You know, we want to believe that this summer's Macworld Expo Boston will escape its apparent destiny as a flop of cataclysmic proportions-- honestly, we really, really do. You've got to realize, here, our first ever Expos were the '94-through-'97 Boston shows, and we're still treasuring some very fond memories of those shindigs (although no amount of therapy will ever allow us to repress the image of Bill Gates's Big Giant Head live via satellite when Steve announced that infamous $150 million investment/cross-licensing agreement thingy). We dutifully followed the show to New York in 1998, and we enjoyed those shows a heck of a lot, too, but there's a whole "coming home to roost" dynamic to this Boston story that has us rooting for the underdog. Plus, we really like the idea of traveling ten miles to the show instead of two hundred and ten, but that's just us being lazy. And cheap.

But there are some overwhelming odds to consider-- like, say, oh, we don't know... Apple not showing up and the ensuing lack of a Stevenote. And Apple's emphatic absence has made both potential attendees and exhibitors doubt whether the show can possibly be worth the money it'll cost to show up: with fewer attendees, exhibitors figure it's not worth the cost of renting a booth; with fewer exhibitors, attendees figure it's not worth the cost of the flight and hotel room. It's a vicious feedback loop that threatens to cancel the show altogether-- or, if IDG World Expo is grimly set on throwing this shindig no matter what (which we think is likely), it'll probably at least make the show a good deal smaller than Expos of the past. That's not much of a "Welcome Home" party.

To get a sense of how teensy this show is shaping up to be, Think Secret is reporting that IDG's goal is to have 100 exhibitors out there when the Mac faithful venture out onto the show floor. While we aren't sure how many vendors have clocked in for past summer shows, 100 sounds like a pretty low number to us-- and as of a few days ago, with only three months left before the conference starts, IDG "confirmed that 29 companies are on the exhibitor list so far." Twenty-nine. And as we've mentioned before, there are a bunch of heavy-hitters apparently missing from that list, like Adobe, Macromedia, and Microsoft. While we always love to play the role of Beaming Optimists, news like this leaves us reaching for the Rolaids. Clearly the show needs more exhibitors, and it needs them soon.

Driven by our incessant urge to lend a hand, we admit we've toyed with the idea of selling off an internal organ and using the cash to rent a booth ourselves. As far as we can tell, though, the cheapest chunk of Expo real estate available directly from IDG is a ten-foot-square "bare booth," which runs $4,800. Since we don't really have an actual product to push (well, other than shirts and stickers, because you just can't bottle melodrama; trust us, we've tried-- it gets everywhere and the stains are permanent), a booth on a hundred-square-foot parcel of land seems like overkill. Heck, without an actual product to push, we wouldn't even want the booth; we'd just lie down on the carpet itself, or maybe set up a little tent to snooze in. S'mores by campfire would probably violate fire codes, though, huh?

But wait, there's another option that's even more attractive: we could sublet one of those cute little minibooths in one of Xplain's "Special Interest Pavilions"! There's no "Smartass Commentary" pavilion, but AtAT could conceivably wedge itself into one of the other vaguely relevant categories-- say, "Edutainment" (we edutain with the best of 'em), or "Digital Media" (we're digital and we're media), or, for obvious reasons, "Clip Art." Best of all, for just $2,995, we could get a "1-meter station property" with "lockable storage space," one "padded stool" (ooh, luxurious!), an electrical outlet, carpet (with padding, mind you), a wastebasket that'll get dumped out for us each and every night, four of those funky exhibitor badges, a plain-text Station Header (we might stick with the default "Display Name," because it's catchier than "AtAT"), listings in the exhibitor booklet, and lots more.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Now all we need is the organ to sell to raise the three grand. (You didn't think we meant we'd hock one of ours, did you?) So, in the interest of padding the Expo's exhibitor list a bit, does anyone have an extra kidney we can sell? Second-hand's fine.