Thursday, July 14, 2005

Just checking in.

I went to Amobea Records in LA on Monday.. Picked up 50 Foot Wave's Golden Ocean.

Summer School's almost over. Two more days. I'm excited.

And then and only then can I update.
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Monday, July 11, 2005

To end all updates..

Comment Commentary

Ethan- Psh, it's my style.

Mimmi- I wish you had used another word instead of "touch"..

Shin- Man Faye has his pride, though. If you ask, he will stand.

..I sure as hell would never do that, though.

Alex- *gives him a hand*

--

There's not as much to say about Monday. I had been saving most of my cash for the last day in hopes of special discount sales, but they weren't as abundant as I had anticipated. There were a few here and there, but for the most part they were all the same prices.

In the end, I bought Saikano manga volume four for ten bucks (despite the Parental Advisory warning. I'm such a little criminal) and the slim-case Noir box set for $70, both without tax. We didn't stick around for the closing ceremonies or con gripes or anything.. My dad wanted to get home, and we were pretty done by noon anyway. On the way home we ritualistically stopped at that McDonalds, and I read Saikano on the way home. Ethan and my brother watched the Geneon preview DVD, which I must say was a pretty lackluster set. Last year they had some good shows on there, but this year it just plain sucked. Not one show caught my interest. Well.. Spare that one Gonzo show, but even then that trailer was pretty poorly put together.

On to the pictures now; I'm tired.

Nothing beats Anaheim Convention Center early in the morning. Honestly, I could do without a lot of the jackasses though.

A couple of Snakes and those army dudes Shin mentioned. I only saw one Naked Snake in the entire con.. He wasn't very good, either. I was hoping to see a good one.

Ahahaha. I knew this was going to happen sooner or later.. See, this is what I was talking about last year, when they were filming upskirt cosplay porn a little to the right of here.

Woot. I don't recall ever seeing a Dante.

He kind of stayed in that pose for five minutes.. I feel bad for his back.

I didn't know there were this many Asians with maid outfits in all of Southern California.. Well, I was wrong.

The trenchcoat looked nice upclose, but the orange tips on all of the guns kind of killed it for me. Sadness.

The ever-elusive Narutard ritual. For the uninformed, Narutards is when a bunch of Naruto fans make complete jackasses of themselves, and do so on a continuously elevating level until one person is doing something so absolutely retarded that nobody else can top it. I refused to get close to them.

I got one of Waldo as a human shield, but I seem to have lost it.

This guy was awesome. He had a sticky ball, and you could stick whatever kind of trash you wanted onto it. Ethan offered his ferret, but apparently the guy already had one. Now that I look at this picture, he kind of reminds me of the Fear Factor dude, only a little more chunky.

"COME ON, ANGELA, YOU ONLY HAVE TO ROLL UP TEN MORE CENTIMETERS OF MAGGOTS TO WIN 25,000 DOLLARS!!!"

The best I got of Waldo. Sadly, he's not very hard to find in this picture.

Ah, the Floor Food. There were people in the Marriott who spent two straight days sitting across from some food they set on the ground. They'd beg you to eat it as you passed by. First day it was pizza, then salad, then candy. I don't know if anyone ever really ate anything.. Ethan took one of the candies, but it was strawberry so he didn't eat it.

Ethan's sign. The writing was technically my idea.. Though it was his idea to take a pizza box out of the trash. o_O

Though if you recall, the Deathsmilies were also my own creation.

We all felt this way, but few of us actually expressed in such a dramatic manner.

The blue's a little bright, and their sword was crappy, but it was still a rather solid costume.

Jet Set Radio girl again. Ethan gave her his AIM screen name.. She never contacted you, did she? :P

I find some sort of artistic value in this. I don't know what, though.

Our seats for the masquerade. Pretty good, for flat seating.. The screen was just far enough away.

They had a Majora's Mask skit.. It was crappy, but it's nice to see some Majora lovin'.

The flippin' awesome Katamari skit. I took so many other pictures of this one (they were blurry beyond recognition) that my batteries did and I couldn't take pictures of anything else for the rest of the con. Sadness.

Here's the big one though: My categorized swag chart that I made when I was really, really bored. You can find it here on DeviantArt.. It was too big to upload to 250free.

And thus concludes my Anime Expo ventures. I'll try to take less cosplay pictures next time, and more worthwhile ones. :P

--

In other news.. Only one more week of summer school. Huzzah. I beat Katamari Damacy today. The moon level was awesome, though I got stuck for like half a minute between some trees. The credits were odd, and I thought it was strange that they would throw an environmental world unity message in that late in the game, but whatever. The second game came out this week in Japan.. Only so long before it gets localized, reportedly for $30 instead of 20.

I need sleep.
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Saturday, July 9, 2005

Finally.

Comment Commentary

Mimmi- Sn00z30r3Z.

Shin- Well, evidently it's not working. I've gone down a rank. :P

--

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday..

We woke up a little early to go to panels in the name of free shit. Viz's anime panel and the Tofu Records one were at the same time (though Tofu went on for another fifteen minutes), so we hit Viz first, waited around and heard some announcements about recently aquired properties that did not interest me (aside from the Saikano OVA.. But I won't be watching that until I've read all of the manga). They only had two people at the panel.. It was fairly dull, since they couldn't really answer any questions.

Though one guy said that he heard that they were cutting Itachi out of the Naruto anime entirely. He had another pointless question, too.. But I forget what it was.

Once we realized that no free stuff was in sight, we dashed over to Tofu. We arrived just as they started handing out signed Polysics posters. Yay for me.

Of course, we had to work for them. Trivia questions. The first question was how they got their name (I remembered it right after the other person answered). The second one was "Which member is not permitted to speak?" I didn't really know that one. It was the keyboardist.. By process of elimination I figured it out, but I didn't remember her name.

And since nobody except for two people knew the earlier questions, the third one was just "What is the name of the Polysics album released by Tofu Records?" As this one was a major duh, a few more hands darted up, including mine, but since we were rather far in the back I didn't have much of a chance of getting selected anyway. So it goes.

We got a bit of free stuff- Tofu patches, Tofu booklets, and so on. I asked the hostess lady if I could steal one of the signed Polysics posters (since there were, like, 20 more of them), but she said no without giving a reason, and I gave up.

After this we met Shin. Don't worry, ladies, you'll get the sexy pictures later. The first order of business was reviewing all that we had seen at the con so far, and after that we headed into the exhibit hall, where we browsed and, again, tried to grab some swag.

After that we walked over to the gaming hall, where we broke out the DSes and played a bit of Meteos. Ethan managed to beat our asses senseless most of the time, but it was still a good time. There were some arrogant assholes over by us that started whining about how everybody and their mom at the con had a DS, but that was easily ignored.

Then all of a sudden these guys with lightsabers (including a Vader, in full costume) started fighting by the doors as a guy with a tuba played Star Wars themes. It was kind of funny when they started pulling out their choreographed moves.. But after that we left.

It was around here that Ethan lost his wallet, which contained over $100. He went up to the room to drop some stuff off, and I gave him my key, and when he came back he realized that he didn't have the wallet, which also contained the key.

We don't know what happened to it.. I subscribe to the theory that he got pickpocketed, but it might have just dropped out when we were playing Meteos on the ground. Either way, he parted ways with Shin and me around this point. I bought some Pocky.

And what did he miss out on? Shitty fanservice anime where everyone had D-cup breasts and they happened to flop everywhere. It kind of reminded me of last year, when we had nothing else to do so we watched Stratos 4- another fanservice show, but that one at least had a bit of integrity. Whatever we watched.. Dear God, it sucked.

After that I had to leave, but it was a cool meeting. Props to Shin for his pimpin' Bebop shirt.

Later on.. Hm. Ethan and I hung around the cosplay people, and watched Ghost in the Shell for a bit. About half an hour in, the Gonzo panel was starting, so we decided to go to that. Not for the free stuff, so much as it was Gonzo.

And it was a nice panel. They had creators and directors of various upcoming shows there, plus a translator. They showed trailers.. I can't remember the name of the one show that particularly caught my interest.. It was a remake of an American classic, and they had some really interesting texture work and color schemes everywhere. It's on the Geneon preview DVD, I think.. I might take screenshots later.

Then we went back to Ghost in the Shell. I had never really seen it before, and though I enjoyed it, it ended really abruptly. We didn't stick around for Innocence.

Instead, we hung out with more cosplayers. Since Sunday was Masquerade day, there was a really huge cosplay congregation outside the convention center. Oh, many pictures were taken.

We weren't planning on going to the Masquerade. It is, after all, a ticketed event, and that means lines. Ethan and I do not like lines. But out of nowhere these guys from up on the third floor dropped two yellow tickets, and they landed right next to me. I gave them a thumbs-up of thanks, and they flipped me off, and we got in the line.

Never in my three years of AX-ness had I been to the Masquerade. I didn't know what to expect.. But it turned out to be the thing where different people dressed up and did skits onstage. We got pretty nice seats- right in front of one of the screens- though we couldn't really see the stage. It was hosted by the guy that ran the AMV workshop who thought he was funny but really wasn't. He made a few decent references, but for the most part I was entertained by Jared the stage ninja and the podium, who appeared to have a face on it from a distance.

The skits started out pretty stupid- people just walking across the stage to music and cheap little jokes- but it got pretty good by the end. The one that got the most awards was the Metal Gear Solid 3 one. They took dialogue from the game and acted it out, which is simple, but they did it really well. Then there was the ever-orgasmic Katamari skit, where they had the prince, five cousins and the King of All Cosmos performed their choreographed interpretation of the opening video. It was awesome.

Another skit of note was a FFVII: Advent Children one, in which they made fun of Sephiroth and those other two silver-haired guys. When they showed up, the Team Rocket music started playing, and they had their own little speech ready, effeminate lisps and all:

Sephiroth: Prepare for nipple.
Other guy A: Make it triple.
Other guy B: Oh hell yeah.

..I guess you had to be there.

It took forever for the judges to ready the awards. Once they sent out the first wave, we just left and went back to the room. By that night we were dragging, and pretty ready to go home. But we paid for four days, and so help me God we would get our four days' worth.

Now for the pictures. Keep in mind that this isn't all of Sunday's pics- there's still 30 or so left over, which I'm saving for next time. My camera battery died during the masquerade, so I didn't get any Monday. So.. Yeah.

First cosplay of the day. These were far from the best Naruto cosplayers there, but for some reason I took a picture of these three. The Hinata was rather interesting- her character is supposed to be very calm and recessive, but the cosplayer herself had this weird look in her eyes like she would pull out a knife and shank you at any minute. Maybe it was the contacts, I don't know.. Either way, you can get a closeup here.

Why, what's this? Oh yes, it's Man Faye, scourge of the seven seas. And he's fighting with a gigantic GIR, which I saw many times over the course of the con. This was a fight to behold in person.. It was straight out of a movie.

Bwee.

We actually got a pose out of him. He lost weight.. He lost the fatness, and the fatness is 30% of his greatness.

I managed to get a better snapshot of Jango. This time it's not all motion-blurry. And there's another shot of Bender in the background.

Wrong con, guys. Either way, it was kind of funny to see an overweight stormtrooper. Alex decided to correct me. He is not a storm trooper, but a Scout. The end.

A view from our hotel room. We were on the fifth floor. Not very high, sadly. The real reason I took this picture was because I wanted to get a closer look at that guy's Nightmare sword.. But it turned out to be crappy up-close. Styrofoam eye and red poster paint. Yawn.

An ever-growing pile of swag. You can see the ferret plushie he killed three people for in the ADV cult crowd.

Now here's the good Nightmare sword. It caught Ethan's eye when we were by the pool-slash-eating space. This was about as close as I could get.. But some of the glory was lost when I resized it. It has blood vessels and lord knows what else hanging all over it, and the eye looks suspiciously real.

I have no idea who this person is supposed to be, and I have no idea why I took this picture. She kind of looks like she's from south central, flashing bling or gang signs or something.

I kind of felt bad for these guys. They stood on the little stage, and spend twenty minutes getting their equipment set up, and by then a crowd had formed. Turns out they played really crappy music, and people left quickly.

The Tetris guys were popular. On the last day I saw them have a danceoff/street fight. One of them apparently sold their suit. I would have paid good money for that thing, too.

Ethan with a shot of his Naruto headband. This is the kind of picture that arises when I'm bored and a panel hasn't started yet. Anyway, a bit of a story behind the headband- my brother went and bought the first one he found which, when unfolded, is one big square with the metal part in the middle. It cost him $35. Ethan got this one for $20, and he doesn't have to worry about folding it up right. The only plus-side to my brother's is that its cloth is darker and thus more badass.

The gaming hall pre-Smash Bros. tournament. This doesn't quite do it justice.. There was a good number of people behind me as well. We left once Ethan was put on standby, and came back at 1 AM only to see the tourney still going. It was mostly empty, though, with food wrappers everywhere.

This guy was kind of scary, actually. He wore a red shirt and red pants, and when someone asked he'd put on the hood, which had a really big flower taped to it. He was cool at the time, but looking at him here he looks creepy.

My new best friend. I almost actually gave him money. He had an oathe of silence until his revenge could be attained. All in all, I think he got like a nickel or something.

Is it wrong to be turned on by this? 'Cause if it is.. Well, I don't know what I'd do.

The best Link cosplayer in all of the con. Mostly it's the darker tunic, I think.. Much more like Twilight Princess Link instead of, say, Windwaker. That shield looked heavy, too.

Finally, some Jet Grind (Set?) Radio loving. This girl definitely stood out in crowds.. In a good way, though. She actually knew how to skate, too, though she had a hard time going down stairs (We watched her as she clung desperately to the handrail as she tried to go down a flight of stairs).

No, she's not crying, she was on her cell phone. I didn't bother asking her for a picture, so I just took one.

It's a.. Nice outfit.

I can't remember if this is the right Bleach guy or not, but one of them had a freaking big, freaking heavy sword. He let it drop when we were in line for the ANN panel on the third floor of the convention center.. It made a huge clunk sound that echoed throughout most of the lobby, I'd imagine.

My brother's headband. I tried wrapping it around my face cholo-style, but it didn't work. I couldn't figure out Tupac style, either.. Cripes, I'm so white.

The Samurai Champloo shirt I got for free at the Anime News Network panel.
Ethan's little Eva 01 figure. I think he lost the horn.. Correct me if I'm wrong, man.

..And my brother's Revolver Ocelot figure. Shin bought the same one when I wasn't there.

A shot from the second floor of the convention center. I always get vertigo when I'm on the second floor of that building or higher.. I don't have that problem anywhere else. Just there, for some reason.

omfg shin!1 I took this without properly warning him, so he deserves props for coming up with a good picture on such short notice.

I saw these plushies from across the exhibit hall and freaked. Too bad they were, like, $75 for the whole set.

One of the booths had a drawing board where you could doodle whatever the hell you wanted. This is just one of the five total. Mine's not on here.

Tokyopop always does bowling. This year they were promoting it in the name of their upcoming American-made release, We Love Halloween (or whatever. I wasn't paying attention). If you got a strike you could get any graphic novel you wanted, but if you got a spare you got to pick from a shitty bargain bin.

I got a spare, and ended up with some shoujo vampire manwha story. o_O

The top secret inner-workings of the Tokyopop booth. I am amazed that the FBI has yet to break into my house and confiscate my camera for taking this. Who knows what kind of valuable information terrorists could extract from this picture?

They had shirts, too.

Apparently, these Star Wars dudes were cosplaying for charity. It was rather lame, to be honest, but part of that might just be because I didn't get a picture of them posing- just standing around waiting to pose.

No better way to bond than through DS Download Play. I was the "host," since I have the cartridge, and I took the picture. That's Shin on the left with his pimp Bebop shirt, and Ethan on the right pwning us.

The Vader with the tuba background music. I couldn't find the guy actually playing the tuba for the life of me. Maybe we were all just imagining it.

Hehe. "Ho."

Not the best cosplayer ever.. But it added to the Katamari frenzy.

I repeat: PWNED.

That's it for today. I could technically do the other 30 pictures, but I prefer trickling them. That way there's a better chance of you lazy-asses actually looking at them. :P

--

Quick update on summer school: Only one more week, and I can't wait. I had to do a project with omega-dork today. He's gotten really unstable and I don't know why- he just constantly looks like he's about to break down and (try to) kill someone. I did the PowerPoint instead of the essay for a change.. He insisted on doing a game show at the end, since it was "such a success" yesterday.

A fun fact: It wasn't. It sucked.

Either way we didn't have the time for it. And there was much rejoicing.

EDIT: God damn, this is a long post. Too bad I can't write this much for homework. o_O
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Thursday, July 7, 2005

..

Tomorrow, I promise.

EDIT: Haha.. Now 250free is down. I had everything ready to go, too.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Many apologies.

I wasn't able to get home until an hour ago, and I have an essay due, and I have this huge headache, so I won't be talking AX tonight. I am very sorry, but a delay was bound to come along sooner or later.

Instead, you just get Comment Commentary.

Ethan- Yeah, about that.. I never got one of you with the sign. Just the sign.

It's okay, you'll live.

Mimmi- Well, I try.

Shin- I don't get the origins of the word. Care to explain for us?

satan665- I've never really been hellbent on going to Comic-Con. It's always right after AX and I'm out of cash, plus it's like $65 for all four days. I'm assuming you get a lot more programming, but that's still a pretty steep price.

Godel- When we were in line for the masquerade, there was a girl with a yaoi paddle who slapped some Wario cosplayer in front of her. It started working.

Shin- I still like the kid with the "ninjas killed my family, please give donations for martial arts training" one. I got a good picture of him.

..And that's it. Again, I apologize.

EDIT: Hm.. Seems AX will be in Long Beach Convention Center in 2007. The Shriners got to the center that year, apparently.

And you don't want to fuck with the Shriners.

EDIT 2:

Something interesting and cool to look at is happening right now, and since I feel bad about the AX delay, I got a couple of more recent pictures up just now.

It's fire season, and here in California that means that we're going to have to take in a lot of smoke. Since we're in the desert up here, I'm pretty used to it, but the first "nearby" fire of the year is happening right now.. Pretty close to my house. I didn't get a picture of the fire itself, but I got a couple shots of my street, which is really, really fogged up with all of the smoke.

Let's not forget that my camera sucks at nighttime. This one still came out pretty cool.. I don't quite get why it came out orange, though. Normally our street lights give off a more yellow look. This one reminds me of The Exorcist.



This one's more representative of the smoke itself. Those aren't smudges on the lens.. It's ashes, heh. It was cool to see in motion.



This one's my favorite, though. I tried getting a shot of the pillar of smoke, but that didn't happen, obviously. One of the funny things about this fire is that it is right by one of the housing complexes we were considering moving into. I never liked the location- I preferred the place nestled more snugly between a bunch of nice, non-flammable buildings- and I guess now we won't have to worry about that anyway.

Not to sound goth-poetic, but I like fire. The smell is what does it for me.. I love the smell of brushfire. It's also pretty cool to see (assuming it's not burning down your house as you watch it). The dancing flames are pretty mesmerising.

And I'm done now.
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Tuesday, July 5, 2005

AH-NEE-MAY EH-KOO-SOO-PO!!!1

Comment Commentary

I can't seem to be able to find the "next page" button in the comment window. I know there are six comments, but it seems I'll only be able to do the most recent five. Sorry, whoever that was.

Lea- Summer school.. For the sake of an elective (We're required to take health and a language our first year).

DDG- I took 121 total (suck it, Shin), and though I'm not putting up all of them, I've only cut out three so far. Because of this I am going to be dividing them up (though in a more orderly fashion than last year, I hope).

Shin- I think I only beat it twice.. I tried replaying it when Windwaker was coming out, but I forgot how to get past the first room in the Fire Temple and said "screw it."

Godel- A lot of people were trying that at AX, I guess.. o_O

Tony- Mine is the type who gets mad when you beat him in multiplayer and insists that you take it easier on him. I think he's gotten past that, though.. He beat Dodongo's Cavern just now, I think.

--

All right. So. Anime Expo.

After school, we stopped by my friend's house to pick up his luggage.. From now on, let's just call him by Ethan (Kiowanman21 on myOtaku), since that's a lot easier than saying "my friend" and other such anonymous phrases over and over.

Anyway, once we got his stuff, we came here and I threw all my stuff into a bag. We then waited around for my dad until about five. He decided to cash a pay check after work, which caused delays. I was rather peeved.

Though it was all good in the hood once we got on the road. Ethan and I played Meteos on the DS. I think I never mentioned that I bought it..

Well, it most certainly rocks, and it served me well while waiting in lines over the weekend. We tried getting some people in on some sexy DS Download Play action, but aside from Shin there were always connection errors.

I figured out the difference between Download Play, which requires one cartridge, and regular play, where everyone has one. It seems that in Download Play you can only choose from four levels (unlike a lot of other puzzle games the different levels actually have different mechanics, instead of just backgrounds), and if you want to change levels you have to have everyone reconnect. I guess it makes sense.. But I wish there were more map choices for it.

Once we got down there it was around 7:30, and fortunately registration ran until 10. Also, since we were so late, not too many people were there. We spent more time walking through where people would have been if the line was loong than actually standing in the line. For some reason, Ethan's ID said "Nathaniel Irving" of some town in Utah. We printed out the real one instead, though we still have Nathaniel Irving's badge.. I don't know who he was. All I know is that there was one very sad man from Utah in Anaheim this weekend.

The Exhibit Hall was closed by the time we got our badges. Instead, we walked around and took pictures of cosplayers and such.

They screened Jin Roh at 10:30. Since I've heard so much about it, we decided to go, and it was a little more dull than I had hoped. It had its good points, but overall I found it sort of pointless and unmoving.

Maybe it's because we missed the first few minutes. I don't know.

Our hotel room was nice. Better than the Hilton.. Though, there were only two beds, so I slept on the couch. It was surprisingly comfy, especially when I pulled the other chair over and used it as a footrest.

The next morning we woke up pretty early and went down into the line for the exhibit hall. This was Ethan's first convention, and he decided to be a swag hunter. He got.. A lot of free stuff, actually. It was kind of scary how dedicated he was.

We went to an AMV Creation workshop. I'm interested in video editing, and I figured AMVs would be a nice place to start.

Though we didn't get computers (I got a computer at some digital drawing workshop last year, so I sort of assumed). Instead, we got some weird guy that looked like Seth MacFarlane who went on about how he thought it would be funny to make a crossover movie trailer. It was boring, and there was no free stuff in sight, so we bailed.

We decided to go the Anime News Network panel since there was nothing else going on. Actually, programming was pretty lame this year. I remember having the entire day laid out last year.. And though we didn't follow the schedule in the least, there was still a lot more on the table.

The panel was fun, though. They had a good number of ANN people there, and they just sat up there having fun. For the sake of free shit (they had a bunch of lame DVDs and a couple Samurai Champloo shirts), I got up and asked a lame question. Somehow they managed to steal a door sign from the Hilton, and gave it to the guy with the worst question.

Lucky bastard.

Before we got in, though, the Pierrot panel was letting out, and as everyone exited, they got a little Naruto mini-figure. This pissed me off, since they had Tsunade, and Tsunade is the shit.

This sent us on a panel-visiting spree, in the name of swag. Unfortunately, all the good ones were earlier that day.

We watched Tsukihime episodes three and four after that. I watched one and two last year, and enjoyed it, so it was only logical to continue it.

Oh, God, the Super Smash Bros. tournament. Ethan wanted to enter it, but by the time he registered he was entry number 150. There were only two Gamecubes set up. The first 128 got in, and the rest were put on "standby." So we left. When we came back five hours later, it was still going.

I'm leaving out details, but most of them are going to be filled in with pictures. The first group (Friday and most of Saturday) is what I'm putting up today. You'd better enjoy it- I spent an hour resizing these bastards.

Parking Lot. The Anaheim Convention Center is such a lovely building. Very futuristic-looking.. You can't tell from here, but they had a really big poster on the front that displayed the AX logo. Sexy.

Ethan in the Marriott. I was kind of hoping this one would come out DeviantArt-worthy, but Ethan turned around and totally ruined the entire thing. GAH.

Registration line. It moved very fast.. I have no idea how bad it was earlier in the day, but for us the process was nice and smooth.

To register, you had to go downstairs into Hall E, walk through all these little ropes, go up the stairs, and around the upper hall to register. We could have cut out everything up to the escalator, but we had to go through the ropes anyway.

First cosplayer pic. And what an odd one to start with- a Heartless from Kingdom Hearts. I took a picture of him without his consent (I don't like approaching people and asking if I can photograph them), and when he noticed the flash, he came over, threateningly asked me if I took a picture of him, and kind of followed us for a minute. I saw him the next day as well.

The first good cosplayer The merchant from Resident Evil 4. We saw him setting up his little torch-light, and I freaked out and asked him to do his catchphrase. Then he opened his jacket pocket and said "WELCOME!" in an awesome way. My favorite cosplayer of the day by far.

For the record, the costume itself wasn't so hot. It was just the RE merch. And you know how awesome he is.

First game of the convention. Ethan played Super Mario Kart Double Dash, and I watched. He kept getting second or first.

Later on he played Halo.. Some ten year old Asian kid got mad when he took his kill, and went on to teamkill him in vengance. This lead to them losing, I think. I'd bet ten bucks that kid has Xbox Live at home.

Ah, the gaming hall.. Reeking of B.O. and Doritos.. A bunch of old fat dudes yelling at each other.. HOME.

A memory book. One of the artists in the Artist Alley decided to put one of these out.. There was a Priest convention going on at the same time as AX, and so someone made a little cartoon of Jesus going "I ****ing HATE Pagans!" I figured it was camera-worthy.

The artist alley itself. Last year they had a lot of space.. This year it looked really really cramped down by registration. I prefer calling it the Artist Ghetto.

Took this one right as we got into the exhibit hall. Not much else to say.

A really blurry shot of the Bandai booth. Every hour they threw shirts and stuff into the audience.. And behind this they had demos of their upcoming games set up. If you played one you got a ticket for a wheel of prizes. On Saturday we came back every hour to try to get something, but they kept running out of tickets. We gave up and never looked back.

Greatest. Bag. EVER. We saw it just sitting there, admired its beauty for a minute, then took it. In the end, I got to keep it.

Elegant Gothic Lolita and other dresses. It's a cool fashion.. Definitely my favorite Japanese style. I have a friend who admires the dresses, so I took pictures of them for her. These were $200 each.

God bless the Japanese for thinking that this is plausible.

This was a really cool robot.. But I have no idea what it's from. In the booth next to this they had an Alphonse Elric FullMetal Alchemist statue about the same size.. But this one was cooler.

The ADV booth. As always they gathered people and threw stuff into the audience.. On a much larger scale than Bandai. See the bald guy running with his hands in the air so he can be in the front row? That's me.

A rather nice dress. Sometimes I like the people just wearing elegant clothes at cons more than people actually dressing up as anime characters.

We saw many Marios. And about as many Luigis. These ones got picked for a Bandai contest, though.. They raised their plungers in the air victoriously. It was cool.

Link and Sheik. There was this really awesome Link at the con (this one sort of sucks, I just like the Sheik).. But that picture will probably be up tomorrow.

Bender! There's a little kid behind him in this picture.. The beer bottle conveniently covers his face, but it's safe to assume he's scared shitless.

The R2 was nice.. But I still don't think Star Wars people should be at Anime Expo.

I got a better pic of this guy later, too.

There was an odd fad going around this year.. Where people would just break out bubbly JPop, get in a line and start dancing by waving their arms back and forth gaily. I don't really get it, but Ethan said he heard someone say it was some sort of Japanese exercise thing. Which explains Animal Crossing.

GREATEST COSPLAY EVER. Nothing is hotter than a female Katamari cosplayer. And this time there were two of them.. And of Asian descent. They had holes in the masks, but when peopel took photos they would pull the face part down.

I would have had sex with them, and I wouldn't have cared if they kept the costumes on. Wink wink.

Our grand total of stuff (free and otherwise) by the end of Saturday. Not pictured is my uber cool FLCL coffee mug that is yellow with the P! on it.

We got a lot more stuff by the end of the con. This is actually pretty meager, when you compare.

But these.. These are the true prizes. The ultimate victory. The dramatic event that will go down in the history books, shaking the very foundation of my shopping skillz.

I bought all five of those Sin City books for $20. All five of them. $4 each, because they were supposedly messed up, but other than a marker line on the side of one of them and a couple of loose pages in another, I can't spot anything. They didn't have That Yellow Bastard, though.. That's too bad.

And on that note, I'm cutting this post short. It's getting late, and I'm tired, and I have to catch up on my summer reading that I've skipped.

Tomorrow's exploits: SHINMARU AND OTAKUSENNEN COLLIDE (and the other guy was there too) AND SPARKS FLY AS THEY MATCH OFF. BUT WILL THEY RESOLVE THEIR DIFFERENCES AND FIGHT FOR THE GREATER GOOD: A PICTURE WITH MAN FAYE? STAY TUNED AND FIND OUT, BITCHES.
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Thursday, June 30, 2005

He made us voyeur him.

Commet Commentary

Godel- We had no bags. I spent two fucking hours trying to find decent wrapping paper or a bag, and that was the best I could find on such short notice. Besides, it's the gift that counts.

Shin- WELL WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO KNOW.

DDG- Maybe. *wink wink*

--

The past couple days have been mildly interesting. Yesterday we had to get a very large essay group project done in an hour and a half.. Under normal circumstances that would majorly suck, but I organized a very useful group. I worked on the essay part with my good friend and fellow "valedictorian" of eighth grade (We got the most awards on the award night thing, so we just say that), and the other two worked on the PowerPoint (God, I hate those things). It was actually pretty fun, challenging, and had a pretty satisfying end product. Afterwards, though, I felt like I had just run a mile or some thing. For whatever reason it took a lot out of me.

Today we had a similar project, and though I had 3/4ths the same group, it wasn't quite as enjoyable. The subject matter was a little more vague, and we weren't given a lot to work with. Ultimately, I think this one was very rushed, though the PowerPoint people definitely came through.

I have yet to meet any new people, though I don't think I really want to know any of these people. I'm all for finding some friends outside of my regular circle, and if I had proper motivation I'd break out of my little shell and talk to someone new, but none of these people fit the bill.

And since I'll have all my classes with these people this year.. Here's looking forward to clubs.

--

My brother seems to have started playing Ocarina of Time today while I was at school. He tried playing it back when I first got it, but he was really young back then, and couldn't quite handle it. Now he's playing the Gamecube version, but it's basically the same thing.

Heh, looks like he's moved up a couple notches on my cool list.

EDIT: Finally got my Anime Expo tickets just now. I'll admit I haven't been in the spirit of things lately.. Up until I got them. Good memories started coming back, and now I'm pumped and ready to go.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Ding ding.

Comment Commentary

Godel- ..Wow. How did you know not know this?

Or did you know this and felt like punishing yourself?

Shin- It's all for the parents, and that makes it even lamer.

--

I've been getting pretty bad headaches lately. I think they're stress-induced.. It might just be my lack of sleep, but it happens whenever something's frustrating me.

--

We started summer school today. It starts about an hour after our regular school, which is nice.. Fortunately, I found someone I knew quickly, and he knew where to go, but we still had to run around searching for our schedules (which was pointless, since we stood outside our class for about ten minutes).

So.. We got to hear about morals and integrity for about seven hours. With a half-hour lunch break. It's not that bad, since the teacher it's a total silence Nazi, but somehow we got stuck in a class full of people dorkier than us.

Well, not quite full. But there are some majorly scary people in there. Infringing upon my turf, you know?

..Nah. I don't take pride in my social awkwardity. In fact, these kids made me look like some sort of popular sport-playing person. One of them took every oppurtunity he had to ramble on about how he's going to UCLA law school so he can become a criminal prosecutor. At one point he stood up in the middle of a conversation and went on about the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation and the individual versus community.

He'd raise his hand and do that annoying "OOH! OOOOH! PICK ME!!1" thing every time the teacher asked a question. And if anybody else brought up a point or said anything, he'd scoff or say "I was gonna say that."

I'd kind of feel bad for him if he weren't such a prick.

The other one I did feel bad for, though. He was just a large kid with an unfortunate voice and seemed to be bad at drinking water out of a bottle.

Actually, a lot of guys seemed to need a good jumpstart to their pituitaries. It's strange when you're in a class with judgemental metalheads who are pointing at your friend's Weezer backpack and all of a sudden they say something in the sweet, serene falsetto voice worthy of the Vienna Boys Choir.

We didn't do much work.. He showed us powerpoints, and we occasionally took notes on them, then we did work. The strange thing is that he has all of his students' work submitted over the internet. I kind of figured that would be nice, but so far the entire endavor has been a pain.

It's a simple system. Basically, you're emailing the teacher the work. That wouldn't be so bad if Microsoft Word worked. I've gotten used to just using Wordpad, but the conveniences of Word are greatly missed. After that, my mouse started freaking out. It kept acting as if the computer was reading the item for the first time, and eventually it just said "hardware is not recognized."

Because my friend decided that it would be wise to hit the thing against the table when it wasn't reading right. ~_^

This is the infinitely lovely Nyko Airflo mouse that Azure so kindly sent me last year. Oh, it served me well indeed, and I shall miss it so. For now, we just bought a crappy standard-issue Microsoft optical, but I plan on rebuying the Airflo.

And it shall be rebought with VENGANCE.

--

We're almost a week into summer, and my brother has had more of a social life than me so far. According to my count, he's had three sleepovers, a pool party and two other meetings at people's houses. I've only done one thing so far.. But oh, what a one thing it was.

I found out my friend was getting the old surprise birthday party treatment from everyone the day that it was happening.. It was okay though, because I had already bought the gift: A Halo 2 Spartan figure that was as close to my friend's character type as they make. Also had her favorite weapon. I got a tackle-hug out of it, so I guess I did something right.

Though the wrapping sure as hell wasn't.

After that was cakefights, a bit of gaming (World of Warcraft bored me), a very ghetto pseudorave, some Splinter Cell-styled stealth, and much, much debauchery. All in all, it was an orgy, best defined by.. Well, one said image, but I'm not about to put it up here.

Wink wink.

EDIT: All riiiiight. Just when I thought I had buried my fears of the crazy-ass zombie dogs in RE4, this shoes up to reaffirm my anxiety!
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Friday, June 24, 2005

DOMINATING!

Comment Commentary

Tony- All the Zim DVDs packaged with the box is an inevitability. Besides, it's not that hard to find three DVDs. :P

Shin- Me: 1, Society: 49,999.

Godel- But it's school! In the SUMMER! :D

--

All right, all right, all right.

Seems like I'll be attending Anime Expo all four days.. Somewhat.

I took a peek at our little summer school paper, and found the part about holidays. We do get July 4th- that Monday- off, which is awesome. The Friday is still a bit of an issue.. We still have school that day, but I think I'm going to stick to the "leave school and immediately go to Anaheim" plan. That way we can get our tickets that night, and not have to worry about it the next day (and if it's anything like people have been saying, it'll be one hell of a line).

So in a sense, it's kind of like going for three days.. But it's only $5 more, and the booths tend to have sales on the last day.

I'll only be able to meet up with Shin and whoever the hell else for one day, though. Friday I'll probably be showing my friend (kiowanman) the ropes. Sunday some other friends are probably coming down, and Monday.. Well, it's Monday.

So Saturday is the day, my friends. I have 512MB of memory stickage this year, plus a couple camera batteries, so I won't be quite so stingy with pictures as last time. ~_^

Oh my.. It seems that I've broken my little "update at 9:00 so that the system thinks I updated at midnight" ritual. Oh well, it's worth it, I guess.

--

Picked up Pacer by The Amps yesterday.. It's pretty good. A few of the songs sound pretty similar, but I'm enjoying it.

I was hoping there would be a cool booklet insert, but it's just a weird little grungey image with the tracklist. Oh well, you can't win them all.
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Thursday, June 23, 2005

E, F, F#, and back down again

Comment Commentary

James- They sell a lot of Zim action figures now, though I forgot the company. Most of them look sort of off-model to me, but the doggy GIR and Tallest ones are awesome. If I see them for cheap at Anime Expo I am so getting them.

Solo- You're welcome!

Shin- Apparently they show Zim daily on Nicktoons TV. I don't have that channel, and that makes me sad, because they also show Rocko.

Azure- It's GIR.

God..

I'm not even talking to you now.

:P

Godel- Damn right you do.

--

So, I've been waking up earlier than usual lately, so in the morning when I'm bored I just watch VH1's early morning music video show.

Coldplay's new album came out recently, so of course Coldplay's new video is on VH1. It's a.. Simple video, I guess (though I love that cool lighting thing), with a song that irritates me. It's one of those songs that I dislike but I find myself humming it.

It was stuck in my head for two days, accompanied by this little loop of the singer guy walking around like he's drunk while singing. It tormented me. At one point I actually considered buying the album for the song.

Then I realized that's what they wanted me to do.

So, in short, God damn you, Coldplay, and God damn VH1 for showing their colorful video.

--

The whole "graduation" thing was today and yesterday.. They called it "promotion" this time around. Elementary school was "culmination." It's sort of annoying how they use different names for everything.

Last night was the awards thing- you know, where they give out little medals and stuff. Pretty quick. Lots of pictures of my half-smiling at the camera and looking like I'm really, really tired.

Today was the real ceremony, which took about 45 minutes in all. Somehow I woke up at 5:00, got all dressed up in my pimp-clothes, and got on my way to the school. I didn't really have a big part in it (most of the people I know had specific "jobs" like master of ceremonies or what have you), but it was decent. I sat on the end, so I talked to people as they walked by to get their pretend diplomas.

I really, really wanted someone to trip. It would have made my day a whole lot better.

Afterwards was pictures, which I am editing the UGLY out of right now. I tried actually smiling in these, but it didn't help much. Or maybe I'm too critical. Whatever.

The point of this rant: I have been out of school for.. Eleven hours now, and by hour four I was already bored out of my skull. I'm thankful for summer school, since it gives me something to do and somewhere to go. I was expecting relief after getting out of school, but now I'm just kind of bored. I did my regular computer + sleep + more computer routine, but it's not so fun when you do it for six hours on end.

I should come up with some sort of "summer project." Maybe something big and complicated in Photoshop, or an actual inked-and-colored comic book (as opposed to four-panel ones).

--

The Zim extras weren't as great as I had hoped. The 24 seconds of The Most Horrible Xmas Ever was really more like six, and ultimately pointless. There are no storyboards to go with the audio for the unanimated episodes, so all you really get is a bunch of screaming. I kind of got entranced by it for half an hour.

There's also some samples of music from the show, and a featurette in which the guy that did the music explains the process. It was rather dull, but it's nice to hear how the Bee song was made.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go.. Well, excuses are pointless. I'm just done.
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