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I spent last weekend at anime mid-Atlantic, the rockinest con in
Richmond.
This is a hell. It is populated almost exclusively by screaming
idiot 14-year old girls, apparently still recovering from
frontal lobotomization. The other residents seem to consist of
socially retarded fanboys gone over-the-hill by no small sum of
summers, the 14-year-old lackwit boyfriends of the youthfully
effervescent twats, and the obvious victim of this gehennan
prison nightmare: me. This is an anime convention; my thirteenth
in seven years, and the face of the creature grows more
frightful every time. Perhaps this will be my last, and what I
write now is nothing more than a eulogy for the demise of my
conventioning carreer.
In adding a dose of morbid humor to the whole event, this same
hotel is hosting, at this same time, some sort of commendation
for a junior high girl's soccer team. This places dozens of
otherwise unspoiled youths into arm's reach of the gross
perversions and corrupting influence of the hundreds of
gibbering con-sluts that these soccerettes will become in the
next few years. Their parents will live to regret the mistake of
settling their party in this foul place, and in time, they will
wonder if this is when their daughters first went bad. I hope
they blame themselves for allowing their daughters to be near my
least favorite subspecies on earth: the con-slut.
They squeal like the pigs they are. The same old actions of a
half-decade ago are reenacted by the not-quite decade-and-a-half
chicks of today. They run at each other like long-lost friends.
Just before these two rampaging freight trains collide, they
skid to a dead stop and hug one another like embracing a statue
of dry sand. They have no honest passion, no wild abandon or
unfettered outpourings except what they pretend in front of an
audience. After an hour of catching up on all the harrowing
events of their lives since 5 minutes ago when they exited the
car they arrived in together, they start preening and going on
about their costumes. They pose and posture for imaginary
cameras, all the while talking in squeaky, high-pitched english
salted and peppered with scripted and obviously contrived
opportunities to insert any one of the half-dozen Japanese words
they know. Then they cuddle and mewl at each other. They flirt
the distant edges of public homosexuality in a gross mockery of
the real thing. They are fashion dykes, leading one another
around on a cheap leash and kissing in public with nauseating
condescension to honest lesbians. Some of the more detestable
use that high-school drama method of stage kissing where you put
your thumbs between your lips and theirs. They find the actual
exchange of spit too distasteful, but the fashion is just too
tacky to stay away from. This is the modern day fangirl
equivalent of playing chicken.
welcome to hell.
Their costumes are their life's blood. The sun rises in the rags
they stitched together last night. The sun sets in the ability
to make their squealing and mewling shatter glass at fifty
paces. The air they breathe is pretension, and accessories are
their meat and drink. These colorblind dykes simply must match
the tinting and shading of every single fiber of their costumes
to the original animation. To prove their accuracy, they carry a
picture of the character that they drew and colored themselves.
The actual color they achieve is just like the one they wanted,
bathed in alcohol vomit and hastily blow-dried.
Two stone dickhead teenage boys behind me are trying to sound
mature beyond their years. The tall, stupid looking one looks to
the short, really stupid looking one as if for some
qualification when he says, "Cartoons, man? I don't even watch
this shit. I'm just here for my girlfriend." Though I have not
seen her, I know she is a hopeless twit who is currently nestled
into a dark corner somewhere in the costume of a Final Fantasy X
character. She's professing true love to some other daffy cunt,
currently wrapped in one of her arms while the other strokes her
latest conquest from the dealer room and she mewls high-pitched
faux cat noises and promises to one day marry the non-existent
cartoon character. All of this conspires to drive me completely
fucking bonkers.
The short, really stupid looking one has completely ignored his
friend's protestations of innocence and lapsed into analeptic
shock from Pocky withdrawl. "Dude, those bitches are sooo hot."
He's looking so intently at the back of the eleven-year old
soccer girl, hand-in-hand with her best friend that he hasn't
noticed that the jersey numbers of the comrades are 6 and 9. I
bite back gales of hideous laughter and move on to the next
atrocity. I shouldn't have to look far.
The second floor walkway has a massive balcony, maybe 50 meters
in length that overlooks the atrium and lobby of the first
floor. The next 4 floors up have similar but ever smaller
balconies. By the second day, the kids who positively refuse to
completely speak a single word longer than about 5 letters
without abbreviating it are referring to the act of leaning on
this and staring at the costumed circus geeks below as, 'Hangin
at the Bal.' I want to hurt the ones who say it when I first
hear this. When I catch myself saying the same thing to someone
not twenty minutes later, I want to crawl into a toilet and
drown.
The stench of pitiable desperation wafts down the too-thin
hallway behind my spiteful perch. He walks by slow and
intentional, and I instantly understand the depth of his
nigh-unfathomable need for attention. He's carrying his laptop
computer clenched to his chest tight as vices and spun around to
face outward for the world to see. Over the speakers blares the
drone of a song I refuse to recognize. Facing the crowd of
everyone he approaches, the screen spasms with the mismatched
and unimpressively jumbled images of his homebrewed music video,
flashing entirely out of time with the beat. The look on his
face is so wantonly starved for any kind of attention or sign of
affirmation that it makes me want to puke blood. It's almost
beautiful in the absolute purity of emotion in his screaming
desire for qualification and gratifying interest in his almighty
self. It might be beautiful if it didn't cry out for someone
like me to kick his damn teeth in. I take solace in the
knowledge that he's not just another lobotomized teenager. Oh
no, this sad fucker is well into his twenties.
My attention is drawn to yet another vapid prepubescent bangtail
approximately shaped like any one of a number of very round
things covered in splotchy and pockmarked skin. This nearly
genderless human basketball is dressed as Inu Yasha, which I
note because one in every five of these assholes is dressed as
Inu Yasha. This is to ensure that you have no sympathy for my
berating of its creative genius or devil-may-care lifestyle. The
creative genius in question is falling currently into the
pattern I've noticed repeatedly over the years at these insipid
cartoon nerd herdings. When one vapid cooze in costume notices
another equally vapid cooze in the same costume, no matter the
distance or obstacle, a pathetic reaction occurs with so little
variation as to be scripted and memorized by all parties
involved. The little twerps approach one another the way a
retarded cat approaches a mirror. Then they pose and/or mock
fight in a primitive staredown ritual to determine who is the
Alpha Geek. This is followed by these two village idiots rubbing
the one brain cell they can muster between them to concoct an
idea they believe to be the height of originality. This is to
get as many pictures as possible taken of the two together,
wearing the same costume. Both of these puffed-up assholes agree
to this sharing of the limelight because they believe their
shitty costume to be superior to the other, no matter which was
crowned Alpha Geek. Both of these stupid, malformed gasbags
agree to this because they think this publicity is original and
uncharted water. An idea unique to every other sad anime
convention in history where two geeks in similar costumes butt
heads. This idea is repeated every time in this situation
without fail.
The basketball-shaped nincompoop pulls out a 4-inch long plastic
pirate sabre deemed fit for 3-year olds, with the words, "AAH!
Other Inu Yasha, clearly we must fight to the doom!" And I am
blown away--I mean really fucking floored when the other Inu
Yasha totally ignores this pineapple faced intruder and keeps on
walking. Everything I thought I knew is called into question.
When the affluent looking cross-dressing manwhore in the
catholic schoolgirl uniform and burgeoning moustache walks by,
it reassures me. The universe is still running smoothly in the
clockwork regularity of disappointment and perversion that I
always suspect.
On Friday night, going to the Karaoke is more important than
drinking, smoking and breathing all combined. From time to time,
spiteful old bastards like myself run out of material to refill
their laugh-at-the-world batteries. The karaoke alone gives me
material for months. The first step is that the tech crew
running the cd player hasn't got the trick of turning down the
vocals track on the graphic equalizer. Everybody sounds off key
when they're trying to sing over the real thing. The karaoke
machine my ex-roommate bought from Wal-Mart for 40$ most of a
decade ago does automatically what is still out of the
convention's technical reach. But this is more of a help than a
burden when the dancing monkey comes up and mumbles out the
words to a Japanese song he claims to know. The costumed twat
dressed as Kenshin runs out of steam half way through the theme
song to Kenshin and stops holding the long notes, but at least
he's compliant when the crowd shouts for him to show off his
bird chest.
We're two hours in, and I've heckled my throat raw when the last
act is called up. I've survived the 500 pound sailor suited
crossdresser who honestly believes himself to be the spitting
image of Sakura. I made it through the line-dancing black guy
singing a ten-minute rendition of the countrified 'Earthbound'
song. Just after the announcer polarized the room by saying that
the left half was cool and the right half sucked, my heckling
right-side sent up beautiful Portia to sing her soulful acapella.
The last act is a group of drunken frat-apes stumbling through
the Pokemon closing song. I've drunk my fill.
Sleepless, I find myself hanging out on the threadbare carpet
outside the closed video game room. It will open for its first
frenzied moments at 9 a.m. which is still an hour away. I don't
give the first portion of a flying shit about video games right
now, I just want to sit somewhere until my hotel-provided sludge
coffee starts taking effect. There is not only a crowd gathered
at the closed gates, but a particularly vocal crowd, and I am
determined to eavesdrop on their prattle and blather. Mostly,
they talk about the video game tournament yesterday and the twat
who won it. One of the prepubescent toads in the crowd asks
where the winner is, if not at the front of this Dork Royalty
conga line. Another of these living paramounts of cool breaks
off from his conversation to say in reverential, hushed tones,
"He's still in his room. He brought his X-Box, Playstation 2 and
Gamecube with him. Why would someone of his caliber sit out here
with the unworthy while he can train upstairs." Yes, he used the
word train. My hand to God. I stifle laughter, because the word
'train' in reference to video games is just too damn much. They
start telling heroic war stories about this frog prince like it
requires untold bravery to wade through enemy fire on the
business end of a Playstation controller. When he finally graces
the lowly peons with his Regal Dork presence, a cheer goes up
from the crowd. He pauses the action on his Gameboy Advance XP
and raises proud fists over a tiny body which hasn't seen the
first part of puberty yet. Long live the king. I stumble down
the hall cackling and awake.
I remember the refreshing dip in the pool I had earlier with
Paul and Raquel, and think that something similar might wake me
up better than the coffee or the lunch I missed two hours ago.
When I get into the pool room, I realize that it's full of
half-naked mewling cunts fraternizing with the children of the
soccer team. Sitting around them in an enraptured ring are more
than a dozen overweight fanboys, sweating in the sauna-like
humidity of the area. They want to pretend they're there to
sunbathe in their pants and long-sleeve Ranma shirts, but their
shifty eyes give them away. Nuclear war couldn't tear their eyes
from the scintillating wetness of the babyfat bodies cavorting
in the pool. At some moment in the con, every fanboy and
con-slut finds his or her own moment of heaven, and I've just
intruded upon theirs. The dip in the pool that I'm now too
disgusted to take would have woken me up fantastically, but now
I settle for going back to my room to vomit, and I think that
should do the trick.
There's a fashion goth fag standing near Steve, Raquel and
myself, and he keeps talking to us. Average height, skinny,
trenchcoated in the heat, two little braids poke out from under
his pretentious stovepipe hat and he looks like the leather and
latex bondage bitch of the chimney sweeps from Mary Poppins. The
verbally diuretic little ponce has on this leather vest that
doesn't even vaguely fit him, despite the number of straps and
buckles that would otherwise lend to a form-fitting chunk of
attire, but this piece of shit leatherrag is folding over on
itself from poor tailoring, and seems cut about 3 inches too big
in every dimension. Poor Raquel can't think of anything nice to
say to the ninny, so she's asking him about this garish
affectation. Southernly, he drawls out that it cost him $200,
and I mumble under my breath, "You got ripped off, hoss." Then
he drawls out that he made it himself, and it took 2 months.
"You got ripped off by yourself, hoss. Pretty fucking lame, I'd
say." I should say these things louder. The babyfaced queen
follows us around for 20 minutes afterwards, and he thinks I
didn't notice, but he never once took his eyes off Raquel's ass.
It's so charming when boys overestimate and overcompensate for 3
inches they can't ever hope to fill.
I stopped going to the costume play after about my 5th or 6th
convention, because they just got so damned sad, and nothing
could ever top the Rei Ayanami Phone Sex Line. I was convinced
that since I missed the boundless hilarity of seeing dozens of
goofy beanpoles in the DDR tournament who seem to have
temporarily gone insane and forgotten that they're white and
can't dance, that I must surely go to the Cosplay for a laugh.
It failed to deliver. After the jokers laughingly referred to as
security didn't want to let us in, claiming the room was packed
full despite the numbers of people exiting with that sickly
green look on their faces. After "pwning" them by way of the con
chair and a friendly connection. After some doe-eyed cunt with a
feather mask and 5-inch fuck me fingernails foisted herself into
our crew. After ditching little miss tophatted Hedwig and his
missing 3 angry inches, we finally made it into the Cosplay.
Just in time to see the end. 5 yahoos in what rags they could
muster from the Mechanicsville dump and some homocore badass in
some half-red half-metal suit paraded onstage, did nothing and
got off before we could properly laugh at them. We sweated and
bled and had to talk to that lanky, babydick gothling for thirty
minutes just for this? Raquel and I had to watch that feathered
tart paw and claw our girlfriended compadre two seats over for
this? Oh no, my dear readers, it wasn't over yet. They had to
play Let's Make A Deal for the "halftime" show while the judges
struggled over Indecision 2004 and had to choose something like
15 of those twits to actually award for their half-baked efforts
at masquerade.
Oh yes, this was so sad that it warrants its own paragraph,
though I don't know that I can really make it POP for you the
way it did to actually be there. Let's Make A Deal is one of the
finer traditions of the classic game show, and I, for one,
fucking love it. You've got boxes and doors and prizes and
mind-numbing disappointments, and people who just gave up the
7,000$ kitchen remodeling contract for the 5$ used car with
Weird Al Yankovich sitting where the engine block used to be.
It's fucking great. The Cosplay version was not quite so
wonderful as this. That big guy who used to come as a
surprisingly convincing Johnny Bravo and who had the Hellboy
costume this year (I think his name is Dan, but since noone is
going to read this and know any better, I'll just call him Dan).
Well Dan was doing the questions, and I love Dan to death, and I
never question his love of anime, but he's never bothered to
learn pronunciation of those funky Japanese words and names and
the useless shit that some fans with no lives pride themselves
on. So Dan reads a question, the moron who's supposed to be
winning things looks at him like his dick is hanging out, the
entire audience answers with flawless memorized Japanese
pronunciation, our idiot contestant repeats some vague
simulacrum of what they just heard, and Dan mispronounces the
word they just spake. Some warm little part of me hopes he does
this shit on purpose, because I love Dan to death. Dan
grudgingly gives up the prize, and I keep noticing that his
smile is bigger and his demeanor brighter when they win the shit
prizes instead of the good prizes. Rob says something in the
worst Capt. Jack Sparrow impression I've ever heard and proceeds
to hit on the contestant before noticing that it's not only a
boy in that sailor suit, but a 16-year old one at that, but
these things don't seem to daunt Rob. Three people into it and
half the crowd is now shouting the wrong answers to the
questions when they know full damn well that the name of Faye
Valentine's spaceship is not the Yamato or the Arcadia, and who
the fuck cares what the first Gundam's serial number way anyway.
We just want it to be over. I retreat before prizes start being
doled out, because I don't want something that depressing to
kill my spiteful world-hating powertrip.
Crumb-covered and chocolate stained, the gruesome Pocky addict
stumbles forward, hands trembling and slouching from withdrawl.
Light hits his face, but shies away from the sunken eyes and
shallow pits of his cheeks, while it lights up the Security
orange of his vest. He needs a spike before he can go in and
rave it up to the Saturday night dance. The Asian market across
town sells Pocky for a buck a box and thin glowsticks for 17
cents apiece in bulk. I've perched with my punk rock friend and
his pornstar ex-girlfriend at a table outside the dance. We're
running out of glowsticks at 50 cents each, and Pocky at 2.50$ a
box, and we're laughing ourselves all the way to the bank. "It's
got caffeine in it, you know," the junkie mumbles while he forks
over his 5 bucks. Like we don't know the color of our own drugs.
Before he can even finish shuffling off to the dance people have
been describing all night as 'the stink-room,' another
bell-bottomed twat with a visor and a baby pacifier around his
neck orders half a dozen multi-colored glowsticks. He stares at
the sign that says "2 for a dollar" and the six in his paw.
"What's that? 6 bones? Here ya go." Before it's over, we're
selling time on a laptop and the hotel-provided wireless network
for 5 minutes to the dollar. I laugh uncontrollably when I find
out what the total profit is before we close up shop and the
stink-room empties its foulness into the hall.
Mafia destroyed me once again. I keep going to these things
saying that I'll only play from midnight to 3 or so, then I
conveniently "forget" to wear a watch. 6 o'clock rolls around,
light streams through the windows, my retinas burst into flames
and I usually realize that I'm still really awake. Friday was
like this. Saturday is almost better, except that Juan was still
working security during the Saturday night game. But lovely
Portia, sweet Stephanie and Christina (who already knows how I
describe her) were enough to help us forget Juan's absence.
Cunning Amber returned, if only briefly. Josh picked it up
quickly, Crumbface picked it up even faster and I lost almost
every game in the second round. Magnus was an egomaniacal
nimrod, and I'm wearing the sunglasses he left there while I
type that. Jessica the Space Cadet disappeared early, which was
good. Sadly the little Kung Fu Cocksucker in the security vest
didn't know how to take a hint any better than he knew how to
play by the rules. All the Mafia players know how much I love
them all, so I won't gush any further. Thanks for breakfast
again, Juan.
But while I'm dishing shout-outs and props (or whatever you
fucking kids call it these days) to people, I want to share a
memory with you, my faithful readers. NekoCon One. You're damn
right I was there. And it was the first time I went to Karaoke.
Dan was hosting it along with some other guy I haven't seen at a
con since, to the best of my knowledge. They did military jokes
before it started. They wrestled on stage before it started.
There were little round lounge tables with soft lamps and white
tablecloths instead of row seating. There was a bar at the back
of the room with alcohol and somebody watching the ID's. By the
time my roommate Steve and I shouted out the chorus to 'Cha La
Head Cha La' with Dan on stage, we were 2 Coronas to the wind,
and it was the best fucking thing in the universe. I'm not
violent by nature, but I would beat twins to death with their
own mother's severed arm if I thought it would make a Karaoke
like that happen again. Now Karaoke is some fat chick with the
social skills of a golf ball who I thought was the guy from
Blues Traveler (minus the vest) playing MC and some stoned geek
running the tech crew with a keyboard and fetishes for MSWordPad
and cowboy hats. The karaoke misses you, Dan. You just remember
how pumped up you got, singing 'Cha La Head Cha La' and think
about that for a second, guy.
Ramsey hasn't slept much more than I have, which means that
between us and the entire weekend, we could almost put together
half a full night's sleep. "I'd slaughter several Inu Yasha for
a cup of coffee right now." Almost on cue but a minute late, an
Inu Yasha steps out from behind the watery glass wall on the
east end of the atrium. I have to make a concerted effort not to
pee my pants.
When I first became engaged in this woefully disappointing
voyeurism, the meaning of the word 'Otaku' was something
different from what it is today. I would say that the
connotation of the word has evolved over the years, were it not
so deeply rooted in devolution. When I started this morbid
fascination, we all knew that 'otaku' was an insult in Japan,
inferring that the recipient has no fucking life to speak of and
refuses to shower. We didn't buy into it, choosing instead to
redefine the word on this side of the Pacific and make it a
badge of pride. Sure we watched cartoons like big ol' geeks, but
we were comfortable with that fact and proud of our geekdom.
Years later, we stopped our Million Otaku March in mid-stride,
and, looking around, realized that 700,000 of our million were
fat, unwashed, socially retarded fan trash without any life to
speak of outside their astonishingly sad knowledge about
cartoons intended for a totally different audience and no shame
whatsoever about sharing this derth of trivia. I didn't realize
until this year, but the definition and connotation of 'Otaku'
has managed to fall yet another rung. We are all less than Zero.
The boys shy away from being called Otaku now, taking cover in
emotionless cool and distanced objectivity. The ones who still
wear the badge are reprehensible bastards, pushing thirty and
still getting their jollies by letting pre-legal con-sluts hang
all over them and their Jack Sparrow costumes. 'Otaku' is like a
SARS blanket being spread over the burgeoning hordes of
lobotomized cunts, two-faced whores and misshapen clotheshangers.
The Otaku of my own first year are all still around, but changed
somehow. Broken by the fandom itself. The ones who don't derive
their personality from the shows they watch and the costumes
they wear are unable to support the weight of the gibbering,
prepubescent hordes of Inu Yasha costumed trollops without
personality. Conlife has never been a particularly beautiful
thing, but the creature it's mutated into is something I can't
even bear the sight of without mixed feelings of disgust and
apprehension. How the otaku of yesteryear can still look
themselves in the mirror now is as mysterious and
incomprehensible to me as quantum physics. They are base dogs,
devoid of honor and allowing themselves to chase every
splitlegged child in a catholic school uniform or cat ears,
regardless of age, looks, brains, personality or the lack of any
of the aforementioned.
There was a time when the anime convention was a wonderful
thing. Halls of people trying to think up original Cosplay
skits, not another tired fight by that same guy in that same
tired Son Goku outfit and wig versus whatever nimrod decided to
show up as a Dragonball villain. A karaoke room with lounge
tables and its own bar instead of stadium seating packed to the
nines to watch a 500 pound black man squawk out what he believed
was Japanese in what he believed was a girl's voice and what we
all believed was a schoolgirl outfit, only stretchier. A not
unattractive young nerdboy in a Lupin costume with two
legal-aged catgirls on his arms striding through the halls, but
not afraid to talk about Toyfare magazine with strangers by the
elevators.
We all partied and drank and fucked and had ourselves such a
grand old time that we never noticed that the body of the thing
was cancerous and too weak to support its own fat. The love of
the thing is gone and replaced by a disgusting and unnecessary
fringe fashion. If you stand on the top of Otakon's Baltimore
Convention Center and look towards Japan with the right kind of
eyes, you can just about see where the wave of honest enthusiasm
broke and crashed and receded. The healthy young Lupin has
become an aging perv dressed as a pirate and desperately failing
to imitate Johnny Depp while chasing the costumed jailbait.
Once, convention life was a starry-eyed 8-year old holding her
mother's hand and walking through the untold wonders of the
dealer room before watching Pokemon in Video 4. Now the con has
grown up into a short, horse-faced anorexic sugar addict in a
tired sailor suit with a sign on her back that says, "Give me
Pocky! I'm kawaii!"
Lovely Portia finishes reading every word you just have and
smiles. "You really hated it here, didn't you?"
Just before I climb into the cab of my truck, Ramsey asks, "So,
are you coming back next year?" You know I am.
note: Jaeger was recently spotted
in a Dragonball-Z "Gohan" outfit. You'd be surprised at just how
well he pulled it off. No really, he literally pulled it off and
threw it right into the fireplace.
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