Devastated.
Dec. 27th, 2009 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heidiI was going to steal time today during the kids' tae kwon do class to post about how flat Christmas Day always feels for me, and how the Chipmunks movie did not suck as badly as it theoretically could, or my thoughts let me show you them on Doctor Who (which I haven't seen yet, but thought I would haveby that point) but that's not going to happen because...
At about noon today I got a phone call frombekkio that she'd just learned that our friend Eric Bowling had died of heart failure yesterday.
Some of you may've met Eric at Comic Con, where he was our guru and organizer and coordinator and moderator in 2008 and 2009 at the Harry Potter panel - you can meet him now, in a way, through the videos of our panel - start with that one and then you can see the rest here. I'm not sure if there's been an upload of this year's panel which again included me and Melissa, as well asgwendolyngrace, flourish, Lev Grossman from TIME, Dr Henry Jenkins and ArtInsights' Leslie Combemale; will try to find it.
Eric and I taked at least three or four times a week - sometimes three or four times a day. He'd been ill since birth with heart issues and related problems, but he never, never sounded down or angry for more than a minute. He was the Harry Potter guy at Comic Con and fought for years to have an HP panel included - and was still fighting to have it removed from the "Kids' Programming" section, as oh my God we definitely were not. He wore his Gryffindor costume and looked enough like Harry with his dark hair that people came up to him when he was using his cane or in his wheelchair to comment on it. He was instrumental in working Disabled Services at Comic Con and was immensely helpful in putting together policies and procedures for Azkatraz and things we will use next summer at Infinitus. Even though he wasn't sure he'd be able to go, he was on the Academic Programming vetting committee and was in the process of applying to Dr Jenkins' program at USC; he wanted to write his thesis on Snape and moral masochism.
I'm going to end this by quoting:
At about noon today I got a phone call from
bekkio that she'd just learned that our friend Eric Bowling had died of heart failure yesterday. Some of you may've met Eric at Comic Con, where he was our guru and organizer and coordinator and moderator in 2008 and 2009 at the Harry Potter panel - you can meet him now, in a way, through the videos of our panel - start with that one and then you can see the rest here. I'm not sure if there's been an upload of this year's panel which again included me and Melissa, as well as
gwendolyngrace, flourish, Lev Grossman from TIME, Dr Henry Jenkins and ArtInsights' Leslie Combemale; will try to find it. Eric and I taked at least three or four times a week - sometimes three or four times a day. He'd been ill since birth with heart issues and related problems, but he never, never sounded down or angry for more than a minute. He was the Harry Potter guy at Comic Con and fought for years to have an HP panel included - and was still fighting to have it removed from the "Kids' Programming" section, as oh my God we definitely were not. He wore his Gryffindor costume and looked enough like Harry with his dark hair that people came up to him when he was using his cane or in his wheelchair to comment on it. He was instrumental in working Disabled Services at Comic Con and was immensely helpful in putting together policies and procedures for Azkatraz and things we will use next summer at Infinitus. Even though he wasn't sure he'd be able to go, he was on the Academic Programming vetting committee and was in the process of applying to Dr Jenkins' program at USC; he wanted to write his thesis on Snape and moral masochism.
I'm going to end this by quoting
Eric loved Emma Watson, loved the Harry Potter books, and loved bringing people together to talk about them. He was enthusiastic, sometimes socially inappropriate, and always had a good sense of humor about life - which could describe a lot of fans! But Eric was special. He will be sorely missed.
All I can say is, somebody who's in CA had better step up and make the Harry Potter panel happen this year, or he's totally going to come back as a poltergeist and get all up in CCI's face...
