OK. So it's not "new". So it didn't "just happen". I don't care. Sure, there was a BotCon this year. Sure it was awesome. But no, I didn't go. It was too far. Last year it was quite far too, but I said the hell with it and took an 8 hour train ride down to North Carolina anyway! So in the wake of this year's Botcon, here is the log of my journey through LAST YEAR'S Botcon...(Yes, the picture is wrong, but doesn't '00 look better then '01? SURE!
Well, to start off with...that ISN'T the actual hotel I stayed at, it's the really nice, ritzy hotel next to where Botcon was. I stayed at a small motel roughly 15 minutes away.(Oh, and for those who just arbitrarily clicked the link...BotCon is the annual Transformers convention)
Well, let's begin? I arrived late Friday evening, and though the con didn't officially start until Saturday but DAMMIT I WANTED TO SEE STUFF. So I took an expensive cab to the complex and did my signing in thing, which entitled me to all sorts of cool stuff I wasn't expecting like a shirt, comics, ID badge, etc...I wanted my exclusive toys, of course, but noooo, not till Saturday they said. I pouted, and they didn't relent as a big lanky nerd pouting doesn't really have much sway...so instead I waited until they weren't looking and snuck into the dealer room...well, what I thought was the dealer room. Actually it was the small overflow dealer room which was about 10% the size of the real room...it was filled with businesses and also guys who spend as much time on the Transformer newsgroups a day as you spend at work, school, and sleeping combined. Oddly enough, my urge to make fun of these people was gone...perhaps because I too travelled across half a dozen states and emptied my bank account just to surround myself with toys for a weekend. But I had a MISSION! A "MetalForce" Optimus Prime...which was a statuesque, BIG, perfect rendition of Optimus made to look metallic...I needed it for cosmic enlightenment. However people soon noticed I did not belong and I made my departure, stage left eve-ennn...and headed back to base to fiddle with what I'd already gotten.

A sleepless night later I crammed what I had already in a duffel bag I'd slung over one arm, shouldered my backpack, and headed out...knowing they would be full of many things, and especially MetalForce Optimus, when I returned...I got to the convention hall around 7, and doors supposedly opened at 8; but something got messed up and we were there till 9-ish. No biggy, some dude had old TF episodes playing on his laptop right in front of me. I swear I could hear the mooing amidst the stampede as the doors opened...and there it was, great googly moogly: The REAL dealer room! Now...there are few things I'm REALLY nuts about, and Transformers is one of them...A gymnasium sized room filled wall to wall with TF toys and other stuff...memorabillia I didn't even know existed until then. Things I had to buy! I bought a couple things like bumper stickers, pins, shirts, posters, and realized I still had to get some TOYS! More importantly then that, I needed MetalForce Optimus....oh yessss....but he was nowhere! Was I deceived? Was this thing so rare it couldn't even be found HERE?! Concerned, I went to the smaller dealer room...and wallah...one boxed MetalForce Optimus. Half the contents of my wallet later, he was snugly in my bag and I was ready for more junk...I strolled through the art room, helped them MST3K some old episodes, picked up some toys here and there, then waited in line nearly an hour to get my super-duper elite commando awesome nifty Botcon Exclusive Transformers. See, I didn't need them much...but in the toy world, convention exclusive=$$$$ and my toy collector gene took over my brain. There was too much to write about here, but one of the funniest things was that some lady came dressed as Arcee; and was subsequently hit on by no less then 347 guys...she shot them down like Shockwave taking out bumblebee...it was pathetic.

Oh, and by the way, this was during a period of time that we believe an alien symbiote had attached itself to my head; pretending to be hair. See, every so often I randomly decide to go for long hair and forget my hair doesn't grow, it fro's. It looked cool when it was wet but that lasted roughly 3 minutes...a year prior it was even worse, and I'd grown my sideburns/goatee in as well making me look quite a bit like Hyde from 'that 70's show'...now back to Botcon.
A notable occurence was the appearance of two guys in HUGE Optimus and Megatron costumes. These costumes were so freakin AWESOME that I forgot how much I could have made fun of people for putting thousands of dollars and hours into a TF costume...however, they auctioned the things off for charity so it's cool in my book. I watched these two guys attempt to re-enact a climactic Op/Meg battle but though neat, the costumes weren't terribly mobile and it was like watching whales mate in slow motion...so I wandered off to find an ATM and buy more things. Another amusing thing to do would be to go out in the main part of the convention center/hotel and watch little kids take a break from playing Pokemon to point and laugh at the grown men arguing over what kind of gun Blitzwing used...the insanity soon spread in odd ways, and small dealer booths began appearing out in the parking lot. I talked with a few people I remembered from back when I used to do a lot in the online TF community, and then headed back to abse to eat and gather my resources...but not before talking over Nerdcore with Optimus.

And then came Sunday...sunday I returned to get the last few botcon exclusive things I couldn't get elsewhere, say goodbye to anyone I knew, and get some Mountain Dew from the really cheap machine there for the train ride home...it was more or less uneventful, as was the ride, but I returned full of junk which many can attest to seeing strewn all over my room to this day; including MetalForce Optimus being king cool of all my toys...all in all, Botcon is a lot of fun and better every year. If you're any kind of TF fan...just GO, you have to see it to believe it...but don't expect much sleep; and hopefully by then I'll be going again and able to hit some room parties; shibby. Now before we finish, a shot of _most_ of the stuff I compiled there...


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