Today and Sunday I'm working at the Wizard World Philadelphia comic convention. I'm pretty excited. I've wanted to go to Wizard World for the past couple of years, but my desire hasn't been enough to make me pay the entrance fee. ($25? When there's only one guest I really want to see? Psh.) But this year I'm going to sell shirts for a few hours and spend the rest of the time wandering. I'm excited.

With that in mind, I would like to leave you this morning with a recent reminder from Lore Sjöberg to all potential comic-convention fedora-wearers:

WARNING: Indiana Jones is a fictional character. His movies are all set decades ago. He is more physically attractive than 98 percent of humanity. These are all reasons you should not attempt to dress like him.

Read Lore's entire fedora warning here.

Occasionally I like to perform the public service of looking at what search terms brought people my website and providing answers to their questions. Today I will tackle this gem: Why can a child smell like pickles?

Here are just a few reasons why a child can smell like pickles:

• The child went on a trip to a pickling plant
• The child dunked him or herself in a jar of brining fluid
• The child purchased or was given a pickle-smelling perfume
• The child recently spent time inside a hamburger-sammich establishment such as McDonald’s or Burger King
• The child replaced all toys with Vlasic Dills and spent the afternoon playing
• Fearful of the looming recession, the child has begun hoarding pickles in preparation for leaner times
• The child joined a pickle-based cult (Warning: do not show the child unpickled cucumbers until he or she has been deprogrammed)
• The child recently ate pickles

Hey ladies! You like not getting arrested for public nudity, right? And fellas! I know you want to have a shirt on so you can get service at your local Subway Sandwich Shop. Well! Here's something you might be interested in: I'm having a big sale of my hand-embroidered shirts over at Gladys Makes Things. I'm doing it to help raise money for my upcoming trip to Snubfest, and all the shirts are between $8 and $15 off. And if you order four postcards, I'll throw in a fifth for free. So start shopping!

I have a new piece up on 23/6 today: Getting the Most Out of Air Travel.

In other news, I'm going to see Gallagher tonight. Lord, please have mercy on my comedic soul.

Last week The Smart Set published my newest feature, "Small Town Cinderella." It's about my hot-and-sweaty, ballgown-wearing summers as an amusement-park employee in northern New Hampshire. Working at an amusement park in high school was awesome. Working as Cinderella sucked.

The top story on Reddit this morning, meanwhile, was the somewhat-similar "Pirate's Booty," a tale about a guy who played Jack Sparrow at one of the Disney parks. I've heard a lot of horror stories about working at Disney, and the article does a nice job at highlighting some of the ridiculous goings-on. Even though the park I worked at was tiny, it's interesting to see the parallels. Like annual/season pass holders—those people are terrifying. I mean, amusement park characters are built around the idea that guests see them once a year. But when guests keep coming back, they expect to see something new from the characters, and there's only so much a character can keep in her bag of tricks.

Anyway, watch out for more former-amusement-park-employee articles soon. I think if it reaches three, it's officially a trend.

Look people: The Jerk is one of my favorite comedy movies. If comedy was nutrition, you could say I was weaned on this film. Now The Jerk is on Hulu in its entirety, so you have no excuse not to watch it. Well, unless you're my parents and still have a dial-up internet connection because the internet companies won't serve DSL to rural areas. Hi Mom, hi Dad!

A blog that switches the heads of kids and dads. Amazing. [Via Boing Boing]

How to Succeed in the Music Biz, by Erykah Badu. [TSOYA]

How to Eat a Cupcake. Moreover, how to cook one. The strawberry buttercream frosting recipe is incredible.

Thomas Doyle's Miniature Art. [Via CRAFT]

Cat Clowns. [From Nat]

Around these parts there have been two words on our lips lately: "Dress Barn."

That's right, Dress Barn. The name that conjures up images of mothers buying floral-print frocks that can only be described as "matronly." The sort of dresses one might wear to play the church organ.

My friend was the one who broke the Dress Barn silence. "I went to Dress Barn," she said. I stared at her. "There was some cute stuff."

I smiled and embraced my friend. She took a risk by telling me that she went inside the Dress Barn. I could have responded by laughing at her, or calling her a "barn shopper." But instead, I was proud of her for having the bravery to break down my stereotypes about the Dress Barn. I learned a valuable lesson: the Dress Barn wasn't where square-shouldered aunts went to get dresses that have little sleeves to cover their arm flab. It was where anyone – be they old or young, rich or having at least $19.95 – could go to buy "some cute stuff."

But while we were discussing this, a more important question came up…where was the barn?

We've all seen Dress Barns in strip malls and Gallerias, but what about the original Dress Barn? It must have been a barn, right? I mean, the first Pizza Hut was a hut, and the subsequent stores followed in that style. Was Dress Barn lying to us? Was there never any barn in the first place, but just box store after box store that adopted the barn name?

The question nagged at me. How could I considering buying "some cute stuff" from a shop that was potentially lying to me? I became so obsessed with my quest for truth that I took thirty seconds to email customer service. This was their reply:

Dear Meg Favreau,

Yes when the first store opened in Connecticut it was actually shaped like a barn it was an existing building that was purchased by Mrs. Jaffee thank you for your interest.

Sincerely,
Your friends at dressbarn

Not only did I discover that the Dress Barn was telling the truth, but I also learned that I have friends at Dress Barn now! I can only assume that they want to be my friend because they respect my quest for the truth. The truth about Dress Barn.

I love this:

Wildly Popular 'Iron Man' Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film

Last night I went to see the Kids in the Hall. It was a wonderful show, and I hung out afterwards to meet the Kids, even though I always feel like a dork when I talk to or see celebrities. Part of the reason I feel like a dork is that I'm never quite sure what I'll do or say. For example, a few hours before the show yesterday, I saw Mark McKinney walking down the street in Philadelphia. I was biking in the opposite direction, but I immediately stopped, got off my bike, and started following him on foot. It took me about a block-and-a-half of tailing him for the part of my brain with good sense to say "You are being a creep" and turn around.

Even though it's embarrassing to admit that story, I don't think what I did was uncommon. People approach famous folks every day, and quite often they do stupid things when talking to those people. For example, I have a friend who, upon meeting Joyce Carol Oates, blurted out, "You don't have any eyebrows!"

Sometimes I'll try to save myself from such bits of verbal dirt by telling myself that I don't need to talk to the person or people in question. But the Kids in the Hall, and Bruce McCulloch in particular, have had a huge influence on both my life and my comedy. So I spoke to Bruce, and when we were done talking I had such a wonderful, glowing feeling. It made me think about a great quote from Wayne Coyne when he was interviewed in The Believer:

What did you want when you met Santa Claus for the first time? You didn't really want to know that he was just some guy who was lucky to have a job being Santa Claus for two months around Christmas time. You wanted it to be the real Santa Claus. And at some point, you and I, we put on a little bit of the Santa Claus costume and go out there and do the show. So I can look at it like, if I met Santa Claus, would I want him to be tired and grumpy and say, "Hey little kid, leave me alone, goddamnit"? I would want him to handle it and let me walk away with that image and that belief still in my mind.

Bruce didn't have any reason to be so nice to me, but I walked away from our conversation feeling like that man cared deeply about my life. It was totally like meeting comedy Santa.

The Smart Set: Disposable

23/6: Supreme Advice and A Museum for America

Comic vs. Audience: Recap: Kids in the Hall at the Keswick Theatre

Do you love nervous laughter? Or are you interested in hearing how much nervous laughter a professional radio show removes in post-production? Then you might be interested in listening to me on the radio! I'm going to be on "The Story with Dick Gordon" this afternoon talking about working in TV shopping. My segment will be airing at 1 p.m. (and again at 8 p.m.) on WUNC (they stream online). Want to listen on a radio but don't live in North Carolina? "The Story" might be carried by a NPR station near you. The piece will also be up on the show's archive page after 4 p.m. today.

Side note: when I went in to the recording studio, they almost accidentally put me on "News & Notes" instead. That would have been interesting.

So far the freelance life has been much busier than I had expected. Which, of course, is great. I've sniffed jars of vaguely scented liquids at a research lab, I've hoofed it around Old City fact-checking scavenger hunt clues, and of course, I've done lots and lots of writing.

That does mean, however, that my blog has gone untouched. Thus I am making five blog posts today, catching up on some old things I have wanted to write about for a while.

This is post number one!