My Drunken Adventure at A.W.A.

So we left at like 1pm, although we had planned to leave at 10am. Ended up waiting on my friend's brother to get out of school, only he ended up skipping class and sitting in Ihop eating with his g/f, then went to her house to have sex, I think. I slept the whole way, as I polished off a six pack the night before while playing some Burnout 3, which is an experience all unto itself.

Arrive at the con, having freshly woken up and checked into our hotel and do the line thing for about 20 minutes. I've always enjoyed how pre-registerring for cons is supposed to be faster for you, yet the pre-reg line is about 40 people longer than the walk ins, which has exactly 3 people in it that are never the same 3. Get my pass, run right over to the dealers room. Not so good for me this year, as far as toy selection. Last year, I ended up dropping about $460, I spent $875 on stuff the year before. Picked up a couple action figures and some pins for my bag, couple b'day gifts for friends that got shafted on going this year, and what have you. Saw a Naruto movie poster that I wish now I had got, but I can still get it online.

Talked to random folks about what all was running, caught some Live Action stuff before we decided to head back to the hotel. We ended up hitching a ride to our hotel, which was about 1/4 a mile from the con mall exit to running across an 8-lane highway. After using a pedestrian walkway, you then go to the back of the hotel and ride an elevator down 8 floors in order to get to the lobby because the staircase to the third floor (which was ours) along with every other floor, stopped at ours but did not let you take stairs to any lower floors gives me the impression that the principal architect of this area of Georgia was either Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles. My friend Joel and I decide that trying to hitch a ride back was a good idea, as we walked out the wrong exit, inadvertantly adding 1/2 mile of walking back to our hotel. A truck pulled over and gave us a ride. I would not say they were driving as much as piloting us back, considering that the moves they tried doing with a truck (bearing 6 lazy individuals) would only be attempted by seasoned veteran pilots. We almost thought they were going to take us on the interstate, which was a small miracle they did not. The price of the ride was my last cigarette, or so I told them, as my last real cigarette was smoked in celebration of survival/not being used as a truck-sling-shot-projectile.

After the misadventure there, it was decided by the alcoholics (everyone but Justin, older brother of Joel) that we needed beer, which we then acquired and drank briskly. The first night of A.W.A. does not provide much, unless you enjoy a good round of Yaoi. I ran into someone I tricked into going into the Yaoi room last year who kept trying to heavily suggest I catch Gravitation, which I declined. Tricked a few other people (only Sailor Bubbas, which are men who cosplay as females, generally Sailor Moon characters hence the name) into going into the Yaoi room, which oddly enough only has one door and is usually very crowded, making escape difficult. I sometimes wonder how many people are in those rooms of their own free will, heh.

I ventured on into Anime Hell, which is where the fandub/parodies are running. Saw a nice one that used Inu Yasha in telling the story of Lord of the Shards (LOTR), was pretty fun. They also ran Redeath, which is a fandub of Evangelion I care to never see again. Did some more wandering and drinking, caught up with a few friends, then I proceeded to play some GCN Naruto 2. Didn't do too bad, there were definitely some kids of challege there. Joel ended up stomping most people after a couple rounds.

By this time, my friends Keith and Lucas had arrived. Keith was the only one who managed to cosplay this year. He went as Van from Escaflowne. All he really did was steal his girlfriends cat-rug, tie it around his waist, and fashioned an aluminum arm with straps. Didn't look half bad. We sat in the room for a little bit playing Def Jam and Burnout, then wandered back across the street. For some odd reason, I sat down and watched a good chunk of Naruto, as they ran a marathon from 11pm to 10am. That was pretty rad for the kids who had never seen it, apparently there were many who went the whole time and sat in there. I wonder if they'll do the whole series for it next year.

By this time, the liquor I had drank earlier kicked in, and I proceeded to mess with people who were too poor/lazy to get their own hotel room and chose to instead sleep in the floors of the con. I can't say I pity these people, there are hotels 10 minutes away that are $30 a night. That's $10 per person if you have 6 people go, or $60 if you don't. If you can't afford that, then just don't go. Not too much of creativeness for screwing with people, mostly cut wicked farts from overpriced room service on the unsuspecting. I was, however, considerate of the other people enjoying whatever was going on in the room and only hit people sleeping by themselves.

Woke up Saturday, having slept maybe 5 hours. Had a bloody nose, as apparently I snore in my sleep and was repeatedly hit. This is the only thing I hate about cons, along with the hangover I had immediately realized I had. Woke up to check the vendor rooms again, found a few more little things I wanted. Managed to sit down and talk to the companies responsible for licensed anime, some of those guys are pretty cool. The ADV people are somewhat knowledgable about their stuff, even if they are complete and utter assholes when you mention that you've already seen all of Madlax. I am going to download episode 26 to spite them, as they got fairly pissy that I had not realized they announced they licensed it. Figures, as they also own Noir and the two have an odd parallel. Sat down for a good 20 minutes talking with Funimation, they have to be the best as far as just general good guys. They're also pretty knowledgable, the person I had talked to mentioned the sites I use for downloads, so it's not like they are unaware of scarywater.net or mirkx.com. He also let me know that they had licensed Samurai 7, which I feel is a pretty cool deal. I also managed to win a free DVD of Detective Conan from them, so I guess that was fairly cool. Bandai gets the lowest marks, mainly because they were selling the GITS:SAC volume 2 knowing that the basic edition had defects (DTS instead of DD) and would not admit to it. Several online sites had pulled the product the second it was mentioned that the DTS had issues and that the single disc had the wrong audio properties, and they remained moot. They tend to license my favorite shows, and they don't do too horrible with their generic releases, but I refuse to buy Special Editions from them.

Afterwards, I immediately ran down to the bar and did several Jager shots and couple pints of Newcastle, then headed up for the AMV awards. Not some bad stuff, saw a parody of Mentos done to Naruto. They also used some good movie parodies with Tomb Raider and Madlax, along with Kill Bill music to I forget what. The video had everyone whistling all day, that got old quick. The nicest one I saw was the parody of Desperado, when Buschemi walks into the bar talking about El Mariachi to Cheech Marin, but the video was all Wolfwood talking about Vash. The Amateur videos ended up being somewhat better than the pros, I felt. Some of the pros are just a little too pretencious over some of the smaller things.

I staggered about for a little while, caught some of the third Inu Yasha movie. Already saw it, but that was probably the most crowded event. Dragged several random people around to Bakuretsu Tenshi, Champloo, and Super Milk Chan. I enjoy the dub of Milk Chan a good bit more than the sub, it's that the dub is more geared towards Americans as the sub is heavily geared towards Japanese. The cultural differences really make the difference there, and the voice actor for Milk Chan was pretty good on the dub. Managed to catch some Read or Die, which I bought both volumes for. I somehow managed to miss that show on Torrents, don't know why. Also caught some of Ikkitousen, which I don't know if I like. Not a fan of panty shots in my anime, so I donno. Managed to see some pretty impressive cosplayers, although a lot of people went as characters from Naruto. The winner (at least, I hope he won) came as a Gundam, the detail to his costume was pretty nice. He had a gun as big as I stand tall, and his costume broke down into about 7 pieces, as carried by his entourage. Other neat ones included a pretty sharp Sesshoumaru, some good Naruto people, Megatron and Optimus, a couple of bad ass Alucards, and some Final Fantasy people. Most Inappropriate Award goes to the three people that came as Tetris blocks. Sure, it's a video game, but it's Russian. Honorable mentions go to the guy who came as Master Chief, people in Goth, and the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which has a little bit to do with what happened on later in the evening. We got a good camera's worth of pictures, I'll try to post them later. I don't know about whether or not I can post the pictures I acquired from the story in the next paragraph, however.

By 11pm, I was pretty wasted. Got tired of the Arcade room, which I had spent a dollar and managed to decimate many, many people at Initial D. If ever a place in the world smelled like a living trash can, it would be the room that has more than 3 DDR machines. At a conferrence like this, soap should mandatorily be next to the water. A can of air freshener is also not a bad idea, since the smell kinda migrates to the adjacent rooms. At this point, the night took a turn for the somewhat odd. My friend Joel, who was also drunk, and I decide that we had a quest in messing with random people, whether they were asleep or not. We stuck things in three sleeping peoples' noses, which wasn't much of a challenge. We then took some pictures of people in cosplay, while slighting the picture by putting fingermade Bunny Ears on people's heads. The entertainment did not last long. We then stumbed upon an abandoned set of costumes from the group of people had gone as Aqua Teen Hunger Force. They apparently decided to throw them in the trash, or in con speak "the floor". The equation works something like this:
8 beers + 3 shots of Jager + abandoned Frylock costume - all the costume but one fry + someone in a Gaara costume - take his gourd from him = humongous penis that can be easily disassembled in a second's notice. We proceeded to find people all over and give it to them, so to speak. The DDR nerds were pretty easy, as they tend to bend over at the back while in line to play. This seriously disrupts the other people's ability to play, but as it isn't them they tend not to care. We also got this real skinny guy hanging over a rail while his girlfriend pointed and laughed, she was in a picture taken on a digital camera. Best one was of a guy in the Rave room passed out with his mouth wide open. I cried from laughing. There wasn't any real fear of retaliation, as along with myself (my physical inability to be hurt generally preceeds me), I also had a guy who looks like a box and tough as nails (Lucas) and Joel (who has a mohawk). If there are three people that a large group of people wouldn't mess with, it would be us. That's not to say all people at a con are complete nerds, but let's face it: we paid no less than $50 per person there to sit in a hotel and watch cartoons. Pretty nerdy.

Drank a good bit more and then passed out. Nothing too much eventful happens at a con on Sunday. We actually left about 1pm, waking up at 11am. My friends bought some Shinais (sp), which we whacked the crap out of each other with. Caught the Ghost In The Shell: Innocence movie. It ran in an arthouse, and it belongs there. I have no problem with arthouse style movies, I just didn't expect one from GITS. Also, theaters that don't run weekend matinees except for first show can blow me, art houses suck about that. I ended up passing out until we got home and put together a Lego Star Wars Millenium Falcon that I had acquired on a beer run once I made it home.

~FIN~


p.s. I also managed to watch the new FMA, which I need to go post on now.... WTF@!$#!