The Smithee Awards Blog

Hi all! We're here safe and sound and Buttoned!


This year was a "Leave for Origins after work" year which...meh. Super ugly double meh because we drove about 10 miles an hour faster than the severe thunder storm that ate Ohio. We did get to see a McDonald's and Wendy's lose power from a lightning strike but traveling through four hours of driving rain and random lightning sux. For your edification; if you stay at the Drury Inn by the convention center the general safe rooms are the meeting rooms on the first floor and if you can not make it to the lobby, the bathroom is the safe area in the rooms. This lead to many a fun expression about visiting the safe room. Indeed.


Thursday we packed up our buttonage and headed out to the Breezeway for the first official Buttons in the Breezeway. This meant we could take over two tables and not feel guilty about it cuz we wuz all official like. So we did.


This is our Make Your Own Button table. As best as I was able to figure, we got about 32 people making their own buttons and lots, lots more taking away a premade Smithee button. I even got a group of pink clad proto anime girls who stopped by to make some buttons. They were eternally fascinated by the maker (as was hiromasaki who stopped by with sgtrocknroll) and then discovered the joys of promotions-fu. Then they discovered miles_foxxer, otherwise known as Pixi-stix guy because he comes with giant Pixi-stix and the good will to give them out to anyone who wants them. Have you ever seen a gaggle of pre-teen girls hopped up on Pixi-stix with a unified goal in action? You could power a small city on their energy.

By the way, we decided that the collective noun for a gaggle of pre-teen proto anime girls is a chibi. Use thie new found knowledge well.

My chibis wiped me out of giveaway buttons in about 30 seconds as they all grabbed fistfulls of supplies and scattered to the wind to try out their skills in promotions-fu. We frantically pressed buttons to make up the deficit but you just can't press fast enough for Pixi-stix fuled chibi. One came back for a reload and said "Did you know that if you compliment people they will take a button? That's awesome!*" America? Beware. I think I may have helped in creating a monster.

(* or awesome chibi word equivalent)

My chibis hung around doing my promotions hawking for about a half hour as Hiromasaki manned the button maker (he has a Badge-a-Minute button system and I wanted to let him try out the AWESOME of a button biz maker) and I sat back and watched my button empire florish. Muahahahahaha! Seriously, I have no idea how it came about that I wound up delegating all my promotions-fu duties to various people but I can get used to this!

Eventually my chibis moved on and the supples for the preprinted buttons dwindled and then it was happy hour. All in all a good day of buttoning.




-Your Friendly Neighborhood Promotions Ninja