Tuesday, May 22, 2007

ACEN 2007: Saturday May 12:

Forgive me if I leave anything out. If I remember correctly, Saturday wasnt really a day for the panels. I did go to a couple though. Shin took me to the Sayuki panel, a fan panel, but she was disinterested immediately. So she went off, and I went to the Final Fantasy 12 panel. Another fan panel, where there were some great discussions about the game, the strategies used throughout, and other things like that. I learned one thing, that the Voice Actor for Basch, is the same VA who does Bloo in "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends." What range huh?

After that, there was nothing I really wanted to see until that night. So what did I do, I sat at the bar, and watched SportsCenter. Texted Shin a few times to find out the where and when of the MyO meetup. So I just start walking around, taking a couple of photos here and there. But just feeling like a Ronin, a wanderer with no real destination.

I somehow made it back to the dealer's room, and artist alley. I saw a booth that had awesome vinyl decals. If I had the money, I would have gotten the Laughing Man Logo from GITS: SAC. Instead, I just made small talk with people, hung out with Sarah at her artist table. I was looking through her artwork, and her friends, and while I skipped the yaoi, I wasnt grossed out in the least. Its just not my thing.

I get the message for the meetup, I did not hear my phone, so Im still looking around. Apparently, I passed Katana and didnt even notice, although she somehow knew it was me. Also, I appear to be somewhat intimidating to underaged people, I dont know why, Im just a big squishy teddy bear.

Sometime during my wandering before the meetup, I was starting to feel a little wierd. I havent felt this way in some time, but it seems that this was a time that my social anxiety came up on me suddenly. So Shin, Katana, thats why I wasnt talkative, I was in a bit of a mild panic attack.

So as we were wandering through the dealers room for my "train of fangirls" they would stop, look at a booth, I would glance at what they were looking at, then go to the nearest weapon/artifact booth. I saw so many cool swords, Buster swords, Masamunes, Zangetsu, Zabimaru, really really cool Gunblades. I wish I had some money. But oh well, there is always next year, ne?

Katana finally gets a hold of Bell, and in what could have been the meanist nice voice Ive every heard Katana says "WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?" to Bell on her phone. I laughed a little inside. So we get Bell's location, and they tell me where she is, and that I have to lead them there. So again we go a wanderin, Schultzie and three squealing fangirls in tow. We look out the walkway, see some neat cosplay photo sessions for FMA. and we make our way back to the hotel to meet with Bell for a few minutes.

She and some other people with these really realistic dolls are just sitting down, and Katana was the one to ask if Bell was Bell. So we meet Bellpickle, and procede to talk for a while and Katana and her friend Waffles ate some of Bell's Japanese candy. I was still feeling panicky and wasnt really that talkative. Bell left and I believe we headed back to the dealers area.

After more mindless wandering, we were all a little hungry and Shin, feeling generous from the news of a new job, decided to treat us to Giordanos Pizza for lunch. We order, go back to the hotel, wait for the pizza guy and see some odd looking gent in what could best be described as an S&M getup. Leather underwear, chains, and black wings. Shin put money in in underpants, with Katana giggling the whole time. And I was feeling rather sarcastic and just started just making fun of people. Like the family from out in the plains visiting Chicago and not knowing what the hell was going on. Imagine a little kid asking his dad about the guy in the sailor moon outfit. Why were there odd space type Nazi looking guys marching around? Beats the hell out of me, but their costumes were cool.

After that, just chatting outside until Katana and Waffles had to go. Shin went to the hotel, I wandered around some more, went back to the bar to watch the White Sox game. I was basically killing time until the Improv stuff to get going. I make my way to the ballrooms to see everything, and the goddamed lines are outrageous. The Masquerade and the Funimation panel both went long, and everything got pushed back, the lines got longer. And after about 45 minutes of waiting, I said fuck it. I went to wander around for another hour or two before I went back to the hotel, I should have just stuck around and went to the viewing rooms, where there was stuff going on all night. Oh well, next year Ill have a better gameplan. I went back to the room and went to sleep.

ACEN 2007: Sunday May 13:
I woke up Sunday, Shin was packing, I didnt want to say anything because I knew she had to get home. I just went back to sleep, read her note in the morning and started getting ready for the day.

I looked at the panel schedule, nothing exciting to see. All I wanted to do was get the Laughing Man decal and wander around some more. With Shin already on her way home, I gave Sarah a lift to the con, so she could try to sell some more of her prints before she had to make her way back home.

I left Rosemont, and ACEN was over for me in 2007. What I couldnt believe is that without changing any part of my personality for most of the weekend, I actually impressed MsKeller. Which is odd, because I usually offend people with my lack of a verbal filter. I guess its because shes going into the Military and has the same kind of thing going on.

Thats it for ACEN, remember, the photos are at

http://s7.photobucket.com/albums/y255/Schultzie/ACEN%202007/

copy and paste it.

Take care everyone, and next post will be in real time.

See ya soon
John
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