Friday night I carpooled from Minneapolis to Chicago.  The drive was quite
pleasant, the weather beautiful.

Arrived in the hotel.  I went wandering about, noting that we were sharing
hotel space with the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women.  What they were
going to make of the weekend's proceedings I shuddered to think.

Walked briefly in on the AD Vision panel.  The most interesting thing I
heard there was that they are *not* going to support DVD.  In their eyes,
DVD has not penetrated enough of the market to make producing DVD titles
worthwhile.  I think they fear to be caught in a Betamax syndrome.

I wandered around looking for Zen.  I tried calling his hotel room to no
avail.  I decided to pick up my badge.  The badges were kinda cheap and the
writing was quite small.  This was inconvenient because all weekend long I
kept peering at people's chests trying to figure out who they were.  Plus
the con people didn't provide for the use of nicknames, leaving many people
to write their own nickname in big bold letters on the badge.

During my time of wandering around, Mark Engels and I were getting into an
elevator.  He called out to me, "Hey, Richard."  A woman in the elevator
with us peered at my badge and then went kinda agog.  She began gushing
slightly about how much she liked my fanfics and how much she'd been looking
forward to meeting me this weekend.  I was extremely flattered and a little
shy, but we talked for a while and I rather enjoyed our brief conversation.

As I continued to wander about, I was rather impressed with the number and
quality of the costumes.  I'm no big con-goer - this was my fourth con, or
third if you call AnimeIowa and Anime Weekend Atlanta half a con each - but
this was the best costuming I'd seen among fans.  I'd left my Kuno outfit at
home, and now wished I'd brought it with me.

Still unable to find Zen, and not knowing what to do, I decided to follow
the old adage - when in doubt, go shopping!  The Dealer's Room was
disappointingly small, but it had lots of good stuff.  I priced Escaflowne
CD's, and found the same CD's in five different places for five different
prices, some $15 more expensive than the others.  I was also relieved to
find an absence of SM CD's (except at one table, which had some SM CD's
mixed in with legitimate CD's; I'm pretty sure they were being sold with the
con staff's knowledge).  After making one go-around, I decided to postpone
any purchases for later.

In the hallway, lots of people were lined up to get Amanda Winn's autograph.
She must have signed for hours and hours, but she seemed to be approaching
it with enthusiasm.

I took a look at the video schedule.  To my surprise, it consisted entirely
of commercial releases.  I'm all for respecting copyrights, and if I'd been
in on the con planning, I would have advocated sticking with what's legal to
show.  However, this made for a somewhat boring video schedule, and limits
the new anime the con-goers can be exposed to.  I made plans to go see
Escaflowne at 8.

I went to the Con Suite, which was very poorly done.  There were a couple of
small bowls of Oreos and Chips Ahoy and nothing to drink.  There was a
broken Macross arcade game taking up floor space.  When I went back the next
day, they had plenty of drinks but nothing to eat.  This is something the
con planners really need to work on for next year.

I went to the Art Show, which was incredibly small and did not have a lot of
high quality items - and many of those were not for sale.  Not the con's
fault, I know - they probably didn't get a lot of submissions.

At 7pm I met Ryan Matthews.  While talking to him, Zen walked by and I
greeted him enthusiastically.  He was carrying a giant Ukyo spatula, made
out of the remains of an aluminum refrigerator door.  The thing was *big* -
about five feet long.  It was well balanced; Zen could twirl it about with
ease.  I also met Lara Bartram - someone I'd talked to a bit on KawaiiMUCK.
Lara, Zen, and I sat down at the hotel's pitiful food court and I bought Zen
some pizza.  We talked for a while and had a meandering conversation.
Meeting folks and talking was a big reason I wanted to go the con.

At 8pm I went to go see Escaflowne.  The video rooms were small and often
cut in half - the only way you could get to the other side of the room
without cutting off the projector was to walk behind the screen or behind
the video control table.  Escaflowne was subbed, but it was almost
impossible to read the subs from the back of the room because of other
people's heads being in the way.  I saw many people playing the
"head-bobbing" game:  they kept moving their heads back and forth trying to
read the subtitles in whatever narrow sight of line they had on the lower
part of the screen.  Again, nothing the con could do; the screen couldn't go
any higher.  The con definitely needs to get better facilities next year.
Anyway, the audience really enjoyed the Escaflowne episodes we saw.  As I
was leaving, I overheard someone saying enthusiastically, "I really need a
giant flying dragon."

Back at the food court, Zen and Lara were still talking, having not moved
since dinner.  I also met David Lerman, who showed us some examples of anime
in Europe.  In Poland, the name for fanfiction is "fanfiki".  I've decided
that that's the term I'm going to use from now on.  :^_^

I heard rumors of Princess Monomoke being shown.  I went to the main viewing
room, only to discover that the rumors were false.  Instead I went to the
gaming room.  The big hit was "Bust-a-Move".  It's a game where your
character dances to the beat, competing against other colorful dancers.  I
know it *sounds* lame - I certainly thought so when I heard of it - but it's
actually a lot of fun to watch and play.  The music was very good, which
helps a lot.  The graphics were first rate, and the camera kept panning
around so that you weren't married to one view of the dancing.  It was
definitely the favorite of the crowd; I imagine they'll sell a billion of
these in the US when they release it.

I went back to the food court - that's right, Zen and Lara *still* hadn't
moved.  I talked with them some more, and then I joined the TCAMS people
(Twin Cities Anime & Manga Society).

At midnight I went to go watch some fan videos.  "Death Racer: Passenger
69", a Speed Racer parody, had its moments.  They showed some fan music
videos, but I left soon thereafter.  It wasn't terribly interesting.

Went to the Ranma pajama party.  At 3am one of the video rooms began showing
Ranma subs, encouraging people to bring pillows and blankets and get
comfortable (not many took them up on the offer).  About fifteen minutes
into the first Ranma sub, one of the video operators from the other viewing
room came in, loudly proclaimed, "Don't all these people know that Ranma
sucks?", spent several minutes disparaging Ranma and telling people to come
into his room where they were showing real anime, and then left.  I found it
rather a slap in the face of the people who were there trying to enjoy a
piece of anime they rather liked.  I thought it was extremely unprofessional
and extremely rude, and was the only example of the con staff behaving in an
unacceptable fashion.

The next morning (well, 12:30pm) I noticed someone in a giant panda costume
standing at the bar, drinking a beer.  The masquerade was set for 8:30pm; I
expected to see a weaving Genma at that time.

I went back to the Dealer's Room.  I bought a Macross CD and the first
Escaflowne soundtrack.  I wanted to buy at least one more, but I decided to
wait until Sunday to see if I could get it at a lower price.  I got some
good advice on which of the CD's to buy from a passer-by.

I met Zen in the Dealer's Room, and we stood for a while chatting.  At one
point, someone came up to me and told me what a huge fan of "Thy Inward
Parts" he was.  I thanked him and pointed him to Zen, the author of "The
Bitter End".  He got all excited and started gushing all over Zen.

This kept happening as we talked.  One guy peered at my badge, saw that I
was Richard Lawson, and said "Wow!".  Another guy came up and started
talking to me about "Roses of Shadow".  He found its depiction of bipolar
disorder to be quite authentic, and helped him change his perspective on one
of his relatives who has the disorder.  It was a little scary to hear - it's
one thing to write about mental illness; it's quite another to hear of
people being exposed to it.  I was deeply moved by his words, and his
thanks, and found myself unable to articulate anything intelligent, except
to thank him for sharing his experiences with me.

More people came by to worship at Zen's feet - the spatula made him stand
out.  ^_^

I began to wander to the panel rooms.  They, too, were *very* small; people
often had to stand in the doorway.  I took part in the tail end of the Anime
Online panel.  Some interesting stuff was discussed.

At 3pm the Fanfic Panel took place, of which I was a panel member.  The room
was filled to overflowing.  I met Jeanne Hedge and Gary Kleppe, two people
I'd been looking forward to meeting.  (My one regret about the whole weekend
was that I didn't have enough time to spend with everyone, especially Jeanne
and Gary).  I also met Lorelei, yaoi author extraordinaire.  Ryan did a good
job of having many different interests represented on the panel - Mark
Engels was a Battle Angel Alita and Evangelion author, Jeanne did BGC, Gary
did Ranma, Ryan did the Dirty Pair and Tenchi, Lorelei did YYH, and I did
Ranma/Nuku Nuku/Sailor Moon/KOR.

One of the questions Ryan asked was "How did you get started in writing
fanfiction."  Ryan, who's credited with writing the first anime fanfic in
the English-speaking world, simply got impatient waiting for the next DP
comic.  Lorelei read a yaoi fanfic, wrote the author, found that there were
others who shared her interests, then began to write some of her own.  Mark
really got into the whole story of Battle Angel Alita, finding parallels in
his own life.  He found some fanfics, found that he *liked* them, and began
to write.  Jeanne got disgusted with Bubblegum Zone and other BGC
self-insertion fanfics, so wrote her own rebuttal, "We Only Want to Help".
Gary began reading fanfics in the archive and decided to try a Ranma/Maison
Ikokku fanfic.  I myself got started in a similar fashion, two years ago
reading what I could find of Ranma fanfiction and thinking that maybe I
could write something at least as good as that.  So I wrote "The Heart of
the Home", got some good feedback, and, as I said with tongue firmly planted
in cheek, "the rest is legend."  ;;^_^

At one point, Ryan mentioned that he used to write pretty quickly, but
slowed down considerably when, as he put it, "I got a life".  Seeing as how
I'm known for writing very quickly myself, I decided I couldn't let this
pass.  So I took the glass of ice water I was holding and poured it on him.
The audience loved it.  ^_^

We talked about many other interesting things:  getting noticed, stealing
ideas, finishing stories once started.  We also talked about controversy -
do you write just so you can start a controversy?  We also talked about
MST's (and generally dissed them, a little to my surprise despite the fact
that I was one of the people who was doing the dissing).  We also were asked
who our favorite authors were.  Among those I mentioned was Zen, whose
writing is guaranteed to do two things:  make me want to give up writing
because no one crafts the language as well as Zen does, and make me quite
upset because I disagree with some of his characterizations.  ^_^

After the panel, I was ambushed in the corridor with a spatula.  I barely
escaped with my life.

Went out to dinner with a couple of Zen's friends.  (Another unfortunate
thing about the hotel was that there were no restaurants within walking
range, other than the hotel's lousy food court or its overpriced
restaurant.)  Six people in Zen's truck meant that I was pressed against the
window on one side and Lara on the other.  I stared straight ahead and
thought of baseball stats.

Back at the hotel we waited for the masquerade to start.  The hotel didn't
like a couple hundred people standing in the hallway waiting for the doors
to open, so they ushered us into Ballroom 2 while Ballroom 3 was being
prepared.  While we were milling about, many people came up to admire Zen's
spatula (dubbed the BFS 2000).

Finally, the masquerade started.  Some good costumes, nothing spectacular.
The skits were very short, thanks to the con rules of four minutes maximum
per entry, which I think was an excellent idea.  What was more important was
that the fans were thoroughly enjoying dressing up for us.  There was a
great rendition of "South Porco Rosso" by Innpchan.

One entry had the giant panda costume and female Ranma on stage, fighting
each other.  A rather uninspired skit, but the panda costume was good.  They
began to walk off stage, when the speakers began playing "I'm Too Sexy".
The panda jumped back to the center of the stage and began gyrating to the
beat of the music.  The audience went crazy, cheering him on as he danced
about, twitching his hips and other acrobatic feats (for a panda).  At one
point, Amanda Winn jumped on stage and stuffed a five dollar bill in his,
er, fur.  Again the audience went nuts.

Other entries were shown, including a rather good Vampire Hunter D costume,
well presented.  While the judges were tallying their results, the con
organizers paid special tribute to Enrique Conty (who'd I'd addressed as
"Victor" earlier that evening, much to my embarrassment).  It was his
birthday, so the who audience sang Happy Birthday to him.  He was obviously
moved.  His special present was to be whipped by one of the contestants, who
was wearing a leather costume that showed her body to good effect.  ^_^

Dancing Genma-panda won Best Presentation.  Vampire Hunter D won Best of
Show.

After the masquerade, a special tribute was paid to the Japanese Guests of
Honor.  Again, the audience was whipped into a frenzy giving them thanks.

At midnight, I went to go see AD Vision's premiere of the Shin KOR movie.
The ADV guy apologized that they only had the dub available.  As I watched
it, I understood why.  I like both dubs and subs, and don't take a strong
position either way on the eternal debate.  But this dub was *awful*.  The
voice actors seemed to be merely reading words off a page.  I couldn't stand
it.  The good thing they did was to make the dialogue a lot less cheesier -
my one big complaint about the sub.  Another curious thing about the dub:
Kyosuke calls Hikaru "Hikaru-chan" (of which I approve); however, she calls
him "Mr. Kasuga".

Back in the video room, I watch the Nuku Nuku pajama party.  Nuku Nuku is
always a crowd pleaser, but the crowd grew less as the night wore on -
understandable, since it was getting rather late in the weekend.

On Sunday there was a massive checkout.  I went to the Dealer's Room to see
if the prices on the Escaflowne CD's had dropped, only to find a fatal flaw
in my plan - everyone had sold out of them.  I really should have known
better - all weekend long, Escaflowne had been a big hit in the video rooms.
I was left only to curse my stupidity.  ^_^

I talked briefly with Bert Van Vliet and Jeanne, went out to get some pizza
with Zen and Lara and some others, then went back to the hotel.  Mark had
stayed behind to watch "Death and Rebirth of Evangelion", only to find that
it was cancelled at the last minute for reasons of copyright - rather a
disappointment.  Finally, I said my goodbyes and left.

The con was rather fun, and very well run for a first time con.  There were
several things that could be improved, and I definitely think they need to
find a better facility.  But to me, the measure of a con's success is how
much fun its participants had, and to my eye a lot of people were having
fun.  I know I did.  I enjoyed meeting lots of folks and talking with them,
and very much look forward to next year's.

If I can avoid Ryan's revenge and Zen's BFS 10K, that is.  ^_^