Saturday 17 May 2003

Anime North 2003 - Day 2

So everything was dandy by the next morning, and after being stuffed by various things like four hashbrowns and a couple of chinese dumplings of sorts for breakfast, I packed my bag with a nice lunch that my aunt wanted to fix up for me. Unfortunately, my cousin had pierced a coke can and it wouldn't open up properly the previous night, and left it in the fridge. Unfortunately for me, because that coke can ended up in my bag and then five minutes later the contents spilled all over the place.

I was looking forward to meeting webrunner and getting his autograph for Jordi, but now coke spread all over the sketchbook I had intended to get him to sign. :_: But the bag was relatively saved from much ruining, so I headed off once again for the hour and a half travel to Etobicoke. I mean Toronto. I mean the airport area.

At Lawrence West station, while waiting for the bus, I looked outside through the glass to where the highway runs underneath, and watched as the pigeons played about in their cementy home-ledges. As I was watching, one just happened to land and then projectile-pooped onto the highway. I have never seen such disgustingness from pigeons. If I had not already been predisposed to kicking their fat bloated disease-ridden bodies aside as they stare blankly off to the horizon, I would have definitely been converted as a pigeon-kicker at this image of self-relization.

I arrived at the Regal, once again by the aid of many people flowing out of the bus at this station, and I rushed in to see already hundreds of crazy congoers in full costume, lounging about the hotel lobby. I mean, if you want to take a look at some of these crazies, you can check out the AN website's forums. I made my way up the stairs to the gopher hole, as it was now called, and was told to go to the art room, the registration (again *shiver*) or to the dealer's room, since no one was about that morning who needed volunteers at the moment.

So I arrived at the art room, where I had no idea what the deal was with this room. I mean, there's the artists' gallery, the dealers' room, the various salons and boardrooms for displays and panels and movies... but what's this room?

"It's a place where artists display their work destined for the charity auction, and some work just for display." And boy, was there a bunch of crazy weird stuff, and some stuff for sale was so bad I think I would have tossed it into the recycle bin if I had done these things.

Apparently, the charity auction would only auction the items which had at least four bids upon them. Otherwise, they would sell the item to the highest bidder, while the unclaimed items would be sold at suggested price. I think even at the time of the auction, there were two items which were auctioned. There was a bunch of crazy wooden painted dolls which were priced at 12 bucks apiece, which only something like four out of fifty had bids upon them.

I spent a sad, sad, sad hour in this room. *BAD MEAN SPIRITED JOKE WARNING!* I don't even know how some of these items could even make the creators' mothers happy. *END MEAN SPIRITED JOKE WARNING!* I was busy checking in bags, until I couldn't move around on my designated spot next to the door anymore. Then we were advised to only check in cameras, which they should have said way way long time before, jerks. Then I got tired of this crap and I set off to explore the con for a little while.

Anyway, I checked out the artists' alley merchandise, figuring that the things being sold here would at least be better worth its money than the crap in the dealers' room. I came across many excellent artists, and many ... shall we say, artists with inflated egos.

But there was one poster, which I was so entirely captivated by, that I decided to purchase for Jorghnassen. It was drawn by this really sweet Korean girl, who had many prints of the same poster. I paid "$12.99" for this, but it was worth every penny.

Then I made the mistake of picking up a stupid free stinky poster of some obscure anime I had no clue about, which I thought would go nice on my kitchen floor to track up grease from cooking. (This is what my mum does.) The reason it was a mistake will be shown soon.

I then made my way to the registration area ... again... to volunteer for another hour. This time, instead of only myself and a security guy herding hundreds of irate pre-registration people, I had more support and backup. There was an insane number of people who weren't preregistered, so they were busy passing little groups of five or so to the tables, while others were still frantically filling out little slips of papers. After another hour and some more, I was sick of the place again, and I went to the gopher hole to have lunch.

After eating, I volunteered for two hours of sitting in one video salon. It was showing Fushigi Yuugi or something spelled like that, and there were tons of people, all laughing and cheering and doing things that most people would kill them for in a normal movie theater. At least in civilised society. Heh. This is why we volunteers were needed for each room, to kick out those who were just being plain pain in the asses. I wish I had a flashlight at that time, then I would definitely have had lots of fun abusing my self-delusional sense of power. BTW, I don't think I had any idea what the crap I was doing in that room anyway as a volunteer. I think there should have been a better indication as to what the volunteers' duties should be in all places.

At the two hour babysitting of Fushigi Yuugi, I remember very clearly that I did have my precious 12.99 poster. But it was rolled up in the cheap-assed poster. Then I moved on to the next two hour video room volunteering slot, where they showed Speed Racer. I don't remember if I had that poster at the time. *FORESHADOWING!!!*

Speed Racer was so bad it was funny. The crazy explosions should have very well killed thousands of spectators, innocent bystanders, and the drivers of cars within a whole city block, but for some reason everyone thinks that driving like maniacs on the street is completely acceptable, and also something to be happy about. I guess that explains all these crappy drivers in Montreal and Quebec. Maybe they should make a new Speed Racer, except call it Speed Racer ULTRA XTREME FASTNESS. WITH SUPERSONIC ACTION. IN CITY STREETS. TO MOW OVER PEDESTRIANS. (It sounded funnier when I was reading this out to myself.)

So after Speed Racer, I was planning to go visit the main rooms and chill out with some congoers. Then I was down by the lobby when I realized my poster was missing... :(

I ran around the hotel for an hour, everywhere, looking for any possible places it could be. I checked with the rooms, the gopher hole, the con office, everywhere... :( Then I had to face it, my precious poster for my precious Jorghnassen was probably taken by some inconsiderate bastard who picked something off the floor and not bother thinking, "Wait a sec, this might belong to someone who is NOT myself and may miss this terrific looking poster very much... Or in fact, may even belong to one of the guests at the con, or maybe even someone out of town who thought that the first con experience she has is a good one, unless someone steals this poster and not even bother thinking this. Well, I should return this roll of paper to a lost and found at the con."

I spent a good half hour agonizing, all the way back to the art room, where I finally decided to finish my volunteer hours, for another hour or so. Distraught, I talked to some of the other volunteers in this room. It turned out, by 6 pm anyway, that no one was visiting this room, and it was full of volunteers who were redirected here out of nowhere else to be assigned by the gopher hole. (I heard on the message board later on that there was a "severe shortage" of volunteers at certain events that day. I wonder why???)

In fact, there were about fifteen volunteers sitting around in this room, and I was pretty sure no one from the con would even bother to infringe on the "no photography" rule, so I kept my guard down and wandered around the dinky room staring at the terrible (and not-so-terrible) art once again. I ended up checking in my own camera, out of nothing else to do, and then I forgot about it until the next day. Smart me.

I met a fellow volunteer named Adrian, and he was finishing up his hours at the same time as myself. We went back to the gopher hole to get our rewards.

Sadly enough, the T-shirts were NOT Anime North 2003 shirts, but crappy promotional free-anyway-from-ebay ebay.ca t-shirts. I was very upset. It was either this one shirt, or this orange shirt that I wasn't going to take because it was too damn big (which Adrian took).

Then I went home. Boy was I disappointed that day. At least I got a bit of loot, and my money back for this terrible, terrible day.

Then I tried to go to sleep, and I suddenly suffered terrible allergy problems in that basement, or I was sick with a cold. I can't tell the difference at that point. I think I won't go back to AN unless there's something in it for me more than a stupid ebay.ca shirt. Piece of crap.