First of all, let’s be clear that I’ve seen FAR weirder scheduling in my time, including for panels I was actually on.  Also, this was far from the first time Awesomely Bad had been scheduled for just one hour.  It’s just that it wasn’t REALLY an hour.  See, a good many conventions schedule events with 15-to-30-minute intervals between things, so that there’s plenty of time for the room to clear out and the previous crew to pack up and the next bunch to set up.  Apparently nobody let Ret-Con know about this little trick, though, so the set up/tear down/host transition time all ate into the actual panel time itself.  And when you add the scramble involving the speakers on top of it all, that’s even more panel time gone.  (In fact, there’s a whole extra comic about that which will be going to Patreon before too long, so go sign up over there if you wanna see what else I’ve been keeping from you)

The thing with Manos is really only funny in conjunction with the first bit, but MAN it would have been nice if it were somehow possible to transfer the unused 45 minutes from Saturday morning over to Friday night.

By the way: despite all my years of cosplaying from MST3k and watching the Manos episode so much that I’ve practically memorized it, this was somehow the VERY FIRST TIME I’d ever seen the original Manos: The Hands of Fate completely raw and unriffed.  And man, let me tell you, those long awkward pauses hit WAY different when there’s no snarky midwesterners talking over them.