The Otakon Diaries, Part 3

(Yes, I know, I promised I wouldn’t be late. But yesterday I went straight from work to Hanover to see the Simpsons Movie, which I absolutely hated, but apparently am the only person who thinks so. I’ll talk about that later, possibly tomorrow night. Anyway, I didn’t have a chance to get home and post this until now.)

Friday (Day 1 of the Con)

Finally, after long drives and secret disguises, Otakon 2007 had finally begun. The doors opened at 9, but we didn’t get there until 11 AM or so. Because we’re cool like that.

Anyway, here’s a breakdown of what we saw throughout the day.

Disgaea: Saw about 10 minutes of the first episode, thought it was shit. Ironically, I had pretty much played only 10 minutes of the game, and thought it was awesome, but never got the chance to play it again. But yeah, this show sucked. Unnecessary titty humor and overused jokes doomed it from the start. Also, I have a feeling La Pucelle Tactics would’ve lent itself much, much better to an anime. But that’s just me. On a side note, it became painfully obvious that fat nerds LOVE titty humor. Like, seriously, it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. Since we (Jonny and I) weren’t as easily amused, we left after a little bit and looked for something else. Thumbs down.

Howl’s Moving Castle: I had already seen this, but Jonny hadn’t, and since it was playing in the giant 35MM theater, I figured I might as well treat myself again. I really, really love this movie. I still don’t quite understand everything that happens in the second half, and the English dub kind of switches between good and bad (Gene Simmons – no, not that one – was great as Sophie’s old lady voice. Emily Mortimer as her younger self? Not so much), but to me, it’s just such a fantastic movie to sit and watch. Perhaps the large theater setting owes itself better to the movie than watching it in your home. One thing that this movie reminded me of was that Joe Hisaishi is one of the best damn musical directors ever. I can’t believe how good the score is for this movie. So yeah, thumbs way up.

Gun X Sword: This show really had a lot of potential. It was like a cross between Trigun and Cowboy Bebop, but therein lied the problem; it was almost literally Spike Spiegel in an episode of Trigun. Sure, there were differences, such as Van wearing a tuxedo instead of a suit, or that he had cool armor on and a wacky swordish weapon. And sure, the whole thing kind of collapsed in the end of the first episode when he just turned into some boring mech (note to readers; despite being a huge Eva fan, I think mechs are incredibly boring), which I’m pretty sure never happened in Bebop or Trigun. In other words, it seemed oddly familiar, but the things it did different weren’t really that cool. I suppose I’d give it another shot if I had the time, though. Thumbs in the middle.

The game room and lunch: Jonny and I, the King of Fighters Masters that we were, went into the game room looking for a fight. In years past, they tended to have KOF 98, in which our experience was minimal because of it’s limited US release, and KOF 99, in which we had played a little more often, since it was easily available for PS1 and the Cast and pretty much got us into KOF in the first place. The last two years, I would camp myself in front of the KOF 99 system and just pound the shit out of dudes all day. I almost never lost. This is more likely because the better KOF players were at the 98 machines, but I digress. Anyway, neither game was here this year. They did, however, have a modded PS2 running KOF XI, which was nice.

Now, for Jonny and I, the benchmark for KOF awesomeness is by far KOF 2000. 2000 had the perfect mix of characters, hilarious guest strikers, and each fighter was perfectly balanced and had all their moves intact, how we remember them. King had her Surprise Rose, Ryo had his fireball, Vanessa’s dragonpunches had a much more pronounced parry at the start, Clark’s tackle could actually have moves done out of it, it was all good. Later (and earlier) editions seemed to omit certain things. In 2001, King was missing a few moves, and the fighting wasn’t as smooth. Plus, there was the addition of characters like May Lee, K9999 and Foxy, who no one cared about or ever used. 2002 was alright, but there weren’t as many characters as before, and Ryo lost his spinning punch, if I remember correctly. 2003 sucked, in my book. It looked pretty, with everyone getting new sprites, but it played like shit. Neowave was pretty good, although I’ll be damned if I ever play a fighting game on that awful X-Box control pad.

Which brings us back to KOF XI. Not too bad. Pretty to look at, and has the inclusion of B Jenet, which to me is like an injection of Dr. Porkenheimer’s Boner Juice. But there’s also some ridiculously cheap characters, like Shion and Jyazu, who need to be removed immediately. And where’s Joe? How can you have a KOF game without Joe? For someone who’s as picky as I am about fighting games, there were just a few things I didn’t like here. Hopefully, KOF XII will deliver on the hype, although I’m skeptical. Since Playmore took over, they haven’t made one as good as 2000.

I’ll get back to the anime in a second, but I should also note the existence of the fag at the Street Fighter Alpha 3 TV. Sure, he was pretty good, although the majority of his offense consisted of CONSTANT crouching punches coupled with Birdie’s overhead splash. Yes, his strategy was to trip the shit out of you, then switch up with overhead attacks that broke crouching blocks. This guy was a fuckhead. Fuck that guy. Learn to play the game for real, cocksucker. Fuck.

Okay, I’m better. I should also note that Mountain Dew was there giving out free cans of their newest drink; Game Fuel. Of course, it’s basically just LiveWire with a Halo 3 can, but still, this was cause for excitement. Especially since it sounded so close to Gay Fuel. We had some delicious pizza across the street, wherein I met a person also wearing a Sexy64 t-shirt (I had been wearing mine this day). However, typical of my warm, outgoing personality, I didn’t want any part of conversation with this man and instead muttered a few syllables to acknowledge him and scurried to a nearby table to ingest delicious pizza.

The Hidden Fortress: This was an old Kurosawa movie with Toshiro Mifune, and I’ll say that it was pretty damn good. A tad long, but still pretty good. Basically, there were these two idiot farmers on their way back from a war, but they can’t go straight home or else they’ll be killed at the border by the enemy. So they take a detour along a mountainside where they start finding pieces of gold. They meet up with Mifune, dressed as the Jolly Green Giant, who is a famous general. He helps them return to their home, but not before they constantly try to steal his gold. There’s also this chick who may or may not be hot. She has a decent body, but she has a truly disgusting voice and the scariest eyebrows ever. Judge for yourself. Otherwise, a funny, watchable movie. It reminded me of Dynasty Warriors, or rather, Samurai Warriors. Thumbs up.

Citizen Dog: A Thai movie, although no Muay Thai was featured, to the best of my memory. Still, a pretty solid, funny movie.

Basically, Pod is a guy who’s unimportant. He works boring jobs, he’s lonely, all that jazz. He meets a kind-of-hot chick named Jin, who is obsessive compulsive and works in his office as a maid. He falls in love with her, despite the fact that she’s batshit crazy and doesn’t care about him, and the rest of the movie is him trying to impress her.

There’s also zombies, rapping geckos, disembodied fingers, talking teddy bears, children acting like adults, hippies, plastic bottles and a white book that leads to the best joke in the movie, which I won’t spoil but I can’t imagine any of the 12 people reading this will ever see this or any of these movies. All in all, a funny, well-done movie, even if the end drags on for about 10 minutes too long. Thumbs up.

Game Room, part 2: So I made my triumphant return to the game room, where I went straight back to KOF XI and proceeded to unleash my legendary HAMMER strategy with Ryo. It’s simple. Hammer the fuck out of people with karate chops. Jumping chops, standing chops, donitchkens (our term for Ryo’s forward-back-forward-punch move) , if it’s a chop, it’s gonna happen. This, combined with dragon punches and lightning legs knockout kicks, made me almost unstoppable. I won six straight rounds before being dethroned by some shit-ass boss character. But yeah, I’m really good with Ryo. That’s what happens when you get the HAMMER.

Future Police Urashiman: MVP of the weekend. Best damn show I’ve ever seen. The greatest anime series of all time. Only some of this is facetious.

Ryuu is a wacky teenager from the 80s who is magically transported 60 years into the future! Bogus! Fortunately, Neo Tokyo’s solution for such problems is to not only make him a cop, but give him a totally sweet Beetle that can drive on walls (the Magna Beetle, as it’s called) and give him a super science mech suit called Urashiman or something.

I only saw two episodes. In both, Ryuu chases down the bad guys in the Magna Beetle in an awesome car chase, then when he has them cornered, he turns into Urashiman, who has a rad helmet and can deflect bullets with his forearm. Just find it somewhere. You’ll like it. I guaran-damn-tee it. It’s hilarious, both intentionally and unintentionally. Thumbs way the fuck up.

(I should note that the theme song to this show contains the random lyric “Midnight Submarine/I want to ride the Midnight Submarine with you”, which is, in fact, the greatest lyric in the history of our sport. As such, you will probably find me referencing the Midnight Submarine once a day for the next 20 years. Just a warning.)

Cat Girl Kiki: The summary is simple. A dude finds a cat, adopts it, and then wakes up the next morning to find it transformed into a hot Japanese girl. I don’t quite know what I was expecting from it, since the plot made it painfully obvious that this movie would not be an emotional tour de force or anything.

But yeah, this movie was bad. Really bad. Or so I imagine; we all walked out after about 20 minutes, following the scene in which the protagonist teaches hot Japanese girl how to say her name, which is Kiki, of course. This scene had to have been 40 minutes long. I wanted to go GameLife Andrew and murder everyone, thus changing their lives forever (sorry, that never gets old for me).

Although I will say that as we were leaving for the night, we stopped by the theater again, where we saw Catgirl Kiki getting fucked in the shower. I probably should’ve expected that. Thumbs down.

Meatball Machine: Shitty city. Boring as hell. Thumbs down. I don’t even feel like explaining it, although I’ll admit that we all left about 20 minutes into this one too. Thumbs down even more than when I just said it one sentence ago.

And so that was the end of day one. Likely the best day, all things considered, with Future Police Urashiman and Howl’s Moving Castle on the bill. Day two would be good too, but the night would be even better.

The Otakon Diaries, Part 2

Thursday (1 Day before the Con)

Our original plan was for Jonny, my brother Dom and myself to all drive from Brooklyn to Baltimore. Unfortunately, we discovered Dom couldn’t get Thursday off at his fancy little job, so the trip was back to Jonny and I, still in a car with no cassette capabilities and a shitty radio. On the plus side, we finally managed to get the Leppard tape out of the deck, but alas, Stay Hungry refused to play altogether when we put it back in.

After leaving Brooklyn via the Verrazano Bridge (home of the re-fucking-diculous $9 toll), we were back on the road again, driving through an incredible rainstorm and stopping at least twice for Mountain Dew and pissbreaks, the latter brought upon by the former. We left New York at about 11:30 AM and didn’t arrive at Baltimore until 7 PM. In case you didn’t know, the drive should only be four hours. Lots of rain, lots of traffic.

Now, traditionally at Otakon, although the festivities begin on Friday, you’re supposed to stop by the Convention Center on Thursday to pick up your registration materials: your badge/necklace thingy, your schedule, and a bunch of other useless crap like magazines and advertisements. In the past, one would arrive at the Convention Center at 4 PM or so, then stand in a line in the blistering Baltimore sun for an hour, slowly moving around the center until you finally get indoors, where you then wait for another 20 minutes until you can reach the desk and get your shit.

This year, things were different. Since Dom couldn’t make it, he was going to have to arrive early on Friday, sit in a line and miss the showings of early films to get his materials. So I had to come up with a plan. A plan so cunning, not even John “Hannibal” Smith could come up with it. First, I would grab my materials with everyone else in line. Then, the magic would start. I’d run to a bathroom, shave my unshaven stubbly half-beard, put on my rad shades and a baseball cap. Magically, I would now become my brother, despite him being a good 30-40 pounds lighter than me. I was like James Bond, using disguises and my cunning wit, not to mention my handsome manly wiles, to outsmart the employees of the Baltimore Convention Center.

Here’s what ended up happening. In the car, I broke my shades trying to use them to eject the Def Leppard cassette. When we stopped by Joel’s house, I forgot both a razor and a hat. I did, however, remember to stuff my pocket with my immortal 2002 Red Sox Rickey Henderson t-shirt. My logic, of course, being that I would be presenting my brother’s Massachusetts license, and the Red Sox are in Massachusetts, so there’d be no question that I was in fact, the man on the license. Therefore, what was once a grand disguise, complete with change in headgear, shirt, facial hair and eyewear, was now just a slight change in shirt.

One thing that was very nice, however, was that since we had arrived at 7 PM, we had arrived after the rush of people in line. Yes, apparently, the reason we waited in sweltering heat the last two years was because we were much like the other nerds who desperately wanted to be among the first in line. Note to self; arrive later in the future. As such, we didn’t even have to wait outside; we just walked right into the Convention Center, stood in line for five minutes, and got our stuff. This meant as well that I wouldn’t have to wait four another hour for my potentially failed subterfuge operation.

I got my shit, and the ruse was on. Despite making two big mistakes, I still somehow made it to the desk. Mistake #1, I decided on switching my shirt while in line, which only brought attention to myself. I used the Mr. Bean method of removing a shirt underneath another shirt through gyrating and lots of pulling. Fortunately, no one said a thing. Mistake #2, after arriving at the front of the line, wherein a fat guy tells you which desks are open, I got nervous and proceeded to walk across the giant room to the other row of ticket windows, where I positioned myself amongst a group of people all getting their stuff.  I was certainly lucky that not a single security guard nor anyone else noticed that I had just cut approximately 100 people in a separate line.

Now you’re probably asking yourself, what is this fag so afraid of? They won’t recognize him twice, and he won’t get in trouble if he was caught. Well, you’re right on both accounts. But I still found ways to fuck it up and overthink it.

I had reached my final hurdle. Giving the window Dom’s ID and pretending it was me. I noticed Dom’s lips, when his mouth was closed, was much wider than mine, or at least it was 7 years ago when the fag got his license picture taken. So I took special care to smile unnaturally, lips spread wide (not those lips, asshole), when the lady was checking out my brother’s ID. I even made sure to speak in a different tone of voice, apparently just in case this lady might somehow know what Dom sounded like.

And wouldn’t you know it, they gave me the materials and sent me on my way. The motherfuckers didn’t suspect a single thing. I am the baddest motherfucker in the world.

With my amazing performance behind me, we all went back to Joel’s, where we played Guitar Hero for a few hours until Dom arrived on a later bus from New York. We got some drinks at a bar with Joel’s girlfriend, returned home, and began what basically is the highlight of Otakon for all of us.

We grabbed our little yellow highlighters and began highlighting what we wanted to see. Honestly, it’s the most fun all weekend.

“What’s Science Girl 2000 Ukiyama about?”

“Let’s see. It says here, ‘Ukiyama is a regular girl who has one little problem: Her science club just murdered President Nixon! Can Ukiyama find true love?”

“Awesome! Let’s check it out!”

Pretty much every sentence goes like that. And it’s magical fun. Although I couldn’t help but notice one glaring omission.

There was no dedicated room for martial arts movies. In fact, there was exactly one martial arts movie on the schedule altogether.

What. The. Fuck.

The past two years, all I had done at Otakon was watch radical martial arts movies and other wacky live action movies from Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Korea and the Phillipines.  This year? 15 titles total. Most of which seemed uninteresting by their descriptions.

So I wasn’t too happy. I was certain that Otakon 2007 was going to suck balls in a big way. I went to bed grumpy and hoping that something might steal the show.

But I had a bad feeling that, when smelly fat guys, ugly nerds, rabbity-faced broads and gay porn-loving paddlefags converged upon me, and I had no retreat, that I was just going to snap.

The Otakon Diaries, Part 1

Yes, one week later, I am here with my account of Otakon 2007.

Otakon was something I wasn’t quite looking forward to this summer. I’d gone for the last two years, and found myself enjoying what was shown and discovering some awesome movies (Born to Fight, Battlefield Baseball), although generally frustrated with the people surrounding me. Disgusting nerds, fat chicks wearing outfits they shouldn’t have been wearing, smelly people, assholes talking during movies, people blocking exits to escalators so they can pose for their faggy pictures, dickheads at the game room who refused to give up the controller, and most of the others who filled up the sea of social retardation.

I didn’t think I’d go this year. I was working a new job, seven days a week, and couldn’t afford to take extended time off. I’d miss out on up to $500, which is one month’s rent and food. Not that I need it now, but I’d like to save it up for the upcoming winter, so I wouldn’t have to work at all.

Alas, a few months ago, my brother called me. “What’s your address on your driver’s license?” I told him, not quite sure of why he needed it. He then asked me a few more questions, then told me he was signing me up for Otakon.

I didn’t raise any objections.

Although my enthusiasm was minimal for the majority of the summer, I found myself looking forward to it as the week approached. I’d get to take a road trip with my best friend Jonny, chill in New York for a night and watch a shitty martial arts movie, as we are prone to do at my brother’s apartment, drive down to Baltimore and hang out with my buddy Joel, who has a ridiculously nice house in a beautiful area of the city. There, we would play video games, grab our schedules and highlight the movies we wanted to see.

And it pretty much played out that way. And wouldn’t you know it, I had a good time. But enough preparation. Let’s get into the details. And don’t worry, I will update this every day, because it’s all already written. Now you can pace yourself.

Wednesday (2 Days before the Con)

It rained, so work was canceled for the day, which was nice. Now we could leave for New York earlier. The plan was simple: Meet up with Jonny, take his car to Brooklyn, then sleep over for the night. If he got tired, I could take over driving, even though it’s only four hours. I’d bring tons of radical CDs, we’d rock out all the way down, and everything would be awesome.

So what happened? Well, first, I had really bad diarrhea. Like, stop by my mom’s old office so I could use the bathroom bad. This probably came from the delicious Big Papa burger I had earlier in the day from A & W. I do not regret this one bit. Anyway, my explosive colon caused me to be late to Jonny’s by an hour or so. No worries.

I get there, get in his car, and discover it’s a stick shift. Shit. I can’t drive a stick. Oh well, looks like Jonny’s gonna have to drive all the way. Next, we see that he does not in fact have a CD player. Rather, it’s a simple cassette player. Shit. I only brought CDs, and left my MP3 player and cassette adapter at home. Oh well, we’ll just listen to the radio or, god forbid, talk to each other. Plus, Jonny has Stay Hungry by Twisted Sister on cassette. That’s good for at least three playthroughs.

So we’re on the road. We rock out appropriately to all nine tracks on Stay Hungry. Then we eject it and insert a Def Leppard cassette. We listen for a little bit, then get bored with it. We try to eject it. Nothing happens. We try again. Nothing happens. This continues for the next 3 hours, as we travel to the merry old land of Brooklyn. And since we both discovered that Connecticut radio stations unanimously suck (as does Jonny’s radio’s ability to find them), this meant our voyage was largely unaccompanied by music.

I’ll spare you the details of our conversations, but as you can tell, that’ll be likely the only details I’ll spare you of.

We arrive in Brooklyn, find a parking spot a few blocks from my brother’s house, and go in for the night. On the way, we stopped by a convenience store and picked up a few bags of cheeseballs. These, combined with copious amounts of Mountain Dew, were to be our accompaniment to the cinema classic of the night, Best of the Best 2, starring Eric Roberts and an early appearance by the late, great Christopher Penn.

So yeah, this movie was awesome. Basically, Christopher Penn stops by this underground fight club in Las Vegas and challenges the owner, who is a giant German man named Brakkus. He’s awesome. If he wins, he gets the casino in which the club is hidden in (and Brakkus owns). Christopher Penn was unaware of the consequences of his defeat, however, as he is murdered in the ring by Brakkus’ enormous arms. Eric Roberts, friend to Christopher Penn and one ugly motherfucker, decides to avenge his friend’s death with the help of his Asian friend, whose name escapes me at the moment, and likely will never return to me. So Eric Roberts and Asian friend learn how to fight better than they already can, with the help of Asian friend’s Indian friends. Or family. I can’t remember if Asian friend was supposed to actually be Indian. Like, teepee Indian, not 7-11 Indian.

Anyway, yeah, they fight Brakkus and beat him. Awesome movie. We play some videogames (the immortal Art of Fighting Collection, which I had just purchased for basically $5, was most certainly the highlight) and go to bed. Prior to sleeping, we discuss who would win in assorted fights, primarily numerous people against Brakkus. Brakkus wins most of the time, at least in our simulations. Tomorrow, we would head to Baltimore and receive our passes.

But a problem arose… my brother couldn’t get the day off. How can we get his ticket now?

Three Weeks Later

 I haven’t touched the site in three weeks. I’m not dead, nor have I been locked in my bedroom with boxes of Fig Newtons, crying over the Chris Benoit situation. Honestly, I felt like shit for the two days afterwards, and have generally been fine ever since. I think about it often, but it doesn’t eat at me like it did.

I mean, let’s be clear here; Chris Benoit was one of my five favorite wrestlers ever. Benoit, Bret Hart, Chris Jericho, Ric Flair and Curt Hennig. That’s pretty much the list. And while some of those guys had periods where I wasn’t as big fans of them for one reason or another (Jericho’s “King of Bling Bling” stage, Flair’s autobiography, Bret’s unwatchable WCW tenure, Hennig’s equally unwatchable and significantly more depressing WCW career), it pretty much took Chris Benoit to kill his wife and kid for me to hate him.

The sad thing is, I find myself still defending him. When the story first broke, I was adamant that there was no foul play. No gunshots or knives or anything, so it had to be carbon monoxide poisoning. When they said they were investigating it as a homicide, I said it was just a formality. Even when it was clear Benoit had actually killed them, and when I knew I could never look at wrestling the same again, I still felt the need to defend him. When the police said he used a version of the Crippler on his son, I rejected it and still somehow tried to protect his memory, as though somehow him not using his finishing move on his own son made him somewhat less despicable.

The media reaction has been predictably silly. I find myself watching Nancy Grace, not because her show is any good (it might be the worst show on television that doesn’t prominently feature Carlos Mencia), but because Bryan Alvarez has been a guest on it a few times. For those of you who don’t know about him, Bryan Alvarez runs Figure Four Weekly, a great wrestling website that covers news stories in an opinionated, but usually fair manner. He rarely goes for the big sensationalist headline (unless the story calls for it, such as VINCE MCMAHON BLOWN TO SMITHEREENS!) and instead makes sure his facts are straight before opening his mouth. He also has regular radio interviews with guys like Lance Storm, Vampiro, Konnan and Paul Bearer on, which are always interesting. Looking at him and hearing his voice, you’d think he’s some 17 year old kid writing NEWZ in his basement, but the guy’s actually a somewhat accomplished indy wrestler in his mid-30s, with a lot of personal relationships with guys in the business. Anyway, yeah, his appearances have made Nancy Grace a somewhat tolerable show, although the real star has been Susan Moss, also known as “The Woman With the Mouth”. She’s a family lawyer who makes silly statements (“This doc should be under lock!” and “Mothers, let your boys grow up to be cowboys, not wrestlers!” being the two most prominent), has an abnormal amount of hair on her head, and has this giant mouth that exaggerates every syllable coming out of it. She’s awesome.

Anyway, back to the story.  When the details finally made themselves clear, and Chris Benoit was revealed to the world as a crazed, homicidal, suicidal maniac, I posted on this site (and a few other places, maybe because I was looking for attention or something) that I was done with wrestling. But the sad truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever be done with wrestling. I think its too much a part of who I am for me to just let it go. It’s like an addiction or an abusive relationship. I haven’t watched a Raw, Smackdown or ECW since the week after McMahon blew up, and before that, I had maybe watched 3 shows in the last 4 months. But by listening to Alvarez and checking the interweb, I’m well aware of everything that happened. I didn’t watch Raw this week, but I know off the top of my head that Santino Marella said he felt like a frog (or fraud, no one’s quite sure), that William Regal and Hacksaw Jim Duggan made dick jokes, causing Ron Simmons to say “damn!”, and that the main event of the evening was a verbal debate between John Cena and Bobby Lashley, the latter of whom should not be within 20 feet of a microphone. I haven’t watched a TNA show in a year, and I can tell you a lot of what happened this wee, too.
I can’t escape this business. I reference Hulk Hogan in daily conversations. I put my drunk friends in figure fours and sharpshooters for fun. I’m too much of a fan of this ugly, deadly industry to let a man who murdered his wife and kid suddenly stop me from enjoying it. It’s certainly disappointing, but I figure there’s worse bad habits to be found.

I really wanted this to be longer and cover more, but I’m going to Baltimore tonight for Otakon and I have to go to work in -10 minutes. So I’ll be back sometime relatively soon with my Otakon diary.