All original content (c)
Ben Cremeens

You can get anything you want, at the Official Transformers Con.
You can get anything you want, at the Official Transformers Con.
Comics, toys, and fanboys devoid of class
It's in Chicago 'cause there ain't no room in Walky's ass.
Hey, you can get anything you want, at the Official Transformers Con.

It was about one BotCon ago, one year ago at BotCon, when I decided that I had enough fun at Fort Wayne that I'd try going again when it came to Chicago. So I loaded up the brown 85 Chevrolet pickup truck with comics and socks and "Instruments of Destruction" and made the drive north.

This trip almost didn't happen, seeing as the weekend before my transmission tried to die on me. While my dad was able to make it work after replacing a vaccuum hose (Can you imagine a $4 piece of rubber dry-rotting and falling apart after 18 years and 140,000 miles? They just don't make 'em like they used to...), we decided to go ahead and rebuild it. In a nice little coincidence, the plant where I work was closed all that week for regular maintenance, so I managed to make a trip home to Equality, IL before heading up on Friday morning.

After driving up three and a half hours on Friday morning, I decided it'd probably be best to take care of two months of bills left behind from my ex-wife. (We still haven't finalized, but we might as well.) Being divorced sucks. Being divorced and poor sucks even more.

After spending pretty much all my toy money before I even left home, I started on the last leg of my Friday trip, trying to avoid any "It's 112 miles to Chicago, we've got a half a tank of gas and a full sack of comic books..." jokes. The big discovery on my first trip north of Rantoul, IL since I was 12 years old was that just north of there you can pick up a Chicago based Spanish-speaking radio station. Spanish radio is awesome. It's like pop only you're not being annoyed by the inane lyrics about "baby baby" this and "oh baby" that. That and there are long commercials about "El Dulcolax" that constantly use the word "suppositivo" before finally ending with a cartoony "SPROING-OING-OING!" sound effect.

Also, "Kankakee" is really fun to say. Just try it. "Kankakee."

So, finally I arrive in Chicago:


Waitaminit, Chicago doesn't look like that.


That's not it either...



That's more like it. Whoever had the idea to call them "Expressways" was full of it. There is nothing "express" about them. I spent nearly an hour staring at the back of that truck as I-57 became I-90, a distance of maybe 500 yards.

When I finally made it into town, my first stop was not the Hyatt but the Field Museum of Natural History. I was probably as pysched to see Sue the T. rex as I was to go to OTFCC. (If you saw the guy at OTFCC with a red "I saw Sue" button they give out to the Kindergarten field trip students, that was me.)

Click the pic to be regaled with the tale of:

Otherwise click here to learn:

Also, I took a handful of extemporaneous notes as I was there. They're boring but they're there.

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