I guess I should finish this shit up, or something.

This sentence only exists because I want the word "penis" to appear on the front page of the site.

Anyhizzle, we head down to the Console Room, and the guys at the door have ramped up the anality even more, this time. They ask us to put our stuff to the side. We flash our badges. Durrrrr stuff on side? No. Badges. Preeeeesss. See? We get to carry our shit because it's worth fucks of money and the sign over there says you people won't claim any responsibility for shit that gets stolen. So he gets somebody more in charge. Eventually, we're waved through and we head over to play some chibi Street Fighter-lookin' game. N1NJ4 and CK fight each other with their backs turned towards the screen, to prove the point that they don't even have to look to have an amazing-looking fight.

Because fighting games are button mashers.

If you waste time memorizing those combos, you are wasting amounts of your life.

So a guy comes over and asks us to put our bags over on the table. Really? Flash the badges and he fucks off. A few minutes later, he comes back and says if we're not filming anything, they'd like us to put our bags on the table. I indicate the video camera in my goddamn hand, which is filming a video that he's now interrupting the audio for, for no reason other than to be a tool. So he leaves.

Tool.

But the now the fun's out of the whole room. We're here to get some good footage and do some reports on MAGFest, and the people working there won't stop hassling us for our trouble. We're out of there, because we just don't feeling like putting up with that shit.

CK starts his arcade interviews while I play some pinball because fuck yeah, pinball! N1NJ4 goes off to game too, and I'm alone. After a bit, I turn and look around to check on my companions. I don't see either of them, but... all of our equipment is sitting, unguarded, over by the arcade machines. N1NJ4 and CK are nowhere near them. Big, huge expensive camera. Lying on the floor for anyone to take.

Goddamn it, CK.

I move everything beside the pinball machine and continue to do poorly (there's a bonus hole that gives you some points if you land in it, but which then shoots your ball straight between the flippers and, as far as our experimenting has revealed, you cannot hit it when this happens. CK comes back and I chew him out for the camera thing and he tells me had a guy watching it. A guy halfway across the arcade who is playing a video game and didn't even notice me moving everything.

Excellent choice.

X-Men machine is now up and running. We record and play that a bit. It's now got two TVs inside for the screen, which is somehow... heartwarming. I'm not certain why that's the right word for it, but it is.

CK fails at the pinball table I was at for awhile, then runs off to get a drink. Comes back with an old Star Wars electronic handheld shitty game that he got from the Mystery Box. Costs $3 to draw something out of it. Well, I'm game. I pay my three bucks and reach in and grab... NFL Blitz 2001! For Dreamcast.

A system I do not own.

There's some duct tape on the back with "$20 off an R4 card!" written on it. Head back and show it to CK. N1NJ4 shows up with a giant Supreme Commander guide book he drew from the box. Curiosity gets the best of me and I head back to ask about the R4 card. They show me all the stuff it does. I have intended to get more DS games, but none of them have compelled me to actually spend money on them (doubly so after the ones I got wound up being boring let-downs - Metroid, Star Fox, and both Zeldas, especially). So hey, $30 to not buy another crappy DS game? Sounds good to me, man.

Buy a Bawls and another Japanese soda to display in my room, because why not. Regroup with the gang, briefly wonder where N1NJ4's book went, and move to a less crowded location for a break. Open the backpack, and on a whim, check my brentalfloss CD. The case is all cracked and shitty from the backfuck. Shiiiiiiiiiiit. So now I'm in a bad mood, to boot. We need to seek out food.

Pass a couple of girl merchants hanging a fishing rod over the side of their table with a feathery thing for cats on the end. I immediately drop to the ground and bat at it.

That's... that's really all there is to that part of the story.

I head over and find Eli. Turns out there are two entries in the computer for me, now. One says $14, one says $20, so he says he'll just give me the twenty. I tell him he could just give me five and a shirt, instead.

We see ZZ&P pass by, and ask them about food. They've already eaten, but Lotus Prince and vysethebold (their other roommate, whose name is now changed due to the fact that he's joined the site) are in the hotel restaurant. Before we go to join them, we spot another chest - only this one has a book next to it.

On the cover is a drawing of a scroll and quill, with the words "SAVE POINT" next to it. Oh my god, I love you MAGFest. I know I can be abusive, but we'll work through that. Inside, there are spaces to put your name (Amedeus), class (Pirate), level (99), location (Tortuga, 'cause I couldn't think of anything better off the top of my head), your inventory (some amount of doubloons), your quest (Kill that guy, with an arrow pointing at N1NJ4's entry), and your guild or something (Space Monkey Mafia Studios).

Get to the restaurant, pass by a room where all the people in charge of the con are having a big feast at the type of table one has a big feast on. I secretly long to be seated at that table.

Get to our friends' table and the waitress comes over to have them remind her of what they ordered. You'd think it would be written down or something, but whatever. I'm rather forgiving when it comes to restaurant staff, so it's all good. We have her move LP and VTB over to a bigger table so we can join them. She doesn't clear any of the dirty silverware or glasses from the table. We push it to one side and continue on with our conversation. A really haggard looking employee there comes by and dumps some water into LP's glass, and all over the table, then doesn't clean it up and staggers off. The waitress returns and I order some sushi, and she says the sushi bar's closed. Only I can see it clearly open and the chefs making sushi. So CK orders us some dumplings or something and we all order waters to drink, and then the waitress asks Lotus Prince and vysethebold what they ordered. Again. Are you kidding me?

About twenty minutes pass. She comes back and says she'll go get us some water. Another twenty. A guy comes by and fills up the dirty glasses that were already there and we ask for some new stuff, and he goes and gets it and comes right back, no problem. English isn't this guy's first language, and he's already doing a better job with customer service than anybody else there. As we sit there and wait for our food that never arrives, CK informs us that "Crow " is here. I immediately announce, "Crooooooooow!" all MST3K-like. Then a very familiar-looking guy shows up. It's a friend of mine from Facebook, whom N1NJ4 and myself both went to high school with. And he joined the site a week before and we never knew.

Small world, huh?

Eventually, so much time has passed that we declare this place bullshit and storm out. We head to that same damn pizza place, only they're closing, so vysethebold drives us down the street until I spy another pizza place. Head in, order, and I swear that guy looks a lot like Wes Johnson. Hm. He's not wearing a badge or anything though, he might just be a local. I tell him he looks familiar, just to test the waters. Everyone around me points out that it's Wes Johnson, and I get my damn autograph.

So we have a pretty cool chat with him until our pizzas are ready and he takes off and we dig in. Back at the hotel, vysethebold hands me a huge book of discs and tells me to pick any game to play. I gravitate straight to Incredible Crisis! I've always wanted to play this game. Pop that into his top-loading PS2 like JewWario had described. I rock my minigames and vysethebold knocks out the button-mashers. CK comes upon one where you're on a ferris wheel and giving a massage (having sex), and you have to find the right spot with no visual clues and you can only check how far it is to the right spot so much. He fails it. Hard. I grab the controller and do so amazingly that everyone in the room is areyouawizard.jpg

Lllllllllllllllllllllladies.

We get back to the convention and disperse. I find vysethebold at the import merchant's table. Hang out with him until LP decides to go check out yet another of Spoony's panels. The line is ridiculous, we soon found out. I run into Todd, though, and tell him about introducing the Duke as BigTheCat. A few guys nearby in the hall start laughing aloud. I proud.

Then I run into Crow, and we adventure off to seek out the treasure chests and see what we can find. Okay, here's one. It's got... a tampon... a Nuka-Cola bottle cap keychain... and N1NJ4's Supreme Commander book. Head upstairs. This one's god... a tampon... a Nuka-Cola bottle cap keychain... dammit, these are getting samey. I throw in a dollar and take the bottle cap which, if you think about it, is sort of a 1:1 trade. My badge now has the name "Hoagie" on the back, a Press flag stuck to it, five signatures, a blue neck-band-dealie, and a Nuka-Cola bottle cap hanging off of it. It is officially tricked out.

After that, Crow drags me into the LAN Room, which I didn't really care about. But as we're leaving, we pass this one really bitchin' casemod. A fishtank, with all the components submerged. And blue lights, and fans underwater just for effect. We snap some pictures and start to leave, when the owner shows up and asks if we got any pictures. We wind up doing an interview with him, which I did a MUCH better job at, because coming up with questions on the spot about a complex physical object is leagues easier than asking famous people obvious stuff about themselves.

We still need to get that footage off of Crow's camera and upload it.

Head down the next hall to visit the Video Room and find Dani and Rick playing some cards. So we sit down and join them in a game of some Monopoly card game. I wind up there for most of the rest of the night. We amass a pretty sizable group and I get to meet some really fantastic people.

At one point, I glance over into the Tabletop Room, and there's a half-dressed girl. I tell the others. Nobody believes me. Until she walks out (dressed again) with a handful of cash and a guy by her side. I ask him what just happened, and all he says is, "Oh, she took her clothes off." Suck it, non-believers.

The night goes on and on and on for hours. The guy owning the casemod and everybody I know (including a friend of mine I didn't know was at this convention - or any convention ever, really - and hadn't seen in years) walk by several times over the course of the night. We get through some Lunch Money (little girls beating the shit out of each other for fun and profit) and start some Candyland, when CK and N1NJ4 come out of the men's room across from us and tell me, "PARTY BATHROOM!!!"

Well now I have to investigate. I walk in, and large group of guys and a few girls immediately greets me by handing me a beer and shouting "PARTY BATHROOM!!!" I have arrived.

The night goes on with its drunken antics. One guy's topless, another has a tie on his head like Vash. Everybody sings a rousing verse of "Don't Stop Believin'". Eventually the women manage to escape and I make an announcement to my new brethren that we have to elect one of our own to go forth and bring back some women so we can survive the Winter.

I said it all weird like that, too. I'm pretty odd when full of precisely one beer. The important thing is, they did as I said and returned with chicks. And then a security guy came in and was obviously not in a very good mood. But he dumped out a Coke bottle and asked us if the beer cans in the sink were empty. We say yes. He tells us we know we're not supposed to have those down here. The guy sitting on the counter says they were here when we got here. He says, "Uh-huh," with a complete nonbelief, then leaves, not giving a single fuck.

I eventually head back and play some Candyland. Which is a bullshit game, guys. I get a card that takes me to the last leg of the game, then one that sends me back to the first. Fuck that shit. Then something incredible happened. Everyone in the PARTY BATHROOM!!! left as one.

Have you ever seen fifteen or so men and women emerge from a men's room at the exact same time? It's something you could never forget. And would never want to.

I lose at Candyland, I missed watching Mortal Kombat (my favorite video game movie) in the Video Room to play it, the last thing Dani mentioned to the table before leaving was her boyfriend, I didn't get to meet half the people I wanted to and didn't get signatures from some people I really should have, and we forgot to go party with Jon St. John. I think it's time to quit this night while I'm awfully behind.

Then we overslept and missed Sunday.

Anyhoo, fantastic convention, all things considered. It's replaced Otakon as my yearly mandatory convention.

Apologies for this being such a long entry, but really, that's your problem, not mine.

Because I don't give a shit.