Be sure you have lots of free time before reading…

With that we got out and headed to the Arc Light to watch the Watchmen 12:45 showing. It was a nice theater and Phill reserved some good seats right in the center center so we had perfect viewing for the movie. As for the movie it was okay. Phill’s ability may be rubbing off on me or it was just a fluke but the actions of the characters and the entire plot of the movie seemed obvious to me. I even knew Ozymandis was the villain when I saw a trailer of the movie. (This being without reading the comic either). Also as a reference I picked up somewhere, there was to much sausage and not enough donuts for my taste. Though I must admit Rorschach in jail was pretty funny with the inmates all trying to kill him. I also take issue with the ending as while I can understand a greater threat will cause enemies to unite in a single force. But with the threat not visually present or continually acting in some way peoples collective memory will forget and bickering will begin again. Also there was not much fighting in it compared to talking and reliving their screwed up pasts which does not hold sway for me. We got out of the theater around 3:30 AM and drove back to my place. Phill got his Iron Gym and other presents and drove off with Ben to parts unknown. Art and I headed to the apartment and while it was 4 o’clock I tried to stay awake but the arms of sleep embraced me and didn’t wake till 9:00 when I noticed I was f’ing really late for work. So I ran out without a shower or breakfast and drove to work mentally kicking myself for going to the midnight showing on a work night. It also took a long time to find a parking spot at school. By the time I was in it was already 9:30 and classes had already started. So smelly and disheveled I went to the deans office to see what could be done. Thankfully she was very understanding after I said I was late and arranged to make up the time later. As I was checking my mailbox the dean came in and asked if I watched Watchmen last night. I sheepishly said yes, and she said one of her daughters had begged to see it at the local theater because it was such a hyped up movie and she had read the novel as well. Her daughter loved it and I gave my own personal review on it as I had not had time to mull it over. So I should figure out some kind of awesome boss award to give her for her understanding, any suggestions?

The rest of the time spent I spent hiding from everyone so they wouldn’t smell me or see my unruly hair. (I’m a neat-freak, ok?) Though close to the end of work I did help out a budding student photographer who wanted to get a picture of an internal reflection demo with his Olympus E-510 (have to check up on it at some point). After work I went straight home to a hot shower and a bit of relaxing.

At this point I only had the 4 hours of sleep and was flip-flopping on whether or not to go to Art’s party. In the end I did go. So Art and I went to a place called Johnnies Pastrami. While everyone gave me this weird look when they saw my camera I focused on the food and the overly small smoke filled glass enclosure called a restaurant. The food was good (unhealthy, but tasty) but the distance wouldn’t be worth it in the long term for return trips at least.

With our full stomachs we headed out to Busby’s for the entre of the night. We were first there and waited awhile playing pool. Soon Kevin and Edylene showed up. Then Dorthy, Henry, and Henry’s highschool friend showed up. Later Linda and company showed up. Meanwhile pool playing persisted throughtout the night as unique characters came and went to play pool as well. It was fine for me as it offered a respite to take pictures but with the low lighting the photos required a long exposure which is fine for inanimate objects. People however are another story as they tend to move. Never the less I think I got a few good shots. Meanwhile as I focused on the pool games Art was getting plastered from everyone buying drinks for him. Soon Dorthy told me Art seemed “out of it and was probably ready to go home” she referenced him going into the bathroom. So I poked my head in and didn’t see him so went on looking for him in the Mile High dance floor, the smokers area, downstairs, game room, and back at the pool room. Told Dorthy I wasn’t sure where he went and continued to search for him. Wound up back at the bathroom but then peeked into one of the stalls to check as I was using the urinal closest. It was indeed Art. So I started knocking on the door to get him to come out and go home. Next I know he vomits on my shoe… So I left figuring I would give him some time to get it out of his system. Time passes and Kev and I are back again knocking on the door with no success. I notified the bathroom attendant about the situation and headed out to check on the rest of the party. Next Kev comes and gets all the guy friends and we go into the bathroom to drag him out. There was already two bouncers there and they somehow got the stall door open. There was a nice random person that helped me extract Art’s unconscious hulking mass out of the stall itself and onto the bathroom floor. At this point I would like to exemplify that Art had vomitted all over the stall along with some of his clothes. Unfortunately/fortunately while trying to move the body of Art, Art’s shirt came off while we were trying to get some purchase on it. After that, the 2 bouncers along with 4 of his guy friends (me included) dragged his body along the floor to the elevator and out the back. There I rushed over to my car to find a freaking parking violation. Apparently I had violated there preferential parking policy (f’ing LA fines). Anyways I moved the car around back and we stuffed Art in the backseat laying him down as gently as possible. We were assuming he was still alive at this point. Edelyne was nice enough to get our jackets and my camera. Dorthy’s car took point and I followed with Kevin in back.

Of course my GPS took awhile to boot up and then decided to give directions oppisite to what Dorthy’s was, so we had a conversation between cars while driving. Eventually we got back to the apartment and I parked right by the elevator. By that point Henry suggested using a blanket or tarp to help drag him up to the apartment. So I rushed up with some of the gear we brought with us and brought down Art’s large blanket.  Even with the blanket and 4 guys it was still a pain moving Art’s still unconscious body. We eventually got to the apartment without anyone seeing us and wondering why we were dragging a body around… We left Art on his bathroom floor with the blanket incase he got cold and propped him up like I learned in my CPR class to make sure he wouldn’t vomit but also placed some pillows behind him to stop him from moving. Henry then wetted his face and after awhile Art seemed to be regaining consciousness but went back to sleep on the floor. We all went back down where I found Art had vomitted in my car too… So I spent an hour or two trying to clean it out of my car with 409 and Lysol. At this point I still dont know whether or not I got the smell of vomit out of my car…

Saturday with Art’s hangover and my sleep deprivation we spent the day recovering. Then we went out to Denny’s to recount what happened on his birthday since he had no recollection of what happened to him. Of course I recounted the hookers on sunset we visited and all the drugs he was doing while drunk. Along with his promiscuous behavior with several of the girls at the party, j/k ^_^ (Or am I? O_o). So Art owes Kevin, Henry, Henry’s friend, and me big time along with Dorthy and Edelyne and maybe a detail of my car if I can’t get the smell out. Now it’s time to work on the photos I took…

Also while driving around with Art on Friday we noted a Pinkberry close to the apartment. Saturday I was curious and needed to get groceries (there’s an Albertsons nearby) so I walked over to try it. I don’t frequent yogurt shops, the previous one was a spontaneous trip to Yogurtland on Claudia’s birthday. Inside the store it was very white and well lit. The Pinkberry’s menu was exceptionally small with only 3 flavors: green tea, pomegranate and plain yogurt. For topping I only saw a bunch of fruit but apparently they do have other things like cereal. Each topping was 95 cents though. The staff were nice as the cashier convinced me to order a medium size green tea with 3 toppings rather then the small because the medium wound up being cheaper. Even though I think it does a good job appealing to health nuts the price just seemed rather steep to make it a regular activity for me. Also they could expand their selection of yogurts while they are at it too.

While I am going on about food at the moment. I went out to eat with my parents today at a restaurant I never even knew exsisted. Snax is a deceptively small resaurant from the outside, tucked away in the corner of parking lot at the intersection of Anza and Sepulveda. It is a family run business that is home to the original Super Burger. Ordering their combo that included the super burger I found it ok at a reasonable price. For lunch, the service was rather fast and the food hot which made me happy. I think it would be a worthwhile restaurant to try again if I ever crave mexican food or a hamburger.

After that, I went after a gathering of one of my favorite series called Avatar. Technically not an anime compared to the American definition of anime, but a cool series none the less. I had seen a Toph character the day before, and several characters today, but they remained elusive. After a while I gave up for the time being and decided to try the Maid cafe. From an actual Maid Cafe business in Culver City, they unfortunately only had cookies, coffee and tea. It was kind of a shame really, as per my usual convention provisions I had been going on trail mix from Target, the Pocky I had a day before, and… I think that was it. A hearty meal served by a maid would have been interesting. The brown uniforms they also wore seemed off to me as well, as I have always seen maids in black and white uniforms. One of my friends named Mark, I believe enjoys Maid Cafes. He referred to the Maid Cafe acting as an immersion into a world where you are the master and people derive pleasure from that aspect. 5 bucks for a cookie, and another 5 for tea with no refill was no immersion to me. I hope their actual business does better than that else I don’t know how they survive. Needless to say I took a few pics of the maids as some recompense.

Searching around for something interesting to do I wound up as the sole photographer for the Deathnote Gathering. When doing the photoshoot of the two Deathnote characters from yesterday they brought up the fact that they don’t like to do the photo gatherings. Their experience dictated gatherings normally degenerate into chaos and rather unpleasant things like a 6 foot pocky used as a phallic object. Needless to say I think I will take a few pictures out of what I took that day. During the chaos I quietly excused myself from the courtyard and went down to check out the How to Draw panel which I found out was canceled. However the B-Boy Showcase was going on in the Performance Hall right across the way so I stopped by to see what it was all about. I got to see the last group called Kaba I believe. They were a well choreographed dance troupe apparently and was nice to watch with some good dance music. Afterward I watched Dororo, about a swordsman made of fake body parts out to get his real parts back from 48 different monsters. With a female theif/sidekick/love interest to assist him. The swordsman finds he is the elder son of a despotic warlord who gave his body parts to the monsters in order to get the power to conquer the world (overly dramatized s*** ensues after finding this out).

Unfortunately Dororo ran over and so I missed the first 30 minutes of a 3 hour Cosfest. Unfortunately the first 30 minutes was essentially the CosFest. I saw 2 acts; one Luffy from One Piece and a group from some anime called Fairytale. After that, they went directly to awarding the participants with cash they didn’t have on hand and because there was so much more time they had an idol singer get on stage. I went off to look for more people to take pictures of. Then I found them, the Avatar group! A group of 5 people traveling together all as Avatar characters. It was the most promising gathering I had seen all day. They were all girls so I had fun directing them to fight and pose and do other things. My photographer side satiated I wandered around a bit before slipping into the karaoeke room.

Not being someone that speaks with a loud voice, let alone speaks I stayed in the back and listened. I must say it was quite fun. A large group of people would pick all kinds of different songs, anime, boy band, oldies and some would sing, others would play as dancers, it was quite the sight. I even contemplated the thought of getting up there, but never did since I know jack music-wise.

With a break in the merriment I left to check out Zebraman. Zebraman is the Japanese version of Spiderman. It is just that awesome. It was slow at first as you find a school teacher with his sucky life and family and his weird fetish for pretending he is a superhero. It however picks up as the story continues with evil aliens, government agencies, and a boy who can not walk. As he finds the power to believe in himself anything goes. With the end of the movie the con was officially over. There was only 5 of us in this giant room, but when I left, everything had been packed away and everyone was gone.

Things I learned from the con was I need f’ing business cards. The number of times cosplayers asked for contact info was alarmingly high. Because of this, I might just split off another site that deals with my photography and watever conwise info might be useful. Course that will have to get in line with all the other things I still have to do like all the photos I still have to go through and edit. >_< Another thing I learned was that Pam and Denny don’t really go to a con as they go to the registration room and stay there for the con. Everytime I came by, they were there and never saw them once as I walked around snapping photos. Last but not least, one should be very careful where they park in the Hilton basement parking. I parked at the end of an aisle with a wall stretching out on one side with pipes jutting out to the lane, a column on the otherside and a single lane to get out of with. I took me nay 10 minutes to wiggle my car out, gah. Onto taking care of the photos now…

So after taking a few photos, I waited around for the Soul Eater Gathering (um-um-good). Unfortunately there was no signs of a gathering (either of people in costume, or a group of photographers to follow the lead of). Soul Eater was not an anime I’ve seen yet, so I was unsure how the characters looked. I went around, saw a Baccano character (awesome series btw), and found 2 more were Baccano characters as well. I figured the Baccano gathering was happening at least… After awhile I wound up by the Volunteer office and decided to try and see what it was like from the other side of a con. I signed up, got a badge, and they told me to check back since there wasn’t any work at the moment. I went away, and forgot about it till Monday when the volunteer badge fell out of my button-up/sports shirt, gomennasai. I hit the Naruto gathering by the pool in one of the 4 courtyards and took some decent photos… hopefully. I have yet to look at them but I took over a thousand photos total (and I still need to weed through them). After Naruto was the Baccano gathering and it wound up being me and the 3 Baccano characters from before. I was quite lost on poses and everything else to do. Two more characters showed up, but together we only got a few group shots. Thankfully I noticed the king from cosplay.com go after them as well, so somewhere there should be photos.

While looking around some more I suddenly passed by two (relatively) tall, blond, women that were freakishly skinny, with large boobs, and puffy lips. Long ago I remember being told that if a barbie doll were brought to full size it would have some unrealistic proportions that would cause it’s internal organs to require rearrangement if it were a human being. That is what I saw! It was not only me either, when they passed, every guy just suddenly stopped what they were doing and quietly looked at them. Because of this weird phenomenon I wound up with zero photographic proof of this (Phill will probably want to kick my ass for this). But I saw them with my own eyes. After a bit more searching I found out that another convention was being hosted at the Hilton as well, called Glamourcon. I was going to attach a link, but their website seems a bit risque for my own site. (Actually delving deeper into their website I am kicking myself for missing this… unique opportunity.) Now that I know of it, I would like to attend next time it is in the area. I think it would be an excellent place to improve my photography skills… just after I wipe the blood from my nose. ^_^

I headed to the last bit of the Bandai panel where they were apparently giving away prizes to people who asked questions. About this time I checked my phone to see how long till the next gathering when I found out the battery was dead. I cut out and headed to the Code Geass Gathering and didn’t find many people either. So I made my rounds to see if there were any cosplayers I missed. Then I headed to the exhibit hall and found a small model mech of “Gurren Lagann Fulldrillized” that I bought for $25. Not a bargain as far as I am concerned but it’s the only souvenir I got from PMX. After consulting a hotel clock, I hit up the Final Fantasy Gathering in the pool courtyard because I saw no one for the DOA gathering down in the lobby. While searching for the Kingdom Hearts Gathering in the courtyards an hour later I wound up right behind an L and Light from the Deathnote series. They so happened to say they needed a photographer for their own photoshoot and so I offered my services. I found it very challenging (not being a pro nor well acquainted with the series to offer suggestions on poses and setups, but then again, neither were they) so we muddled our way through with a basic understanding of the characters. Afterward I hit up the other courtyards and encountered a fight between Capt. Toushirou from Bleach with some mystic Chinese warrior guy while a cow and a menagerie of other characters were watching. In another courtyard was a Naruto couple, and a threesome from Inu Yasha, along with the King taking photos of the same Deathnote cosplayers. So I shadowed the King for a bit, just to see if I could pick up a few tips. I think I did, but by now have forgotten. I took more photos though.

Another thing I forgot to mention was the Pocky Bar. A brilliant idea by the people who ran PMX. For $5 you were admitted into what amounted to an all-you-can-eat pocky room. They had 7 or 8 different types of pocky, and you basically tried out the different types till you could make up your mind and get a free box of pocky. They even had Men’s Pocky, which featured bitter chocolate. But I think they were exaggerating its flavor since it still tasted sweet. In the end I could not decide between the Milk Pocky or the Strawberry Pocky. So I decided on size of the container and picked out the Strawberry Pocky. Afterward, more picture taking and then the Machine Girl Movie which was overly gory. I sat through most of it till the Cosplay.com gathering which I didn’t see happening so I went back to catch up with the rest of the Machine Girl movie. By that time there were crazy football players, parents of dead children that a girl with a machine gun for an arm killed. The football players tried to kill the machine gun girl while she tried to kill a yakuza boss? It was strange indeed with lots of over the top gore and violence. I also went to the Darker than Black “Premiere” which was already underway. Darker than Black looks promising from what little I saw. Apparently a futuristic anime, bad stuff happens, Tokyo builds a huge wall around the city and there are “false stars” in the sky. People with “special” powers appear and violence along with a possibly interesting story ensues. (Ok, maybe I am getting a little cynical about my anime.) I sat in and watched the first volume of Code Gaess as well, which turned out to be pretty interesting with a world taken over by a fictional empire called Britannia, Japan becomes called Area 11. Some overly smart student with familial ties to the royal family (but thought dead) is given a special power to make a person obey his orders only once if within eyesight. From that he will supposedly crush the empire of Britannia. With that, I skipped out on the dance and headed home for the day.

More later, for now sleep.

Saturday Ben and I drove over to Claudia’s House to celebrate her birthday (Happy Birthday Claudia ) where we waited for one of her ex-coworkers Julie and her bf, David. While at the house we watched the first episode of Pushing Up Daisies which seemed like a genuinely funny morbid comedy. Doubt I will ever buy it on my own or seek it out though. But it looked like a good way to kill some time. Julie and David showed up and we headed out to Long Beach to a place called Green Fields. Green Fields is a Brazilian BBQ restaurant that is overly fancy and a pricey joint. I can not say how normal this is in other Brazilian BBQ restaurants but apparently there was a medium sized salad bar where you could get your breads, your banana churros (really good), salads (surprise!) and soups. What the servers did though was come around with large skewers of meat to each table and offer the people meat from the skewers. They had around 20 different kinds of meat with different sirloins, lamb, chicken, pork, duck, strangely no seafood besides shrimp though… How we let them know whether we wanted more meat or not was with a multicolored cylinder at each table. One side was green (more meat), the other was red (stop), and the middle was yellow, so when tipped over meant we wanted the bill. I took a few pictures which I still need to go over and save somewhere.

After paying the bill, taking a few more pics, and using the mouth wash in the restrooms we were off to LA. For a place called the Milk Shop, which sadly closed at 11, which we arrived at 11:15 (parking in LA is a pain too). In light of this setback I was already to go to Marie Calendars for some pie, but Julie suggested a Yogurtland we had passed on the way. Yogurtland was an interesting experience as they provide a variety of different yogurts and toppings that you can fill up a cup with. The sneaky part is that they then bill you on the weight of the cup and its assorted contents. However having frozen yogurt on a cold night outside the store was not exactly a smart idea, so we went inside the car and ate instead. After awhile we went back to Claudia’s house and said our farewells.

Friday came and after work Art and I went out to Best Buy where I got the 5th season of Teen Titans and he got all the seasons of every series in the He-Man universe he was missing. Afterward we stopped by a comicbook store close to the Best Buy and looked through their selection. Art seemed interested in a book on the Art of Tranformers but didn’t buy it because of it’s price. Also Art started to crave a specific type of ice cream only sold at a specific drugstore. Unfortunately he couldn’t recall which drugstore it was sold at. I thought it might’ve been a CVS, so we went only to find out it wasn’t. Next we tried a Rite-Aid down in Redondo, although not certain at the time Rite-Aid acquired Thrifty which was infact the store Art was seeking with their fabled chocolate malted crunch ice cream. Though we had found the store, they were sold out of the ice cream. Ah the travesty of it all. Because we were there as well, we thought of trying Eat at Joe’s but found out that they were closing in 3 minutes, the horror. Not detered by these setbacks, Art went to another Rite-Aid/Thrifty to find out that once again they were sold out. So we tried again, only to Art’s disappointment. I was, however, just there for the ride and enjoying the epic struggle between Art’s craving’s and his seemingly unlucky fate. (As a small sidenote, Art commented that this series of events had become so intriguing that he himself would write on this series of events on that faithful night. Comic-Con also comes to mind *poke* *poke* ^_^) So Art finally accepted that the quarts of ice cream were sold out in all of Torrance and surrounding areas. Not wanting to go home empty handed, he went to the ice cream shop and got 3 scopes of the chocolate malted crunch ice cream which they in fact carried. Satisfied for now, we drove back to the apartment.

I am currently typing this at a friends house close to San Diego, relatively close anyways, where we are attending Comic Con. We actually arrived at Comic Con on Wednesday after picking up Phill at work. The line stretched around the front, looped about 10 times on the side and then went behind the back of the convention. But we waited and once the line started to move it just got faster and faster till we got our badges and bags. Known as Preview Night, Day 0 of the con was centered around 3 hours of the exhibit hall being open early for those rare purchases. We only had 1.5 hours and barely scratched the hall. I stopped by the Dark Horse shop to pick up some manga, Art picked up a shirt and that was essentially it. After we left the preview night we headed over to the Tractor Room after navigating the periless one way streets of San Diego. It twas expensive, $15 for a cheeseburger. It was nice in its low ambient light and small floorspace. While there, I took a crack at some exposure shoots with my camera, they turned out really red.

Day 1 I hit the exhibit hall for a couple hours and went through the whole place in a few hours while going crazy with photos. Oddly enough I didn’t even reach 4 gigs by the end of the day though. Guess AX is still better for cosplay… I bought some anime and then hit a few panels. Animation on a shoestring gave some nifty advice though they also had some about claymation which made me lose interest. Went to Quantum Quest, saw it was bad even though Robert Picardo was on the panel. Saw The Hulk vs Wolverine screening. Nice animation, but I think they were taking the characters out of their roles though. The Hulk could utter complete sentences, wtf? Also this weird regeneration thing with Deadpool, though it’s the first time I saw Deadpool in action. Also attended the Science behind Sci-Fi which was cool as they talked about Battlestar Galactica and Eureka which I may just watch when they do the next season. After Art and Phill dragged me out of the con, we went to TGIF for food and drinks.

Time for Day 2.