C-C-Con Report
Man, I thought I'd never get around to writing this damn thing. God bless that time in the morning before work. Well, the weekend was crazy. I'll do my best to give it a proper rundown.
So thursday afternoon I left with Tino to make our way to Baltimore. After getting lost going to the LIE of all places (I sorta drifted down the clearview without paying attention until we got to Bay Terrace) we got onto I-95 with no problem which we pretty much just take down to Maryland. About 2 hours into our epic journey, my car started acting funny. Like an automatic actually... it would keep going into high rev and then dropping back down, like it was changing gears on its own. We got to some crazy stop and go traffic, and it got driven from my mind momentarilly. There is apparently a 3 mile stretch of 95 where they thought it would be a good idea to merge 3 lanes into one. An hour of gridlock later, we were back on our way, but the car was acting particularly strangely. It got to about 4500 RPMs before it would even get to a peak speed for a particular gear. And then I realized I couldn't speed up at all. I pulled to a shoulder and turned her off. When I turned the car back on, my fears were realized... The damn thing was stuck in neutral... the clutch was dead. This was around midnight and a couple of staties and non-AAA tow trucks later, let's say about 4 hours later, we got a tow truck to take us the rest of the way. We were thankfully quite close to our destination when we broke down. Kat, who we stayed with, was really cool and we joined fellow crasher John in the basement and passed out.
Woke up the next day at 7:30 to make my way to the auto shop they dropped me at. Well, the AUTOBAHN (caps are important when typing german) didn't work on Japanese cars, again as I had feared, but he took a look and told me that the clutch definately needed to be replaced. VUNDERBAR. So they helped me move it to the street, and I started talking to AAA on the phone. The first person I talked to was an idiot. She gave me the name of a shop not even close to nearby, and I told her to hold off on a tow truck until I talked to them. Sure enough, they said they wouldn't be able to work on the car until monday, so I call back, and not only have they sent a tow truck out, but she's messed up the make and model for my car. I got someone who wasn't brainless, and got it figured out... the local goodyear was gonna hook me up. I told everyone else they may as well get to the con, got into my bitchin' Jigen cosplay, and made my way to my car, mass transit directions to the BCC in hand. I was thankful for my costume, as a cigarette really calmed me down while I waited for the truck. Don't worry folks, if I smoke 2 in a month it's been heavy. Anyhoo, long story short (too damn late kid!), goodyear said they'd hook me up, and even gave me a ride to the light rail. A train ride, a call from my credit card company asking why I got gas so many times in one day, and a long ass line later, I was at Otakon.
----To be continued from work------
----[10:34] Back in Action Baby-----
So Otakon. Man, it was pretty cool. When I finally got there, I found Tino hanging out in artist's alley, where I got to finally meet Steve of Grab, Twist, Pull fame. Man, we need to talk about perspective dude. Anyhoo, we basically wandered for the entirity of the con. It makes for a less interesting post, but I'll be putting my pictures online at some point. John, who was far more photo-happy than I, has them up somewhere, but I have to figure out where exactly. There were lots of Naruto costumes... it was pretty cool. Between Zabuza and Cloud, the place was packed with people weilding weapons bigger than themselves. One of the coolest costumes I saw was Jewish wolfwood (he's got a yarmulke and a huge star of david instead of the cross), who I'm told got a huge applause at the masquerade. The AMV contest sucked... that is until it got to the last two sections. Do yourself a favor and go find "AMV hell" and "eva bebop"... I'd say go find another couple, but they don't seem to be online. There were however lots of very sad folks at the con. If I had a dime for every ugly person with a 'hug me' sign, I'd be a rich man. This was made up for of course by a comprable number of similar hot people.
On saturday, while Tino was teaching me some Go, I got a call from goodyear and my car wouldn't be ready till monday. This was a pain as I had to miss a day of work and weasel another night's room and board from Kat. She was really cool about it and even cancelled her plans for that night... felt bad but again, she was cool and we had a good time sunday night. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The rest of the day was alright despite everything. Turns out I hadn't really eaten anything on friday, so it was good to get some food in me. Had a headache that night and just ended up sleeping on a couch while Tino was at the Masquerade. I was wiped. But I did get to play a lot of Naruto 2 for the gamecube, which is pretty bitchin. Tino found his guy right away in Kiba, and I think I liked using Shikamaru, but I'd have to play more. Ah well, I'm comin' japan.
Sunday was mellow at otakon, but I got to see the Miramax cut of Hero, which I had yet to see. And then I saw the hong kong dvd that night. There were a few STRIKING translation differences. All in all I liked the hk one better. Sure the miramax one told exactly how much gold and land Jet Li was getting everytime he got closer to the king (don't worry, not a spoiler really) but they completely left out anything about the assumed names that Broken Sword and Flying Snow take at the calligraphy school, which I know is minor, but that means they totally changed the translation for a good part of the movie. The BIG one though was the characters Broken Sword writes in the sand. Stop reading if you don't want a spoiler. In the Miramax cut, it's "Our land" and in the HK it's "all under heaven" which, and I'd think you'd agree, a bit different. Now, they don't actually show the characters, but they say it sort of like, and apologies for the unavoidable butchery, "Tenishia", which could be "Ten" and "Shita" which are the japanese readings for "heaven" and "below"... and I believe both of those readings came from the chinese, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now. At any rate, boo hiss for the liberties Miramax took... the stuff that wasn't different was identical, so I'm sure they had the previous sub to work with.
And then on monday, I got my car, and we got home free of incident. But lord I'm beat.
So thursday afternoon I left with Tino to make our way to Baltimore. After getting lost going to the LIE of all places (I sorta drifted down the clearview without paying attention until we got to Bay Terrace) we got onto I-95 with no problem which we pretty much just take down to Maryland. About 2 hours into our epic journey, my car started acting funny. Like an automatic actually... it would keep going into high rev and then dropping back down, like it was changing gears on its own. We got to some crazy stop and go traffic, and it got driven from my mind momentarilly. There is apparently a 3 mile stretch of 95 where they thought it would be a good idea to merge 3 lanes into one. An hour of gridlock later, we were back on our way, but the car was acting particularly strangely. It got to about 4500 RPMs before it would even get to a peak speed for a particular gear. And then I realized I couldn't speed up at all. I pulled to a shoulder and turned her off. When I turned the car back on, my fears were realized... The damn thing was stuck in neutral... the clutch was dead. This was around midnight and a couple of staties and non-AAA tow trucks later, let's say about 4 hours later, we got a tow truck to take us the rest of the way. We were thankfully quite close to our destination when we broke down. Kat, who we stayed with, was really cool and we joined fellow crasher John in the basement and passed out.
Woke up the next day at 7:30 to make my way to the auto shop they dropped me at. Well, the AUTOBAHN (caps are important when typing german) didn't work on Japanese cars, again as I had feared, but he took a look and told me that the clutch definately needed to be replaced. VUNDERBAR. So they helped me move it to the street, and I started talking to AAA on the phone. The first person I talked to was an idiot. She gave me the name of a shop not even close to nearby, and I told her to hold off on a tow truck until I talked to them. Sure enough, they said they wouldn't be able to work on the car until monday, so I call back, and not only have they sent a tow truck out, but she's messed up the make and model for my car. I got someone who wasn't brainless, and got it figured out... the local goodyear was gonna hook me up. I told everyone else they may as well get to the con, got into my bitchin' Jigen cosplay, and made my way to my car, mass transit directions to the BCC in hand. I was thankful for my costume, as a cigarette really calmed me down while I waited for the truck. Don't worry folks, if I smoke 2 in a month it's been heavy. Anyhoo, long story short (too damn late kid!), goodyear said they'd hook me up, and even gave me a ride to the light rail. A train ride, a call from my credit card company asking why I got gas so many times in one day, and a long ass line later, I was at Otakon.
----To be continued from work------
----[10:34] Back in Action Baby-----
So Otakon. Man, it was pretty cool. When I finally got there, I found Tino hanging out in artist's alley, where I got to finally meet Steve of Grab, Twist, Pull fame. Man, we need to talk about perspective dude. Anyhoo, we basically wandered for the entirity of the con. It makes for a less interesting post, but I'll be putting my pictures online at some point. John, who was far more photo-happy than I, has them up somewhere, but I have to figure out where exactly. There were lots of Naruto costumes... it was pretty cool. Between Zabuza and Cloud, the place was packed with people weilding weapons bigger than themselves. One of the coolest costumes I saw was Jewish wolfwood (he's got a yarmulke and a huge star of david instead of the cross), who I'm told got a huge applause at the masquerade. The AMV contest sucked... that is until it got to the last two sections. Do yourself a favor and go find "AMV hell" and "eva bebop"... I'd say go find another couple, but they don't seem to be online. There were however lots of very sad folks at the con. If I had a dime for every ugly person with a 'hug me' sign, I'd be a rich man. This was made up for of course by a comprable number of similar hot people.
On saturday, while Tino was teaching me some Go, I got a call from goodyear and my car wouldn't be ready till monday. This was a pain as I had to miss a day of work and weasel another night's room and board from Kat. She was really cool about it and even cancelled her plans for that night... felt bad but again, she was cool and we had a good time sunday night. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The rest of the day was alright despite everything. Turns out I hadn't really eaten anything on friday, so it was good to get some food in me. Had a headache that night and just ended up sleeping on a couch while Tino was at the Masquerade. I was wiped. But I did get to play a lot of Naruto 2 for the gamecube, which is pretty bitchin. Tino found his guy right away in Kiba, and I think I liked using Shikamaru, but I'd have to play more. Ah well, I'm comin' japan.
Sunday was mellow at otakon, but I got to see the Miramax cut of Hero, which I had yet to see. And then I saw the hong kong dvd that night. There were a few STRIKING translation differences. All in all I liked the hk one better. Sure the miramax one told exactly how much gold and land Jet Li was getting everytime he got closer to the king (don't worry, not a spoiler really) but they completely left out anything about the assumed names that Broken Sword and Flying Snow take at the calligraphy school, which I know is minor, but that means they totally changed the translation for a good part of the movie. The BIG one though was the characters Broken Sword writes in the sand. Stop reading if you don't want a spoiler. In the Miramax cut, it's "Our land" and in the HK it's "all under heaven" which, and I'd think you'd agree, a bit different. Now, they don't actually show the characters, but they say it sort of like, and apologies for the unavoidable butchery, "Tenishia", which could be "Ten" and "Shita" which are the japanese readings for "heaven" and "below"... and I believe both of those readings came from the chinese, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now. At any rate, boo hiss for the liberties Miramax took... the stuff that wasn't different was identical, so I'm sure they had the previous sub to work with.
And then on monday, I got my car, and we got home free of incident. But lord I'm beat.