Hey everyone! As John mentioned back on Friday, Joe and I spent this weekend at ROFLCon, a.k.a. The Great Meeting of the Internet. It was a blast!
First, a word of explanation. From ROFLCon’s “About Us” sidebar:
Mix up a bunch of super famous internet memes, some brainy academics, a big audience, dump them in Cambridge, MA and you’ve got ROFLCon. [...] It’s a group dissection of internet culture. What makes it work, why it works, how it works. We’ll talk about where internet culture has been and where we think it’s going.
So what was Fantastic Bonanza doing there? Well, we designed the t-shirts!
In addition, the ROFLCon organizers (being the awesome folks they are) kindly offered us the opportunity to set up a booth at the convention. Of course, we jumped at the chance. Things happened, deals were made, and soon enough Joe was flying across the country to meet me in Cambridge, MA.
Here’s the breakdown:
Day 1:
The crowd at ROFLCon, as seen from the Fantastic Bonanza table
We arrived a little late on the first day, but the super-awesome Christina was there to cheerfully greet us and hand us our schwag bags—among the goodies included were a Firefox-branded apple and a 16-ounce can of Brawndo1. In an extremely well-conceived plot, I downed the Brawndo in the span of 10 minutes, thereby dumping a cool 100mg of caffeine into my normally stimulant-free circulatory system. Between the resulting jitters and my poor vantage point, I didn’t really catch most of what the opening keynote speaker was saying. I believe it had something to do with the internet.
After the talk was over, Joe and I went to Building 34 to set up shop. After a fair amount of hustle and/or bustle, we were ready to go.
Look, Joe is saying “hi!” Hi, Joe! [The table on Saturday looked way better than the haphazard spread of Friday! -Joe]
Our table was situated right next to Leslie Hall’s booth, which was kind of neat. Leslie herself was out and about for the most part, posing for pictures and whatnot (you know how it must be for Internet-Famous People); her mom had the duty of managing the booth. So we talked with Leslie’s mom for a bit, and she was extremely friendly. She even bought a shirt from us!
Before long, Joe Mathlete came on by and set up shop right next to us. He was selling off the last handful of MARMADUKE IS AN ASSHOLE shirts in the world. Yes—the whole entire world. This was extremely lucky for us, as it meant that we got to hang out with Joe Mathlete on-and-off for the next couple of hours. From this experience, I can say without equivocation that Joe Mathlete is all three kinds of awesome. Yes, all of them.
I stole this picture from the ROFLCon site because I am incredibly bad at taking pictures of my own. But see that arm on the left side of the picture? See it? That’s my arm!
Internet Famous People with Fantastic Bonanza T-Shirts after Day 1
Day 2:
On the second day, we had our table a bit more standardized than the first…
A view of our table… from the side!
At the bottom edge of the table, you can see our super-neat Conezor buttons (courtesy of the amazing Purebuttons3) and our last-minute DIY cannibalized stickers. We were situated between the ROFLCon info/schwag desk on our left, and the Weekly Dig (whose special ROFLCon issue is hilarious) crew on our right.
We spent a pretty decent chunk of Saturday chilling with Larry ‘Liontamer’ Oji and David ‘djpretzel’ Lloyd (from Overclocked Remix). I was going through Greg’s iTunes library, and he has basically a million video game music remixes from OC Remix. So if you see some sort of OC Remix/Fantastic Bonanza collab, don’t be surprised!
A camera dude from Fox 25 Boston came by and talked with me, and they posted the brief interview on their website for some reason. So that’s pretty cool! I obviously wasn’t ready to give a spiel about Fantastic Bonanza, and they cut the part where I mentioned our name:
Before his appearance on the Internet Cult Leader panel, Ryan North (of Dinosaur Comics) stopped by and got a t-shirt. We heard it straight from his mouth: he doesn’t consider himself to have either a) a cult or b) a leadership position. But, in our opinion, he still has a pretty sweet webcomic! After this final panel, Jeph Jacques (of Questionable Content) swung by for his very own Fantastic Bonanza tee. He seemed pretty discombobulated… Christi described him as like ‘leading a herd of cats’. At the very end of the day, shortly before we packed everything up, Andy Ochiltree (head writer at JibJab) came by to get Octotree because his last name, Ochiltree, is so eerily similar!
So all in all, ROFLCon was good times. Pretty much a lot of the internet was there. I got live Rick Rolled… twice. Hundreds of people did a barrel roll. And Tron Guy was there. It was great.
Internet Famous People with Fantastic Bonanza T-Shirts after Day 2
1It’s got electrolyes!™ 2 Why am I mentioning these two dudes specifically? Because of foreshadowing, my friend. 3 Use coupon code HPB for 10% off at Purebuttons.
Lucky Stripes: use coupon code SPRING for 15% off your final order.
Oh! New Persons
BLABLA: a community shop hailing from France, boasting 2400 members and currently selling 109 designs.
Cosmicsoda: newly launched, awaiting your design submissions and patronage.
Design A Shirt: fairly self-explanatory. Offers a wide array of apparel on which you can print things, including hats and windshirts. (Golf vests are currently out of stock.)
Visible Elephant: straight from Japan, offering many dark-on-light designs in tees, polos, and hoodies.
Design by Hümans (read all the info): their latest sale (25% off with coupon code LUVDBH) ends April 20th at midnight. So either hurry or don’t bother?
Designgive: These guys consistently put out amazing designs, and you can feel warm and fuzzy after you’ve bought one because you know a portion of the proceeds will go to charity.
Limitees: “Selekkted Design T-Shirts for Europe”, their site proclaims. Europe, indeed—for Americans who have to deal with a killer exchange rate, these pretty shirts are pretty pricey.
lhome: Three new abstract monochrome designs, and another one that involves a giant match.
Artifex Shirts: Two new eco-friendly shirts at Artifex. Also, their Earth Day Sale is still going on, so check it out!
NerdyShirts: NerdyShirts has joined the t-shirt design competition party!
Akumu Ink: Two dark new designs (one of ‘em is black on black!) and 15% off a few selected shirts might pique your interest.
Nuda Tees: celebrating the release of four new designs, all tees are only $8.00.
Spreadshirt: celebrating Earth Day, they will shave 15% off of any item purchased from their eco-friendly section when you use coupon code EARTHDAY4 at checkout (Canadians, use code CADEARTHDAY4). Code expires April 22, does not apply to shipping, and requires a minimum $20.00 purchase.
Monsieur T (read all the info): during their Spring Clearance Sale, all shirts are half off and all hats are 25% off.
Defunkd: celebrating the launch of their new store, all items are 10% cheaper until April 7th (tomorrow).
Mint Condition
Pooby5: featuring designs rejected from Threadless and Shirt.Woot. T-Shirt Tuesdays feature shirts for $10.00, reduced from their normal $11.00 price.
RAZK: an Amsterdam-based label whose summer designs will grace the internet within the next week.
Soapy Laundry: three distinct designs printed on multiple colors. All designs involve soap in one way or another.
2K by Gingham’s April Fools’ Sale: save 10% through Monday when you use coupon code GIVEME10 during checkout.
Shirts On Sale: their new coupon page seeks to bring together all the t-shirt coupons it can for your financial benefit.
New, Like You
Artcotic: a community-oriented retailer that loves loves loves to collaborate with artists.
C-O-D-E-R-E-D: an ecologically-conscious community t-shirt design competition website. A certain percentage of sales is donated to “animal welfare, rescue and adoption organizations,” and their shirts are of eco-friendly design.
Teeco Chart at OMGTees: this realtime chart seeks and compiles the internet’s most discussed t-shirt companies using fancy algorithms.
Tolky Monkys: this Madrid-based store recently translated (most of) its site into English for the convenience of English-speakers.
TShirtsville: primarily selling band shirts, though not exclusively—some other categories include cartoon and superhero shirts.
Known, Like a Clone
Dave Ortega: his work, along with the work of five other emerging Latin America artists, will be featured at Mezcla, an exhibition presented by the The New England Gallery of Latin American Art. To RSVP, email info [at] neglaa [dot] com.
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