That was the con that was...
Aug. 14th, 2006 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterThis is the story of my weekend at GenCon.
After spending a nervous evening getting ready, making sure I had packed everything, and so on, I got in the cab at 9:00 and we headed uptown to the bus station, with a stop on the way to hit the ATM. Got my tickets without much trouble, checked my baggage early, and we were off.
Not much to tell about the first leg that wasn't told in my voice message the other day. Made good time, got to St. Louis on schedule, and I was able to put some more charge in my phone and iPod.
However, when it came time to board the St. Louis to Indianapolis bus, it became clear there were more people wanting to board than there were seats to board into. We moved slowly up the line, standing around soaking our clothing with our sweat in the hot and humid air, and when I got halfway there the bus was full, but they said they were sending for another one and it would be there in "just a few minutes." "That usually means 'an hour,'" another passenger said gloomily. But it was more like a half hour 'til the next bus pulled up and we could climb aboard.
I spent the first few hours trying to doze, then finally gave it up and started reading a book to pass the time on the way there. We stopped in Effingham for breakfast, a 20-minute stop that turned into 40 minutes for some reason, putting us even further behind schedule, so that when we pulled into Indy it was about 9:30, an hour or so after we were supposed to arrive.
I called my friend who was getting me a free ticket to the con. Caught him in the shower; he said he would call me back in a few minutes, and to come on over to the convention center. So I did. My bags at that point weighed approximately a ton, but somehow I managed to stagger the half mile from the station to the convention center, with frequent rest stops. Along the way, the belt pouch that I had bought to carry camera and water and stuff in…tore right off my belt. I guess it wasn't as sturdy as I had hoped it would be.
Finally made it to the con when my friend called me, asked me to pick up a schedule and meet him at a room in the Westin hotel. I grabbed a couple of con goodie bags, which I thought would have the schedule in them, and went up; it turned out they didn't. I borrowed his shower to de-stink after the sweaty trip, then we met up with a couple of other Robotech fans (David Farris, aka rabidsoutherncrossfan/Brooklyn Red Leg, and Stephen Bierce) and headed downstairs to the Robotech Retrospective panel. The panel was pretty cool, we got to see the trailer for the aborted Robotech 3000 project in higher resolution than you can see it on robotech.com, and Tom Bateman talked about the history of the franchise. I'll probably do something up in more detail on it for RDF Underground.
After that, we went for lunch; I asked my bro for a recommendation and he suggested the Rock Bottom brewpub. We ate there; it was a bit pricey but good. Then we all decided to wander around the con for a while. I took my laptop with me, to see if I could sniff out any free wireless hotspots. As it turned out, I need not have bothered; my wireless card was broken, though I didn't find that out until later.
Finally, I wanted to deposit my bag in my friend's room so I would be free to wander around the con that afternoon, doing the dealer room and so forth, but I encountered a problem: my cellphone had run down entirely, and I didn't know where any of my friends would be—and I didn't have his number except on my cellphone's speed-dial. Someone suggested I could ask a hotel front desk to see if they had one in their lost and found, but the one I checked didn't. So then I headed down to the Circle Center Mall, still carrying my old Wallstreet bag which was starting to weigh a ton, to see if I could find somewhere I could borrow a charger for long enough to call him. I found a Cingular shop where the clerk was nice enough to abrogate her store's "we don't charge cellphones" policy to let me hook up to a charger for long enough to call my friend and arrange to meet again. Then I staggered back to the meeting place to deposit my laptop.
By now it was starting to get pretty late in the evening, and we decided to find something cheap to eat; we settled on Steak & Shake, where the waiter made several mistakes on my order. After that, it was 9:00, about time for me to get picked up by my brother Alex. After a bit of difficulty getting him to find me, we hooked up and headed to his house in Broadripple, about 8 miles away as the crow flies.
Alex showed off his house, including the slightly peculiar painting hanging in his living room, and then we watched a couple episodes of Genesis Climber Mospeada, which I'd sent him as a birthday present but he hadn't gotten around to viewing yet. Then he had me play through a couple missions of the Robotech: Invasion PS2 game. It was about midnight by the time I went to bed.
It was about noon by the time I got up on Saturday. I was so tired, I slept for about twelve hours. That's one of my major regrets of the convention, that I slept so late. There was so much stuff I could have seen in the hours prior to noon, if I'd only gotten to bed earlier. Sigh. Oh well, there's always next con.
Alex and I headed on in to the con, wandered around the dealer room for a while looking at this and that. I bought something as a birthday present for my Dad (I can't say what, in case he's reading this; I'll come back and edit it in after I've given it to him), then it was about 2:45, time to head over to the Funimation panel. I arrived in time for the tail end of the ADV one, after which I had the chance to ask Matt Greenfield about ADV's project to adapt David Weber's book Mutineer's Moon into an anime; he explained to me some of what had happened about that and suggested I talk to him again about it after the "State of the Anime Industry" panel the next day.
The Funimation panel was all right, though there wasn't much of interest there for Robotech fans; they basically just mentioned Shadow Chronicles would be coming out and that was it. I headed on back to the dealer room to wander around a little, got my picture taken with Kevin Siembieda of Palladium Games, then found Alex again in time for the Shadow Chronicles panel. Alas, we were not to get to see the entire anime, but we did get to see some of the documentaries that will be on the DVD, and a 4:15 clip from it. There was also a Robotech trivia contest in which I won a free T-shirt (I gave it to my brother, since I'd already gotten one), and then my brother won a free T-shirt with the answer to a question about the Robotech version of a Mospeada episode we'd watched the night before. It was just lucky that they hadn't changed that particular character's name in the dub.
After that, we all went out to eat—me, Alex, David, Stephen, and a couple of Japanese-pop-culture bloggers who we'd all met. First we had a beer at the Alcatraz brewpub while we were waiting for our reservation to become available at another place, then we moved across the street to the Ram, another brewpub. We ended up with me, Alex, and the two pop-culture reporters sharing one booth, and our conversation ranged wide over many geekly topics, largely including Doctor Who and James Bond. The food was good, though by this time I was full enough I couldn't eat much and brought half my sandwich home.
After the dinner had ended, it was 10:00, and time to head home. We watched three more episodes of Mospeada, and then I crashed.
Sunday, I got up around 9ish, with the intention of meeting a couple of friends from City of Heroes whom I'd been trying to get in touch with all through the con but we somehow never managed to touch base. Halfway to the con, I realized I'd forgotten my badge, so we had to go back for it. By the time I got there, it was about 11:30.
Still, I managed to meet my friends, whose in-game characters are "Cygnata" and "Kelp Plankton." We hung around for a while, wandered by the Cryptic booth and I briefly met and shook hands with Jack "Statesman" Emmert, then I had to go in time to catch the State of the Anime Industry panel. The panel was interesting, and I learned more about what happened with Mutineer's Moon; I later posted it to Baen's Bar. That left me with about an hour free before the Robotech free-for-all panel.
I headed back to the dealer room with the intention of finding some good artists to do commissions of some of my City of Heroes characters. I found some good ones and commissioned two of Pouncetta Purrfect, my L47 En/En Brute, and one of Serena Chow, a character I write about in another setting. Probably spent too much, but my brother insisted on paying for my $85 bus ticket, so I had a little more cash to spend. One of the artists was particularly impressed with the commission sheet that I had ready, on which I'd taken a number of screenshots of the character and included her ID card and personality notes. It was too late for me to be able to pick up the art, as the dealer room was going to be closing shortly, but I was just fine with having it mailed to me. In fact, that would sort of stretch out the good stuff I would be getting from the con, so it could almost be considered an advantage.
Then I headed over to the NCSoft booth, met and chatted and got my picture taken with Cricket, the new NCSoft community representative, and talked with her about various characters and so forth. I showed her my artist commission sheet, on which I had a screencap of Infurno's ID card, and she noted that I had all the good Fire Tanker powers. Then I realized I was late for the Robotech panel and headed on over.
The panel included a fun discussion called the "Robotech Rumble" where they took 8 different mecha from all eras, pitted them against each other in duels, and the winners of the duels moved on to the next round. It took a while as the judges' panel had tie votes on every round except the very first one and the very last one, but in the end, the winner was determined. And the winner was…well, I think I'll let you wait 'til I dub the panel off my microcassette deck for inclusion in the RDF Underground podcast to find out.
And after that…the con was over, pretty much. I hung out in front of a bigscreen TV that was looping videogame advertisements and trailers ("I am your shield. I am your sword.") for a while, then wandered around until Alex could come pick me up.
We got dinner at the Boston Market and took it to Alex's place to eat, where I got to encounter Alex's wife Rachael for the first time this trip (she was working the emergency room night shift so was sleeping when I was awake, and vice versa). I presented Alex and Rachael with the Christmas presents I had meant to give them last year, and had never gotten around to shipping to them—a pair of Mercedes Lackey novels, personally autographed by the author—and then Rachael went off to work and Alex and I played a game of Shadowfist, then sat around and watched an episode of Monk and an episode of Psych before heading to bed.
Got up Monday morning around 10ish, and packed up my stuff. To my extreme annoyance, I couldn't find the "swag bag" I got my first day of GenCon. I can only guess that I left it in my friend's room by accident, rather than packing it in my duffle bag as I had intended. I am very sad about this, as I had really been looking forward to rummaging through the swag bag at length and seeing all the cool stuff I had gotten. I know that a "Bootleg Edition" of City of Heroes had been included, a nice crystal die, and various CCG starter sets. Bleah.
I end the con with a number of cool things—the chance to attend the Robotech panels and see Shadow Chronicles footage, the chance to meet friends, commission artwork, and so on—but also a number of regrets. I regret the wasted hours walking around with my laptop Friday evening. I regret sleeping so long on Saturday morning and missing out on so much of the con. I regret not having the chance to spend more time with my City of Heroes friends, or with the City of Heroes reps who were at the convention for that matter. I regret not having the chance to spend much time doing the dealer room. I regret all the niggling little things, like my earphones breaking, my belt pack breaking, losing my goodie bag.
I also regret that I never got the chance to fetch my Shadowfist cardboxes and go to the room where Shadowfist was being played. I almost never have the chance to play it with anyone who actually knows how, it's sad. I should see if I can get in touch with Z-Man games and find anyone doing Shadowfist game demos and so on in my area.
And finally, I regret not getting in touch with my friends from Eyrie Mafia who were also going to be at the convention. There was so much other stuff to do that getting in touch with them just entirely slipped my mind.
So many regrets. I expect that these, plus the usual post-visit/post-holiday style letdown, will put me in a bit of a black mood over the next few days. Hope I can get over it soon.
I guess I should look at this convention as a bit of a dry run for the next one—which should be even better since it's rolling in the sloughed-off portions of E3. Next time I'll be smarter. I'll take the train from St. Louis, or maybe even fly out of Springfield if the terrorism lockdowns have been relaxed by then. Or maybe I'll even be able to drive myself, I don't know. But I'll get better sleep and do more things.
In just an hour or so, my brother will be picking me up and driving me to the bus station, where I will get to hurry up and wait to board the bus back to St. Louis, thence to Springfield. I will arrive at something like 11:00 tonight, which means I will need to go right home and get right in bed, and still probably not get quite enough sleep before the next day of work. Then I will have to deal with going back to the office and getting back into the daily work routine again. Not looking forward to that.
But I don't regret having gone.
After spending a nervous evening getting ready, making sure I had packed everything, and so on, I got in the cab at 9:00 and we headed uptown to the bus station, with a stop on the way to hit the ATM. Got my tickets without much trouble, checked my baggage early, and we were off.
Not much to tell about the first leg that wasn't told in my voice message the other day. Made good time, got to St. Louis on schedule, and I was able to put some more charge in my phone and iPod.
However, when it came time to board the St. Louis to Indianapolis bus, it became clear there were more people wanting to board than there were seats to board into. We moved slowly up the line, standing around soaking our clothing with our sweat in the hot and humid air, and when I got halfway there the bus was full, but they said they were sending for another one and it would be there in "just a few minutes." "That usually means 'an hour,'" another passenger said gloomily. But it was more like a half hour 'til the next bus pulled up and we could climb aboard.
I spent the first few hours trying to doze, then finally gave it up and started reading a book to pass the time on the way there. We stopped in Effingham for breakfast, a 20-minute stop that turned into 40 minutes for some reason, putting us even further behind schedule, so that when we pulled into Indy it was about 9:30, an hour or so after we were supposed to arrive.
I called my friend who was getting me a free ticket to the con. Caught him in the shower; he said he would call me back in a few minutes, and to come on over to the convention center. So I did. My bags at that point weighed approximately a ton, but somehow I managed to stagger the half mile from the station to the convention center, with frequent rest stops. Along the way, the belt pouch that I had bought to carry camera and water and stuff in…tore right off my belt. I guess it wasn't as sturdy as I had hoped it would be.
Finally made it to the con when my friend called me, asked me to pick up a schedule and meet him at a room in the Westin hotel. I grabbed a couple of con goodie bags, which I thought would have the schedule in them, and went up; it turned out they didn't. I borrowed his shower to de-stink after the sweaty trip, then we met up with a couple of other Robotech fans (David Farris, aka rabidsoutherncrossfan/Brooklyn Red Leg, and Stephen Bierce) and headed downstairs to the Robotech Retrospective panel. The panel was pretty cool, we got to see the trailer for the aborted Robotech 3000 project in higher resolution than you can see it on robotech.com, and Tom Bateman talked about the history of the franchise. I'll probably do something up in more detail on it for RDF Underground.
After that, we went for lunch; I asked my bro for a recommendation and he suggested the Rock Bottom brewpub. We ate there; it was a bit pricey but good. Then we all decided to wander around the con for a while. I took my laptop with me, to see if I could sniff out any free wireless hotspots. As it turned out, I need not have bothered; my wireless card was broken, though I didn't find that out until later.
Finally, I wanted to deposit my bag in my friend's room so I would be free to wander around the con that afternoon, doing the dealer room and so forth, but I encountered a problem: my cellphone had run down entirely, and I didn't know where any of my friends would be—and I didn't have his number except on my cellphone's speed-dial. Someone suggested I could ask a hotel front desk to see if they had one in their lost and found, but the one I checked didn't. So then I headed down to the Circle Center Mall, still carrying my old Wallstreet bag which was starting to weigh a ton, to see if I could find somewhere I could borrow a charger for long enough to call him. I found a Cingular shop where the clerk was nice enough to abrogate her store's "we don't charge cellphones" policy to let me hook up to a charger for long enough to call my friend and arrange to meet again. Then I staggered back to the meeting place to deposit my laptop.
By now it was starting to get pretty late in the evening, and we decided to find something cheap to eat; we settled on Steak & Shake, where the waiter made several mistakes on my order. After that, it was 9:00, about time for me to get picked up by my brother Alex. After a bit of difficulty getting him to find me, we hooked up and headed to his house in Broadripple, about 8 miles away as the crow flies.
Alex showed off his house, including the slightly peculiar painting hanging in his living room, and then we watched a couple episodes of Genesis Climber Mospeada, which I'd sent him as a birthday present but he hadn't gotten around to viewing yet. Then he had me play through a couple missions of the Robotech: Invasion PS2 game. It was about midnight by the time I went to bed.
It was about noon by the time I got up on Saturday. I was so tired, I slept for about twelve hours. That's one of my major regrets of the convention, that I slept so late. There was so much stuff I could have seen in the hours prior to noon, if I'd only gotten to bed earlier. Sigh. Oh well, there's always next con.
Alex and I headed on in to the con, wandered around the dealer room for a while looking at this and that. I bought something as a birthday present for my Dad (I can't say what, in case he's reading this; I'll come back and edit it in after I've given it to him), then it was about 2:45, time to head over to the Funimation panel. I arrived in time for the tail end of the ADV one, after which I had the chance to ask Matt Greenfield about ADV's project to adapt David Weber's book Mutineer's Moon into an anime; he explained to me some of what had happened about that and suggested I talk to him again about it after the "State of the Anime Industry" panel the next day.
The Funimation panel was all right, though there wasn't much of interest there for Robotech fans; they basically just mentioned Shadow Chronicles would be coming out and that was it. I headed on back to the dealer room to wander around a little, got my picture taken with Kevin Siembieda of Palladium Games, then found Alex again in time for the Shadow Chronicles panel. Alas, we were not to get to see the entire anime, but we did get to see some of the documentaries that will be on the DVD, and a 4:15 clip from it. There was also a Robotech trivia contest in which I won a free T-shirt (I gave it to my brother, since I'd already gotten one), and then my brother won a free T-shirt with the answer to a question about the Robotech version of a Mospeada episode we'd watched the night before. It was just lucky that they hadn't changed that particular character's name in the dub.
After that, we all went out to eat—me, Alex, David, Stephen, and a couple of Japanese-pop-culture bloggers who we'd all met. First we had a beer at the Alcatraz brewpub while we were waiting for our reservation to become available at another place, then we moved across the street to the Ram, another brewpub. We ended up with me, Alex, and the two pop-culture reporters sharing one booth, and our conversation ranged wide over many geekly topics, largely including Doctor Who and James Bond. The food was good, though by this time I was full enough I couldn't eat much and brought half my sandwich home.
After the dinner had ended, it was 10:00, and time to head home. We watched three more episodes of Mospeada, and then I crashed.
Sunday, I got up around 9ish, with the intention of meeting a couple of friends from City of Heroes whom I'd been trying to get in touch with all through the con but we somehow never managed to touch base. Halfway to the con, I realized I'd forgotten my badge, so we had to go back for it. By the time I got there, it was about 11:30.
Still, I managed to meet my friends, whose in-game characters are "Cygnata" and "Kelp Plankton." We hung around for a while, wandered by the Cryptic booth and I briefly met and shook hands with Jack "Statesman" Emmert, then I had to go in time to catch the State of the Anime Industry panel. The panel was interesting, and I learned more about what happened with Mutineer's Moon; I later posted it to Baen's Bar. That left me with about an hour free before the Robotech free-for-all panel.
I headed back to the dealer room with the intention of finding some good artists to do commissions of some of my City of Heroes characters. I found some good ones and commissioned two of Pouncetta Purrfect, my L47 En/En Brute, and one of Serena Chow, a character I write about in another setting. Probably spent too much, but my brother insisted on paying for my $85 bus ticket, so I had a little more cash to spend. One of the artists was particularly impressed with the commission sheet that I had ready, on which I'd taken a number of screenshots of the character and included her ID card and personality notes. It was too late for me to be able to pick up the art, as the dealer room was going to be closing shortly, but I was just fine with having it mailed to me. In fact, that would sort of stretch out the good stuff I would be getting from the con, so it could almost be considered an advantage.
Then I headed over to the NCSoft booth, met and chatted and got my picture taken with Cricket, the new NCSoft community representative, and talked with her about various characters and so forth. I showed her my artist commission sheet, on which I had a screencap of Infurno's ID card, and she noted that I had all the good Fire Tanker powers. Then I realized I was late for the Robotech panel and headed on over.
The panel included a fun discussion called the "Robotech Rumble" where they took 8 different mecha from all eras, pitted them against each other in duels, and the winners of the duels moved on to the next round. It took a while as the judges' panel had tie votes on every round except the very first one and the very last one, but in the end, the winner was determined. And the winner was…well, I think I'll let you wait 'til I dub the panel off my microcassette deck for inclusion in the RDF Underground podcast to find out.
And after that…the con was over, pretty much. I hung out in front of a bigscreen TV that was looping videogame advertisements and trailers ("I am your shield. I am your sword.") for a while, then wandered around until Alex could come pick me up.
We got dinner at the Boston Market and took it to Alex's place to eat, where I got to encounter Alex's wife Rachael for the first time this trip (she was working the emergency room night shift so was sleeping when I was awake, and vice versa). I presented Alex and Rachael with the Christmas presents I had meant to give them last year, and had never gotten around to shipping to them—a pair of Mercedes Lackey novels, personally autographed by the author—and then Rachael went off to work and Alex and I played a game of Shadowfist, then sat around and watched an episode of Monk and an episode of Psych before heading to bed.
Got up Monday morning around 10ish, and packed up my stuff. To my extreme annoyance, I couldn't find the "swag bag" I got my first day of GenCon. I can only guess that I left it in my friend's room by accident, rather than packing it in my duffle bag as I had intended. I am very sad about this, as I had really been looking forward to rummaging through the swag bag at length and seeing all the cool stuff I had gotten. I know that a "Bootleg Edition" of City of Heroes had been included, a nice crystal die, and various CCG starter sets. Bleah.
I end the con with a number of cool things—the chance to attend the Robotech panels and see Shadow Chronicles footage, the chance to meet friends, commission artwork, and so on—but also a number of regrets. I regret the wasted hours walking around with my laptop Friday evening. I regret sleeping so long on Saturday morning and missing out on so much of the con. I regret not having the chance to spend more time with my City of Heroes friends, or with the City of Heroes reps who were at the convention for that matter. I regret not having the chance to spend much time doing the dealer room. I regret all the niggling little things, like my earphones breaking, my belt pack breaking, losing my goodie bag.
I also regret that I never got the chance to fetch my Shadowfist cardboxes and go to the room where Shadowfist was being played. I almost never have the chance to play it with anyone who actually knows how, it's sad. I should see if I can get in touch with Z-Man games and find anyone doing Shadowfist game demos and so on in my area.
And finally, I regret not getting in touch with my friends from Eyrie Mafia who were also going to be at the convention. There was so much other stuff to do that getting in touch with them just entirely slipped my mind.
So many regrets. I expect that these, plus the usual post-visit/post-holiday style letdown, will put me in a bit of a black mood over the next few days. Hope I can get over it soon.
I guess I should look at this convention as a bit of a dry run for the next one—which should be even better since it's rolling in the sloughed-off portions of E3. Next time I'll be smarter. I'll take the train from St. Louis, or maybe even fly out of Springfield if the terrorism lockdowns have been relaxed by then. Or maybe I'll even be able to drive myself, I don't know. But I'll get better sleep and do more things.
In just an hour or so, my brother will be picking me up and driving me to the bus station, where I will get to hurry up and wait to board the bus back to St. Louis, thence to Springfield. I will arrive at something like 11:00 tonight, which means I will need to go right home and get right in bed, and still probably not get quite enough sleep before the next day of work. Then I will have to deal with going back to the office and getting back into the daily work routine again. Not looking forward to that.
But I don't regret having gone.
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Date: 2006-08-14 06:41 pm (UTC)