Get your con Chicago on

Okay, since ETP has given a quick rundown of the trip he, BOETP, and I took to Chicago, I now find myself embarrassed for slacking off and taking, like, a day-and-a-half to start covering what I want to cover. Hey, I've actually got tons shit to do at work, and taking a couple of days off didn't help. Plus, there's all that "banging hot chicks" I have to get around to. Oh, and you don't give a shit about my mini-vacation anyway, remember? So get off my ass already.

I was debating just how I should go about this. Should I do one long post, or several vignettes? In the end, breaking it up wins, because that A) keeps me from having to make a 67-hour post and B) allows me to have posts with all sorts of titles that I think are so bloody clever.

So, where the fuck to start? Well, how about the beginning? Damn I'm smart.

The ostensible reason for going to Chicago on this particular weekend was because of Anime Central. The thing is, it's not like you ever need an excuse to go to Chicago. But some kind of special event doesn't hurt to help tack down a date. If said special event turns out lame, hey, we're in Chicago. It's not like there isn't anything else to do in this town.

We knew in advance that we were going to be bringing home a boatload of shit that we didn't leave home with, so we decided to drive in order to avoid trying to haul things home on the plane or shipping things back. Since we're fucking smart/stupid, we hatched a plan to leave the Denver area around 9 PM-ish Thursday night and drive straight through to get to Chicago. With three people driving, this wasn't too bad of a plan. That pretty much worked out. Maybe 14 hours in a car would drive other people nuts, but not me. I love driving. I've driven 10-11 hour drives by myself and been just fine. Having your two best friends along for the ride certainly doesn't hurt matters.

For me, the driving part is an essential element of many vacations. We kept ourselves pretty well entertained both going out there and coming back, and I wouldn't trade that for anything, not even being able to get there in a couple of hours instead of more than half a day.

We did decent in terms of time. We got into Chicago around 12:30 PM or so. Behind schedule, but what the fuck. Our plan was to just head over to ACen immediately, and we did just that. Hey, no time to fuck around going to the hotel or somewhere else to clean our filthy selves up, there's shopping to be done!

Okay, now, check this out. We wanted to be there at noon to hit the dealer's room when it opened. Didn't happen. Okay, we're a half an hour to an our off our target. Not a huge deal, right? After all, we pre-registered, so getting in there should be a snap, shouldn't it? Wrong. We get there only to find a long line for pre-regs. This, of course, is only a line to get into ANOTHER line. All told, it wasted over an hour to get our fucking badges that were already paid for. It didn't help that things were organized horribly and stations were manned by fucking idiots.

Note to ACen and pretty much any other con: if people are good enough to pay in advance, SEND THEM THEIR FUCKING ADMISSION MATERIALS IN THE MAIL. Thanks.

Standing in line for so long did allow us to witness one special event: the worst atrocity ever. We see this cute Asian girl there. She's even wearing a schoolgirl outfit, and we all know about me and that. Then... Then we see her boyfriend. Now, it's not the fact that she had one that was so awful. That's something you're almost always expecting. No, the atrocity was just how fucking awful this guy was. I mean, he was the kind of guy you'd expect at an anime con for Christ's fucking sake. I don't know what the deal there was, but that's pretty much going to piss me off until the end of time. You know what? I hate myself, and I'm just going to end this segment here.