite sure what this firm actually does but all these people are coming out

and on their smoke breaks. It does star the two key actors in this are Jeffrey Stab and Davis-Darock. And those two are comedic geniuses, comedic acting geniuses and such. So I do highly recommend that series. Anyways, Drew just told me, yeah, here are some of the panels that will be taking place today because it was my only day doing video work.

And so, yeah, I'll see if I can get at least one of these panels before I have to leave for the day. But in the meantime, yeah, I'll just go on the floor, on the main convention floor, and get as much as possible,

consciously staying away from celebrities, even though I did walk to celebrity row mostly go to the bathroom but when I did throw it, I noticed already this at the beginning of the convention already. Huge line for

autographs with David Tennant who is on Doctor Who and if you recall from our Sam Tottie episode he had to explain to me what Dr. Who was. He is one of

actors who played the doctor and as the only really a celeb sighting I had all day but I did walk around get some footage trying to do so with

as much juice as humanly possible because I was working on just one battery and it's been a while since I used my camera all right so no guarantee

that I would been able to get everything I needed but I got to playing good shots enough which I kept they all went to the

media team for their purposes but I can tell you about some of them so one of the booths I stopped by was actually Jan Gephart

her son Ty has been on the podcast Ty currently the president of Heartland natures so we've had both the most recent

presence of that group on the podcast along with Mark and said yeah I'm Tys I'm in front of Tys and he told me Tom Matcha and everything

and I'll be seeing in the scene that's why I didn't stay the whole time was I was going to go to a heartland swim so yeah cut my time short

to swim naked I do not think that's going to be the case next year and we'll see if that's Planet Anime coming up in the fall but it doesn't look like that's going to be the case for next year because Heartland Swins are always the third Friday of the month

next year, Planet Comic Con will be March 27 through 29 so I'll be able to stay a little longer actually now I'm looking at this plant anime is November 21st through 23rd and that is a swim weekend I still want to volunteer for that though so yeah I met Ty's mom

I also met a artist I think his name was Drew who did a lot of pretty cool stuff I stopped and talked with them about the podcast. But the really cool stuff. Oh, here it is. Drew Drew, Drew Greiner is the guy's name.

Drew Graynor Illustrations.com. What really caught me with this guy is he did drawings of the Kelsey Brothers. He did a really cool one of Travis, and Jason a big guess on the cheek and Jason's grimacing and I know Jason being really a fierce and really fierce

expression on his face and you're thinking we talked a little bit about I guess he got shot out on New Heights as did I the whole sandwich thing that led to Travis's

Mayo SMR I caught some other clips of people interacting with vendors and some cosplayers lots of cosplay of these things and a variety

of cosplay so I saw a lot of Star Wars I saw some Star Trek and some other cool stuff in between even a Shorzy Jersey I saw

shout to Letterkenny and Shoresy and fuck you Shorsy give your balls a target that fucker

but another group that thought was really cool to run into was the KCR2 builders

so these are a bunch of local folks who build R2 units, life-size, fully functional, radio control, R2D2 units with the, and they have the lights and the beeps and everything for those who are familiar with Star Wars, and they

have all different types of units, so not just R2 units, but pretty much all the small drones that you see throughout Star Wars. So I thought that was pretty cool. everything and yeah I also noticed that the US Navy was there with a video gaming kiosk so a lot of people were playing video games your text dollars in action and I walked away with a pen and here's the occasional reminder that yes I was very briefly in the United States Navy for about 12 days to some

yeah and I take it a little bit of one of the panels before I had to leave and they were talking about zombies a group from Western Kansas actually coming in and we

talked to a little bit nice folks and everything I hope their panel went great and I got really cool shot my last shot of the convention that day was the two convention with lightsabers kind of going ahead and strike and pose and all that and walked away with a couple of cards One is from Jay Gaphart's on her books.

So what's Bread and the Bone, which Ty mentioned when he was on the podcast, we have Bone of Contention, a Bones a Bick, and the other side of fear, a novella about the XK9s. They all have dogs on the covers. So, so really cool. Also got a thing, this is a 3DHQ. So it's a full size, you know, full 3D scanner and printer. So the idea is you get yourself scanned.

You'd step into their little booth. Get yourself scanned and it becomes 3D arts. So we can create three, oh, how it works, sorry, how it works. Step one, step into our full body 3D scanner. Step 2, strike a pose. Step 3, choose the size you want your 3D memory to be printed in, and you're all set. We can create 3D figures from photos, but they would be quoted individually. we do offer lithophanes.

I have never seen that word before. And holograms from a photo. About material options, premier resin. Our latest high resolution material offering the best color matching accuracy. It's detail level is up. five times higher compared to other options. Monochrome.

Choose a single color print in FDM or resin crafted from robust plastics like PLA, PETG, or resin events. We offer our full 3D scanning services to all types of events, school company, privates, charity, charity, raisers and more wholesale we offer wholesale discounts on all of our merchandise and can also make custom merch for your company and uh oh yeah they charge a lot so a two inch three-d printed thing that's 99 bucks no thank you but but yeah that is cool that that is a thing um I also got a little video of, I think it's, I think it's Falcourt from the never-alating story, the big luck dragon. Someone was actually writing this thing. So that's pretty cool.

I did run to Friends of the podcast both days. So day one, I ran to Dan Hanley, who I think was there all three days. actually that's that's a commitment I guess day two that Saturday I had to work so so

could not show up and day three of the Sunday that was the board gaming thing so I got there a little early well duh got the earliest gene so I walked around a little bit I ran to another friend of the podcast

and Mike Pohl who was they're playtesting and running his game and ran to some other friends as well throughout the course of the convention and there were some other friends of the podcast who were there I just didn't get a chance to see them that's okay so the board gaming side of things they had this set of a mostly free game free gaming so free play area and uh they had a couple vendors uh set up there as well and they had a section uh corned off for uh d and d and things like that and they had a game

library so too so uh here i've gone name trap coach jesse our former chess coach she showed up uh for d and d we talked a little while And we will see if we're able to do collaborative video work and get her on the podcast as well. But it's great that she's doing well. But the game library, similar to how we run game libraries, it's May West Game Fest and other gaming conventions. by the way there's a good time to point out

but this will I've already been out by the time Midwest Game Fest comes around but I'll be volunteer Midwest

Game Fest again I'll see if I can get some material from that and yeah some interesting people

I checked in and out for the games they did things a little differently in that we actually collected people's driver's licenses to check out board games and one was from Pennsylvania. West Versailles, Pennsylvania, I had never heard that place. So I asked, you know, where is that? She said, well, it's outside Pittsburgh.

Oh, really, my father's from Pittsburgh. And we talked a little bit before they went enjoyed the game and that's and I think that's actually going to be the end of my discussion here now will I do this again absolutely if given the opportunity I had a lot fun

doing both sides of the coin and I did making clear I wanted to try to do both sides and they made it clear that during my time at the convention

while I was working the convention that was not to do any podcast activities and I complied

and that's why I'm doing this episode now post convention speaking in the gaming

section I will I did pick one of these up this is A quiz at MENSA, the smart people group put out in relation to this convention. I'll go and read it and then I will show any answers as well. So take the MNSA Planet Comic Con Quiz and see if you are as smart as the doctor or Doc Brown.

I should point out that one of the celebs there was Christopher Lloyd, most famously, Doc Brown, in Back to the Future. So notes, while the 10 questions are similar to those on a real exam, a real exam is longer, and some liberty has been taking at this show with changes for Planet Comic-Con. question number one the doctor asks what is the four digit number in which the first digit is one fifth the last and the second and third digits are a single number as a single number are the last digit multiplied by three hint the sum of all digits is 12 I'm not going to try to answer that unless I have a good idea what the answer is I'm going to not answer them right now question number two Jane went to visit

Jill Jill is Jane's only husband's mother-in-law's only husband's only daughters only daughter What relation is Jill to Jane? The smart aleck answer is to quotes spaceballs, absolutely nothing. I'm your father's, brothers, cousins, nephews, former roommate, which makes us absolutely nothing. Question number three, back to the future, Marty McFly. Asked to Doc, which word below? which is least like the others. The difference has nothing to do with vows or consonants.

He answered, More pears, animal zipper. More pairs, animal zipper. Question number four. Start your question. Geindin thinks Picard likes Zinfandel, but not Merlot. He likes Chardonnay, but not Riesling. and he likes Pinot Noir, but not Shirah.

Following the same rule with Picard, like Cabernet or Roseille, and Y. Oh, let's see, Zinfidel, white wine, Marlowe, red, chardonnay, white wine. I'm not too sure about Riesling. Piano noir is red, and Syrah, another one I'd. Don't quite know, but cabernet and rosé. Camerne is a white. Rosee is its own thing. I will just say Cabernet.

Just a guess. And I'm not quite sure why. But we'll get to the answers. Later. Question five. Hans Solo needs to fuel the hyperdrive and is trying to measure some coaxium. one number is one more than one tenth and one fifth of one half of four thousand you're making us do a shit in the math

question six in a foot race this is where it refers to Pac-Man the four ghosts in Pac-Man Enki was neither first nor last Pepper beat Inky Inky beat Blinky Clyde

H. P.O.C. Was neither first nor less. Clyde beat Pinky. Blinky

beat Clyde. So who came in first and who came in last? Okay.

I don't know where Pepper came from, but the rest does are the ghosts in Pac-Man. Number seven, help Grogu, also known as Baby Yoda,

figure out what number best completes the following sequence. One, two, four, seven, eleven, insert here, 22. Number eight, Bo Katan, wants to make some drinks, but needs some. fruits. Boba Fett runs the store and buys four oranges and three lemons for three

sixty. The next day, Bo Catan buys three oranges and four lemons for 3.40. How much did each lemon and orange costs? I'm going to guess the lemons were cheaper and the oranges and that generally is the case. Number nine, place the same three-letter word on each blank to make four common words is neither who nor doc. Rhine, R-E-I-N, O-E-I-N, O-E-R-E-Y, and me. And number 10, Professor Riversong said. there's only one nine-letter words that contains only one vowel. Do you know what it is?

Is it Georgian? Answers, number one, 1,155. 1 equals one-fifth of 5, 5 equals 3 times 5. Number two, she is Jane's daughter. Jane's mother's husband is Jane's father His daughter is Jane and Jill is her daughter So That's not absolutely nothing

Number three is zipper The others are anagrams for cities Rome, Paris, and Manila. Number four, I got right. Carinet. Picard likes wines with three

syllable names. By the way, there is an actual Chateau Picard. Number five, the Han Solo one, is 41. 4,000, divided by two, is 2000

divide that by 5 is 400, divide that by 10 is 40 plus 1 and you get 41 Number 6, the Pac-Man ghost things of pepper finishes first and Pinky

finishes the last. I don't know where pepper came from, but Pinky is definitely one of the ghosts. Number 7, the Baby Yoda one is 16. Each letter adds 1, 2, 3, 4,

five and six respectively through the preceding number otherwise on this the puzzle that made Lisa Simpson think she was stupid number eight on oranges and lemons oranges cost 60 cents each and lemons cost 40 cents each number nine is the T-H-E. So they're in theology, theory, and theme. Nice. And number 10 is strengths. All right, so clearly not going with the Georgian word. All right. So got nine and ten right? Yes. Got seven or eight correct? Very good. Ready to test for real? this will probably already pass by the time this episode is out but the next testing session for Mensa

is April 19th at 10 at Lenoxa City Center Library where we've done where we did our 100th episode and we did our fifth year and first year episode if you prefer private testing please visit our national website US.minza.org

registered before April 30th with code KC ComicCon 20 and save 20%. So that is pretty cool and I did take their practice test

and it turns out I am above average intelligence but not quite MNSA smart although that would to be interested in. I'm pretty sure I'm doing stuff that day, but

I will. Go ahead and just take a look at my calendar. There. And yeah, that's a Saturday and I am working that day. All right. So,

that will do it for our Planet Comic Con section of the podcast. Again, I had great time volunteering and I look forward to volunteering. Again, and I might consider doing volunteering at Planet Honeyme as well. So I want to thank the folks at Plant ComCon once again. And if you, if I happen to be there and you happen to be there, feel free to stop and say hi.

So we shall talk soon. This podcast is Uncalled for is hosted, produced, and edited by myself, Mike Cherniewski. The opening music is the, this podcast is Uncalled for, theme. at suno.com S-U-N-O-D-com. Our outro music is Broken Reality by Kevin MacLeod at

combeTech.com and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. are exclusive uncalled for merchandise, t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, stickers, and so much more. Go to www.comfacepress.com slash uncalled for pod. Thank you so much for listening. We will see you next time. So, you know, we're going to be able to be.

You know, you know, I don't know.