I’m back! Again! From yet another trip! The trip to Virginia Beach was entirely, 100% successful, and in the best way possible – it was full of great surprises that easily qualifies it as one of the best trips of the year, simply because it was so unexpectedly funny, entertaining, and sweet.

NekoCon 2003 was hilarious. So much so that I ended up spending the whole weekend there. I didn’t goof off in the hotel, I didn’t read my books, I didn’t do any work, I just stayed at the convention and had a great time. Sure, it was an anime convention, and yet despite a heart devoid of love of this particular genre, it was a blast. It was so much fun I’m gonna go to the next one.

Friday afternoon was a little slow compared to Saturday, but it was just laying the foundations for the best day ever. I got to drive around Virginia Beach, running silly errands for Steven, which gave me this strange feeling inside. As I listened to the radio (because the batteries in my mp3 player died), driving around on my own, going 80mph down the freeway to get to Wal-Mart, I almost… *almost*… felt like a teenager. It was giving me flashbacks of driving around Destin, Florida with Nate back when I was 14. That was the last “teenager-y” moment I remember having. That was fun. The purpose of this trip to Wal-Mart was to gather supplies to create a big, colorful sign for Steven’s artist’s table, where he sold prints and t-shirts featuring his 3D artwork. Everyone else around us at the artist’s tables had signs, but Steven didn’t. He had a kick-butt computer out to display his art, but no signs. I made the executive decision to make him one, so I spent a few hours creating a wonderful neon sign featuring a brilliant Bomberman. I wish I could say I drew him, but all I did was color.

I attracted enough attention, though, being the only person seated at the artist’s table that wasn’t selling anything. I got to meet some really amazing people. I’ll list the ones that need to be established characters, since you’ll get to know them more when I explain the goings-on of Saturday. First there was Chris, a very sweet North Carolinian who was attracted to the table by two stuffed Gir toys (for those of you unfamiliar with Geek Gods, Gir is an insane cartoon character from ‘Invader Zim’. He’s cute, he’s a robot, and he’s an instant conversation-starter.) Chris and I started talking and the conversation wound around to the fact that Chris missed Invader Zim and couldn’t find any episodes anywhere. Since I just so happen to have the entire aired collection of Zim, I offered to mail it to him on CD. He gave me some money (and a bit extra – I protested, but he said it was cause I was nice – isn’t that sweet?) to cover the cost of burning the CDs and all, then he said he’d drop by later and hopefully he’d catch me tomorrow.

Next there was Kevin. He too was attracted by Gir. (I’m starting to think I should carry that Gir toy around with me more often…) Turns out *he* has an even bigger collection that I do! He asked if I’d ever seen “The Lost Episodes”. Of course, being naive, I hadn’t even heard of them. He very gallantly offered to burn them on some DVD-Rs for me if I’d cover the cost of production – only $10! (I so love geeks, they’re such a generous bunch!) I was so excited! He said he’d bring them the next day, so I was definitely looking forward to that.

Finally, we met Jesus. Or, should I say, Chuck, who happened to be dressed up as Jesus. The story goes he decided to grow a beard. Why? Because he was bored. After a while, someone said to him that he looked like Jesus. That happened to be around Halloween time, so he decided, ‘hey, I’ll dress up as Jesus for Halloween.’ It was such a big hit that he came to the convention as Jesus. It was great! Chuck’s hilarious, we had great fun with Chuck the next day.

I took pictures all day Friday because I was just so enthralled with all the people who showed up in costume. Normally showing up in costume at conventions is considered the epitome of geekiness/nerdiness/whatever. But you know what? Being in that environment, actually going there with an open mind, really shows you how much fun it is. I am by no means an anime fan, but I had a blast. Why? Because everyone was so friendly, and it must have felt so freeing for these people to just let it all go in an environment where they know they aren’t being judged by the majority. Why? Because they *are* the majority. Sure, other outsiders may call you a freak, but who cares? You know you look cool to everyone else, and more often than not, you are carrying some kind of kick-butt weaponry. That’s gotta be an amazing feeling.

So Friday was fun, but nowhere near as much fun as Saturday. Steven and I slept in a little, which meant we got to the convention around 10:00am. Steve got all set up and I again sat down next to him at his table. I came prepared with my laptop this time so that if anything got boring I could play a game. This time, though, a couple new people showed up next to us at the artist’s table – Lisette and Ashley. Lisette is another artist like Steve who was there to sell some stuff. But Ashley was her 8-year-old daughter. Ashley immediately decided to be my friend. I think that’s entirely because I offered her some of my animal crackers. We started playing Roller Coaster Tycoon together, but she quickly got bored with that. That’s when I decided we should watch some movies. Too bad I didn’t have any. Oh well, that could be fixed, because I had a car. And, I knew where Wal-Mart was. So I spent an hour going to Wal-Mart, getting bagels, then stopping by Best Buy. However, when I got back, Ashley had gone out to get lunch with someone else.

I was slightly disappointed, but that was okay. I was planning on sitting down to watch a movie, but that’s when I saw Chuck – in full costume – sitting in my seat next to Steven. They had concocted a plan. It’s slightly blasphemous, I hope no one will get offended, but it was just too funny. I couldn’t resist. When Steven and I arrived the day before, we were really hungry and I had it in my head that I wanted Pizza Hut. Miraculously enough, I turned in all the right directions and ended up right at a Pizza Hut. As we were waiting for our pizza, I glanced across the road and saw a place – I swear I’m not making this up – that had a big blue sign that said, “Karate for Christ.” First off, I was enthralled, both with the oddness of it and the curiosity of just what those people did in there. Then, sure enough, when we show up at the convention, there’s Chuck, dressed up as Jesus.


Steven had asked Chuck if he wouldn’t mind driving over there with me to have his picture taken. I was slightly worried about this, wondering what Mom would think, me driving this stranger around the block for a photo session. But I was too oblivious to the world to object (I blame the teenager-y infection.) So off Chuck and I went on the funniest adventure of my life. Right around the corner there was the Karate for Christ Ministry. We parked, got out of the car, and took pictures. In fact, I had to take multiple shots because I was laughed so hard some of them turned out fuzzy. But, we accomplished our mission. Here’s the evidence. Isn’t that just too funny? Blasphemous, yes, but I think God has a good sense of humor.


So from then on Chuck and I were buddies. We’d occassionally meet up throughout the rest of the day, talk, laugh, and have lots of fun. My favorite was we decided he needed a shirt that said, “What Would I Do?” Ah, time for the lightning rods, I think we’ll be struck down at any moment.

After my adventure with Karate for Christ, I sat back at my table and watched ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ (apparently the teenager-y feeling was still running rampant in my system, for I bought Ferris Bueller, ‘Clueless’, and ‘Legally Blonde’. Throw in John Cusack and/or the Brat Pack and I think I would have gone into teenage overload.)

But, right about when I got to Ben Stein repeating ‘Bueller’ to an apathetic classroom, Kevin showed up! I was so very happy to see him because he had Zim (and not to mention he was kinda cute, which is always nice.) He tossed me the DVDs, I tossed him $10, but then he disappeared before I could give him a hug. As soon as he turned, I couldn’t spot him in the crowd. He did say that he’d come back later, so I decided I’d stick in my seat so he wouldn’t miss me if he came back to the table. Dang it, he deserved a big hug for getting me seven lost episodes of Zim!


I pulled Ferris out of the DVD drive and put Zim in instead. However, I didn’t catch too much of it because I was too distracted by my efforts to scan the crowd, looking for Kevin in his black and red outfit. (He wasn’t in costume, but that red was red enough to stand out in the crowd.) Still no luck finding the elusive Kevin. I was rather sad, and I felt bad for not properly thanking him.

Finally I couldn’t take the crowd scanning anymore, and I wanted to get better pictures of all the extra people in costume. So many more had shown up since Friday! It was all too exciting. So I closed up my laptop and off I went, camera in hand. I made a whole lap of the hotel and found rooms that I didn’t even know existed with all sorts of fun things going on. When I finally made it back out toward the front doors, I was wondering what to do next and had just about decided that I was bored enough to go back to watching the movie, when suddenly someone to my left said, “Hello!” I kind of did a double-take, wondering if that voice was talking to me, and that’s when I noticed who it was. Chris! There he was, and I was so excited to find somebody I knew that I kind of just hugged him out of the blue. I’m kind of curious what he thought, but no mind, it was fun. I was happy, and when I’m happy, I spontaneously hug people. (Again, I blame my bubbliness on the teenager infection.) We talked for a little bit and eventually it came out that he and his friend were very sad that they didn’t have a camera because they wanted pictures of all the people in costume. I felt bad for them, since I completely understood the entertainment involved in Picture Hunting, so I offered to send them copies of mine and wander with them and take pictures of whatever costumes they wanted me to. Chris was keen on the idea, but his friend went off in search of somebody else.

Thus started my day with Chris. We never really split up after that. We wandered for a good long while, taking lots of funny pictures. Eventually it wound around to dinner time and Chris asked if I was hungry. I was starting to wonder by that point what I would be doing for dinner, and going out sounded like fun. It was just then that Ashley turned up and was oh so very excited to see me. She asked what I was doing and I said it looked like Chris and I would be going out to dinner. She started bouncing and said that would be fun and she really wanted some chicken nuggets. I just didn’t have the heart to tell her not to come. I still remember being that age and dying to hang out with all of my brothers’ older friends, thinking how cool they were, and wanting to do anything just to be around them. Ashley was like looking at myself in a time-warped mirror, I couldn’t break her little heart. So I asked Chris and he was fine with bringing her along, and surprisingly, her mother was alright with her going off with two strangers. Weird, but oh well. Not the weirdest thing I had seen that day.

Off we went to Wendy’s, which was an absolute riot. We started all sorts of conversations with the Wendy’s employees and had a great time. Ashley and I got Kid’s Meals – Ashley cause she’s a kid, me because I couldn’t tell how hungry I was. (Plus, there was a Kirby toy inside, and I wanted it. But shh, don’t tell anyone that.) I had to have another wrestle to see who would pay for the meal, but Chris beat me to it and wouldn’t let me give my credit card to Allan the Wendy’s Man. Does the man paying for the meal make it a “date”? If yes, does the fact that an 8-year-old girl was with us cancel that out? I’m so clueless about that sort of thing.

Anyway. After dinner we all went back to the convention and decided to camp out in a quiet corner of the hotel lobby to watch the 7 lost episodes of Invader Zim. We thought we’d be out of the way, that way we wouldn’t disturb anyone else with our Zim-watching. Turns out, Zim’s infectious and can be caught by any true geek within the same general area. Why do I say this? Because our quiet little corner was soon occupied by about a dozen transient Zim fans. Some would come and go, but then we established the Invader Zim Club – a party of about 8 people – including Chris, Ashley, and myself – that stuck around for all seven episodes as well as several other episodes that we all knew by heart.

After the seven episodes, we had a brief intermission to watch the Lunar Eclipse. We wandered outside into the bitter cold. Ashley unfortunately forgot to bring a jacket. Why is that unfortunate? Because she stole my sweater. I was freezing. But thankfully Chris is a gentleman and gave me his jacket. So we sat out on the cold grass, numbing our behinds, watching the blood-red moon. Ashley danced around on the grass for a while, just being her little eight-year-old self. It was great, I loved it. But eventually it got too cold so we all slowly went back inside and congregated in front of my laptop again.

It was at this point that I decided to lay down on the floor, cause I was pretty tired. The whole Zim Club turned into the weirdest slumber-party-esque gathering I think I’ve ever been to: eight strangers, laying on the lobby floor of the Holiday Inn, obsessing over a TV show, and falling asleep right next to each other. I was happy, mostly because my feet were sore, I was happy to be laying down finally, and I got a back massage. 🙂 That was looovely.

As I fell asleep, it seemed the rest of the club became disinterested with Zim at long last and began their preparations for the upcoming dance at midnight. Chris and I were still tired, so we stayed on the floor and watched the first third or so of Ferris Bueller. We shared headphones at a pillow and laughed at what I think is the best 80’s teen movie of all time. Ashley was still dancing around us somewhere, putting glowsticks on our wrists, and pronouncing us The Powerpuff Girls because she got a hold of three glowsticks in blue, pink, and green. She was Bubbles, I was Blossom, and Chris was forced to be Buttercup. I think he was too tired to be bothered. 🙂

We went to the dance, but Chris and I got rather bored with it after only ten minutes or so. It was all Japanese Techno music, and there were some people doing some rather inappropriate dance moves, so I wasn’t too comfortable in there. Plus, my feet still hurt. So out we went and decided to crash on a sofa. I think the purpose of crashing on the sofa was to sit down and decide whether or not we wanted to finish watching Ferris Bueller, but we didn’t get back up. Eventually we were joined by some other random people. There were some really awesome guys dressed up as Wolvering and Nightcrawler. I had seen them earlier in the day, when we fed Wolverine some little white donuts and got some of the best pictures from the whole trip. But this time we got to mess around with Wolverine’s claws, which Nightcrawler had made for him out of aluminum. Holy crap those were cool! The only thing is Nightcrawler gave me his email address and URL, but now I feel really horrible – I can’t find it. So, Nightcrawler, if you’re out there, *please* email me!

The couch was right near the elevator, and as Chuck was heading up to bed, he spotted us and decided to camp out with us. I think he was the most zoned out one among us. I was to the point of being so tired that everything was incredibly funny. I think I laughed too much, but oh well. It was a nice ending to the day, just sitting there with our feet up, laughing at random things, and staring at the crowd of costumed people that were still hanging around.

Finally, at around 2:45am, Steven packed up his computer and decided it was time for us to go. Even though I was dead tired, I didn’t feel like leaving the couch. The only bad part about Saturday was knowing that I wouldn’t get to see Chris or Chuck again, you know? But thankfully Chris invited Steven and I to breakfast at his hotel for the next morning. I was happy cause I’d get to see Chris again, and Steve was happy cause we didn’t have a plan for breakfast, since he had eaten all the little white donuts and we hadn’t exactly planned on staying over that night anyway. Thankfully Mom and Dad were okay with that and booked us another night at another hotel right around the corner.

The next morning we stole breakfast from the Hampton Inn. We were all so tired we didn’t talk too much, but it was fun to get those few extra hours of listening to Chris say “Ya’ll”. But then Steven and I had to leave, since we still had a three and a half hour drive back home. The drive went alright, and seemed to go by pretty fast. Of course, I’m sure that was helped along by the fact that I got to drive 80mph for most of the way back. And, we got to work planning my costume for the next anime convention. 😀 Yup, that’s right, I still don’t like anime, but dang it, I want a costume. I’ll be dressing up as one of the four horsement of the apocalypse, as depicted in the classic Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman book, Good Omens. According to Pratchett and Gaiman, the four horsemen now ride on big motorcycles, and the best part is one of them is a woman. Obviously, that’s the one I’ll be. I get to dress up as ‘War’, a red-head who walks around in impressive and intimidating red leather outfits. Of course, since leather’s expensive, I’ll have to replace that with vinyl, but it’ll still look awesome. It won’t be that nasty, cheap vinyl – it’ll look close enough to leather that you won’t even be able to tell, even if you touch it. I’ve designed an amazing red coat to wear over a pair of black vinyl pants I already have. To further customize the black pants, I’ll be adding black over-stitching to the sides of the legs. And to top it all off, I’ll be carrying a gigantic sword, since according to the book, as Armageddon begins, War is presented with the sword that once guarded the gate to the Garden of Eden. So of course, my costume would not be complete without it.


Now all I need are three more guys to play the other horsemen. Steve might dress up as Pollution, which means I need to make him a white vinyl coat (since according to the book of Revelations, Pestillence/Pollution rides on a white steed and is clothed in white.) That leaves Famine and Death. Any volunteers? 🙂 Hehe.


The best part is today I found out that I’ll be able to get a bunch of vinyl for free! That cuts down on the costs considerably. This friend of mine, Nathaniel, the guy I know who owns a professional print shop, has a colleague who prints banners made out of – you guessed it – vinyl. I overheard this and asked how much it was – turns out Nathaniel’s vinyl-printing friend has a few bolts that he can’t use for some unexplained reason. He’s going to give me a bunch for free! The only problem is it’s all white… that’ll be great for Steve’s coat, but doesn’t do much for me. But, of course, Nathaniel then explained that his friend is a major flirt, and maybe if I sweet talk him he’ll just print red onto a bunch of it so I can make my coat. I’m going to go meet the vinyl guy tomorrow at his office, and you can bet I’ll have my best outfit on and I’ll be all dolled up. I need to put on my best powers of persuasion. 🙂

All in all, this trip has been a huge success. I made some great new friends. I also found Kevin’s email address, and have since sent him part of the gratitude he deserves. Although, I still think he deserves a hug. I’ve emailed Chris to see if I can’t convince him to come to one of the upcoming conventions. It’d be fun! Call me a freak if you wish, but I had fun this weekend, even if it was at an anime convention. And I can guarantee that if other people would just open up to the idea and actually come to one with a happy attitude, they’d have fun too. So there. 🙂