Many of you know that A-Kon was this past weekend but for those who don't even know what it is, basically A-Kon is an anime convention, and the reason I go is to check the gaming scene. Usually this is a futile effort because I simply can't compare what I'm capable of to what I see in the gaming room for two reasons: I am horribly easy to distract and my weakness is my elbows. Okay, let me explain that last sentence... The gaming room at A-Kon is over crowded and loud as hell, there were at least six Guitar Hero 3 setups in the room and you couldn't really hear any of them, and there are so many people in the room that you can't even turn in place safely. I've been easily distracted since I was a wee lad, so this isn't a new problem, but what it means in the realm of being able to guage my abilities to others' abilities is that I don't know how distracted they are, but I know that I certainly am, maybe they're used to that scenario but I am incapable of coping with that level of chaos whilst trying to focus. Even further, this level of crowding led to poor seating arrangements which involved, at times, playing Smash Bros. Brawl for instance at about an eighty seven degree angle and trying desparately to guage left to right depth perception on 3D game on a flat widescreen while being barely able to see really anything at all. As far as the elbows comment, and I openly admit this might sound really strange, that is how I guage timing on a controller properly... with my elbows. The motion, reverb, strength, posture, etc. that I use in my elbows are of an enormous importance toward the quality of my gameplay (as I reveal one of my biggest weaknesses). Not to mention that, once again, the degree of difficulty in moving said elbows without bumping into someone was another quite large distraction.

The truly aggrivating part about the console room difficulties is that there are several empty rooms, lots of them really, all over the place that are more or less already paid for by acquiring the convention area. There could have, at the very least, been a casual gaming room where people could bring their own stuff and simply enjoy themselves rather than the clusterfuck that was the Console Gaming room. In this regard, I'd like it to be more like AnimeFEST was several years ago, when all types of gaming... LAN, card games, arcade, consoles, etc... were in what may as well have been a doublesized gymnasium, with plenty of room for all and, believe it or not, walking room (lots of it).

One very welcomed surprise though is that I can't recall hearing any genuine shit talking in the gaming room this year. There were those who were obviously not as skilled as others, some who were teamed against in Brawl, and others who took actions that were obviously cheesy... but there weren't any malicious words that I was witness to. That gives me hope, guys... anyone reading this who was exhibiting good sportsmanship in that room, you're kickass. Thank you.

During the gaming room shenanigans I did manage to meet a couple of people that were pretty damned cool. So later the three of us went to the indoor pool at a pretty late hour to jam and just be social. Amanda is really cool and I made it a point to remember her name for reasons I can no longer remember, something about having told her how horrible I am with names, I guess I was trying to go against the grain. Anywho, I don't remember the guy's name that we went up there with, of course that makes it seem like I was particularly interested in Amanda where-as it's actually the fact that he told me his name but the one time and then I failed to mentally index that information by using his name at least twice (yeah, I suck that bad with names), but he and I had a grand time more or less forcing those around us to deal with our rambling of MC Frontalot lyrics. Blah blah, the point is that at this time, good cheer was had by all. Amanda's boyfriend showed up, joined us for maybe an hour and a half, and then they left around 2:30am (I think, there was no clock around) then no-name and I jammed for another couple of hours with whatever groups of people showed up. And then the real fun started... it was probably 4:30am or so, I was talking to random couple about different gaming stuffs when I saw a bright flash, I looked up and noticed it came from the fire alarm fixture on the wall... it flashed again, and some more. I'm more or less thinking, "You've got to be fucking kidding me." but then the audible portion of those alarms kicked in and I accepted it. I jumped out of the hot tub (which I had been in for the last fourty minutes or so), grabbed my things (forgot my damned shirt), and ran up twenty two flights of stairs to make certain that my friends were aware and got out safely. To my dismay I noticed while traveling upwards that the fire alarms weren't going off on any floor past the fifth, huge fire code violation, which led me to believe that they were indeed still asleep and unaware of the situation. I finally reach the right floor, open the door, and awoke them. We then headed down to the lobby, another twenty six flights for me (total of 22 up, 26 down = 48), where we sat at the cafe waiting for confirmation of what was happening. Of course, there was no fire, that would've been on the news and considering the fire code violation chances are there would have been a criminal case involved, but my friends were grateful for my actions and concern. I woke up the next day with a pain in my right leg that has been getting worse since then, I've seen a doctor and if it doesn't get better by this Saturday then they'll need to run some tests to figure out what's going on.

Math subnote: The pool is on the 4th floor, we we're on the 27th floor, that is 22 flights up. There is no 13th floor. Same for going down from 27th to the 1st floor lobby... 26 flights.

Let me go ahead and describe why this pain is odd as such that I sought medical opinion... it doesn't hurt to stand on it, it feels like my muscles are pulling when I bend it a certain way, if I tense up my calves hurt, and if I put any physical pressure on either my calve or thigh it feels like a stab wound. Most of the pain is in the meatier portions of my leg. To put it simply, any number of hundreds of things could've happened during that fire scare, I wasn't thinking about much other than getting to my friends as quickly as possible, so there's no telling.

Anyways, back to the con... the dealers room seemed more expensive than usual (most of it). Most of the A-Kon staff that was doing more than checking badges were totally on about themselves, on a power trip, or just outright fucking obnoxious. Oddly, on the other hand the hotel staff was amazing nice, patient, understanding, even generous... normally this is a bit more balanced.

Overall, the convention itself was just not that great, it sucked, and I will no longer be attending A-Kon of my own accord. I have had a much larger margin of success with AnimeFEST, as far as seeking good times is concerned, and I'll be concentrating on that one in the near future.

Sometimes... I just CAN'T STOP TALKING!!!