Each year I realize that these two thoughts repeat themselves more and more in my head:
"This time is the last time."
and
"I wish I was dead." (lol angst)
First official day of the convention. Goodtimes. Okay, not really. Actually, you're lucky, kids. I was pretty worn out, tired, and generally unwell. Luckily I skipped the AMV contest (which I heard was good) and caught some Zzz's, so I'm feeling much better now. Although I hear my writing is better when I'm being negative and pessimistic, so perhaps you're not lucky. Well, I'll try to be as negative as possible.
Alright, so after my last post, we sorta headed out. The keys all magially demagnetized themselves. That was fun and delayed everything for a while since we couldn't all leave the room unsure if we'd ever get back in. Eventually Jesse and I got new keys along with the vouchers which will lead into more drama later.
Bob and Paul had to get their badges, which apparently was still a very packed line. By the time we got out of the room, they were pretty much done I believe. Somehow the group got further fragmented, Bob and Paul went to the Exhibit hall after getting their badges I believe, arty and jason had gotten tired of waiting to go to the hall, and Jesse and I were trying to get everyone together so that we could exchange the vouchers for tickets. Leland's busy with Karaoke and AX Idol auditions all day, but we'll get back to that later on.
Jesse and I made it into the exhibit hall. It was pretty fucking packed, but not that bad. I guess this would now be my time to bitch about cosplayers. Whatever, I don't get the fucking appeal, but apparently people have a hardon for dressing up as anime characters and that's just fine. My major fucking problem is with the guys asking for pictures in the exhibit hall. "Oh hey, a four way intersection in a very crowded hall! Do you think we can all stop here and stand around and take pictures?" Eat shit and die fuckers.
But yeah, the hall was crowded. I saw everyone. Even the asian girl from the line yesterday. Yeah. Goodtimes. It was so crowded it was difficult to even get in a position to browse what stores were selling. As I was walking around, I started feeling a bit dizzy, I wasn't really paying attention, just walking around. It was goodtimes in a badtimes sort of way. I had to get the fuck out of that place. I really hadn't gotten enough sleep at all the previous night and I hadn't eaten anything all day. I was getting bummed out real fast, you see.
So I exit the exhibit hall, which leads to an entire fucking huge unused hall that the shitty ass cosplayer picture takers could have used instead of standing in the middle of a very busy aisle, but hey, what the fuck do I know, right? I guess I've never just felt the pure rush that some of these guys feel when it's like "omigodamoderatelyattractivegirldressedasaredmage! caniliketakeurpiturekplzthxbai!" I really don't have anything against those taking pictures of cosplayers, just those who do it in utterly retarded places.
So anyways, I'm getting the fuck out of there and getting out fast. You know, I gotta make it back to the room, sleep, write some emo songs about asian girls, busy. You know. But as I'm getting out, Jesse calls. He's gotten ahold of Heather. We've been trying to do a group FFMLAX lunch/dinner/meal shit, but never have been able to. Well now here's the chance maybe I suppose. So I'm not getting back to the room. Fine, I'll go eat. We (Jesse, Jason, I...the others are MIA currently) go meet Heather and part of her cosplay crew. That was cool, but we're trying to get together and stuff's not working out for some reason. We decide to try to exchange the vouchers for AMV tickets. It's about 2:30 pm by now.
Walk past the front entrance of the Convention Center, and guess who was there attentionwhoring it up? That's right kids, Man-Faye. He's back, lost a lot of weight, and apparently is being refused entry or even a badge for Anime Expo. I won't get into it too much, I'm a big man-faye fan but that's for another time and place. Besides, at the time I was still feeling really shitty and I just wanted to move on.
I look around, and wow, Jesse is gone. Shit. I walk to the box office, he's gone. Everyone's gone. Heather is nowhere to be seen. Jesse, the tall man who is impossible to spot in a crowd is unspottable. Shit, again. I really couldn't stand it at this point, so I try to call everyone's phone, no reply, and head back towards the hotel. I don't even care if I eat at this point.
I finally get ahold of Bob while en route to the hotel. We're going to meet and go to Denny's, where the rest of the group was supposed to go to lunch. Basically, we run into Paul and a lot of waiting occurs. Jesse tells us there are some problems with the vouchers but he's trying to get it fixed and he'll call us back.
Basically what happened was this: Anime-Expo is a lot of lines and a lot of untrue rumors. The problems fell into the latter category. Somehow we had heard that: A) Each voucher yielded two tickets to main events of your choosing and B) Ticket pickup started at 2 pm at the box office. Both were obviously false. Indeed the problem was that ticket pickup actually stopped at noon, but uhh...whatever. Long story short, Jesse is the man and was able to talk to some AX Staff and got four AMV tickets. Good deal, except we expected 8. Oh well.
At this point, it's getting pretty late, and Heather had to be somewhere at 4:30, making lunch a bit of an impossibility. We decide on early dinner or something. So now everyone ends up in the hotel room, and we just cruise for, well, a few hours. Gaming occurs, of course, blah blah, people crash, okay. I play a lot of fucking meteos because, you know, that's what I do. 99 stock game vs. 3 cpus crew represent.
So anyways, this goes till 6, when we plan the Denny's thing. Everyone from ffml-ax is going except for arty, and eh, who needs arty anyways. Nah, I kid. I was feeling still pretty terrible still, but whatever, so I apologize to everyone at Denny's since I said absolutely nothing the whole time besides ordering and I think I just sat there looking ill the entire time.
After Denny's, we walked back. We only had 4 AMV tickets, but that was fine, since Leland was still karaokeing, Arty was indifferent towards the whole thing, and I needed to sleep fast. So Paul, Bob, Jesse and Jason went, and really you'll have to ask them what they thought of it, but I heard it was pretty good. Myself, I went back to the room and enjoyed a few hours of sleep. Arty went out and cruised around downstairs at the marriott, and he eventually woke me up about two hours later when he came back.
I woke up feeling a lot lot better. I wasn't all "omg I hate anime expo I think I'm gonna go home tomorrow angst angst" anymore. I decided to go downstairs to get some cash and buy some water. I ended up buying some cold/flu drugs since my throat was a bit scratchy, and hey, drugs!
So I'm wandering around downstairs, actually probably enjoying myself for the first time since AX officially started. I walk towards the karaoke room, planning to check it out, and fortunately I run into Leland who is just coming out of the room. I'm informed that he's made it to the semifinals, and I'm glad because hey now I've got a good excuse to hang out and watch some karaoke.
Karaoke was pretty tight this year (all one day), and Leland was doing really good. The first few I watched were okay but not really powerful at all, but when Leland took the stage I actually think I completely woke up. He made it to the finals, which was cool because now I get to stick around for those, too. And hey, he let me take his poster prize, so I'm even profiting from the already enjoyable goodtimes.
Serena (last year's Karaoke champ, former ffml-ax room member) did a performance with a dude on keyboard that was actually really good. Following that, was the finals (which Paul, Bob, Jesse, and Jason showed up for after AMVs, and even Arty eventually made it).
Let's see, first of all, group karaoke finals. Now, let me just say that it has been my longest running fantasy to see two cute asian girls in skirts singing "2 b a master" or whatever the name of that pokemon song was, and luckily my wishes were fulfilled. They got massively gyped because the mics weren't working at first, and ended getting 5th (last) in the finals, which is complete utter bullshit because the groups that got 3rd and 4th sucked a lot harder. I am totally not returning to AX next year due to it, and I must say that, for what it's worth, the girls performing the pokemon song win the wcxp.com best group karaoke award (I believe their group name was black and white?) The girls who ended up winning totally just accomplished that by playing up the whole "this is our last performance" angle which is also probably bullshit just used to gain favor with the judges. Okay so even though I was having a good time I guess I'm still pretty cynical. But really those pokemon girls were hot okay? Fuck.
As for the individual, everyone was really good. Leland did a great performance, and ended up with third, which is great considering it was his first time ever making the finals. Sure, first would have been great but everyone who performed was actually good, and since I'm not "in da karaoke biz" (a pretty large biz or so I hear) I really don't know what qualifies for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th.
After Karaoke, pretty much returned to the room and typed this shit up. It's 2:11 am now, and I'm gonna shower and sleep. I probably forgot something significant but really at this point it's a lost cause. Well, I do remember something about how I wanted to mention how I saw quite a few disturbing things like fat women in corsets, but I dunno, I'm sure there will still be plenty of shit to bitch about tomorrow.
Also, totally made it a day without buying a single thing from the exhibit hall. I'll probably change that tomorrow but still.
Finally, one last thing, Bob's ffml livejournal community still sucks shit and this is the #1 source for ffml-ax related news.
Oh yeah, new word for this year. shitrooster. As in "This whole situation is pretty shitrooster right now." Last year (or 2 years ago?) it was muppetfuck.
Shitrooster.
edit: picture of the day:
manfaye doing what he does best.
2 Comments:
Woo!
By Locke, at 7/02/2005 02:01:56 AM
I found this by Googling "AX Idol" and just let me tell you, Mr. Opinionated... I am one of the girls who was in the group that won 1st place at the Karaoke Competition and we did NOT win by playing the "last performance angle." We won because we were the best that year. And it's not "total bullshit" that it was our last performance, as you so eloquently put it. One of our members is in Japan for this year and another member is heading to New York, so we can't perform together anymore. We weren't expecting to win because of that, we just didn't want any questions like "Why aren't you performing anymore?" Get it? It wasn't even the first time we won the competition, so get over yourself. I didn't see YOU in the karaoke competition, OR at AX Idol (which I *did* make finals for), so I really don't think you have any place judging who should have won what award. I don't appreciate you flaming my group of friends/fellow performers. Just wanted to have my say...
By Anonymous, at 10/29/2005 03:21:09 PM
