5-Year-Old Cosplay Michael is Bound for San Diego Comic Con International

Let's start here with the pitch:  Go to http://www.gofundme.com/CosplayMichael and donate if you can.

Nope.  There is nothing wrong with this little guy!  He doesn't have a rare disease.  He isn't from a disadvantaged family or a crumbling neighborhood.  He is not unreasonably challenged, any more than any other child of 5-years-old.

Michael is a normal, healthy, happy 5-year-old boy with big dreams, high hopes and a passion for creativity.  He is a cosplayer.  In short, he enjoys creating, enhancing and dressing up in costumes emulating his favorite comic book and film characters.  He takes it quite seriously, and he's good at it.

Michael began dressing up, like most kids, as soon as he was old enough to dress himself.  He saved Halloween costumes and played in them around the house.  He borrowed mom and dad's clothes and accessories to create original adaptations of any character or imaginary person of which he dreamt.  Michael loved everything about pretending, and then something really wonderful happened.  He went to a convention.

Michael's mom, a business major and I, a published author of 5 books, own and operate a small business producing a web talk series called the Hangin With Web Show.  We travel to conventions and conferences and interview writers, artists, filmmakers and creators of all kinds and share new artists as well as celebrity entertainers with the world wide web.  In 2015, we attended our first pop culture convention: Necronomicon in Tampa Florida.  To help occupy our 4-year-old while we worked, we let him bring some of his costumes and dress up, "like the grown-ups."  He was hooked!

He found a sense of community in the immediate acceptance of adult cosplayers and convention attendees wanting photos and stopping to encourage him.  He met an adult dressed as Marvel Comic's "Loki," and himself dressed at Thor (complete with a home-made hammer), they "played."  They two battled center floor in the hotel lobby and the cosplayer, a man easily in his late 20's or even early 30's, had no trouble channeling his own inner child to play and pose and have fun with 4-year-old Michael.  We never did learn the man's real name, but we are so grateful for the time he took to make a small child's weekend so very special.

Following that weekend, our show became more popular and we found ourselves at more conventions and conferences where Michael could play and dress and be a part of this new community that both he and we had discovered.

Michael made so many friends and fellow creative cosplayers at conventions, that we decided to set up a facebook page for his endeavors.  Of course, his mom and I monitor it and share posts with him.  While he does read some, he needs a bit of help and we like to know who is posting.

In the spring of 2016, just a few short months ago, while reading his news feed to him, we were surprised to see a message from a fellow cosplayer.  Most just posted on his wall, but this one sent him a "private" message.  The message was an invitation to Cosplay Michael (his Facebook name) to participate (with his parents) in a panel at world famous San Diego Comic-Con International.  The panel now set for Friday, July 22, 2016, at 2 p.m.  and to talk about his love of cosplay and the cosplay and convention culture in which he now finds himself making friends and feeling comradeship.

We were surprised.  We were a little jealous.  We were a lot intimidated.  But his host was pleasant and cordial and his excitement was anything but muted.

"I'm a cosplay rock star," he exclaimed.  "Alright, let's go to comic con!"

Well, that's where our journey began.  Now with just days until our trip begins, we are still hoping to be able to offset the expenses of the trip with the help of this amazing community and those artists, authors, filmmakers, and creators we have tried to help for the past year.  While we have had some success with our own show, we have yet to travel out of state or such a great distance as San Diego, CA.  We live and work in Melbourne, Florida.

We have even applied for, and been approved for press access to the highly touted Nerd HQ, where many celebrities and pop culture icons gather to raise funds for Operation Smile.  We don't mind "singing for our supper," as it were, and we intend to do just that.  We don't mind at all working for our blessings, and teaching Michael how to do the same.

We do need help, though, still.  The trip is long across America.  It will take gas.  We'll need to eat.  We'll need to sleep.  We'll need time off from "day-jobs."  But it is al worth it to us to help Michael realize a dream and to demonstrate to him that he can accomplish anything if he is willing to work hard for it.  We want him to learn from the trip.  We want him to appreciate being a part of this global and vast community, to appreciate the art and creativity that is expended in this endeavor, to appreciate the fellowship of other with like ambitions and powerful dreams.  We want Michael to continue to learn to express himself and to encourage others to do that same.

You can help, and I hope you will.  Thank you for taking the time to read this article.  It means everything to us.  Please share it with as many as you can.  We ask that if you are able you take a few more moments to click:  http://www.gofundme.com/CosplayMichael and DONATE.  Just $10 will add to the donations of family and friends and help to make this seemingly simple wish come true.  It does add up.  You can make a difference to us!  Donate TODAY


+Gofundme +Cosplay Michael Pomichter +Sage Ia +Deanna Pomichter +Hangin With Web Show

Domestic Terrorists Declare Victory over Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Rebel Fandom

It isn’t hard to see that with a 24 hour news cycle and a nearly global awareness of almost every horrific act committed safety and security have become a preoccupying factor in the lives of people everywhere.  But in the growing quest for peace of mind, have we fallen victim to very fear and anxiety that the western world has long stood defiantly against, and how far into our daily lives has this intruded.

After 9/11/2001, many Americans graciously accepted the added inconveniences they faced at Airports and other travel terminals as necessary evils to combat the threats of international terrorism.  Most even found some small solace in the added security.  But global religious and geopolitical terrorism isn’t the only threat that citizens face.  Increasingly we are barraged with images of random acts of violence perpetrated by seemingly average people.  While some may hesitate, these are in effect nothing less than domestic acts of terrorism yielding the same results — a fearful reactionary society unable to enjoy the simplest individual liberties trapped by timidity into accepting almost any action aimed at providing a sense of safety.

How pervasive is this phenomenon?   One needs look no further than the highly anticipated and almost exalted launch of the latest cinematic installment of one of the western world’s most beloved pop culture film franchises — Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

With just a little more than a month until this instant blockbuster is set to hit theaters, various theater chains including AMC theaters, which is closely linked to Lucas Films new parent company, The Walt Disney Company, have already announced plans to restrict audiences famed for Cos-Play to costumes that won’t hide their faces and do not include items that could be mistaken for or hide the presence of weapons.  This is bad news for both movie goers who enjoy dressing as their favorite Star Wars villains such as Darth Vader, Darth Maul, storm troopers or any number of supporting aliens as well as many who enjoy the visual spectacle that Star Wars has become in its 3 generations.

Many find the new rules little more than an inconvenience that helps provide a safe movie going experience, especially in the wake of public shootings at theaters, schools and even public recreational events like the recent Orlando Florida Zombie Walk.  But they also represent a significant intrusion into the fundamental liberties of individuals to express themselves creatively.

It is perhaps true that no one wants to be injured or assaulted while simply enjoying a recreational expression of pop-culture fandom, but at issue isn’t only the visual spectacle created by fun-seekers, but the increasingly limited opportunities for people to escape the ever growing toil and stress of professional, political and an increasingly socio activist world to express their humanity and their communal joy.

Is that an extreme interpretation of a benign pragmatic approach to public safety?  Perhaps. 

But, consider this:

If the rational purpose of terrorism is to promote terror (fear) to attain power, and it can be agreed upon that power can be defined as the ability of a person or group to effectively alter or facilitate the behavior of another person or group of people; then the objective assessment of the success of a terrorist — domestic, religious or geopolitical, can be made by the resulting effects of an act or acts to facilitate a specific behavior as a direct or indirect result the fear (Terror) caused by the terrorist’s actions.

Thus:  terrorists destroy, kill and injure to promote terror and alter societies behaviors through fear and intimidation.  A society alters it’s most basic behaviors to accommodate the presence of a terrorist or the threat of terrorism.  Said acts of terrorism can be objectively judged as successful.

Since it is most notably the goal of western society to render terrorism innate and inevitably extinct, and success encourages future similar behavior, the above assessment poses a specific and undesirable question.  What does a society do to promote safety and security, while denying individuals and groups using terrorist tactics success, and balancing the rights and privileges of lawful citizens?

It appears to be a catch 22.  One that individual revelers are facing every day in America and through out the western world. 

This most recent quandary created by the additional rules imposed by theaters upon paying consumers to a highly anticipated social and cultural event may help to illuminate the fundamental problem inherent in the situation.

In the original Star Wars trilogy a group of renegade rebels fought and eventually defeated an oppressive galactic empire.  In 1977, just one year after the 1976 bicentennial of the United States, there was perhaps no more American interpretation of the classic heroes journey.  In 1999 Lucas Films returned the pop culture phenomenon to tell the story of the geo political forces that led to the emergence of the evil and oppressive empire and it’s most infamous villain, and movie goers young and old, despite a sometimes distinctive distain for many of the prequel trilogy’s elements saw the democratic galactic senate under siege by an elaborately choreographed set of terrorist forces independently maneuvered to force senators and citizens to vote their own security and safety above the individual liberties prized by the old republic.  By 2002, the second installment of the prequels hit theaters, carefully sidestepping any direct allusion to the horrific events of 2001 by focusing more heavily on the much-needed spectacle of a good space yarn.

“So that is how democracy dies, to thunderous applause,” lamented the young heroin of the trilogy, Padme Amadala, the mother of the original trilogy’s most beloved brother and sister rebels. 

Now, as this epic celebration of fierce rebelliousness and individualism and the growing sense of freedom for all humanity is set to launch a new generation into the annuls of galactic universal rebellion and the ongoing struggle for freedom from oppressive forces, it is perhaps most ironic that the business interests and geopolitical strife of reality should force the hands of societies most individualistic and pervasive counter culturists, who celebrate  their passions with creative and elaborate costumes to be tied and their creativity to be limited by said same fear that befell the very heroes and scoundrels that they revere.

Young Anakin Skywalker, determined to govern away freedoms inherent strife, the elder Darth Vader bent on service to an ordered empire, the emerging Kylo Ren, determined to maintain the order of tyranny opposed upon his foes, all surely would revel in the surrender of their rebellious fans to the fear and trepidation that forced the sublimation of their expressions.

But, if we are those rebels, celebrated on celluloid for three generations, what are we to do to ensure the safety of our children and grandchildren as they become the newest generation of fans to this awesome cinematic spectacle?  How can we keep them safe without teaching them fear?

I accept that few will read this and fewer in positions to take these questions and consider seriously more defiant but equally safe balances.  For that to happen, the force must be strong with theater owners and patrons alike.  The collective energy fans create to surround us, penetrate us and binds us together in fandom would need to also awaken us to the watch out for each other.

I will end this diatribe with an observation.  The most effective governance in a free society is invisible.  It secures us without intruding on our lives.  It accepts that free people bear inherent risks and sets consequences for those who take advantage of freedom to commit evil.  The most effective governance of a free people does not punish the masses for fear of the actions of those evil forces, it must wait its turn to punish evil accepting that it may always exist within the body free.  That is the challenge that will always face free people — to risk in order to be truly free.

Isn’t that what Han, Leia and Luke taught us all? 

http://moviepilot.com/posts/3626188