As a forewarning, this post is a collaborative effort between BLM, ETP, and BOETP. Hereafter referred to as a Spike Lee Joint.
So yeah, this past weekend was NDK weekend in Denver. NDK is Denver's anime con, forever destined to be shitty since it is, well, Denver. For the none of you who care, here's what BLM had to say about last year's con. Let's see how the aftermath of this con compares to the previous con, shall we?
To start, why does NDK blow such hard ass? Well, for one, Denver is a nice place to live, but no one wants to fucking come here. Basically because there's nothing to do here but play with your prick and eat at Wendy's until the end of time. Maybe mix in some People magazine. Nabeshin wouldn't be caught dead here, that's for sure. We could probably get more Japanese guests here for the con if we were put in charge of entertaining them, though. We have no social skills just like all the people who are involved in making anime, and we are down with drinking and looking at schoolgirls and leg fetish photos. We all know that this list pretty much sums up Japan's raison d'être. But does the con tap the resources available to them? Shit no.
In addition to being in Denver, NDK is held at a completely irrelevant time as far as everyone is concerned. The con is also run by this fat stupid bitch who really needs to bathe (and once made a reference to cooking that probably didn't have any relevance to anything). You know, an anime fan.
NDK never can and never will be the glory that is ACen, that's for damn sure. You know, the con we showed up at, shopped at, went to one whole event at, and then blew off because we were in FUCKING CHICAGO. In the short lived battle of Chicago vs. Anime... Chicago Wins! (Excellent.) Partially because it's one of the greatest cities in the U.S., but also because, as a population, anime fans kind of have a sour milk, urine and BO stench to them. We've demonstrated that we can find a way to handle unpleasantries like that for reasonable periods of time, but when stacked up against Chicago, we're going with Chicago.
Back to NDK... Alright, so we had fucking plans. That's unheard of; we hardly ever plan shit. But it was like, yeah. BLM'll get off work early and pick up mom and dad since it's their day off, dooode. We'll get down to the con, get a Friday admission pass, hit the dealer's room, and get the hell out of there and never look back.
We were ON IT. Doin' it in style, too. We show up in BLM's Audi, with two-thirds of us decked out with the power of The Horse, the other a walking billboard for BLM (and it wasn't BLM; lazy little shit can't even be bothered to do his own self-promotion). ETP had the "It's never going to be good again" t-shirt coupled with a "Visors Are For Losers" visor. Next to him is his wife in her Ralph visor, a juxtaposition that was fucking sweet. We were just dying for some dipshit to come up and say "Uhhh, you say that visors are for losers, but your wife is wearing a visor." To which we would have said something like "Yeah asshole, thanks for getting the joke -- or becoming it."
Anyway, as we go to get into the queue (let's get some British flair in here...) for admission, we see a familiar sight -- a huge fucking line. A nice long one coming out of the hotel and snaking around the corner. Each and every one of us (that's including all you fuckers) is a big fan of certain long, snaking things -- you just NEED it! -- but this wasn't one of those certain things.
This was also change-up from last year, where the registration line was all inside and in a different part of the hotel. That was a much better option than this year's stupid fucking idea. Yeah, let's take a bunch of bloody unwashed anime fans... And let them bake in ninety-plus-degree heat. Sure, it sucks being stuck indoors in line with these scumbags, but at least the environment in there isn't doing as much to exacerbate the situation. Not to mention inside we would have access to booze (pronounced boo-zay) at the nearby hotel bar if the situation required... Which it
So we're like, fuck this. Let's go get some food and see if maybe things have started moving by the time we get back (knowing full well that they wouldn't). We hop the street over to Qdoba's. ETP brings up the fact that Qdoba's sells beer. Should we start drinking before the con? Yes, we should start drinking before the con. In fact, there's a liquor store next door; we might be back. Why didn't we bring our flasks?
After eating, drinking, and probably making people at nearby tables wonder why we were using phrases like "child fucker," we head back to get in line once again. On approach to the hotel, we immediately see someone wearing a costume that they have no business wearing. Along with the general odor, this is one of the worst things about any anime con. Not only are you surrounded by a bunch of fat ugly people who are way bigger losers than you are, but a bunch of them think they're all hot and clever with their costumes on their horrible bodies.
This particular, uh, whatever you want to call it, thought that it would be a good idea to show off her thunder-thighs in a leotard... I'll let that image sink in for a moment so you can get to where we're at... There it is. Look, bottom line is that if you don't look something like this or this, you have no business doing any kind of cosplay. The sad part is that even if they were not in a costume they would still offend the eyes because people do not dress for their body type. If you don't have a good body, cover it the fuck up.
To sum up the whole cosplay experience, which truly is for sucks: STOP THAT!! STOP THAT SHIT!!!! Either stay the fuck home, or put on a goddamn beekeeper suit.
Okay, sure, there are a couple of people that can float, but for the most part the genre sucks. The best you can hope for -- when it comes to the women, at least -- is for a girl who has an average to decent body but a face that looks like it took the brunt of Hurricane Ivan. Otherwise, maybe a couple of costumes that look cool and/or actually clever, but that's as good as it gets.
As always, getting a bit off-track here. Thirty minutes after seeing patient zero of bad cosplay -- once the vomiting and shakes died down -- we made our way to the back of the line. After about six seconds, BLM decides to scout on ahead and see if it looked like there was any movement at the head of the line or not. While seeing that there wasn't, he notices another line at the other side of the hotel, which he realizes is for pre-regs. They're not moving either. Fantastic.
Why the fuck do cons always pull this shit? If someone goes through the trouble of pre-registering, just send them their fucking badges. One of the only logical reasons we could come up with for not doing that is because they don't want people making copies or some shit, but there are ways around that. If cost is an issue, just build it into the ticket price. Whatever the case, it's ridiculous to make people stand in line when they helped your ass out by paying in advance. Even ACen fucked this up horribly, and we're tired of it. We're flaming pissed about it and we didn't even pre-reg for this con.
Anyway, BLM gets back in line, and shortly thereafter stupid people start talking to us. The first was this utterly atrocious specimen with teeth that made the Japanese and the British look like dental and orthodontic masters (... and now let's rip on the British). We start talking about how bad the line sucks, and she's like "It's a great time to make friends!" To which BLM replies that we really don't care much for friends. Then she talks about how we should have pre-registered! To which BLM replies (smooth as shit through a duck's-ass like; seriously, he wasn't even up from tying his shoe when he got the line out and damn... it turned ETP on) that the pre-reg line looks like hell, too. "But you don't have to fill out any forms!" Yeah, the forms that ETP and BOETP had to fill out last year which took all of ten seconds.
ETP makes the mistake of asking about how long the line is, and someone else starts in with how it's going to be an hour or two and blah blah blah and last year blah blah blah and some shit about pandas. ETP apparently tuned out the part about pandas and now wishes he told the girl about the time he killed a panda because it looked at him funny. Fuck pandas... And bees! Upon reflection, perhaps BLM made up the part about pandas because he was trying desperately to tune the bitch out as well. But none of us would be surprised if that's how it went down. Upon further reflection, BOETP has indeed confirmed some nonsense about pandas having been in there.
Flashback to White Castle: "I'm done." ETP makes the final judgment on what BLM has been calling for, and we pile into the Yuppiemobile and get the fuck out of there. Which, to be honest, was better in a lot of ways, just like Portillos was better in a lot of ways. To start, we could all do with cutting back on the discretionary spending. Sure, each of us went in with a short list of stuff we were looking to buy, but the past two cons we really went into with no list -- and we all know how that shit turned out: with mountains of legally-sanctioned, thinly-veiled child pornography!
In addition to the monetary benefits, it was probably for the better just in terms of general mental health. Not being bombarded with the aforementioned awful cosplayers for the rest of the day was a definite plus. In addition to just plain not wanting to get sick, there's always the potential that you can see something so incredibly awful that it can ruin something you really, really like -- such as girls in sailor schoolgirl outfits. There are quite a few of those running around any anime con, but of course they're almost entirely low-quality outfits on correspondingly low-quality gai-jin girls. BLM has become kind of a purist on this whole sailor girl thing; unless if you're A) Japanese (or at least Asian since they all, uh, nevermind) and B) cute, you're probably just wasting our time and quite possibly our lunch.
Things smelled a whole hell of a lot better, and we didn't have to deal without all of the morons talking about things only they and their loser friends think are important... SHUT UP BITCH!!! This is something we never do, and would appreciate everyone else knocking it the fuck off.
Once we high-tail it out of there, we're like, now what? We came all the way out here, so no sense wasting the day. BOETP suggests doing something pretentious -- we're good at that. So we head down to Cherry Creek, an upscale (for Denver) shopping district. BLM is just itching to check out the brand-new Crate & Barrel, BOETP needs to see the new fall Ralph line, and ETP needs Tweekend because, let's face it, that's the name of the game. Plus there's plenty of other shit in the area to hit, so we go ahead with our Creek plan, and yeah, it's better. By day's end, we've spent next to nothing. Sure, we went around looking at things like furniture and stereo equipment, but we didn't buy any of it. In the end, the con helped ETP and BOETP save some cash for other high-end merchandise that they're going to buy, and it helped BLM save money for shit that he's already bought.
By day's end, we felt pretty successful. Minimal money spent, only a few dipshits and awful cosplayers seen. All we could do was look at one another and say, "Good con guys!"
Oh, and just because BOETP wants to say it: "SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS SIDEWAYS!!! LET ME KNOW HOW THAT WORKS OUT FOR YOU!!!"
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