Wackiness Abounds

Hmm. Thoughts are congealing. Need more coffee.

...

Okay, next on our special feature, Cons I've Known is KatsuCon, er, Ichi? Ni? San? One of 'em. Anyway, it was 1996, and I was the heady age of 20, venturing forth once more into the wild unknowns of Virginia. This time, however, instead of using the great highway in the sky, I would be using the great highway on the ground. In other words, it was a Road Trip.

I'd just gotten my apartment, at this time, and piles of my stuff were still strewn across the floor when my ride arrived. My ride was, I'm surprised to say, an Archetype. The Dischordian Babe. Church of the SubGenius stickers adorned the inside of her car, along with the occasional discarded Orbitz(tm) bottle, drained of it's life-giving nutrients and little floaty gelatin balls. Our conversation on the way up mostly consisted of me looking rather stunned as she laid out the high points of her life, which were, sad to say, rather more wacky than the high points of my life. She had actually attended one of those wacky, hippy-esque colleges where wacky Neo-Paganism and Dischordian wonkiness were normal, and her main complaint about Tallahassee was that all the guys seemed to be interested in Relationships, and nobody just wanted to have cheap, meaningless sex any more. (Um, excuse me, are we talking about the same city, here?)

However, she didn't try to sacrifice my soul to the Elder Gods, so she was merely wacky isntead of completely demented. But we digress. And anyway, she talked an associate of hers into letting me have crash space (since we arrived late on Thursday Night, I believe. Or was it Friday. Um. It's been a while. Probably Thursday. Yes.), which was an experience in and of itself. How many otaku[1] can you cram into one double hotel room? I don't think there was a single inch of floor that didn't have someone tucked into it.

Morning came, and I was promptly booted out, to search for my various associates who were supposed to show up at the Con. Most of these I knew off of the Net. From IRC came a handful of people whose names I barely even recall, but whose handles are still clear. Corwin, who I once talked out of offing himself. Gubaba, who named himself after the Obligatory Cute Fuzzy Animal Sidekick from an anime called Macross 7, thus showing himself to be completely mad (but in a good way). And a couple other people whose names I've completely forgotten to the mists of time. From an on-line role-playing server (which I think was called the Complex by that time, but might still have been Calvin. It's been so long I can't remember) came Philip "Phil" Moyer from the East Coast, Amy "General Chaos" Borden from Illinois, and Eric "Stirge" Sturgeon from Arizona.

Yes, Arizona.

To Virginia.

By way of Illinois to pick up Amy.

This requires a digression.

Stirge, you see, was quite, quite mad. He decided that he'd like to go to KatsuCon and meet some of the people he'd been hanging out with on line. Amy also was keen to go, and since Illinois is (vaguely) between Arizona and Virginia, it made sense to go there first.

Now, it should be noted that Stirge's vehicle of the time was a VW Microbus.

An old VW Microbus.

An old VW Microbus that proceeded to cough up important bits of itself somewhere in Amy's home town.

Eventually the pair rented a car to reach the Con, but lost precious time in the process, and left me quite concerned for quite a while, wondering if they'd been kidnapped by aliens while en-route or something.

Regardless, the first day was spent doing Con Stuff, meeting up with Corwin and Co, going to the Dealer's Room, watching subtitled anime (the first episode of Slayers Next, which was still only a fan-subbed dream at that point), watching unsubtitled anime (the first episode of the Saber Marionette J series, which is another digression for another time), and going to Waffle House, where Corwin and Co were very disturbed at how hospitable the waitresses were (this was technically In The South, after all). ("Be mean, sardonic and bitter! Please! I can't... stand... the courtesy!!")

Corwin also provided crash space for the night, which was good, as this was much less cramped than the other room, and provided an opportunity to take a shower and ward off the Stench of the Otaku (what we call the smell that only comes from un-washed fanboys after far too long sweating over the decision over wether to pick up that $200 Chibi Usa animation cel, or the vacuum-sealed collector's wet dream Bubblegum Crisis B-Club Special).

On Saturday, Amy and Stirge showed, and I ran into Phil (who had gravitated the other two over to where he was). Hillarity might have ensued, if it weren't for the fact that Amy and Stirge were dog tired after their quest to reach the convention.

Oh, the sordid happenings of that day. The costume contest! The karaoke contest! ("I'd like to thank... th' bar... for givin' me th' courage ta come up here and sing ta y'all... but... but... the bar 's closed! ") The music video contest! In those early days, it was still possible to get into these events without massive effort.

There was also various trips to find sustenance, but the highlight of the day was the Hentai Space Vines.

Again, we digress.

Now, in anime, there are various labels to put on things. There's "shoujo" anime, aka "girl stuff". There's other labels like "bishonen", "shonen", "lemon", "hentai", "ecchi" and most of all, the dreaded "yaoi". Beware anything labelled "yaoi". It is a fearsome, fearsome thing. Suffice it to say, it is frequented mostly by people with a thing for flower arrangements. Or, in this case, stringing ornate paper vines on the walls around their hotel room.

"Gosh," quoth the three of us (Stirge, Amy and myself) upon seeing this. "That looks interesting."

"Aiiee," quoth a couple mundanes who had wandered into that end of the hall, as they spotted the vines and fled in terror.

Into the room went Stirge, unable to resist the lure of the Hentai Space Vines. Inside the room, it seems, they were showing anime. Anime of the yaoi kind. Amy and I, brave souls that we were, fled and abandoned Stirge to the scourge of the Hentai Space Vines. Only later would he emerge, horribly scarred from the experience, able only to mutter something about "the colors... the *colors*..."

Thus concludes my first experiences at KatsuCon. There might have been more, but I was too tired to remember it very well, except for the part where I lost my purple shades in the Dischordian Babe's car, and never saw them again. Ah, well.

Next Episode: Anime Weekend Atlanta '98

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