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May 04, 2005

PersaCon 2005!

I spent last weekend at PersaCon in Madison, Alabama, and had a great time, sick though I was. Read on to get the skinny on my time in the South...

THURSDAY

My flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta was uneventful, and we got in a bit ahead of schedule. I shelled out two dollars for headphones to figure out what the rest of the right-thinking world already knew--"Elektra" was a bad movie, and I don't mean "bad" like "good" or "cool," folks. Still, I got to keep the headphones, so those two bucks weren't a total wash.

I don't know how it is for the rest of the nation, but living as I do in California, I'm guilty of the same sort of geographical ignorance at the national level that Americans are so often said to suffer on a global level. Any direction I go, I'm surrounded by California--and lots of it. Thus, I didn't immediately realize when I got my flight info that I would be overshooting my final destination by an hour, but that was the case. I had a brief layover in Atlanta before a much smaller plane took me west to Huntsville, Alabama.

By "much smaller plane," I mean something perhaps about half the size--seating 150 passengers to the first plane's 300, let's say. And it was small enough to let me feel every little bump and rattle. That's when I start getting nervous. You can explain the laws of aerodynamics to me until you're blue in the face. But I'd really rather you didn't. At some core level, the idea of machine-aided flight will always strike the primitive portion of my brain as magic. Ignorance is bliss. Wiley E. Coyote can zoom off that cliff and walk on air ad infinitum, but once he looks down and confronts the paradox, his goose is cooked. Out comes the sign with the pithy rejoinder and down he goes.

Anyhow, I stepped off of that plane in Huntsville, happy to be back on solid ground. I met up with Lauren (the con chair), Mike (said con chair's boyfriend, to whom I bear no small resemblance), and Miss Bonnie (said con chair's mother).

I don't think I've ever addressed somebody by the combo of an honorific and their first name, but in the case of Miss Bonnie, it came quite naturally. My ear started picking up and incorporating the southern accent immediately, and saying "Miss Bonnie"--which rolled out of my mouth as "Miss Bonneh" sooner than I like to admit--only sped the process along. And speaking of accents, I had meant to ask somebody while I was down there how they'd go about imitating my West Coast accent (which I can't hear, of course), but I forgot to. If any of the con-goers (or anybody from the South, in general) wants to go to the trouble of explaining it to me, knock yourself out in the comment section.

That first evening in Madison (population 30,000) was relatively sedate. Stephanie Chateau and Steve Bennett had already arrived, and Michael Coleman deplaned only minutes after I did. Miss Bonnie took the guests out for dinner at Ruby Tuesday (which must be a regional chain, as I've never seen one before, with a menu roughly equivalent to what you'd get at a TGIFridays or the like).

Later that night, the guests and Lauren and Lauren's Mike ended up at Waffle King. I was confused by the Waffle King, which served a great many items, only one of which was the titular waffle. With a name like that, I had expected an IHOP-type waffle-o-rama, but that wasn't the case. Mike Coleman and I had our first taste of grits, which tasted to me like I think a wet, warm, liquid rice-cake would taste. The addition of sugar and butter helped a bit, but I think they're an acquired taste--one I didn't have a chance to acquire, shall we say. Mike seemed lukewarm on the grits, too, but this is a guy who enjoys fries with gravy and mayonnaise ("poutine" to us Yanks). That crazy Canadian...

FRIDAY

PersaCon started the next morning at 10 a.m., but seeing as how it was a weekday, a lot of the younger con-goers were still in school. My panel wasn't until 3 p.m., so after I made my morning appearance, I went back to my room to knock out a few pages on my script. It wasn't much, and it was to be the last script work I got done over the weekend, but it was better than no pages whatsoever. I also relaxed for a bit, since I had been sick since that last Monday evening, and didn't want to get any worse.

I still had some time to kill, so I wandered into the game room and promptly fell in love--with Taiko Drum Master for the PS2.

The moment I saw somebody playing it, I was hooked. The trippy, bright graphics...the overly enthused level announcer girl...the little Taiko drum creatures that seemed to enjoy nothing more than taking a repeated pummeling about their face. How could I resist? Oh, and did I mention that one of the con staffers had even gone to the trouble of cutting down a dowel into bachi for folks to use instead of the plastic sticks that come with the game?

Someday I'm gonna marry that there game.

I did pretty well at it, and once somebody explained that the left drum was gimpy and pointed out its "sweet spots," I did even better. I especially liked picking some rambunctious classical song and banging my way through it on Hard (or even Oni, if I was feeling my oats). By the end of the weekend, I had managed a few perfect songs and some top scores.

When I showed up for my 3 p.m. panel, I walked into a room containing maybe ten people--and I didn't want to know how many of them were hold-overs from the event that had ended immediately prior to my time-slot! They were a mellow bunch, and I spent my hour talking about the ins and outs of anime voiceover work, some of my experiences in particular, and answering a few questions (asked mostly by the indefatigable con-chair Lauren--when I said they were a mellow bunch, I wasn't kidding!).

The opening ceremonies were held shortly after my panel let out, and the crowd had grown from the numbers I had seen that morning. We guest-type folks were introduced to the con-goers, Miss Bonnie put the fear of God into any would-be miscreants, and off we went.

Then it was time for our ninety-minute autograph session, my first. There were t-shirts available with pictures of the guests--pictures of Steve and Stephanie and caricatures of Stan from "Hamtaro" for Mike and Luke Valentine from "Hellsing" for me--that the con-goers could purchase and have us sign. I never knew how hard it was to write on fabric with a Sharpie, but I got marginally better at it by the end of the autograph session. Meanwhile, Stephanie and Steve were whipping up complete pictures to accompany their sigs. I signed a bunch of shirts, some con programs, one of the con staffer's sneakers, a light saber (after pointing out that I had nothing at all to do with the "Star Wars" franchise, but Vader wasn't taking no for an answer), a printed picture of the Paper Sisters from "R.O.D. the TV," and a box with some form of "Full Metal Alchemist" figurine inside of it. I think that con-goer might have thought I was Travis Willingham, who is in "FMA" but who had to back out of the con due to work conflicts. I didn't want to embarrass the person, though, and thought maybe they knew I wasn't him and wanted me to autograph it for lack of having anything else to sign, so I did. If not, at least they could look at the signature in private and figure it out then.

Once that wrapped up, we took just long enough of a breather to set up for the AMV competition, and off we went. I had a definite favorite--an AMV of clips from "Naruto" set rather adroitly to Maroon 5's "Harder to Breathe," to which I assigned my personal Judge's Choice award--but all of the entries were impressive.

By then, it was 9 p.m.--time for dinner! We headed back to Ruby Tuesdays, not only because we'd enjoyed the food the night before, but because it was all of a block away and the choices were dwindling by the hour. Plans had been made to try and catch a late screening of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," but we were all pretty beat and begged off.

I wandered down to the game room, meaning only to play one round of Taiko Drum Master, but restrained game-play wasn't in the cards. I played and played and played, raising both a sweat and a blister, feverish with love of the game and...well...actual fever. I dimly remember drumming out an especially impassioned rendition of "My Sharona," much to Lauren and her Mike's glee. I think I knocked out the beat above my head with the drumsticks before the song started like some hair-metal drummer straight out of the '80s, but I can neither confirm nor deny this. I do know that I tried in a fit of bravado to qualify for the DDR Tournament Finals which were slated for the next afternoon. Lauren's Mike was kind enough not to state the obvious--namely, that I was nowhere good enough to make the cut. Thanks, Mike.

By the time good sense prevailed and I stumbled back to my room, I had to face the hairy truth--I had been sick for four days by then, I wasn't getting better on my own, and I felt damn wretched. I had bought some pills for general cold/flu malaise, but I think their aim was too general to do me any specific good. I trudged the two rainy blocks (and one of those blocks was just the parking lot!) to Wal-Mart and bought Hall's throat lozenges and NyQuil cough syrup. I was through messing around. I was also soaked and not wearing socks. Brilliant, no?

I trudged back to the hotel, climbed into the tub, and read most of Mori Ogai's "Vita Sexualis"--hardly titillating, title notwithstanding. The narrator could have used a little more vita in his sexualis, and vice-versa. I dig the book a little more after having discussed it in my independent study group this afternoon, but only marginally. After today's discussion, I fear my two classmates and my professor are ready to write me off as some sort of literary philistine, but I digress.

SATURDAY

I woke up Saturday morning to one of the con staffers knocking on my door, asking if I still wanted to go out and participate in the Battle Royale Dodgeball match. I croaked my polite refusal. I had wanted to play, but I felt so sick that I could imagine a well-thrown ball taking my congested head right off of my neck. I fell back into bed and slept until 2:30 in the afternoon. The sleep helped, as did the NyQuil and the Hall's, but I still wasn't up to snuff.

Mike Coleman and I headed over to the Waffle King a block away, where we had had our first experience with grits late Friday night. The girl working the counter asked what had brought us to town, after our conversation (and un/accents) outed us as tourists, and we told her about the convention. Not only was she into anime, but she was particularly fond of "Hellsing" (the series of mine that the con-goers knew best). She even got a chance to drop by the next day, although PersaCon was basically done but for the shouting by Sunday afternoon.

I buoyed my spirits with a little more Taiko Drum Master and caught the end of the DDR Tournament Finals, where I watched preternaturally agile teenagers and 20-somethings hop around a dance-pad faster than I can think.

After that, it was time for my second and final hour-long panel of the convention. The attendance was better this time around, so while I discussed much the same material, there were more questions from the crowd.

I had a few hours of downtime (read: more Taiko Drum Master, baby!) before it was time to judge the cosplay competition. Merely getting the participants lined up, photographed and numbered took a lot of time--perhaps as much time as the competition itself. Had this been Anime Expo, we'd still be processing entrants, but the overall speed of the contest was one of the large pros of a small con (forgive me...couldn't resist).

Miss Bonnie took the guests and a few of the con staffers to Appleby's (more for the principle of the thing than due to any problem any of us had with the idea of a Ruby Tuesday three-peat) and we returned to the hotel to discuss the cosplay judging. I'm no costume expert, but the entries I felt particularly strong about were general favorites, so we were all pretty much on the same page. My Judge's Choice award went to a girl who cosplayed Yomiko Readman. I'm sure everybody thought I was just copping out to series bias, but she really did look like her. I knew who she was playing before anybody told me, and that speaks well for an outfit comprised of everyday, nondescript clothing. It was a good choice of characters for her to depict based on her build and features, she assembled the ensemble well (even if she didn't have to hand-make anything), and that was good enough for me.

SUNDAY

After the awards ceremony at noon, I pretty much spent my final hours at PersaCon wandering around the hotel, talking with the con-goers and staffers I'd met over the last few days. Miss Bonnie and Lauren bumped up the closing ceremonies to earlier in the day so that Mike Coleman and I could make our flights on time, but Mike still ended up dashing out of the room at 3:53 p.m., frantic that he wouldn't have enough time to get processed as an international traveler before his 6 p.m. flight took off.

When Lauren and her Mike dropped me off at the screening gate and we said our goodbyes, I was met with my final experience of the South--pleasant airport screeners. They weren't scowling. They weren't curt. They were affable. They even joked with me. Of course, the Huntsville airport was a ghost town that afternoon, which probably had something to do with it. Still, they displayed a level of humanity I wouldn't expect from an LAX screener even if I were to find myself the last passenger on Earth.

"Wow," breathed one Huntsville screener, "you actually locked your duffel bag?"

"Well, I'm from Los Angeles."

"Ohhhhh," he intoned, my answer explaining my apparent loss of faith in mankind.

When I got to my gate, Mike Coleman was standing at the gate across the walkway from mine, having gotten to the nearly-empty airport with tons of time to spare. He boarded his flight, and I boarded mine, a short flight, brief layover, and longer flight away from LAX and home.

I'm sure I've left out details of my time at PersaCon that deserve to have been included, but it's four in the morning, and I'm done with today (or yesterday, rather). If I look at this later and feel like I've omitted anything vital, I'll slap it in. Any good photos will go up later, too. Before I end this entry, though, I want to thank Lauren again for bringing me out to the con, thank Miss Bonnie for her hospitality, thank my friend Erin for schlepping me to and from LAX, and say "Howdy!" to all the great people--fellow guests, staffers, and con-goers--I met last weekend. You guys were a fun bunch, and with any luck, I'll see you all--or "y'all," if you prefer--next year!

Posted by patrick at May 4, 2005 02:41 PM

Comments

Posted by: Nastassia Parker at August 25, 2005 02:13 PM

Posted by: Jon Bastian at August 25, 2005 02:14 PM

Posted by: Itchino at August 25, 2005 02:14 PM

Posted by: Mad Monarch Voards at August 25, 2005 02:15 PM

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