I awoke to the melodious sound of Sana-chan throwing yet another hyper-spaz fit. Yes, that’s how we otaku wake ourselves up: an episode or two of Kodocha is enough to wake up even the worst narcoleptic. Pyxie and Pokey left in the morning, trying to catch a bus to Universal Studios. Unfortunately, they missed it and were forced to spend the day with us. ^_^ Oh well. They managed to hit the pool with Locke later in the day, so it wasn’t a total loss. And speaking of Locke, his luggage, which had somehow been lost en route, turned up, so Sky drove him to the bus station to pick it up. (Yes, he took the bus. Two days on the road. From Iowa to Anaheim. Pity him.)

  At any rate, Kodocha was not enough to stave off encroaching hunger. So we began wandering off in search of cheap food. Although such a thing does not exist within the resort’s limits, we managed to find a place that was selling a burger, fries, and drink for only $7. (And that really was the second-cheapest meal I had all convention.) After stuffing ourselves with fast food, several of us headed over to the exhibit hall.

  There, we were greeted by what appeared to be the line from Hell. After first trying to get in through the exit (and obviously failing), the nice AX staff guy (*snort*) directed us outside—to the line. It was the longest, most stationary line I’d seen since the prereg line at AX ’99. And the fact that I was wearing dark clothes in broad daylight wasn’t helping things, either. Fortunately, once the line started moving, things proceeded quite rapidly. Mild punishment for the prereg line this year, I suppose.
 

Once inside, things got crowded. REALLY crowded. Last year, the dealers room was huge, about stadium-size. This year, it was merely big. The size of, say, a hotel lobby. Add to that a record number of attendees, and just picture the chaos. Especially for me, who tries to avoid contact with others at all costs. We were packed like cattle in a slaughterhouse (hence the title of this section; clever, eh?). And since it was a hot day, and some otaku are not known for their personal hygiene in the first place, and some were wearing full body costumes made of leather, well...I leave that to your imagination. If you’re brave enough.   At some point, we squeezed our way out, and a few of us went to the art show. (I think it was me, Johnmog, Mabis, Daran, and Golbez) After both completely crushing my artistic confidence and inspiring me to make good fanart, we went to another room where fan artists were hard at work churning out commissioned hentai. There, Golbez found a pic that completely enthralled him; it was a FF8 fanart of Squall as a pimp and Rinoa, Selphie, and Quistis as his hos. Well, that just blew him away. He spent a while talking to the artist and presumably requesting things to draw. I don’t exactly know because, in the meantime, the rest of us forgot about him and wandered off. Not good, because we had agreed to meet in the room at 6:15 so we all could go to a Japanese restaurant in the Disneyland Pacific Hotel. After we realized Golbie was missing, we ran around the exhibit hall for a while, looking for him. Then at six, the dealers room closed. Left with no options, we hoped Golbez had gone back to the room and hurried back. Thankfully, he had.

The smell of sweaty otaku at close proximity  was indescribable. (But Daran came prepared)

  And so off we went again, this time to the Japanese restaurant. Fortunately for us, they had a nice big table for all of us. We got to take off our shoes and everything. Having been on my feet for the past several hours, you can’t imagine how good it felt to take off my shoes and sit down for a while. Then came the most anticipated part—the sushi. Expensive but, unlike a lot of other things at Disneyland, well worth it. It was the best dinner I had at AX in terms of both the food and the company. We had a lot of fun trying to remember who had ordered which sushi and of course eating it. The best part was when they were stuffing spicy tuna rolls down my throat. Yes, a fun time was had by all.

  After that feast I was full, but Pyxie wanted to dance. And since there was an AX dance party going on in the convention center ball room, what was I to do? I could have just said, “No, thanks, I’m not interested,” but I’m not the kind of guy who expresses his honest opinion. So, Pyxie and Sky dragged Pokey and me to the dance. Twice, because Pyxie went back to the room to change. And along the way, Sky, expert matchmaker that he is, was trying to hook me up with various otaku girls. Of course, since they were all headed AWAY from the general direction of the dance, you can imagine how that went.

  At any rate, when we went back to the room for Pyxie to change, Locke was there. We used his cell phone to try and call the list’s resident babe and ex-moderator, Kaitlin. And lo and behold we got through! But Sky was a little confused by Kaitlin’s voice; he said it was so deep and sexy that he thought he’d dialed a phone sex hotline by mistake. But we got things straightened out, and each of us spent a few minutes talking to the all-powerful listmistress. Then Pyxie, Pokey, Sky and I went back to the dance, leaving Locke to talk to Kait in private. ^_~

Note: Bwahaha. Trust me, Kaitlin, Sky never said such a thing. If you want to chew out anyone, I’m your man. Plus, I have no idea what Locke and Kait talked about after we left, so I just threw in some innuendo—ah, you can never go wrong with innuendo. ;D

Busting out my mad DDR SkiLLz on the dance floor.

So once we got there the second time, it was either dance with Pyxie and Pokey or get hooked up by Sky. The choice was obvious. Of course, having never danced before, much less with crowds of people all around, I was a little worried. So I did the only thing I could do: I put my Dance Dance Revolution skillz to the ultimate test. No one booed or asked if I’d had breakfast,  so I would assume that I passed. Note: Bwahaha X 2. What DDR skillz? I barely passed the easiest song. And I certainly didn’t try those moves on the dance floor. My dancing consisted mainly of rocking back and forth roughly in time with the music. Have to give Pyxie credit though. Not only is she a great dancer, she didn’t laugh at me once.

  Well, after that experience, we collected Sky (who was still hitting on female otaku) and headed back to the room for another all-night anime fest. But while we were doing that, Locke was off doing something few other people at the con were able to do. He got into the premiere showing of the Escaflowne movie. He even says he was the last person admitted into the film room. How’s that for being a lucky bastard? This, plus the dealers room, should have tipped us off to just how quickly events were getting filled up. Particularly since we were planning on attending events such as the Masquerade and the music video showing. But it was a tiring day, so pretty soon we were out until late the next morning. Little did we know that lines were already forming...

Back to:

• THE INTRO!
• DAY 0!

• DAY 2!
• DAY 3!
• DAY 4 (& 5)!
• MISCELLANEOUS!

Disclaimer: This account contains a lot that could offend people. Sex. Porn. Drug use. Profanity. Violence. Anime. Crudely drawn pictures. Sentence fragments. A lot of non-white people. People celebrating a culture other than America’s. Disney-bashing aplenty. At any rate, if something offends you, stop reading. If your kids read something that offends you, tell them to go to another web site. If you’re really ticked off by it, then e-mail “cosmic_chicken” at “excite” dot “com” and I’ll listen. Certain characters, events, etc. referred to and depicted in this account come from Japanese animated films and television series and are copyrighted by their respective companies. Whatever the SPJA and Anime Expo have copyrighted belongs to them.

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