In a message dated 6/2/98 20:18:00, sterman@uswest.net wrote:

For this con I had Lara Bartram as my con-going buddy.  I picked her up at

the Minneapolis airport and we began our twenty-hour drive from Minneapolis

to Dallas.  The weather was hot and sticky, making rest well-nigh

impossible.  We listened to CD's and admired the Milky Way and talked about

steaming guts and compared dead animals our cats had produced for us.

Lucky you... I've come to the determination that it is FAR better to drive to
a con than fly to one. I drove to Expo last year, and flew to A-Kon this
year... It may take longer, but at least you can listen to what music you want
to, and, more importantly, STOP AND STRETCH YOUR LEGS on occasion.

I had to fly into Minneapolis and then onto Dallas... In the middle of the
night, no less. So I was perpetually tired the entire weekend, and totally
useless Monday.

Got to the hotel at about 10am on Friday, before Zen arrived.  I slept for

an hour or so on a couch.  We took a first pass through the dealer's room.

Wide aisles, easy access to the merchandise - I thought it well-designed.  I

was too tired to do more than glance at the stuff.

The dealer's room had potential to be VERY good, it was plenty large enough
for the number of dealers. Unfortunately, it had a few problems with how they
set it up... One of the two islands had far too much space on the inside, and
could have been thinned by a little bit. The end aisles were too narrow, they
could have widened them a bit and took a bit of space out from the central
aisles.

All in all, tho, a lot of variety, and I couldn't detect any bootleg
merchandise: no SM CDs, no tapes, not even posters or scrolls. I found that
impressive.

Finally, we met Zen and company.  He had his huge Ukyo spatula, which he

carried with him always.  The thing is six feet long and made out of a

single piece of metal.  It's very well-balanced, too.  I could see Ukyo

wielding this thing.

It didn't seem QUITE that long too me, but it was really impressive,
nonetheless (and I still say he should put an edge on the thing.)

Took a second pass through the dealer's room.  I found some new Nuku Nuku

CD's, based on the TV series.  They were a bit expensive, and I wasn't sure

if the voice actors for the TV series were the same as the ones from the

OAV's, so I decided against buying them.  I did sift through some anime and

made some preliminary purchase plans.

Just FYI, AFAIK, the TV series DOES have the same VAs. I know that Megumi is
still in it.

Registration was quick and efficient.  Nice badges with excellent artwork

were produced in seconds for the con-goers.

I just wish that the names on the badges were bigger (or, in the case of those
who didn't pre-reg, had more space to write their name). Throughout the con,
there were only 2 people I was able to identify easily by their name: Blade
and Zen. (Mostly because they wrote it really big)

I tried to enter one of the video rooms.  The room was *way* too small,

*way* too crowded, and I could smell it from ten feet away.  I didn't even

try to get in.

Indubidably, The video rooms at A-Kon were about the same size as those at
BAKA!-Con, and we only drew in 300 people this year. Definitely need to look
at getting more space for their showings in the future.

A bunch of fanfic authors got together at 7pm to go out to an

all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant.  It was expensive - $20 a head - but you

could really eat all the Japanese food you wanted, including all the sushi

your heart desired.  During the trip there, Lara was crushed in the back of

Nick's car between me and Zen.  I thought furiously of baseball stats during

each trip.

Again???

Lara and I braved the stench to watch part one of Ruroni Kenshin.  It was

quite different from what I thought it was going to be.  Not great, but not

bad either.  I may give it another look when it's released commercially.

_IF_ it's released commercially.

One big tip was making sure you know all of the

source material before writing a fanfic.  This especially applies to

Evangelion.

I'll be keeping this in mind and reviewing each tape of EVA at least twice
over the summer as I work on a fic I've got planned (a teaser will come soon.)

After two hours the panel broke up.  A lot of people hung around afterwards

and I talked with them for a while.  One guy had bound all of Thy Inward

Love together and wanted me to autograph it.  I was more than happy to

oblige, egotist that I am.  :)  The talk was interesting and pleasant, and

was the highlight of the con for me.

I'm sure this talk would be a highlight of a con for me, but other than
chatting with Blade and Avatar, I didn't really do that much. Damn my
introverted nature!

Blade showed up in the overflow audience wearing a *very* good (what else?)

Pantyhose Taro costume.  Next year we're going to force him to enter the

cosplay with it.

Er... I sincerely doubt he'll make it next year. During a conversation, he
broke the big news that a few of us had known for a while:

He's gonna be a papa, so his time will PROBABLY not be very free in '99. ^_^

After the cosplay, Lara and I went to the main video room, which was much

larger than its smaller counterparts and well-ventilated.  We watched an

episode of Vampire Princess Miyu, which I had never seen before.  I found

that I liked it.  I'm going to have to get a hold of the OAV's one of these

days.  After VPM, they began the Hentai fest.  I had no desire to watch it

and (believe it or not) neither did Lara.

The large vid room was nice, but still not big enough... Because of the nature
of the room, people couldn't sit in the middle of it (or they'd block the LCD
projector) and it had all those annoying desks that took up space people could
have been sitting in. I think it might have been able to seat 100 people, and
that's being charitable. I had to stand through much of the music video
contest, and all of EVA 13, and many times as I passed by it, I noticed a
crowd of people at each of the entrances trying to see... A-Kon definitely
needs more space for video in the future.

All in all, it was a nice Con, I'd like to go again, but sincerely doubt I'll
be able to afford it in the future... unless transportation becomes amazingly
cheaper.

Damien Roc