Duct-tape booths were everywhere — in blue, orange, red and the new Jonas Brothers duct tape that sold like hotcakes. Was “hotcakes” a euphemism back then? Nick Jonas stood on the podium presenting Jonas Brothers duct tape. Some girl in the crowd was wrapped up entirely in Jonas Brothers duct tape. She looked like a mummy and alone amongst screaming fangirls was terrifyingly silent. I don’t know if she wore anything under the duct tape. See, that gets you kids interested.
Not calling me an old frog now. Flipping me off, stealing my glasses. (Give them back.) Listening now? Gimme my glasses and I’ll tell you more. (Back in my day they didn’t call old people frogs.) Back in 2012 the world was ending and all the anime-niacs and Jonas Brothers fangirls and some other people all got together for a party. They rented out this immense Cold War bunker for the convention and it was like we were in someone’s basement. Above us, improvised explosive devices were going off whenever the bands played. One band stormed off — some DJ just said, “We’ll fix this technical problem,” and played eighties music for an hour. The place should have been soundproofed; I never figured out why it wasn’t.
Don’t ask me what I did! Oh, now I can’t remember what I actually did at the PopCon 2012. There wasn’t much to do — there was lots to watch. It was like fifty different YouTube videos being played at once and somehow you can watch them all. Guys in fur suits slapping each other’s tails. Someone pretending to be drunk. People dancing to their iPods, wearing black, looking like the ads. Duct-tape sellers hawking their wares — bazaars of duct tape. Oh — how could I possibly forget? I did do something — I raced for the fortune cookie!
I was in costume like most others; I was Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist. The only other one I bother to remember was (presumably) dressed up as Odie from Garfield. What was Fullmetal Alchemist? Garfield? I don’t think I even watched . . . one of them. Must have been Garfield, since I dressed up as a Fullmetal character. So Garfield, which I didn’t watch, was a TV show, and Fullmetal . . . a comic strip? That can’t be right. And who were the Jonas Brothers? I don’t remember these things. Just the con. Odie was a dog, and we were both outdated. In 2012 the world was ending. We got all the old things together in a bunker, a basement, with all the new; they would pass together. Don’t leave yet, I’m just finishing — it’s just about to get exciting.
There was no start line. We started scattered across the crowd. Standing atop duct-tape booths to proclaim our existence, our importance, we shouted our names, our motives, our challenges to each other. We had no numbers. Our shouts raining down on their heads, cosplayers and bums and maintenance people and hawkers remembered us by our costumes, our duct-tape colours: red, blue, orange, JoBros. I climbed off a large booth’s awning. Odie leapt — a cat’s trick, ironically — but still, I knew he was my real opponent.
There was one fortune cookie booth and the fortune cookies went like hotcakes. Hotcakes, as a euphemism — I think somebody started using it at the PopCon. It spread until people forgot where it came from, forgot the joke, forgot it was new. It survived 2012 — a year of flames and floods, elections and explosions, but the world ending was a world of memory. People didn’t want to remember what came before change. It had been going that way for decades. When the world ended, everybody at once decided to end everything at once, the same way we stuffed everything at once into one room, all the things that fed on each other’s memories, wrapped together in duct tape.
Brand new! screamed the talking fortune cookie on the ad banner for the fortune cookie booth. Brand new fortune cookie, you won’t forget it once you’ve seen it, you won’t know until you have! Limited edition! Everyone too far from the booth to casually pop by knew that those who ended up within its walking distance left with a teasing secret in their eyes and fortune cookie on their breath. Why are you leaving? Isn’t it getting exciting? It’s exciting.
Odie vanished into the crowd. I’m almost sure I saw him running on four legs like a real dog. Where was he? Everyone watched the race, passing the racers’ positions back and forth by cellphone with remarkable accuracy. Some people popped out of nowhere. “Edward, you rule!” A girl wearing a Fullmetal Alchemist shirt, running alongside me now.
“Where’s Odie?”
“Why do you want to know? Creeper.”
“I’m racing him! I need to know the positions of my opponents” — opponent, but I don’t say it — “in the race.” She fell behind before she could answer. And where are you kids? Gone? You’re going to miss the ending. You’re missing the best part. Please. Oh, wait. You’re gone.
But I can keep going. I’m an old frog. I can keep telling this story while you aren’t there. I kept running and bumped into another racer, somebody from a video game. If I can’t beat her, I thought, I’ll get slaughtered by Odie. Running on all fours is hard — what if he stands up on two legs? Unless he’s a real dog, he would go (I predicted) impossibly fast. Let me put my glasses on.
I really can’t see anything without those. I couldn’t even see if you were there. Maybe you weren’t ever there. Maybe you just grabbed my glasses, gave them back, left, and I’ve been talking to myself this whole time. That would be comforting.
I kept pouring energy into my legs. That’s right, I told myself, I’ve just been jogging this whole time, holding back, I can go even faster. After passing the video-game racer, I hopped up onto another booth. From the booth top — still running — I saw the fortune cookie place and Odie, who looked up and saw me running over the tops of booths, leaping between them. I gained. Odie got up on two legs — he tripped.
At his speed he bowled somebody over pretty bad. It was the funniest moment. You had to be there. People crowded, clustered. Cellphone cameras went off. Security came, abandoning their duct-tape outposts. I kept going. I didn’t quite have the satisfaction of winning, but I just needed the satisfaction of the last fortune cookie. I leapt down right in front of the ad banner and waited for Odie. I was going to treat him to a fortune cookie — the normal kind.
And after a few minutes (presumably of being held up by security), here was Odie, lifting the fake dog head high in the air, waving it like a flag and in its place was the face of . . . Joe Jonas? No — Joe Jonas was there awarding the fortune cookie. I cracked it open to find a little autograph. Too bad — I wasn’t a Jonas Brothers fan, so I was a bit disappointed with the prize.
The Jonas Brothers duct-tape girl certainly wasn’t, popping out of nowhere, yanking it out of my hands, running off. Fortune cookie pieces clattered on the filthy floor. So I didn’t win anything. Still, you had to be there. It was like my Woodstock. What was Woodstock? When was the original context of that word lost? There, in the frenzy of PopCon, dying as “hotcakes” was born?
Just a sec. Let me take off my glasses. I’m such an old frog. Now my voice is hoarse, like croaking. I haven’t croaked yet.
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