[ Monday, September 30, 2002 ]
Back by popular demand, I present:
Tales From Cairo #3
This flight was...interesting. I got on board and found my seat in the relatively spartan coach section. The only other person in my row was a young Chinese man four seats away. We pretty much left each other alone the whole time. I read some more of House of Leaves and perused the inflight magazine a little. It wasn't terribly interesting considering that I couldn't read a word of it. I also got to watch a horribly funny airline safety video, which I also couldn't understand a word of, although some of it was supposed to be in English. After a while, the in-flight movie started up. As fate would have it, it was Harry Potter. I casually plugged my headphones in and followed the slightly mumbled English instructions to turn the audio to channel one or two. I tried channel one first, and got to hear Dumbledore and Prof. McGonagall chatting in Russian. This got old pretty quickly, so I switched to channel two. I was then treated to...more Russian. Sightly louder and more to my right, but otherwise the same.
Oh, very funny.
An American movie and they offered it in two languages, Russian and louder Russian. Makes perfect sense. At least I had already seen it. I watched almost the entire thing simply out of a lack of anything better to do. The dubbing was certainly passable, for what it was. Hagrid sounds quite natural in Russian, as you might imagine. Hermione also sounded rather natural, and Harry came out as well as could be expected. Ron sounded a bit off, though. Just not quite right.
I'm sure you care.
I was also pleased to note that the Philosopher's Stone remained the Philosopher's Stone (or at least something that sounded like "filosofski kinya"). It puzzles me to no end that they changed this in America. Sorcerer's Stone indeed. After that ended I got out the pillow and blanket and at one point actually tried the sleep mask, but I never managed to get to sleep. I could have tried stretching out a bit, but the Chinese man had already claimed the middle seat in my row, and two seats seemed oddly worse than one. I think I did sleep at some point, just never when I was trying to. I went into a weird sort of haze after a few hours when low light and eyestrain conspired to make me stop reading. I suppose the out and out mind-numbing, skin-crawling creepiness of my book probably didn't help, either. At any rate, I gave up on my literary pursuits and went on to stare blankly into space for five or six hours. I would sometimes get distracted by the movie screen, which had started playing something intensely weird. It was a long string of either short films, commercials or possibly both. All in Russian, of course. They were only entertaining in ten second increments since they were so impossible to follow, but every so often one would catch my attention. As I said, I think I slept, but I can't be sure. Since my environment was completely devoid of all stimuli, and the lighting had gotten so low that I couldn't really see my watch without intense effort, I managed to lose all sense of time passing or not passing. There was really no way to accurately tell the difference between falling asleep and blinking. My only clue was the vaguely rested feeling I got from time to time.
I also ate a few times during this period, which prompted the invention of another one of my air travel games. I like to call this one "Don't Let the Flight Crew Know You're American". It's fun. Or, at least, it's more fun than staring at the back of the seat in front of you and doing an impression of a narcoleptic for six hours. High praise indeed. Basically it consists of this: Whenever the flight attendants come around to ask you something, listen very carefully to the response given by person seated in front of you and repeat it as best you can. Unless, of course, the question is blindingly obvious in context. Like if they happen to be pushing a drink cart at they time. Surprisingly, this never really came back to haunt me. It just kept me surprised. I did screw up a couple times, though, or they asked me a follow up question and I finally had to admit I had no idea what I was talking about. This led into an interesting phenomenon with the flight attendants. Even after I had made it as clear as I possibly could that I did not speak any Russian (i.e. saying to them "I do not speak any Russian") they took some kind of perverse joy in asking me everything in Russian and making me get them to repeat it in English. EVERY TIME.
This was more confusing than anything else. It almost motivated me to get more use out of my little Russian phrase book, but reading was still a bit impossible. I did get some use out of the standard selection of international vocabulary that I had picked out before leaving. These are the handy phrases that I made a point of memorizing in both Russian and Arabic:
1. I'm sorry.
2. Yes.
3. No.
4. Thank you.
5. Where is the bathroom?
6. I'm from Canada.
I assumed that these would get me out of pretty much any trouble I could get myself into. Anyway, the fish that my little game left me with was surprisingly good. It may have had something to do with how hungry I was, but it really seemed well beyond the normal quality of airline food. More than that, it was edible.
During one of my extended stares, the trip started really wearing me down in earnest. More than anything else I think the prolonged futility was getting to me. There was really just nothing to look forward to. I was sitting on an airplane for 12 and a half hours. After I got off this plane, I would get to sit in an airport for 8 hours. Once that was done, I would have the privilege of sitting on a completely different airplane for 6 more hours. Huzzah. After that airplane, I would finally be able to get to the flat my mom was staying in. Once I was there, I knew that I would most likely spend the majority of my time sitting.
There is some truly horrible psychological state that comes when the only milestones in your foreseeable future come in the form of a change in the quality of sitting. If there's anyone in the world that makes their living stress testing recliners, I'm sure they know how I felt. It doesn't sound stressful, but it breeds a weird sense of dislocation that was quite draining for me.
That having been said, the flight did eventually draw to a close. This deposited me in Smerenteyevo airport in Moscow. More on this later...
Carter [3:56 AM]
[ Sunday, September 29, 2002 ]
So, to answer your questions, this semester I am studying film and law. I do this because Harvard E's comp. sci. program kind of ate itself. Film is cool, except that the class is about four hours long with no breaks. Law is an unqualified cool, and I think there's a troll in my class. A troll who contra dances, actually. He's really cool.
I also wrote a little personal assistant program to do stuff for me. Her web interface isn't world viewable, but you can AIM her at "ChiiBot235" if you want to talk to her. I should warn you, she gets a little weird sometimes.
Carter [2:56 AM]
[ Monday, September 16, 2002 ]
I just bought a semester's worth of textbooks. The grand total?
$23.70
Thank you, night school!
Carter [5:57 PM]
[ Wednesday, September 04, 2002 ]
Back from AXNY.
Ladies and gentleman, my Con Report. Enjoy. ^_^
Day 0:
-Late, yes. But earlier than I expected.
Met up with Nick and Harold at the Tokyo Kid. They were about ten minutes late, which is technically early since I was planning for them to be at least fifteen minutes late. This should give you an idea of how organized we are. Let me introduce Nick and Harold to those of you that don't know (of) them.
Nick is the representative from the land of punk rock and ska. Mostly Gundam, in the anime category. Also a big Kenshin fan, and big into old samurai movies. This is Nick.
Harold is more of a hardcore otaku. Also has a few more...colorful mannerisms than Nick. If Michael Richards had Jack Black's love child, that would be Harold. Just stick with that mental image.
-The vending machine is our friend.
We went to Porter Square to stock up on UCC coffee. Unfortunately the Kotobukiya supermarket was totally out of UCC and out of Pokka as well, which was the most horrible thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind. We went across the hall to the sushi bar and spent twenty minutes or so in front of the vending machine. Every so often we'd go over to the counter and break another large bill. I really wonder what they thought we were doing...
All told we wound up with about thirty UCCs and five or so Pokkas for variety. It was a real bitch getting them home. Some went into my bag, bust most wound up in Harold's guitar case. We would have just kept them in there all weekend but the strap wasn't holding up so well.
-It's the oldest emo boy in the world...
While waiting at Alewife station for our ride to Harold's house we spotted a 45 year old emo boy. This was one of the few things you don't expect to see in the Boston area. We also practiced the fine art of using aikido moves to obliterate business cards which we pilfered from a small envelope strung up by the payphones. Incidentally, we suck at it.
-Cardbored
In a desperate attempt to have some kind of cosplay going on, the three of us fashioned crude Gundam antennae from cardboard and duct tape. Then we cannibalized a t-shirt in order to make headbands to attach them with. Harold also made a heathawk (his Gundam's weapon of choice) out of the same materials. It was actually rather cool, and a lot of fun to smack people with. We ran out of duct tape at one point and had to run out to the Store24 (which for some bizarre reason closes at 11 in Belmont) to get some more. We also got an awesome red sharpie to color the headpieces with. After the construction was done we spent a while loading up the car and finally managed to get some sleep around 4am.
Day 1:
-I just saw something scary...my house.
We had planned to leave at 7. Nobody woke up until around 7:30, so we didn't leave until after 8. Upon leaving we headed directly for the bank. Unfortunately, as soon as we got there Larry (Harold's dad, our driver) suddenly realized that he had forgotten his bank card back at the house. So we headed back and get it. Then it's back to the bank. Then, since Larry promised Kathy (Harold's mom) that he'd bring her some money too, it's back to the house again. It's close to 9 by the time we really got on the road.
-Well, this ranks pretty high on the random shitometer.
Except that we didn't really get on the road. We stopped at the first available rest stop, and after a brief foray into the local McDonald's Larry hits us with some bad news. Evidently he took a bit too much of his heart medication this morning by mistake and now he is, for all intents and purposes, intoxicated.
Well, fuck. We had to stop until he feels better, the best estimate being about two hours. After taking a quick survey of the entertainment sources in the car, we concluded that none of them will function without an electrical outlet and a TV. Great.
-Skatebored
First we consumed a few convenient heavily caffeinated beverages and all felt a little less fuzzy for having done it. Since this killed all of fifteen minutes at its most stretched, we decided to invest in a miniature skateboard in the name of preserving our sanity. Not one of those little fingerboards or keychain boards but an actual functional skateboard that was about half the length of a real board. You COULD, in fact, ride it. Albeit for about five or six feet before you fell off, but it was possible. It was also rather shoddily built, as we could actually see it fall apart as we rode it. I really don't understand why this thing existed in the first place. It has no point. You can't ride it for more than a few seconds at a time, and even the most basic trick is now nearly impossible. It would only ollie properly maybe one time out of twenty. Now I wish we had kept the packaging for it, because I would very much like to write to the company that makes it and ask them what the hell they were thinking.
I suppose the more immediate question is why we would buy such a thing, but as I said we were just THAT bored. Plus I believe we were fated to buy it and actually wound up at that rest stop just for that reason. This theory is somewhat validated by the fact that Larry said he was ready to leave no more than three minutes after we bought the stupid thing. It turned out we were only there for about half an hour.
-Lost? Yeah, you can say that again. The next time we drive past, for example...
The rest of the trip was an unholy nightmare, plagued by poor navigation and excessive boredom. We got off the highway in Connecticut to stop at another McDonald's and couldn't manage to get back to the main road. We circled around these poor girls running a car wash about four times, and they kept offering to give us directions, but every time we passed them we were absolutely sure we knew where we were going. The one time we did ask for directions we did it at a gas station. Larry went inside to inquire about the highway and when he came out he was full of information.
Larry: Ok, he said we're supposed to turn right at McDonnel St.
Us: Ok, we'll keep an eye out for it.
Five minutes and about seven blocks later...
Nick: Umm...are you sure he didn't say to turn right at the McDonald's?
Larry: Ohhh...maybe he did. Yes, that would make much more sense.
We then drove past the car wash girls AGAIN and finally managed to make it onto the main road. Some time later we got hit by a truck in upstate New York, causing some cosmetic car damage. Otherwise the rest of the trip was uneventful.
-GTO otaku?
Upon finally arriving at the hotel (which we parked six blocks away from and had to carry the massive bag of coffee to) we got up to the lobby (mysteriously located on the 8th floor) and started waiting in the check-in line. We figured it would be good practice for all the waiting in line we would have to do over the rest of the weekend. After a moment, a random asian gentleman in obvious con garb ran up to us.
Asian Guy: Hey! I get it! You're those three otaku from GTO, right?
Us: Umm...not really. We're just kind of generic Gundam fanboys.
Me: It was late, and we were tired.
Guy: Oh. Well, you really fit as the GTO guys.
Us: Thanks.
Guy: *shakes our hands and runs off excitedly*
Me: I feel better already.
-Yes, we applied duct tape to cardboard all by ourselves.
After we got checked in, we were informed that our rooms were not quite ready just yet. We were welcome to check our bags at the bell desk and come back in half an hour or so for our room keys. Just talk to the bell desk for the bags and the keys, and then check our messages upstairs to see what Larry was up to. We then went down to the con floors and signed in for our badges and bags.
I was kind of blown away by the number of people who seemed to be genuinely impressed by the stupid headpieces we were wearing. Several of them had us pose for pictures (which I'm sure will surface during my presidential candidacy, no sooner and no later) and at one point some guy offered Nick money for his. I mean, there was a fully outfitted Jenova there and people were still impressed with our cardboard hats. It boggles the mind.
-I really enjoy Sesame Street, and I'd like to perform with Sting one day.
I took a moment to slip away and glance at the Cowboy Bebop panel. A glance is all I could hope for, really, since the room was packed with people like a tin of sardines (fire code? what fire code?) and there was a huge mob outside trying to look in. I got to see just enough of the Q&A section to hear Yoko Kanno explain that it has always been her dream to play alongside Sting and that her favorite American production is Sesame Street. Kinda makes me wonder.
Oh, and Toshihiro Kawamoto's dog is named Colline.
-Lulus and Yunas and...Doraemon? Oh my...
Cosplayers were out in force by the time we got there. In force. Several were quite excellent, as well. A few personal favorites:
Neko Piro, who is interesting because this is a girl dressed as a guy dressed as a girl dressed as a cat. My head hurts.
This chick. Umm...some member of Malice Mizer, perhaps?
Spandex Rei Ayanami. *cough*
And so many more...
-Because it's so full of mercy.
In the line for the dealers room, we spotted this man waiting ahead of us. The cross he had to bear seemed to be made of styrofoam or something similar, as it was bending and squishing a bit.
Me: You know, that cross appears to be very light.
Nick: Yes.
Me & Nick (in unison): It is not full of mercy.
If you're not a Trigun fan, just take my word for it. It's funny.
-We tie people up! ...in obis.
Dealers room rocked. Full of wonderful things. Not, as the salespeople working the lines implied, wonderful bondage things, but wonderful things nonetheless. This one place had a great deal on boxed sets of Slayers tapes, so we all got in on that sooner or later. There was also the place that sold laserdiscs at five bucks each. FIVE BUCKS. I wish I could live there. Fabulous cel booth, too. Words cannot describe...
-Will you tell us which room you can't let us into?
After buying fabulous things, we attempted to take them back to our fabulous rooms. Unfortunately this did not quite go as we had been told it would.
Bellhop: Hi, what can I do for you?
Us: You said you'd have the room keys for us?
Bellhop: Oh no, you'll have to go to the check-in desk for that.
Us: Oh...ok, I guess that makes sense.
Us: *go to the check-in*
Check-in Girl: Hi! What can I do for you?
Us: We checked in earlier, and you said the rooms weren't ready. We need our room keys.
CiG: Ok, do you have a photo ID?
Us: ...
Harold: Uhh...the room isn't exactly in our name...
Me: Don't you remember us? We were here an hour ago, how many people in Gundam headgear can there be in this building?
Nick: Don't answer that...
Me: We need to find our responsible adult-type person.
Harold: He's probably in his room already.
Me: Ok, can you tell us the room number?
CiG: Sorry, no.
Me: Of course, why would you? We'll...be back.
-I am retarded, doo doo doo doo doodadoo...
We set up base camp on the seventh floor rotunda area and sent scouts out to check the other floors, assuming Larry was most likely in a viewing room somewhere. After searching through every floor that was part of the con, we gave up and decided to wait for him to wander by. After resting on our asses for about ten minutes, we abruptly remembered that we had Larry's cell phone number.
Why did it take us this long to remember? Because we're very, very stupid.
We made a series of calls from a payphone in the lobby, with varying degrees of success. There were two phones present, one of them wouldn't take our change and the other wouldn't give it back after it refused to dial. We finally got it to accept our money AND perform a somewhat reasonable function. Unfortunately, after dialing the cell phone, we got a lot of ringing and a series of clicks and nothing else. Especially not our quarters back.
We scrounged some more change and called Kathy back at the house and asked if she had talked to Larry since we got here. She had, but she hadn't gotten his room number. We decided the best thing was to have her call him again through the switchboard and tell him to turn the cell on so we could call him. Personally I had a couple of logical objections to this, but I wasn't actually a part of this conversation and it sounded reasonable enough to Nick. So all we had to do was kill ten minutes or so and then try the cell again.
-I hate myself!!
This was by far one of the most amusing moments of the con. Mostly because it didn't happen to me.
We were sitting around, going through our recent purchases and waiting for our plan to go through. As we started going over some of the more substantial purchases we had just made, Harold suddenly got a horrible look on his face.
Harold: Oh no...
Nick: What?
Harold: You know all those Slayers tapes I just bought?
Me: Yeah.
Harold: I forgot to check if they were subs or dubs.
Nick: You fool.
Harold: *rummages through his bags*
Me: Honestly, that should be the first thing you check. ESPECIALLY when it's a good deal like that.
Harold: AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!
Me: Dubs, huh?
Harold: Oh god, noooooo!!
Nick: Which one, first or second season?
Harold: Both!!
Me & Nick: *try not to laugh too much*
Nick: Dude, you suck at life.
Harold: *rolling around on the floor, sobbing loudly* Oh GOD! I hate myself!!
Random man, passing by: Wow...
Me & Nick: *fall over, laughing uncontrollably*
-A very professional woman stabbed me in the thumb.
This also ranked fairly high on the ol' random shitometer. After scrounging four more quarters (evidently payphones cost a dollar in NYC) we convinced the friendlier phone to dial Larry's cell phone again. After a moment and a long series of clicks, we heard someone say the following (paraphrased heavily):
"Yeah, so it went really well. She was totally professional about the whole thing. I bet she's a really good nurse. She just stuck the needle into a spot on my thumb and injected it really quickly. Yeah, it's much better now."
Only much longer. As soon as Nick said something into the phone, the voice stopped and eventually the phone cut off entirely.
Fucking weird, it was.
-I'll keep an eye out for any spokesmen that wander by
After deciding that the cell phone was a lost cause, and moreover after running out of change, we finally resorted to calling Kathy collect and asking her to phone Larry again and tell him to meet us at the bell desk. I think we really could have just done this in the first place, but as I said I was not part of that decision making process. We retrieved Harold at base camp and headed up to the bell desk. Fortunately this plan actually worked...
-We need more ice!
After we managed to get set up in the room, we tried to decide how best to deal with the huge bag of coffee we had been lugging around since yesterday. The minibar was suggested, but it turned out to be more of an in-room vending machine than anything else, so the concept of actually storing foreign objects in it was somewhat absurd. We briefly considered using the sink for this purpose, and simply filling it with cold water and ice for storage purposes. Of course, this could never work since the sink was so small as to only hold maybe five of our thirty or so cans at a time. This was unacceptable. So we did the only logical thing and filled the bathtub with ice. It took about twenty minutes for the three of use to get it reasonably full using the ice bucket and two convenient wastebaskets. The end result was quite a sight, so it's kind of a shame nobody had a camera and we never managed to get anyone else into our room. Oh well...
-Hello, Jen...
We decided to look into the karaoke room for a bit. As it turned out, we arrived just in time to catch the end of what I'm sure was a show stopping number on the part of one Jennifer Wand. She's an old friend of mine. Kind of. Friend is the wrong word, I think. But we don't try to kill each other and I can generally recognize her when I see her. Talking to her is one of the more intimidating experiences I'm likely to have, given the nature of her personality and the fact that she is many of the things I have always wanted to be. She seriously seems to do almost everything I do, only she's much better at them. Evidently she was a finalist in the karaoke competition, as well. We left before they announced the winner though. My vote would have been with the Korean girl who sang the Boa song directly after Jen. She was REALLY good. Jen was excellent, too, and could easily have won but...yeah. I like Boa, and I couldn't figure out what the hell Jen was singing. I'm biased that way. As we left, I went to a better vantage point and waved at Jen to see if she would recognize me.
Well, she rather clearly mouthed the words "oh my god" and gestured for me to come back inside and talk to her. I did, and a rather awkward and nervous conversation on my part ensued. She asked how I was, explained that she was a finalist, and that she was sure the Korean girl was going to win (evidently a friend of hers as well, go figure) and we sat through the next performance together. After that Nick and Harold mercifully arrived to retrieve me. I introduced them, explained about the Gundam hats, then excused myself and left.
Of course, when I say I left, I actually performed a complex maneuver that involved standing up, bowing, turning around and colliding headlong with that poor Boa girl seemingly all at the same time. I decided it would be prudent NOT to come back to the karaoke room for a while.
-West Side Bebop
We eventually made our way to the AMV room. We managed to circumvent the horrible evil line for this even by showing up late and getting terrible seats. Good planning on our part. Or...lack thereof. We came in between videos, and as we were searching for seats the audience proper seemed to start laughing a lot for no good reason. After some more searching I finally realized what was so funny. Evidently Gundam headpieces make for wonderful silhouettes on the projector screen. Odd that this didn't occur to use sooner.
We were there in time for the second half of the presentation and I hear we didn't miss anything that spectacular in the first. Except, of course, for the three (THREE!!!) videos in the drama category submitted by Jen. Good lord...
I think "West Side Bebop" was definitely the best of the show. It seems I'm not alone in this opinion, since it did win. It was in fact a wonderfully lip-synched rendition of "Tonight, Tonight" by the Bebop crew. You kinda had to see it to really appreciate the brilliance of this.
Others worth mentioning:
DBZ set to "Scatman". I am not a DBZ fan, but this was just entertaining.
Read or Die set to "Natsuko Tayama" by Momus. Fit really well, quite memorable. And Read or Die is inherently cool.
Super Smash Brothers set to the MGS2 theme. The hell were they smoking? But it worked, I tell you, it worked!!
Cowboy Bebop set to "Can't Get You Out of My Head" by Kylie Minogue. I swear it was cool!
All kinds of Gundam set to "AM-3P" from DDR. Gundams playing DDR. Enough said.
-Be happy with what you're getting, there's a guy who's been awake since the Second World War...
I slept at this point. Told the guys to wake me up if something interesting happened or in time to catch Shinesman, whichever came first. This meant I would get a maximum of four hours sleep. It came out closer to three. I later learned that they went out to McDonald's for a while, came back, had an ice fight in the hallway and finally rode the elevator up and down for about half an hour. Then they came back to watch Onegai Teacher in the room and I eventually woke up during this. Some time later, Nick crashed and Harold and I went down to watch Shinesman.
Day 2:
-I'm gonna die in a Godzilla suit.
This is day 2 for me since I was asleep and woke up. The changeover came closer to 5am then to midnight, but it's the best break point I can make. We watched Shinesman subbed. Ironically, it's the one thing in the world that is better dubbed. It's so camp that the cheesy english voice acting actually enhances it. The fact that they had the gall to screen Sailor Moon dubbed and this subbed makes me worry for this con, but no matter. After Shinesman ended, we went back upstairs. Harold crashed, leaving me with instructions to wake him up in an hour.
-You know, there ARE bathrooms on this floor.
Ok, I'm all in favor of going to extreme measures to avoid leaving the viewing rooms. I had nothing but admiration for the man at TotalCon who timed his bathroom breaks to when the tapes were rewinding and ordered pizzas on his cell phone to have them delivered not just to the hotel but to the viewing room itself. He was my hero, but this was something else entirely.
I was in the back of the Excel Saga room, watching episode 2, when the man several rows in front of me decided it was a good time to change his clothes. He looked behind him to make sure the coast was clear, but since looking behind him meant staring directly into the projector it's no wonder he didn't see me. Just...kinda creepy.
-We slept UNDER A TABLE.
I was busy talking to a couple of staff members (one of whom turned out to be Mike Tatsugawa, but I didn't figure that out until later) who were very nice and explained why the air conditioning was set on "glacial" when a handful of very frazzled looking girls ambled out of the Geobreeders room.
Girl #1: How hardcore are we? We just slept under a table!
Girl #2: Shh! Don't say that in front of the staff!
Staff: ...
Me: ...
Girls: *leave*
Staff: I don't think there is a table in that room.
Me: You think they mean that AV cart?
Staff: I don't think you could get under that.
Me: What about that weird blocky thing up by the stage?
Staff: Doesn't that have that huge subwoofer under it?
Me: Well, I've never slept on a subwoofer. Maybe it's really soothing. Like a massage.
Staff: ...
Me: I have to go wake my roommates up now. >_<
-In hindsight I should have asked for money
I managed to wake Harold up by severely beating him with the heathawk. At least, he was awake enough to say "Yeah, ok." whenever I made enough noise.
Me: Harold, wake up! *wham wham wham*
Harold: Yeah, ok.
Me: It's been an hour.
Harold: Yeah, ok.
Me: You going to sleep some more?
Harold: Yeah, ok.
Me: You want me to wake you up again in another half hour or so?
Harold: Yeah, ok.
Well, fair enough.
-Have you ever tried to commit seppuku with a frisbee?
I returned in another half hour and woke Harold up enough to get real sentences out of him. He said he was going to be down for a while. I woke Nick up instead and asked if he wanted to line up for the dealers room with me. He was surprisingly alert all things considered, and he decided to come along.
We lined up outside the entrance, alongside a couple of friendly people who started up a fairly random conversation.
Guy (out of the blue): Hey, have you ever tried to commit seppuku with a frisbee?
Me: Is that where you fold it in half really hard and jam it down your throat?
Guy: Yes!!
Me: And you have to be really super pissed to do it?
Guy: You get a hug for that! *hugs me*
You meet the most interesting people in lines...
-I hear the dealers room has an H Kitty booth. I'm sure that's just a typo...
We eventually got inside the dealers room. And it was still cool. The porn dealers were a little more bold at this hour, but were still maintaining a certain degree of subtlety. I bought a bunch more laserdiscs that I had somehow overlooked the day before, and then invested in a very...interesting Evangelion cel. It was cheap. With good cause. I love it more than you will ever know.
-Pay no attention to the herd of roaming dominatrices.
On our way back to the room to retrieve Harold (some of the LDs had duplicates he would want) we ran into a group of drunken ex-fratboy types. They seemed very confused by our manner of dress, and one of them appeared to be on the verge of a violent outburst. One of the interesting things about this con was that while we had taken over all the conference rooms and convention halls we had less than one tenth of the actual residential rooms reserved for attendees. So whenever we left the main area we were suddenly surrounded by normal people. This was kind of awkward for us, but I can't begin to imagine what it was like for them. The con signs were easy enough to miss, and it must be a hell of a shock to suddenly hop into an elevator and find it occupied by Lum. I think we fielded questions from at least 25 curious people over the weekend. Depending on our mood, answers ranged from "Yes, there's an anime convention on the lower floors. Yes, that's right, Japanese cartoons." to "We're not -really- here. We're all just figments of your twisted imagination. Pay no attention to the herd of roaming dominatrices!!". That last bit was right as both Lulus walked by. Ok...so I was tired...
-I guess I just look like the lesbian type.
During one of my laps around the dealers room, I was pulled aside by one of the industrious young men who was busy handing out flyers for various things. He discreetly asked if I was 18. I said I was. He then proceeded to invite me to Yuricon.
If you don't know what that is, you'll just have to go work it out for yourself.
I'm just curious as to why he singled -me- out.
-What do you want us to do? Pay you to take them?!?!
We spent at least an hour trying to get someone to buy the Slayers sets Harold bought by mistake. Nobody wanted the stupid things. We couldn't really blame them, either. Dubs bite. Some people were sympathetic, but claimed to have no money. Others just seemed creeped out and told us to go away. We FINALLY managed to sell them to the girl on the left here for all of 28 american dollars. For the record, Harold paid 80 for them. It's funny because it wasn't me.
-You think he'd sign my Dreamcast?
We spent a surprisingly short time in the open autograph line to see Takao Koyama. Unfortunately we were surrounded by rabid Dragon Ball fans the entire time, so even really short was too long. That and this kid in front of us wound up getting like eight things signed, which is a completely asshole thing to do. But no matter, I did eventually get my Slayers laserdisc signed, so it's all good.
Next up on the block was Akitaro Daichi, who seemed remarkably normal in appearance. Given his work (Kodocha, Jubei-chan, &c.) I half expected him to have green hair or three heads or a small man growing out of his abdomen or SOMETHING. Unfortunately, due to a tragic oversight on our part, between the three of us we were completely unable to come up with anything appropriate for him to autograph. It was kinda sad. We spent about half an hour desperately searching for something signable. We didn't have anything he had done. We didn't even have any posters or pictures or ads of anything he'd done. At all. Towards the end we were really reaching.
Me: Maybe he could sign one of the UCCs?
Harold: The ink would never stay.
Nick: You think he'd sign the dreamcast?
Me: In the name of god, why?
Nick: Well, it wouldn't show up as well on the PS2.
Me: Unless he had one of those silver markers.
Nick: Did he?
Harold: No.
Me: I know! He can sign the skateboard!
Nick: Ok, we're on crack.
He was gone before we could come up with anything. Bastard left fifteen minutes early. Ah well, he's still the man.
-Final Fantasy Catfight
We decided that in order to get the most out of the Masquerade we would perform a similar maneuver to what we did at the AMVs (i.e. show up late and get nosebleed seats). They had three HUGE screens showing what was happening on stage, so it didn't matter so much. There were a handful of painfully bad entries, and the MC was a peculiar Australasian man who didn't seem to know what he was talking about, but for the most part it was fun. The Jenova girl actually danced in that outfit. I mean, good lord. There was also an extremely *cough* talented Tifa who rather flamboyantly lost a water balloon on stage. The funniest part was when the MC very politely returned it to her afterwards.
But by far the most entertaining act was the "Final Fantasy Catfight".
It started off with Tifa and Aerith dancing out onto the stage, along with that picture of Cloud. Once the picture was set up, they performed some competitively suggestive dances at it to some hip hop sounding song. After a few minutes of this, Sephiroth came on stage too, performing a similar dance. After a moment, he simply walked over to the picture and licked it bottom to top, then grabbed it and walked off. Tifa and Aerith paused for a moment, then shrugged and started making out.
Best. Skit. Ever.
-Right. If caught, eat the sign.
This was sad. I'm very proud of what we did, but it WAS sad. In a desperate attempt to make friends and influence people we came up with a sign fashioned from a bag that once held our laserdiscs that read (and I quote):
"Bored fanboys with lots of anime + games looking for people Who are also bored to hang out with. Please."
We wandered around with it for at least two hours, with nothing that could be called success. After a few minutes we were approached by a Selphie who was representing a crowd of people across the hall. Now, along with two of the Lulus, a Faye, a Rei, and possibly Yoko Kanno, this girl really was the most attractive living thing in the hotel. Naturally this made it a little difficult for us to talk to her coherently.
Selphie: Hi there!
Us: Juhhh...nam?
Selphie: We'll hang out with you, but we're kinda busy trying to get our friend laid. ^_^
Us: ...
Selphie: ^_^
Us: ...
Selphie: ^_^
Nick: Which...friend...?
Selphie: With the pink hair. Over there... *points at this guy*
Us: OHHHHHH...ok.
Selphie: Yeah, male.
Us: Got it, yeah.
Selphie: *walks away, seeming slightly disgusted*
Me: You know, for a minute there that deal was just getting better and better.
Harold: Seriously.
Nick: We could still join up with them.
Me: Yeah, that's just what the sign needs. Put it right at the bottom, "And the raver needs sex"
Nick(quietly): "...rest of us wouldn't mind."
-Just plain old fucking BORED
After the Selphie debacle, we only had two things that could count as successes. We briefly picked up one guy who turned out to be DBZ head, and later met up with this guy who was not Jet Black at the time, but was still suffering the aftereffects of having attached his arm too tightly. He eventually left us in favor of Wicked City of all crazy things, but not before he got to witness the joy that was me spelling out the word "Weelah!" in paper cups on a table in the artists room. Fun that.
Somewhere in here we got interviewed by a guy who claimed to be from Fresh Angles. So help me, I think we actuallly scared him off. I will be extremely surprised if that article ever shows up, let alone our interview.
-Hella Moby buying beer
After giving up entirely and going back to the room, we were rather inexplicably visited by a girl named Cyrie. I have no idea how her name is actually spelled, so I'm just going to stick with that. Cyrie was known by Nick and Harold, but not by me, and I gathered she was a resident of those parts. She was not an anime fan, and seemed a bit confused by our room. She also proved that it might be just as well we didn't get any other people up there by benefit of The Sign. The first thing she said when she walked in was "What's that smell?". I was pretty fried at this point, so I only have a very hazy recollection of this conversation. I remember Nick spending a very long time trying to explain to Cyrie what emo was. I remember that Cyrie used the word "hella" more than I thought was really necessary, and that she kept talking about how she had run into Moby the day before when he was out buying beer with his girlfriend. That's pretty much it. She eventually left and we fell asleep, although not necessarily in that order.
Day 3:
-Fear and loathing in Anime eXpo.
Me: Guys, wake up! We have to check out in five minutes and the room is a massive shithole!!
Guys: Nuhhhh?
We overslept. In that we got almost five hours of sleep, which was waaaaay too much. It was truly impressive how badly we had managed to trash the room in two days time. I get the feeling we could have started a rock band based on this one credential. We had less than five minutes in which to check out and we had to:
1: Get out of bed.
2: Get our shit together.
3: Put the garbage in the garbage baskets (previously used only for ferrying ice around).
4: Drain the bathtub (see above re: ice).
5: Deal with the accumulated room service detritus.
6: Return the A/V system to its previous working order.
7: Actually leave.
And we did, albeit rather inefficiently and slightly late, but good enough. In our rush to leave we also forgot the skateboard, but that's probably for the best. After checking out we made a few final rounds of the con and eventually made our way back to the car with all our stuff. Wow, I made that last part sound easy, didn't I? The rest of the trip was not terribly eventful, as it was raining on the ride back and we mostly just slept (seemingly in shifts, for some reason) and read GTO manga.
Well, that was fun. And I think it's longer than the rest of my blog thus far combined.
Thanks to A Fan's View and Cosplay.com for the pictures.
Carter [8:33 PM]
