| Saturday | |||
So we got down to the hotel about 7:30pm, parked and paid at one of those kiosks where you push the money into the slot with a metal 'key', then walked to the convention center for preregistration pickup. This year, a BIG LONG snaky line was in place. Last year I just walked up and picked up my packet.
I decided to try and figure which part of the line had my last name letter. I walked all the way around to the other side, waved at and talked to one of the anime club folks working at packing goodie bags and scoped out the situation. Then I saw my letter on the balloon suspended low on the table. The girls behind the table kept calling out the letters and no one came up to the table. So I just walked up, got my badge and packet and went on my merry way. rat decided to not pick up his Sunday only badge that night because of the other long line. We cruised the three floors to see where the different places would be for the panels, etc. Then we stopped for French Toast at Dennys and got home so I could begin my semi-final packing.
I think next year I will check in on Thursday - that way I can already be there and have a parking spot at the hotel.
Friday
After hauling a very heavy and very large suitcase
down the stairs (and making enough racket to get the neighbor to come
out and look) I drove into Dallas. Silly me, thinking that getting to
the hotel around 9:15am would get me a parking spot at the hotel. No
such luck. The garage AND valet parking was full, just like last year.
So, just like last year, I drove to the next garage down the street
and parked. This time I was familiar enough with the building so I parked
near the elevator closest to the exit facing the hotel. I lugged my
suitcase into the elevator and the folks asked me about the 'strangely
dressed' people going toward the hotel. I told them it was an anime
convention, to which they replied, "Huh?" I quickly explained
it was a convention about Japanese animation, which made them glaze
over immediately.
Anyway, I got to the hotel and decided to check and see if my room was available. Luckily, it was, at 9:30am. This meant I did not have to lock up my luggage in their safe room until 3pm, the usual check-in time.
So, I found the elevator to the floor of the specific tower where I would be staying, got onboard, found the room and began dumping things out. I was able to take some of the things out of the bag I initially thought I would have to carry around with me until check-in time, which was nice. It was going to save my shoulder, that's for sure! I got the craptop and digital camera stuff set up for uploading later, then went searching for the ice machine, which was just down the hall. Sadly, a large mass of ice was hanging from the opening so I could get any to ice the drinks I had packed. I went back to my room and called the front desk to report the problem. Then I left the room for the con proper.
One of the things you learn quickly when attending a con is to allow at least 15 minutes travel time just for waiting for the elevator. It's a great place to visit with total strangers and take pics of cosplay.
I wandered around the main floor of the con, shooting the newly arriving cosplay, looking at the artists setting up and talking to a few people I knew from prior cons. As I was talking to "Shuichi", a girl I met at Animefest last year and have kept in contact with via email and her Ryuichi friend (in full bunny suit), bluepita, a friend from the World Lit/Anime class, came walking up. And here we thought we would not find each other! So I introduce bluepita to "Shuichi" and we all chatted a bit before bluepita and I decided to walk around a bit.
We wandered around the first floor, taking pics and looking at the little bit of artwork in Artist's Alley. Some artists were still setting up their tables. At about 11:20am, we decided to go upstairs to try the dealer's room, which was supposed to have opened at 11am.
When we got upstairs, we ran into Kuruma, my friend from my Japanese language classes who had moved to Houston for a job opportunity last year. Kuruma was in full cosplay as a Shinsengumi warrior.
A mass of people were standing around the closed doors of the Dealer's Room. It was not even a typical line up - it was a glob of humans hovering. A blockade was in front of the closed doors along with people making sure no one got too close. I walked up and asked one of the people in charge about the situation. Seems it was not ready to open yet. We back-pedaled to the far wall to get away from the milling masses wishing to throw money at vendors and chatted a bit.
I invited bluepita and Kuruma to join me for the cel painting class with Steve Bennett. This year I had brought my own paints and brushes so I would not have to depend on whatever supplies were provided. This really helped, because we got all set up and were ready to go prior to Steve's talk. He had us gather around him and he talked for about an hour and a half while we stood. My poor feet and back! Steve recognized me and gave me a hand shake and hand kiss. I have been attending his workshops for years and we have chit-chatted a bit throughout those years. He knows I am a yaoi fan woman. Anyway, after the initial talk, I helped put out the cels and paints for the class. We got our cels and immediately began painting with my paints. It was good I DID bring paints, because the paint supplies were getting sparce.
We had to leave an hour before the class ended because we had another panel to attend. This one was an academic panel about writing papers for anime. Our World Lit teacher and others we knew through her association were the other panel members. It was only an hour, which was too short. It was also their only panel, which was disappointing. Last year, they had at least three panels.
Then bluepita decided to go to a different panel while Kuruma and I went to a drawing panel. The speaker did know some things and gave some good suggestions for books to better a person's drawing and inner health. I started sketching with the pen and paper provided by the hotel. Kuruma saw me and decided to draw, too. We ended up having our own little drawing session in the back of the room. bluepita showed up and we decided to finally hit the dealer's room. I got a Kakashi plushie, a Kyo in cat form plushie and finally broke down and got a Yaoi paddle. Kuruma picked up a nice set of Kenshin figures and some Hello Kitty stuff for his wife. bluepita was still shopping around for the best deals.
After the first frenzy of shopping, we discussed getting something to eat, since we hadn't gotten anything to eat all day, not even snacks. I suggested the sushi place on the first floor of the parking garage where I was parked.
After walking all the way there, we were disappointed to find EVERYTHING closed for the day. It was frustrating, because rat and I had specifically driven by these places and had seen them open the evening before and even at a later time. Anyway, we all decided to call it a day and made plans to rendezvous on Saturday.
I retrieved my car, paid the fare, drove to the hotel garage and found it open, finally! I had to park beyond the covered parking, though. That was okay. As long as I was closer than down the street and actually IN the hotel parking lot, I was happy. I just put up the sun shield, locked up and left the car. I took the elevator to the main floor and walked across the breezeway to the hotel's main lobby area. The hotel's restaurant entrance was almost directly opposite the front door so I decided to check it out, knowing all I had up in the bedroom was Japanese candy I had brought with me, a bag of Cheetos and canned ginger ale. I noticed the prices on the menu were not too bad so I decided to get a nice salad for dinner before going to my room.
During dinner I finally saw togabitoion, one of the ex-officers of the anime club and an avid cosplayer. She popped by my table to talk. She was wearing street clothes and I ribbed her about it. She told me the buffet was only $10. For an expensive hotel, this was cheap! I paid more for my salad! We chatted a bit. She told me about an internal TV channel provided by the hotel where they would be showing current and past events. Then she had to get back to her friends at her table because they were all leaving.
I got back to the room and turned on the TV. I found the channel showing the A-Kon stuff and tuned into some past panels. Also, an A-Kon dos and don'ts video done by the Red versus Blue folks aired occasionally. It was a riot. It gave the rules of the con, and of course, one of the prime ones was "BATHE!"
I could not get the craptop to connect to the hotel phone line for some reason. So I used the hotel phone to call rat and let him know I was settled in and to ask him what did he think was going on with the connection. After a nice chat, I tried to connect the craptop again, using his suggestion, and it worked. I checked in with some online friends and was in the process of writing up some stuff when I noticed the sheet about phone calls on the desk. Seems the calls with the hotel phone were costing me 54 cents a call! WTF? So I finished off my stuff and decided to keep off-line the rest of the weekend. I loaded the con images from the camera into the craptop, did some other things, then went to bed for a few hours prior to the Yaoifest at midnight. It was difficult to sleep, especially with the idiots on both sides of me making noise.
I got up about 11-ish, redressed and was back at the con quickly. The line for Yaoifest circled around and around along the walls of the third story of the convention center. I must admit I was surprised. I went to the end of the line and started chatting with the mother and daughter standing there. Almost immediately, one of my male anime club students walked up and told me to follow him. As we walked, he told me he was told to fetch me. I ended up standing with another anime club student, mel_mel_chan, her boyfriend and the other club member in a better place in line. We chatted a bit, then the floorshow began. In the middle of the floor, two guys decide to kiss. The cameras were pulled out and flashes went off all over the place. Girls squeeled and cheered. Two more guys went to the middle of the floor and kiss. Then the first two guys pulled out a Pocky stick, put an end in each of their mouths and slowly began eating it, finally meeting in the middle for a kiss. The four guys did a double Pocky kiss and the cameras kept flashing and the girls kept hooting. Various boy combinations continued. I quietly said, "If you want to see the real thing, go to Cedar Springs..." I was slightly amused but it still was pretty silly.
Finally, the doors were opened. They allowed us to file in, with the idea we were to go to the front of the room and take the first seats available on the side they designated. We sat down and found we could not see the screen. The Ryuichi girl (without costume) reasonably 'complained' enough times about not being able to see the screen so the mods picked up the screen, stuck a bunch of stacked chairs under the screen and raised it enough so everyone could see, even the folks in the back. We cheered.
The kissy boys from earlier were sitting right behind me and I was amused by their pre-show comments. One guy said, "They better not show anything too hardcore!" The guy next to him said, "Dude, you were the one kissing on another guy in the hall earlier!" I smiled to myself. A guy in front of me decided to turn around and tell me his life story about how he graduated from highschool at a young age and was well on his way to get his umpteenth masters degree from Harvard or some place like that at the tender young age of 18 or something. I know I am old, but I am not stupid or gullible. Why do you want to tell this bs to me? Do you think I am just here with my children and I am out of my element? I am wearing a Gravitation teeshirt, you know...
Anyway, the MC got up and got everyone cheering. He asked if the group wanted to start tame and get progressively or explicit or did everyone want explicit at the beginning. Explicit won, of course.
The first one they showed was Level C. Yeah, it has fluids, 'invisible' penises with white outlines, and some graphic sex scenes. It also has a uke you want beat repeatedly for being a whiny idiot. He is more annoying than Shindô Shuichi from Gravitation, who is VERY annoying in the anime the first time you watch it, especially if you do not have any manga under your belt to understand the whole character. And, I had a raw Japanese version and fan-subbed version of this one and watched it three years ago. So, I was relatively bored, except for the amusing comments coming from the crowd. My male student to the left of me squirmed and my female student to the right of me commented on how she thought she had downloaded this at one point but had never watched it.
Next was Kizuna part one. Own it and watched it a long time ago. Next was Kizuna part two, Own it and had seen it a long time ago. I forget what the next one was, but I owned it and had seen it a long time ago.
I finally left about 2:30-3am because I was sleepy and nothing was being shown I hadn't seen before, at least in the lineup that I had already seen that night. I really wanted to see some new stuff. Yaoifest was one of the reasons why I had decided to stay at the hotel this year and I was disappointed. I guess the licensing of these old pieces finally made these available to the masses so that was what was shown. I had hoped to see if they would show Ai no Kusabi or The Legend of the White Wolves. I don't think either have been officially licensed for US dubs/distribution yet.
I got back to the room and settled in for a few hours on semi-sleep. I never sleep in a hotel room the first night so I knew I would not be getting any quality rest that night. The people on both sides of my room were still at it. The people on the far side finally settled down, but then the folks closest to the bed got louder. Finally, at 4am, I took my Yaoi paddle and banged on the wall. They banged back, but shut up.
I did not get much sleep, of course, but I was still up early so I could get ready, have a leisurely breakfast and start the day. The breakfast buffet was $10 and worth it - good basic food without any frills. I had scrambled eggs, some different and delicious link sausage (more like small and well-seasoned hot dogs than the usual link sausage), a bowl of cereal, part of a small danish and a lot of fresh pineapple chunks.
I went back upstairs to brush my teeth and gather up my stuff for day, then did the usual elevator wait to get to the con.
I wandered around the first floor of the con, taking pictures, then went upstairs to the third floor for the next day of cel painting. I was early so I checked out the art show, finally. Saw a few pieces I wish I had put bids on, or purchased outright. I did not have time to look at everything right then and there because it was time to go to cel painting, two doors down.
I started setting up my stuff at one of the stations at the back of the room, then bluepita showed up and helped. We were ready to go when Steve showed up with the rest of the supplies and we started painting as soon as the cels were provided. We kept expecting Kuruma to show up but he never made it. We ended up chatting quietly while Steve had the rest of the class at the front of the room and had a great time talking about family, anime/manga and writing. We both find the literary aspects of anime interesting. I ended up giving my paints to bluepita so her daughter could try cel painting too. These tubes would probably dry up before next year and would be useless so bluepita and her daughter might as well use them now and have fun painting together. I can buy fresh tubes for next year.
I suggested visiting the artshow to bluepita and we walked around for a while, looking at artwork. I caught some pieces I had missed before and liked what I saw. I wrote down the names of the artists for future reference. I decided to find out more about the artists and if they had websites so I could contact them later if I needed to. I asked the room monitors and found out that some of the artists were in the Dealer's Room while others were in Artist's Alley.
We finally found one artist in Artist's Alley by just asking, "Are YOU Amelie?" We got directed to the right person and we talked with the artist a while about her work. I really liked her sketchbook. A lot of her work is in a traditional and realistic style with anime/manga elements, just like mine. She did not have any small copies of the Gravitation work but she did have buttons, and we both purchased them. Amelie told me to email her about ordering prints, which I did the following week. Yes, I now have three Gravi prints by this artist - one of Shuichi with a large stick of strawberry Pocky in his mouth, one of Eiri with an earpiece of his glasses in his mouth and one of the two of them getting ready to kiss. The boys look like guys, with muscles, which is nice.
We wandered around and did some more shopping in the Dealer's Room. bluepita found a vendor that had HunterXHunter stuff and she finally went wild with spending, which was fun to watch. We were both grinning like idiots as we left the Dealer's Room. I like seeing people find stuff they have been looking for and be able to purchase it. This stuff makes us happy. I scoped out a Sesshoumaru figure I wanted to pick up the next day.
By the end of the afternoon, bluepita decided it was time to call it a day and we planned on the panel to meet at on Sunday. It was also time for me to get back to the room to connect with rat. I noticed the line of people waiting to get into the cosplay event THREE HOURS prior to the event. It was even outside and snaking along the building wall. I considered going to the event that night - it WAS one of the reasons I had planned on staying in a room - but decided to see what rat had to say.
I got back to the hotel room and called rat from the cel. He answered - he had just gotten out of the shower and was in the process of dressing and packing. I gave him the hotel room number, floor and other directions to get him to the room.
I got comfortable, pulled out a sketchbook and pencils and worked on a drawing. I kept the cel phone near me but it did not ring. Finally, it rang and rat told me he had been calling for a while. He was close to the outside of the door of the hotel room. We never figured out why the calls never got through, not even the phone messages.
After rat got unpacked, we decided to hit the buffet. That night was fried chicken - yuck! - but I stuck it out. We got back to the room and I turned on the rest of the cosplay. It was really nice to watch it in the air-conditioned comfort of a hotel room, without all the bodies and the yelling in one's ears.
We planned the next day's panel visits with our schedules. Then rat crashed quickly after that - he works 12 hour shifts three days in a row for his job - and I stayed up for a while and worked on a drawing. He was entertaining as he slept. Here we were in a king-sized bed and he was sleeping on the very edge of one side, almost falling off. I finally woke him up and told him to move closer in, or he was going to knock himself out when he fell off the bed and hit his head on the nightstand.
I took some pics outside the window of the hotel room as the sun glinted off the shiny buildings then took some shots of the stuff I had purchased so far. The hotel had shoved the bill under the door with a note saying I could leave it there for an express check out. We decided to actually check out, since we were wanting to lock up our stuff in their air conditioned security closet while at the con.
We got packed up for the most part, then went to the breakfast buffet. Can't beat all-you-can-eat breakfast basics. We went back to the room for final teeth-brushing, etc., packed the final bits and pieces then did the final lock up. I checked out while rat had the luggage put in the security room and off we went to the con. By now I was limping - even the tops of my feet were hurting on the third day! My hips were also killing me, so I used my yaoi paddle for a cane.
We met up with bluepita at a lecture about parenting and anime. Of course, it got into issues about hentai, yaoi and other things. The presenter was knowledgeable and basically told the parents they needed to get involved with their kid's viewing habits and learn about anime because they will find it interesting, too.
The three of us would meet for a while for a panel then separate then meet again throughout the day. We all had our own shopping and panels to attend, then we would rendezvous again for something. The various panels were interesting. Panels are one of the main reasons why I go to anime cons.
Ran into my anime club students coming out of another panel I had wanted to attend - one about how to run an anime club. They looked shell-shocked. Seems the club has been doing 'everything wrong', at least according to the panel members. I kept asking for more info about the panel and they looked at me glassy-eyed.
I want to know why the cosplayers are lazy on Sunday. Hardly anyone dresses up, and the few who do are swamped with people shooting their cameras.
I did a lot more shopping the third day. I actually stopped at a few booths and looked at stuff more closely. Picked up a Sesshoumaru figure I had been coveting after seeing the photo of J's one. I got a couple doujinshi labeled as Gravi. One I knew was Gravi because I knew the artist's name. The other was unfamiliar. When I opened the baggy I discovered it was not Gravitation, nor was it yaoi. It probably has some BL undertones to it, if I took the time to try and translate the thing. It's not worth the effort. The art is okay, so I will live with it for now. Found some nice trading cards and got a few just because I liked the costumes. I have no clue about the anime series. Also got a few of Shigure from Fruits Basket because he is such a devious dog and I like the character. I wish I could have found some Hatori cards, too.
Made a few more art connections in the Artist's Alley. rat bought an adorable print explaining about certain truths about Sesshoumaru. Just a couple - he hates his brother because when Inuyasha was a kid he got Sesshoumaru's 'fluffy' all muddy. Sesshoumaru loves Rin because Rin will jump rope with him, using his 'fluffy'. The 'fluffy' in question is that long furry stole-like piece Sesshoumaru wears over his shoulder. It's a really sweet coloured piece of fanart.
bluepita and I were limping pretty badly by the end of the afternoon so we decided to end our A-Kon adventure, go home and pass out. rat and I went to my car, I drove him to his car, and we headed home. We decided to stop for dinner so we called my folks, who met us at a local Black-eyed Pea. We told them about some of the things we saw and did at the con. After dinner, we got into our cars and went home.
It was a good con overall. I met some artists, saw people I recognized from other cons whose names I do not know but we are still friendly because of our love for Gravitation. Staying at the hotel worked well because we could stay in bed longer if we wished, go upstairs, take a nap, dump stuff and/or relax for a while.
Will we rent a room next year? Maybe. It all depends on whether or not we decide to attend Yaoicon in San Francisco. If we go there, we will need to save our pennies and not attend either con in Dallas. Perhaps we might do one day at each con, just to keep our feet wet. Finances are the key to all our future con plans.
It WAS disappointing going to the Yaoifest on Friday night but that's okay. I would have liked to have seen the cosplay live but I was not about to stand in line for hours waiting to just get in. Having it televised into the hotel room was great.
Anyway, it was a good time and I recommend attending a-Kon in Dallas, TX to anyone wishing to experience a larger con that's not too large and filled with lots of friendly otaku.
Page created July 10, 2005
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