For a third year in a row I had the incredible experience attending of Awesome Con, a pop culture convention in Washington, DC.

Every year, I look forward to cosplaying at the Con. I wear a different outfit each of the three days and I try to do one new one each year. This year’s cosplays were Amos Burton from The Expanse, Wreck-it-Ralph from the movie of that title, and Ash Ketchum from the Pokemon animated series.

To get Wreck-it Ralph’s look, I started with a pair of overalls I’ve had in the back of my closet for over a decade. They were purchased to be worn when my high school show choir performed the song “Thank God I’m a Country Boy”. Despite having worked on my grandparent’s farm, I’ve never found reason to wear them since that choir performance. They were in near perfect condition, so, I felt a little bad that I had to bleach, dye, and distress them to get the right look for Ralph. I bleached out the blue color and dyed them brown to look like the overalls in the movie.

Then, I bought a cheap orange t-shirt. I cut out the collar and soaked it with a little bit of the brown dye to make it look worn. Then, I pulled out an old green shirt to wear underneath. Put it all together with a little hair gel and you’ve got Wreck-it-Ralph.

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This may have been the best Awesome Con yet, and guess what… I didn’t meet a single celebrity. Don’t get me wrong, meeting celebrities can be cool. I met John Barrowman and Bill Nye last year, and I might write about it later. But, its also very expensive. My funds were limited this year, so I decided to forgo any photo ops or autographs, despite the impressive list of celebrities who were in attendance.

What did I do instead of waiting in massive lines and shelling out money for thirty seconds with an actor I admire? Panels. I jumped back and forth between the two buildings hosting the con and went to as many panels as I could.

Rather than meeting actors who’ve pretended to explore space in front of a green screen, I listened to scientists who are actually exploring space every day.

The best of these was the panel on the upcoming solar eclipse. On August 21st, the moon’s shadow will pass right across the continental united states and I could not be more excited. The scientists on the panel talked about what we can expect during the event, and they asked us all to download a smartphone app and act as citizen scientists by collecting data. If you want to help out with this project you can find the app here: https://observer.globe.gov/science-connections/eclipse2017

I also learned about Antarctic dinosaurs from the paleontologist who’s digging them up. A SETI scientist discussed the state of our search for extraterrestrials and his hopes for the future.

Then, I found out that one of my biggest pet peeves in science fiction was never the issue I thought it was. Dr. Erin Macdonald, who’s done work on gravity wave detection, schooled us on the different types of parallel universes and showed me the error in my objection.

One universe to another makes no sense in the many-worlds interpretation. #nerdrant I'd never considered that they might be tapping one…

— Anthony Marchese (@acmarkz) June 21, 2017

You're so welcome. Glad to help!!