Reality Amuck™

I’m hoping most of you didn’t get to excited hoping that you were about to get taught the fail proof ways to rob a bank. To you I say “good day sir or madam, meet me after the lecture and we can discuss a get away plan”. To all of you with better sense, you knew I meant Con as in Convention. That’s right folks, I’m referring to NekoCon 2009. If I had any regular readers, you would remember my last post mentioning that I might talk about my experience. Man oh man was it filled with pure excitement and its fair share of disappointment. With this being my second Con, my first being Baltimore Comic Con (w00t), I thought I knew what to expect. I had prepared my nose for the nerd stink, the constant bumping and rubbing up against strangers, and a lot of walking. I will say all of my expectations were met beautifully.

Just like my good friend who shall remain nameless, I am not one to be very punctual. For those of you who are thinking about opening another tab and googling that word, it means I’m not always on time. I’m not questioning anyone’s intelligence, I myself find it hard to comprehend words with more than five letters if I read them to fast. But I digress. I was late, but I made it which is what counts. I met up with my friends Kirby and her boyfriend Jed (known throughout the weekend as Jedi or chowking) and her roommate Shelby and one of Jed’s friends Clark. Two out of the four of them had costumes so I felt good because I came in my normal geek costume many of you may known as Isaiah. Introductions were made, hands are shaken and I am pointed in the direction of the badge line.

Taking my place in line, I find myself stuck between a pair of adolescent girls giggling about the guy who’s costume didn’t require him to wear a shirt, and a time advanced man in a sailor uniform that I swear had to be the first one off the line back during the construction of Old Ironsides. Ignoring my urge to bolt, I stood in line and eventually made it all the way to the registration computer. Being a whiz on a keyboard I made short work of the registration, when the sailor did the unthinkable. He touched me, then proceeded to whisper in my ear “what all this about? whats going on here this weekend, a Con?”. Immediately the words “Stranger Danger” rang in my head but he stepped out of my bubble, giving me time to calm down and turn and say “It’s NekoCon, an anime convention”. “Oh he said, I saw all the cars so I just wanted to check it out”. Which lead me to believe either he was a pedophile who knew what was going on, but wanted to seem clueless, or a weird old man who “just wanted to check things out”. Neither of which explained the sailor uniform. I literally snatched my badge my from the hands of the lady who was a total female dog, and got as far away from that guy as possible.

Now the adventure begins. It didn’t help the first words I hear from about the Con from my friends were “It was much better last year”. But we made it fun. The vendors had awesome stuff, extremely overpriced, but awesome still. The costumes some people had were amazing. Kirby was cosplaying Matsumoto from Bleach, and out of respect for Jed I wont comment on how well made and form fitting the costume was, that also goes for the Tsunade cosplay she did for the next day. Jed had on a Stitch hat and Clark was cosplaying Kenpachi Zaraki from Bleach. Shelby and I wore regular people clothes. But as I was saying, the costumes some people had were done really well. The ones that stick out was the pre-revenge training Terry Bogard, a nurse from the Silent Hill series, a Rufio from Peter Pan, and someone dressed as huge Pokemon. I had a blast for the most part, and that’s entirely because of the friends I was with and Jed’s “why do black people like Bleach” video he was shooting for his youtube page. I wish there had been more exhibits and more panels, but alas, that’s what KatsuCon and AMA are for. So they better not let me down.

I plan on cosplaying the Moonlight Knight, and maybe a Power Ranger. Many of you might be wondering why I would be cosplaying those two characters. The number one reason is this, masks. As much as I love anime, there is a lack of African-American characters to cosplay. I wouldn’t be Afro-Samurai if you paid me. The masks covers my face, therefore my ethnicity, so I wont stick out. That may be the wrong way of thinking, any cosplay is suppose to be fun and color doesn’t matter and blah blah . Never seen a white guy cosplay Afro-Samurai and you wont see me cosplay Ichigo from Bleach. The number two reason is this: the Moonlight Knight and Power Rangers are bad ass! Not the American ones, the original Japanese ones. Reason number three, which is the most important one. If my Moonlight Knight costume is as awesome as I’m envisioning it in my head, it will guarantee me a picture with every girl who cosplays as a Sailor Moon character. Genius isn’t it. Sometimes I scare myself.

I really only recapped day one, day two was awesome as well. Met up with Tovias’ kids, #1 and #3 as he refers to them and we had a blast as well. Following the Con, Tovias vowed to put child #3 in a convent.