LIRGE 2025

Last weekend’s convention was great. The folks at Long Island Retro Gaming Expo put on another great show. I hope I can go back next year, but it all depends on the timing of our move. I did two panels, one with Frank Cifaldi and the usual live podcast with Pat. I hated doing panels when I first started doing conventions, but over the years I’ve grown to look forward to them. I think Pat and I have a slightly different energy when we’re live. It was also my birthday and my first gift was from Pat: a large Sicilian pie with pepperoni from Mama Theresea’s. That’s been my go-to upon arriving at the hotel for three or four years now. This year we remembered the name! We’re getting smarter. Anyway, it hits like nothing else after a 5.5 hour flight. We had a ton of good food, overall. We got the hits: bagels, homemade rainbow cookies, cannoli. My friend Joe brought me a baguette. The green room had Italian food on Sunday. That meant I got to, once again, glow about the eggplant rollatini. There was a birthday cake and ice cream.

I also got to meet and become friends with a lot of cool people this year. I was less focused on the vendor floor than ever, and I think this gave me more time to chat with our fellow guests. It was nice to get to know some folks that I’ve only known from the orbits of social media. Simply talking about some shared interests with new folks, bouncing ideas off of each other, left me feeling, I don’t know, creatively recharged? I’ve recently had the desire to do more, to create things, and that’s been refreshing! Now it’s a matter of reigning in that excitement and focusing it into something. That is the tricky part.

Tomorrow, Vani and I head up to Long Beach for Midsummer Scream, a horror convention. I’ve never been to one before! The majority of the conventions I attend are video game or comic themed. These are fun, but I’ve been to so many that the appeal of the vendor floor has long worn off. I’m looking forward to seeing what sort of unique things are for sale. The vendor list is long and mostly alien to me.

I’ve got lots more going on, from photography to Battletech, but that’s for later. I’m certainly staying occupied!

-Ian