{"id":6058,"date":"2014-07-01T17:24:22","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T23:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=6058"},"modified":"2014-07-01T17:24:22","modified_gmt":"2014-07-01T23:24:22","slug":"no-such-world-should-ever-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2014\/07\/01\/no-such-world-should-ever-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"No Such World Should Ever Exist!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mind-boggling and unexpected (well, to me, at least — I really didn’t think it’d fly) success of Salt Lake’s first-ever official Comic Con last fall, followed by the even-bigger Comic Con Fan eXperience (or FanX) this spring, has inspired another promoter to try their hand at throwing a big party for Utah nerds. FantasyCon<\/a> will be held this coming weekend, July 3 through 5, with an impressive\u00a0line-up<\/a> of celebrity guests that includes many of the hobbits and dwarves from Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films, as well as genre favorite Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead <\/em>and, sadly, JJ Abrams’ Star Trek <\/em>reboot… but I won’t hold that against him!), who is making his first convention appearance anywhere<\/em>. Considering that Pegg is British and will have to spend a lot of time on a plane to even get here, that’s quite an honor for my little backwater city.<\/p>\n

To help spread the word about the fledgling event, FantasyCon has commissioned a series of amusing TV spots in which a group of familiar character types — an elf, a knight, a cleric, and an orc — are engaged in a role-playing game called “Cubicles & Careers,” with a white-bearded wizard as their “Cubicle Master.” That’s right, the premise here is that their<\/em> imaginary game world is our<\/em> ordinary reality. And as you might imagine, these rollicking freebooters who live lives of romance and adventure, who are accustomed to solving problems with magicks and steel and strength, have a bit of difficulty navigating through the mundane horrors we face every day. My favorite of the ads is “Episode 3: Cleric”:<\/p>\n