MAGFEST 4
Warning: Long Post Ahead!
You all rocked and made my experience at MAGFest the best it could have been. I really hope we can do this again sometime in the near future. I can't begin to describe the feelings that come up when I look back at the weekend. From getting settled in to meeting everyone to listening to amazing music by the artists up close and personal to the partying and the food and just everything. Best days of my life. I'm just sorry we couldn't have gone on a little while longer.
Anyway, a recap!
Thursday: I got up at 5, drove down to the airport, and flew to Virginia. When I got there, almost nobody was around, so I introduced myself to Brendan, the con chair, and waited about a bit before meeting FL_Dave, an old old friend from the #turkishguy days. We went to Taco Bell before we split, and then I met with Robert and his friends from Ohklahoma. As we hung out after setting in to the room, we caught up with Royal and George from Seattle. They were hungry, so we all went to Chili's, where much fun was had. The grocery store was called Giant G! Haha!
Thursday passed pretty unassumingly. I didn't want to sleep, though, so I stayed waiting in the anteroom for the virt crew. And they finally showed up. Jake, Dan, Jason, Andrew, and Xavier all arrived and much hugging took place. They had had to pick up Wave Theory at the airport, which had taken them a bit longer than they expected.
After a quick sleep, I met up with Jake and co. to go to the grocery store for some snackages. Xav bought this horrid potato salad, which he later claimed he only bought because he didn't think he could refuse the lady. I'd post the conversation we just had but I can't find the log. Anyway, we got back in time to watch opening ceremonies, which went hilariously. Brendan, the guy who runs the con, talked about "playing with your junk" and girls handling guys junk. Priceless. So many amazing people showed up. The guys from the Shizz / Minibosses forums came in droves, as did the coolest and the best of VGMix, including Matt Pollard and Roy, Shael Riley and his brother Devon, Richter, and others.
Friday with nothing much going on, Xavier and I met with Royal and later Josh (lasombra) and Aaron (skyline) came to play Magical Drop 3 and Metal Slug and other weird Neo Geo roms while listening to old mods from #trax days when they all hung out there. Royal is a master of that Magical Drop 3, though... I think I beat him one round out of probably 10 or more.
Friday evening I enjoyed my first can of Sparks, and I have to say it is a good drink. Energy drink with malt, very cool. Turns your tongue orange. I spent some time drinking goldschlager and Bailey's with Ailsean and his wife Kris and housethegrate. Tasted like cinnamon cookies. The whole time I was hanging out with Xavier as well... he is a badass Frenchie. Never met a funnier guy. When we were at the opening ceremonies, Brendan was talking about this novelist, Robert V Aldrich, who would be at the con later to promote his anime novel. I won't go into detail about last year's MAGFest but for those of you who know waht I'm talking about, Xav yellled out "Robert V Aldrich! Sell me your book, do some one-handed pushups!" Priceless. He lent me his camera for the rest of the time we were there at MAGFest.
Friday night had a concert which I might have been at, but don't really remember. I remember hanging out with the Smash Bros while they practiced for their set on Saturday night. I tried staying at the Dwelling of Duels but it was just too laid back and slow so I left that. I was stilll tipsy and went around greeting people such as Geoffrey Taucer and Stevo of Level 99 fame.
Oh! That's right! Andrew had challenged Jake to a 20 soft taco eating contest, so we all went into their room to watch the battle unfold. Andrew and another challenger, Harley (rpenguin) were no match for Jake, who could have eaten 20 soft tacos with no drink in two bites each. With the drinking and tacoing out of the way, I was hanging out with a couple of others in the room when I decided to go outside and talk to Royal and Xavier. Unfortunately, the door was off its slider, so the moment I touched it, it fell forward! The door slow motioned its way down and onto the outcropping of the balcony for the room, where it proceeded to shatter into a million pieces. I was taken aback by that, but glad that nobody was outside and nobody got hurt.
We also had some time spent outside just chilling while some smoked cigarettes and others double fisted vodka. Matt had to leave with his girlfriend, unfortunately... The hotel moved Jake and the rest of his room up from the 3rd floor to the 6th, where only one bed was. We joked about a bunch of dudes sleeping in the same bed, and it became a great joke. Before too long they were tired and so I left them to fall asleep while I found other things to do.
With things calmed down, I attacked Name That Tune hosted by X-Strike Studios with Xavier and mauled Koala and this other guy to face Shael Riley in the semi-final. He beat me narrowly but I gave him a run for his money. Shael eventually beat JoeCam in the final event. That was a fun one.
With Name That Tune out of the way, I ventured into the video room, where they held the premiere of X-Strike's newest film, "Nth Mile", a movie based on the video game Parappa the Rappa. I sat with Shael and Ailsean and laughed my ass off. What a great film. Some sleep later I woke up to Saturday.
The guys and I attended the meet the bands panel and followed that up with Jake's panel on writing video game music as a living. He is fucking amazing, folks - not only does he make top notch music, but he even animated a short film based on a day in the life! Talk about skill. I laughed my ass off the entire time. And Rexy as the goon chasing after him! Oh!
I think following that I went to pizza with JoeCam, some people from the OCRemix crowd, and a couple of other dudes for pizza. We played telephone... it was fun.
Having missed Robert Aldrich and Empire Arcadia, I went straight to drinking with Xavier. What I did not take note of though was that peppermint schnapps, the drink of my choice that evening, was the infamous Mint Potion of MAGFest 1, a curse that left Dale North vomiting all over several rooms at the Clarion in Williamsburg in one go. I didn't feel it right away, so I downed some of Xav's rum and we headed down to watch Wave Theory and the Smash Bros.
Wave Theory I have always heard songs from but never actually seen play. Boy, can they get the crowd moving. Even when they fucked up the mixing they sounded badass. Alex (skill) can really put on a show. I can't wait til they do some local shows here in the Bay Area. I bought a shirt from them after their set was over. There were a couple of acts between them and Smash but I think I just bided my time drinking.
The Smash Bros rocked the fucking house. I cannot describe to you how amazing it was to hear Katamari Damacy played in a true rock setting with Midee on electric violin and Ailsean and prozax on guitar, norg on a Chapman Stick, virt on the keyboard and shawnphase drumming. They were intense the whole set through. Every one of them impressed me to no end. Who knew shawnphase would be such an excellent drummer?! After they finished up, we charged up to the room for a celebratory drink. I had still more to drink, and we all decided to visit the concert hall for the Minibosses, who were the closing act.
The Minibosses as I might have written about before put on a great show. They are not the most musically gifted artists ever, but they know how to move the crowd. Instant moshes came up. I stayed at the back and sang along while jumping up and down and dancing to the sounds of Castlevania. This dude Grimm from the Shizz, who had flown over from Japan, was with me. We talked in Japanese a bit, I think...
Here's where things start to go bad. As I had had too much to drink, I must have blacked out because when I came back into conscience I was in a bathroom puking over a sink while someone tried to help me drink some bottled water, which was coming right back up. I then passed out again and found myself lying on a stretcher being put into a hospital bed! Apparently the paramedics had taken me to the UVA hospital to be taken care of.
They put me under and I woke up the next morning. I hadn't had alcohol poisoning, I learned, and did not need to have my stomach pumped, which was good. Matt picked me up to bring me back to the hotel but I was feeling very weak. When everyone awoke, they alll checked to make sure I was doing okay, which I was, minus some light aftershocks. Apparently Rob had gotten into a bit of an accident himself... I feel responsible, him seeing me all drunk and incoherent...
Brendan came up to me and explained what happened while I was out of it...
I found my way up the elevator to the wrong floor after the concert, and ended up in 510 instead of 610 where Jake and the others were staying. I guess I talked to some people from X-Strike who were there and some friends of theirs before puking profusely in Koala's bathroom. Brendan heard about a person being very sick in the room who claimed to be Jake's roommate and told Rob about it because he assumed it was me. When Rob came up, he exploded and passed out, landing face first on the bathroom tile, messing up his front teeth badly and causing his mouth to bleed profusely. At this point, someone called the paramedics, but when they arrived, they also found me, drunk and confused.
Apparently nobody there knew who I was. When the medics asked me who I was and what time my flight was, I shouted, "AILSEAN! MATT! JUST 10 MORE MINUTES! JUSTONE MORE GAME!" and they assumed I had had WAY too much to drink plus I must have been insane so they carted me off on a gurney.
Apparently, Brendan tells me the whole way down the hotel I was singing loudly the Katamari Damacy song and speaking to the EMTs in Japanese. He had to stop them and explain that I was just very excited about the song because the band had played it earlier and it is one of my favorite tunes. As they were ready to roll me out of the hotel, I somehow managed to wiggle an arm out of the straps, throw up a fist, and shout, "ROCK!" That, I hear, earned me quite a few fans, although I do agree with George that it was not the coolest thing in the world (alcohol problems can end much worse than that.)
When I was up and about again, Sean, George, JoeCam and myself helped tear down the concert hall, and I recorded one of the funniest lines - Joe doing an impression of DJ Potato collaborating with Disk Masta Smokabitch to do a remix of the song about Robert V Aldrich. Jake and the rest had to leave by noon because Jason's flight home was at 8 and it took about 6 hours to get to the airport. Many stayed until the end of the con at 4 PM. It was so sad to see people go.
Before it ended, however, I did sit in on a very interesting panel put on by X-Strike. After that, I purchased the DVDs they had on sale and helped see Ailsean and his wife to their departure with house and Ashane. It was very sad to see them go.
With almost nobody left around to talk to, I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening speaking with Royal, Brendan, JoeCam, and Luiza, a Shizzie who came all the way from Brazil. We talked for several hours. When at last the final TVs and video game systems had been packed away, we all went for food at a late night diner. The food wasn't that great, but not terrible either. At one point one of our 17 people's wife came and yelled at him and called us all dumbasses. Only in Virginia...
We all headed to Brendan's house following that, where we met with Empire Arcadia. Triforce, the guy who heads it up, was talking on and on about the Zelda series and how the games interconnect chronologically and storywise. So great. He also plowed through Zelda for NES in 2 hours, showing off his skills. The guy wears a Powerglove almost 24/7. I think he legally changed his name to Triforce. That's how hardcore he is. Still, I had a thing or two to show him (Secret to Everybody locations).
Most people headed home, and I went to sleep on the floor. I left Brendan's at 2 PM and flew home, finally getting into San Jose at 10 PM. It is a trip I will not soon forget. I am happy, however, to be back in San Jose with home cooked meals and warm weather. 30 degrees with wind chill Virginian weather did not quite suit me...
So! To wrap it up:
I came home with 5 CDs by shawnphase, 2 DVDs from X-Strike Studios, 30 minutes of total video game play at the con, and tons of memories that I will keep in my mind and in my heart forever. The people I met this weekend were the most completely awesome folks ever and I hope we have more chances in the future to hang out again.
If I remember anything that I left out of here, I'll update. Also, leave me messages if I left anything out that you wanted me to include.
I love you all. Goodnight!
You all rocked and made my experience at MAGFest the best it could have been. I really hope we can do this again sometime in the near future. I can't begin to describe the feelings that come up when I look back at the weekend. From getting settled in to meeting everyone to listening to amazing music by the artists up close and personal to the partying and the food and just everything. Best days of my life. I'm just sorry we couldn't have gone on a little while longer.
Anyway, a recap!
Thursday: I got up at 5, drove down to the airport, and flew to Virginia. When I got there, almost nobody was around, so I introduced myself to Brendan, the con chair, and waited about a bit before meeting FL_Dave, an old old friend from the #turkishguy days. We went to Taco Bell before we split, and then I met with Robert and his friends from Ohklahoma. As we hung out after setting in to the room, we caught up with Royal and George from Seattle. They were hungry, so we all went to Chili's, where much fun was had. The grocery store was called Giant G! Haha!
Thursday passed pretty unassumingly. I didn't want to sleep, though, so I stayed waiting in the anteroom for the virt crew. And they finally showed up. Jake, Dan, Jason, Andrew, and Xavier all arrived and much hugging took place. They had had to pick up Wave Theory at the airport, which had taken them a bit longer than they expected.
After a quick sleep, I met up with Jake and co. to go to the grocery store for some snackages. Xav bought this horrid potato salad, which he later claimed he only bought because he didn't think he could refuse the lady. I'd post the conversation we just had but I can't find the log. Anyway, we got back in time to watch opening ceremonies, which went hilariously. Brendan, the guy who runs the con, talked about "playing with your junk" and girls handling guys junk. Priceless. So many amazing people showed up. The guys from the Shizz / Minibosses forums came in droves, as did the coolest and the best of VGMix, including Matt Pollard and Roy, Shael Riley and his brother Devon, Richter, and others.
Friday with nothing much going on, Xavier and I met with Royal and later Josh (lasombra) and Aaron (skyline) came to play Magical Drop 3 and Metal Slug and other weird Neo Geo roms while listening to old mods from #trax days when they all hung out there. Royal is a master of that Magical Drop 3, though... I think I beat him one round out of probably 10 or more.
Friday evening I enjoyed my first can of Sparks, and I have to say it is a good drink. Energy drink with malt, very cool. Turns your tongue orange. I spent some time drinking goldschlager and Bailey's with Ailsean and his wife Kris and housethegrate. Tasted like cinnamon cookies. The whole time I was hanging out with Xavier as well... he is a badass Frenchie. Never met a funnier guy. When we were at the opening ceremonies, Brendan was talking about this novelist, Robert V Aldrich, who would be at the con later to promote his anime novel. I won't go into detail about last year's MAGFest but for those of you who know waht I'm talking about, Xav yellled out "Robert V Aldrich! Sell me your book, do some one-handed pushups!" Priceless. He lent me his camera for the rest of the time we were there at MAGFest.
Friday night had a concert which I might have been at, but don't really remember. I remember hanging out with the Smash Bros while they practiced for their set on Saturday night. I tried staying at the Dwelling of Duels but it was just too laid back and slow so I left that. I was stilll tipsy and went around greeting people such as Geoffrey Taucer and Stevo of Level 99 fame.
Oh! That's right! Andrew had challenged Jake to a 20 soft taco eating contest, so we all went into their room to watch the battle unfold. Andrew and another challenger, Harley (rpenguin) were no match for Jake, who could have eaten 20 soft tacos with no drink in two bites each. With the drinking and tacoing out of the way, I was hanging out with a couple of others in the room when I decided to go outside and talk to Royal and Xavier. Unfortunately, the door was off its slider, so the moment I touched it, it fell forward! The door slow motioned its way down and onto the outcropping of the balcony for the room, where it proceeded to shatter into a million pieces. I was taken aback by that, but glad that nobody was outside and nobody got hurt.
We also had some time spent outside just chilling while some smoked cigarettes and others double fisted vodka. Matt had to leave with his girlfriend, unfortunately... The hotel moved Jake and the rest of his room up from the 3rd floor to the 6th, where only one bed was. We joked about a bunch of dudes sleeping in the same bed, and it became a great joke. Before too long they were tired and so I left them to fall asleep while I found other things to do.
With things calmed down, I attacked Name That Tune hosted by X-Strike Studios with Xavier and mauled Koala and this other guy to face Shael Riley in the semi-final. He beat me narrowly but I gave him a run for his money. Shael eventually beat JoeCam in the final event. That was a fun one.
With Name That Tune out of the way, I ventured into the video room, where they held the premiere of X-Strike's newest film, "Nth Mile", a movie based on the video game Parappa the Rappa. I sat with Shael and Ailsean and laughed my ass off. What a great film. Some sleep later I woke up to Saturday.
The guys and I attended the meet the bands panel and followed that up with Jake's panel on writing video game music as a living. He is fucking amazing, folks - not only does he make top notch music, but he even animated a short film based on a day in the life! Talk about skill. I laughed my ass off the entire time. And Rexy as the goon chasing after him! Oh!
I think following that I went to pizza with JoeCam, some people from the OCRemix crowd, and a couple of other dudes for pizza. We played telephone... it was fun.
Having missed Robert Aldrich and Empire Arcadia, I went straight to drinking with Xavier. What I did not take note of though was that peppermint schnapps, the drink of my choice that evening, was the infamous Mint Potion of MAGFest 1, a curse that left Dale North vomiting all over several rooms at the Clarion in Williamsburg in one go. I didn't feel it right away, so I downed some of Xav's rum and we headed down to watch Wave Theory and the Smash Bros.
Wave Theory I have always heard songs from but never actually seen play. Boy, can they get the crowd moving. Even when they fucked up the mixing they sounded badass. Alex (skill) can really put on a show. I can't wait til they do some local shows here in the Bay Area. I bought a shirt from them after their set was over. There were a couple of acts between them and Smash but I think I just bided my time drinking.
The Smash Bros rocked the fucking house. I cannot describe to you how amazing it was to hear Katamari Damacy played in a true rock setting with Midee on electric violin and Ailsean and prozax on guitar, norg on a Chapman Stick, virt on the keyboard and shawnphase drumming. They were intense the whole set through. Every one of them impressed me to no end. Who knew shawnphase would be such an excellent drummer?! After they finished up, we charged up to the room for a celebratory drink. I had still more to drink, and we all decided to visit the concert hall for the Minibosses, who were the closing act.
The Minibosses as I might have written about before put on a great show. They are not the most musically gifted artists ever, but they know how to move the crowd. Instant moshes came up. I stayed at the back and sang along while jumping up and down and dancing to the sounds of Castlevania. This dude Grimm from the Shizz, who had flown over from Japan, was with me. We talked in Japanese a bit, I think...
Here's where things start to go bad. As I had had too much to drink, I must have blacked out because when I came back into conscience I was in a bathroom puking over a sink while someone tried to help me drink some bottled water, which was coming right back up. I then passed out again and found myself lying on a stretcher being put into a hospital bed! Apparently the paramedics had taken me to the UVA hospital to be taken care of.
They put me under and I woke up the next morning. I hadn't had alcohol poisoning, I learned, and did not need to have my stomach pumped, which was good. Matt picked me up to bring me back to the hotel but I was feeling very weak. When everyone awoke, they alll checked to make sure I was doing okay, which I was, minus some light aftershocks. Apparently Rob had gotten into a bit of an accident himself... I feel responsible, him seeing me all drunk and incoherent...
Brendan came up to me and explained what happened while I was out of it...
I found my way up the elevator to the wrong floor after the concert, and ended up in 510 instead of 610 where Jake and the others were staying. I guess I talked to some people from X-Strike who were there and some friends of theirs before puking profusely in Koala's bathroom. Brendan heard about a person being very sick in the room who claimed to be Jake's roommate and told Rob about it because he assumed it was me. When Rob came up, he exploded and passed out, landing face first on the bathroom tile, messing up his front teeth badly and causing his mouth to bleed profusely. At this point, someone called the paramedics, but when they arrived, they also found me, drunk and confused.
Apparently nobody there knew who I was. When the medics asked me who I was and what time my flight was, I shouted, "AILSEAN! MATT! JUST 10 MORE MINUTES! JUSTONE MORE GAME!" and they assumed I had had WAY too much to drink plus I must have been insane so they carted me off on a gurney.
Apparently, Brendan tells me the whole way down the hotel I was singing loudly the Katamari Damacy song and speaking to the EMTs in Japanese. He had to stop them and explain that I was just very excited about the song because the band had played it earlier and it is one of my favorite tunes. As they were ready to roll me out of the hotel, I somehow managed to wiggle an arm out of the straps, throw up a fist, and shout, "ROCK!" That, I hear, earned me quite a few fans, although I do agree with George that it was not the coolest thing in the world (alcohol problems can end much worse than that.)
When I was up and about again, Sean, George, JoeCam and myself helped tear down the concert hall, and I recorded one of the funniest lines - Joe doing an impression of DJ Potato collaborating with Disk Masta Smokabitch to do a remix of the song about Robert V Aldrich. Jake and the rest had to leave by noon because Jason's flight home was at 8 and it took about 6 hours to get to the airport. Many stayed until the end of the con at 4 PM. It was so sad to see people go.
Before it ended, however, I did sit in on a very interesting panel put on by X-Strike. After that, I purchased the DVDs they had on sale and helped see Ailsean and his wife to their departure with house and Ashane. It was very sad to see them go.
With almost nobody left around to talk to, I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening speaking with Royal, Brendan, JoeCam, and Luiza, a Shizzie who came all the way from Brazil. We talked for several hours. When at last the final TVs and video game systems had been packed away, we all went for food at a late night diner. The food wasn't that great, but not terrible either. At one point one of our 17 people's wife came and yelled at him and called us all dumbasses. Only in Virginia...
We all headed to Brendan's house following that, where we met with Empire Arcadia. Triforce, the guy who heads it up, was talking on and on about the Zelda series and how the games interconnect chronologically and storywise. So great. He also plowed through Zelda for NES in 2 hours, showing off his skills. The guy wears a Powerglove almost 24/7. I think he legally changed his name to Triforce. That's how hardcore he is. Still, I had a thing or two to show him (Secret to Everybody locations).
Most people headed home, and I went to sleep on the floor. I left Brendan's at 2 PM and flew home, finally getting into San Jose at 10 PM. It is a trip I will not soon forget. I am happy, however, to be back in San Jose with home cooked meals and warm weather. 30 degrees with wind chill Virginian weather did not quite suit me...
So! To wrap it up:
I came home with 5 CDs by shawnphase, 2 DVDs from X-Strike Studios, 30 minutes of total video game play at the con, and tons of memories that I will keep in my mind and in my heart forever. The people I met this weekend were the most completely awesome folks ever and I hope we have more chances in the future to hang out again.
If I remember anything that I left out of here, I'll update. Also, leave me messages if I left anything out that you wanted me to include.
I love you all. Goodnight!