39 Days: The Down-Low on the Convention

Okay, I've decided to split the Banzai Anime Convention story into three parts. Being an English major, I am using the Noun song to name the parts. Day One (today) is "Persons," Day Two is "Places," and Day Three is "Things." So for a start, how's about I introduce you to our main characters?


From the left corner and moving clockwise around the table, we have:

Erin the "Temptating"
Aubrey the Gorgeous
Beth the Smarmy
Jessica the Verbose
Justin the Odd
and
Clearing the Aliased

So that's us. I could talk about us all day long, but that would be lame and there are other people we need to get to, so here's a short highlight on each:

Erin had to stuff socks in her hair for the convention to make it fluffy enough for her costume;

Aubrey was the most popular at the convention and couldn't make it down a hallway without being hugged 7 or 8 times;

Beth took an interest in the window ledge in our hotel room and actually jumped out of it at one point;

I spent hours and hours trying to convince people that since my uniform was from Star Trek: TNG, I was not in eminent danger of death by being a "redshirt;"

Justin is Beth's cousin and knows all the words to the Dr. Horrible songs, which made for a lovely car ride;

Clearing is Erin's cousin (I've never found out what her real name is) and outshone all of us by participating in the Battle Brawl with a team of fellow geeks.

Alright, then. Now we get into the people we MET. There were hundreds of people at this convention, mind you, and one in three of them were legitimately insane, so you can understand how it might be hard to pick just a few to talk about. However, there were a few who really stood out; there were a few I will never (unfortunately) be able to forget. For instance, when we left for lunch on the first day we were accosted by the Devil.

No, really. I have a picture of him, standing behind us and making the peace sign, but it's hard to see and you'll be very sick of pictures by the end of the week anyway. True to his name, he was both crude and offensive; I didn't even understand most of the jokes he was making, although the gestures that went along with them gave me a pretty good idea. So we spent fifteen or twenty minutes hanging out with the devil before we finally managed to escape Satan's grasp and get back on the road to the "bread" of life.

But it was not to be. We were only halfway down the block when we passed a bar and a couple of men who were sitting on the patio jumped the fence to come talk to us. Well, the leader really mostly wanted to talk to me.


...and get a couple pictures with me and the rest of the gang. They were "from out of town," here on a business conference or something and had nothing to do with the convention. It was actually fun to talk to him at first (if only because he recognized my uniform as being from TNG) and his friends were nice. But halfway through the conversation we realized his interest in us was limited to everything below the neck, and it took us a good forty minutes to get away from him and his fellow businessmen.

Next up is the king himself. Yes, the King of Con (*trumpet fanfare*). Below is a picture we snagged of His Majesty from behind - peasants like yourselves can't look directly at the King, of course.


See the scepter in his right hand? Funny story about that: You see, what the King of Con does is wander around the convention interviewing people with his camera-laden lackeys, who take all the footage and put it on the internet so that people can relive the experience again and again and again. So the King of Con approached our group and started interviewing us, sticking the scepter into our faces like a microphone. After a minute or two, it got really annoying because none of us had anything interesting to say and the King wouldn't leave us alone. So after about the sixth question, when he was holding the scepter an inch away from my nose, my brain just snapped. I grabbed the scepter, yanked it from his hands and made a run for it. (Stealing things and making a run for it is a habit I picked up in Jr. High; long story.)

Cool, right? Well, it would have been except the scepter actually WAS a microphone of sorts, and had a cord sticking out the back of it that was attached to the King's pants. Which means that when I ran off with the scepter, there were some unforeseen consequences: I was jerked backward by the cord, but not before quite efficiently breaking the microphone.

Oops.

It was a big deal. The King was dumbfounded. The lackeys were shocked or laughing their heads off. They live surrounded by Con nerds, and yet I managed to surprise them with my spontaneously violent behavior. They couldn't get over it. When I abashedly brought the scepter back, they interviewed me about what it was like to be a thief. Think there's any chance that part won't be on the online vid?

And last, but certainly not least, Guy Fawkes.



At the masquerade ball on Friday night, Erin was approached by this man and asked to dance. He had been watching her all night and wanted a chance to dance with her himself. Erin was a little creeped out - men whose faces are made of plastic can have that effect on women - but let him have his dance. That was not to be the end of it, however. The next day, we kept turning around and noticing Guy Fawkes standing only a few yards away from us. Sometimes we'd see him change course in order to keep following us. Erin was freaked. So were the rest of us. The situation was made all the more unnerving by the fact that we weren't sure if there was more than one Guy Fawkes, so we didn't know if we were really being stalked or if we just kept seeing different people wearing the same costume. Who was that mysterious man? It's a mystery to this day.

This concludes the "Persons" segment of our convention trilogy. Tune in tomorrow for "Places" and hear more about the masquerade ball, eating in restaurants, Battle Brawl, and our night in the hotel.

Today's Movie: "Genesis"- Star Trek TNG Episode