Otakon Summary

Thursday
Thursday, got permission to leave early, etc.
Ever since the transportation debacle Brady and I were forced to take the train.
Train being Amtrak.
And good old Amtrak decided that on thursday, they would delay the train from Poughkeepsie to Penn Station by three hours.
As we waited we realized there was no way we'd catch the connection train to Baltimore from Penn.
So instead we hopped on the local MTA to Grand Central, ate at Grand Central, and being the awesome time managers we are, barely made it to Penn on time for the connection.
We arrived at Kenny's place around 11pm.

Friday
Getting up semi early, taking a cab to the convention center, Kenny has decided to actually tag along.
Pre-registration line is HUGE.
Huge huge.
Run into Kaela from home, talk a bit.
Kenny hasn't preregistered, and is told he'll have to stand in registration line, then pre-registration line.
This is complete and utter bullshit.
Brady and I sit on line for 2? 3? hours, while Kenny, playing 10 dollars more, gets in faster than us through the registration line.
Yeah...
Anyway we stand around for a while before I split from them to go find the guy who made my custom badge (Patchouli!).
See like 90 Cloud's, all with honestly different types of swords (It seems everyone had a different favorite), making Brady feel a bit inferior as he had no dyed hair AND no sword.
Make my way to the videogame room, finally meet up with Kumu, Akuma, Sp00ky, Vman, GBlood, and some others.
Kumu is NOTHING like I expected to him to be, I expected somewhat a lot angrier looking.
Akuma is what I expected, I never knew spooky until the con, VMan is quite a surprise, GBlood is again what I expected.
Played games for a while, went to eat at California pizza kitchen (Really good!)
I didn't bother waiting for the dealer's room (No more lines after pre-reg) so in all honesty I played games until midnight or so.
Right, around then, Gunflame Buri (hahahaha Gunflame) and company (Shazay) showed up, Gunflame didn't know Saturn made usb pads ("OMFG PINK PAD!"), played IaMP (Killed Buri in glorious nolag, killed Shazay with Alice cept he didn't have a stick) till it closed.
Got to see the infamous Remi stick (and Gblood's completely random Keine/Mokou one)
Figured out that the frikkin $1.60 shuttle by what used to be UniMini goes to Baltimore Convention Center (Ride home too!)
Much better than cab fare.

Saturday
Korean BBQ day!
Before we went down, Kenny mentioned some girl's parents were holding a Korean BBQ, and said we could come though rides were questionable.
Well the rides were provided so yay.
Woke up around 10? 11? along with Brady and Kenny, sort of just sat around watching Brady play Starcraft against horrible people (I'm talking about YOU Ex) until it was lunchtime.
Walked to where our ride was supposed to be (A nice asian girl), seems like quite a lot of people were going to the BBQ.
Anyway, I fell asleep in the car, Kenny (IF YOU CALL SHOTGUN YOU ARE THE COPILOT) fell asleep in the car, we got lost and arrived last XD
Lots of food though for all, amazingly good, ran into Kevin Chung, who was finishing up his CS masters and...going to work IT for UPS after he graduated in NJ (Hometown, CS Masters...for IT? A little silly, though I think he knew also.)
He was still heavily into gaming, so we just talked about old times and new times and whatever times.
Also, it finally dawned on me (Well honestly a while back in the car with the music), that this was Kenny's church group, as I said "Holy Shit" without realizing it and it got a reaction.
Still, food was really really good, so it was all worth it.
Coming back, Brady's too tired to return to the con, but I go.
I hear later that Kenny sold his badge to a friend for 20 dollars.
Going down the elevator I run into Simon from JHU's anime club, who's also a mod at 4chan (Yes THAT cesspool, 4chan)
And here is when I learn that if YOU ARE ON A PANEL, you get in for FREE.
Turns out most anime conventions do this.
I have sort of vowed to somehow fake myself onto a panel.

Run into Kumu and them again, go to watch fan parodies.
A hilarious DDR one done by Cornell (And I understood the Mandarin part of it perfectly yay), pretty funny Naruto ones, until we hit...the epic.
Basically some people documented their trip to last year's Otakon.
It had its moments but...then it started getting idiotic.
Really really long and and it WOULD NOT END.
There was an insanely unfunny Masterpiece theater parody segment that pissed people off.
When everyone though the movie was over, and ANOTHER Masterpiece theater parody showed up, EVERYONE booed.
I have not seen such an overwhelming vote of disapproval in forever.
People were yelling "Pool's closed" and "Sage this shit!"
They fastforwarded it (And holy shit it kept going after the END of Otakon, did the people even screen how long this thing was?) but the damage was done.
The audience could not take any more bullshit or buildup, when the next parody talked about kidnapping Britney Spears we walked out.

Bunch of game tournaments that day, Soul Calibur 3, Smash and Slash (along with those rhthym games that I don't care about but EVERYONE else plays.)
Kumu entered Soul Calibur 3 because, as he said, "He hated himself."
He lost against a Cervy 3rd or 4th round.

Smash had to line up an hour early for both tournaments so I didn't enter, but I hear the gay rabbit ear wearing Swedish asian trap won singles using Peach. (Yes, he is a gay rabbit ear wearing pretty boy.)
Ricky (Link player, played him at the last Katsucon, insane shit) won the FFA tournament.

Slash was sort of :V
Every player complained of the plasma screen TV lag, Buri kept missing his FRCs.
Anyway Buri got a bad match in Potemkin plus lag.
Ironically, GBlood, who plays Potemkin, lost to a random Sol.
I honestly think GBlood should have just won with random shit, but seems like his busters were whiffing like crazy (yay plasma tv lag).
Finals was Shazay's Slayer versus one of Vman's friends with Ky.
Let me reiterate that Ky is a scrub.
Yes I was a Ky player, I honestly don't know if I'll keep him in Slash since he's SUCH A SCRUB.
Anyway pretty exciting finals, came down to final round, with Ky taking it.
With four? or so TVs turned off because of the slash tourney, VMan comandeered one with his laptop and we had ta da, Eternal Fighter Zero on a plasma screen.
Good exposure for the game, unfortunately I had hoped Buri would return with his laptop so we could do the same hookup for Iamp (Putting it on a plasma), but he fell asleep when he got home instead.
Anyway VMan was the only one knowing how to IBD or whatever the fuck acronym for roman cancelling in that game is called, so he pretty much owend Kumu and I in turns (Though I finally started taking rounds with Kano, as she really doesn't have many corner air relaunch bullshit combos to speak of, just crazy bullshit ranged normals and projectiles up the wazoo!)

4chan panel.
Ha walked in half way and just listened to the end of it.
Simon was taking questions, and I got to see the guy who started one of the biggest pits of despair on the internet when he was only 14.
Colonel Sanders was there, along with "The King" from Burger King, an ME-Tan, an afro invasion team and a Bridget Brigade.

Anyway, being the stupid idiot I am, could NOT refind the shuttle stop and so just took a cab home for like 15 dollars (ouch ouch)

Sunday
AGAIN Brady is too lazy to go the convention, so again I'm the only one going again.
Go into the dealer's room, buy some last minute ridiculously expensive 1.5? 1.6x marked up JP artbooks (Magna Carta illustrator...Shana artbook. Yeah I still haven't quite gotten over Shana yet XD)
Just sort of lazed around, with Brady making plans for Amtrak home (Our plan, argue for discount since we got screwed on Friday.)

Here's where shit starts getting annoying.
Upon getting to Baltimore Penn, we get our refund on the first ticket (only 20 dollars out of 80), and then we are told that Coach is SOLD OUT going home, and that only Business class (140 dollars!) from JUST Baltimore to NYC is available.
Neither of us have the spine to really argue that they screwed us once and are now screwing us twice.
Bullshit.
Brady and I think for a wihle, Brady suggests greyhound, 40 dollars, a lot cheaper.
So we go to the Greyhound station, and there we find THE LINE of lines.
Seems like EVERYONE in Otakon is going back to New York too.
How quaint.
Anyway the line already snakes around the building, we got there at 3:40 for the 4:15 bus.
The 4:15 bus leaves full, the 4:30 bus leaves full, the FIVE thirty bus leaves full, the SIX thirty bus leaves full, we finally get on a bus at 7:45 or so.
As you can see we spent longer time in this line than the preregistration line.
And also the entire time we were in front of two fucking Jersey girls who WOULD NOT SHUT UP.
I've never heard two people who could talk so much about E/N and their fucking lives as much as these two.
Nothing about the con they went to, nothing about anime in general, just ABOUT THEMSELVES AND THEIR FRIENDS AND WHO'S NOT REALLY THEIR FRIEND AND WHO THEY LIKE OUT OF THEIR FRIENDS AND WHOS GOING OUT WITH WHO AND ARGHLEFEWFJLASL.
Yeah, I fucking unintentionally absorbed their life story.
Of course, luck would dictate that on the 5 hour bus ride we would of course SIT NEXT TO THE SAME TWO GODAMN JERSEY GIRLS.

Anyway, bus was full of Con people going home, so generally friendly environment, got to see Bleach PSP (Pretty nice) and other things.
But it was a long bus ride.
Managed to school brady about 20 consecutive times in Brain Academy Versus, basically I had like two games I was weaker than him in, the rest I completely trashed him in.
I think it was the flashcard matching and the flashcard memory.
Either way, I'd win by ridiculous scores of like 300 to 50.
He only came close in the end, 300 to 250 or so, and all he did was choose those two games I was weak in.

Bus hits Port Authority at about 12:30, and we barely make the 1:10am train back to Poughkeepsie.

I didn't take many pictures but I'll post the ones I have.