As I mentioned in a previous post, this past weekend, I went to MoCCA Fest!  "What?" you say, "The festival of the Marketing Operations Cross-Company Alliance, a community for sharing practical experience between Marketing Operations professionals?  Or perhaps you are referring to a music festival featuring the band, Mocca, a four-member Indonesian group featuring bossa nova, disco, waltz, and rock 'n roll beats!  Oh I know!  You must have visited Mocca lounge, a fantastic new hot spot in Tribeca, serving Middle Eastern Cuisine and featurng world-class DJ's!"  Actually, no, invented blog reader, I was talking about the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art's festival!  There were all kinds of people there, a huge range of talent and style!  We were able to stick out a bit with our massive sign:

Actually, our sign caught the attention of The Beat, a comics blog!  Cool!

MoCCA is in New York.  Where is old York?  I mean, I know in the UK.  I guess it's sort of in the middle-ish, based on Google maps.  And there are cool buildings there, like York Minster.  And strange little dogs.  And guess what: Wikipedia tells me that, in general, the wife of the Duke of York is known as the Duchess of York!

Anyways, we didn't really get to see a whole lot of New York.  But what we saw was interesting.  We got to see Times Square, which, to be honest, made me want to barf a little.  It sort of like being transported into like Candy Land or Oz, but instead of Plumpy, Gramma Nutt, Munchkins, and Wicked Witches, there's MCDONALDS, BANK OF AMERICA, COCA COLA, and... wait, actually there may have been Wicked Witches.  It's all quite dizzying, and like being eaten by a Saturday morning cartoon commercial break.  Now I'll stop making similes.  Have you ever read a Cricket in Times Square?  I have, but I don't really remember it.  I think it was pretty good, though, maybe I'll go back and read it some time.

Also we walked through Union Square and saw this huge public art display that includes a big LED with changing numbers on it (called Metronome).  Then we were stopped by this guy with a sweatshirt that said, "ASK ME ABOUT THE NUMBERS", written in sequins.  Yes.  Sequins.  Anyway.  Turns out, he's the official numbers guy!  He first stopped us with a question, asking,

"Are you guys familiar with the expression, you can't see the forest for the trees?"

"Yes." we replied.

Then, he explained how the numbers are the TREES, and we can't see the WHOLE forest because of the trees.  He proceeded to explain the numbers (They make up a clock on military time on the left, with the numbers on the right displaying the time left in the day).  Then he explained the FOREST that we were missing out on.  Then he explained all this symbolism, saying the hand in the piece represented the hand of God (when really it's an enlarged replica of the hand of George Washington on the statue in the park below).  Yup.  Well, you can watch his video, and that's what we saw, down to the last dramatic intonation.

After the convention had ended Sunday evening, we were wandering around downtown looking for a good place to eat.  Everyone was dead tired, we had all been on our feet all day long, and we were having trouble finding something good.  Finally we stumbled into a Taj, an Indian restaurant, mainly because Kailyn wanted to take advantage of a free wine special they were advertising.  It turned out to be a great little place.  It wasn't busy, so we got great and frequent service from the lady who owns the place, and there was wonderful live music in the background.  If you're ever in the area, you should check it out!

After Taj, we took the subway to a nice, chill bar where a Malian rapper was performing (for the first time in the U.S.).  It was all in French, so I couldn't understand it, but he explained some of the songs.  We all danced up front, and our group constituted the majority of the people dancing (most people in the bar were too cool).  And it was a fun, tiring way to end the weekend.  

The convention itself went well.  Most of the time was spent wandering the floor and manning our booth.  I think manning the booth was the most fun part.  Especially when we started giving away issues of Carleton Graphic for free.  People love getting free stuff that isn't business cards or advertisements.  Going around and trading was fun, and I got a lot of comics that way.  We also made some cool friends, like Static Fish, a college comics club operating out of Pratt Institute's art school.  They were really cool and amazingly talented.

Well, I think I'll leave it at that, for now.  This is a pretty beefy post.

Peace,
Jon