Ayacon - Day 3

[chrisvenus]

Day 3 started at an even earlier time than day 2 since I had to get everything packed away so I could hand my room key back by 9:30. I managed this without any problems and carried all my stuff to the car. Well, I thought I had managed it but after getting home I discovered that I'd left my cool conbag and the conbook behind somewhere (as well as the various adverts and stuff that came in there). I can only assume I left it in my room somewhere whcih is annoying. The conbook was basically a mini magazine of articles and the like and I haven't read any of them since I figured there'd be plenty of time when I got home. Oh well, I might be able to borrow beg or steal one from somewhere. :)

Anyway, breakfast was good again, as well as far too early in the morning. If up by 8 on a saturday is bad then up by 8 on both days of the weekend is just cruel. This cruelty can of course be largely offset by a good helping of bacon and egg in the morning so by the time breakfast was over I was feeling happy with the world and wandered off to ops, my social hub. :)

There were a lot of other gophers wandering around looking bored and sitting outside ops chatting. We got thrown out of there by the committee for making too much noise since they were trying to have a committee meeting just inside ops and so we all decamped to the sofas just round the corner which was much more comfortable anyway. It was at this point that the VR2 story was repeated several times. I think I heard it in ops the night before but now is the best time to tell it.

One of the other Gopher's, I forget his name, was telling us a story about what had happened to him the day before. He'd been taking a break from his duties to use the loo and as he was washing his hands he glanced up and in the mirror caught sight of a girl standing behind him. HE finished washing his hands and turned around and she was still standing there. He asked her if he could help and she replied, standing in a room whose walls were covered with urinals, "Is this video room 2?"

I hope this story is as good if you weren't there as if you were but it had us laughing and joking about it for... well, I'm still laughing and joking about it. :)

I had marked down a couple of anime that I wanted to watch but had not signed up for any official duties so instead I took the option of just sitting around and chatting to people until 10 O'clock when people started wandering off to do jobs. The Auction was happening at this time so still not in the mood for anime I decided to go along and see what was being sold and for how much. The auction was made up of various items being sold either by individuals for their own gain or things that had been donated to the charity side of the auction.

Some of the things I remember being sold were bed sheets with cute anime girls on (single bed, naturally) - 50ish quid, Full Metal Alchemist plushies (ed, Al, winry, roy and armstrong if I remember correctly) - about 60 quid, A cardboard box that once housed dell equipment (35 quid) [1], a set of 9 con badges (junior, member, gopher, press, dealer, tech, security, committee, guest) (60 quid) and other stuff too but I forget what. It was scary to see how much money some people had to throw around. Then again, maybe if I wasn't broke I'd be more tempted to spend more money. I could certainly see myself coming out of the dealers room with far more stuff (anybody able to tell me if there is a good online retailer for wall scrolls? I wish I'd bought another one or two since krys said she'd be happy to have my one in one of the public areas of the house.

Despite being scheduled for two hours the auction actually finished in good time so I had the chance to go see one of the anime that sounded really intriguing from the description - Eureka 7.

Surfboarding mechs, in the sky. From the creators of Raxephon, who have clearly discovered an entirely new range of hallucinatory substances.

Despite the description I didn't think this was anywhere near as "hallucinatory inspired" as many of the anime I've seen. The setup was another "shrouded in mystery" kind of things with some unexplained event in the past leading to the setup of the current world. The lead character, a young lad, lives with his grandfather, his father having taken part in huge plot events and his mother having gone off for reasons I forget. This boy is interested by the huge surfboarding mech mentioned in the description and longs to pilot one. He gets his chance as they are visited by a ragtag bunch of mech surfers who, it seems, have some uber-cool prototype mech that defies the principles on which they are meant to work. Oh, and the boy has the ability to set off some uber-powerful effect in this prototype mech.

Its a nice premise and I will probably download more of it to watch. If nothing else then it would be great to edit the anime together with some Beach Boys to form the ultimate AMV! :) I am actually very intrigued by the plot as well so would like to watch more. Its a shame really that the majority of the things I really like are mecha shows or I'd push for all of them to be shown at animesoc next year. :)

After this I was up in ops when they were looking for some of the people taking part in the panel quiz so I decided to go down and watch that. As it turned out there was no gopher working the door so I took the job upon myself and stayed to enjoy the quiz. If nothing else it was a good excuse not to have to go work the Dealer's room door which was a possibility. That was infinitely more dull than working anime room doors.

Anyway, after that I stopped for lunch, a jacket potato with cheese from the cafe-bar. It was very nice and kept me going til dinner which I guess was the whole point of the thing. After that I had intended to go see blood which was timetabled for 2PM. It being about 20 to I decided to wander up to ops to see if they needed any help with it. I'd not signed up and they had a full list but I figured that more gophers on something big like this are always helpful, if nothing else so you could have more gophers on hand so you didn't need to look for the half dozen that were signed up who might be lurking elsewhere.

So I wandered up to ops and was told they had some posters being made up that needed printing and then blue tacking to the wall. These were the "No food and drinks" and "no video recording" sorts of signs. So that's what got me wandering in past the gophers manning the doors to the inside of the whole thing. I stuck up the posters and then ops were happy they'd done what they needed for the time being so I then wandered around the gophers manning the doors to see if it was all OK and then wandered inside to check on what was happening. I helped make sure ops knew what was going on since the guy running the blood concert hadn't got a radio - it was running an hour late, I believe largely due to a delay in the band's flight. A couple of us it seems were wandering to ops and telling them about the current planned schedule and so on. Various people were also being paniced so we tried to take the stress off them by running errands and so on.

There was also some professional security there who were very helpful in making sure us amateurs had an idea of what to do. The lady who was running the security team made helpful suggestions as to the best way to do badge checks on an eager and enthusiastic crowd trying to pile into the venue. They were also doing the stage security which was a job that we were totally not qualified for. Though the crowd were well behaved so there was no real need for it.

I ended up after all the running around helping do the crowd entrance. We had two people on each door badge checking but a couple of us were doing food and drink checks to save the door people having to do both. It was a bit of a silly thing to do in some ways since loads of people had bags and we weren't doing bag checks. However, those who were carrying drinks in their hand were those most likely to be drinking them so stopping those probably did do the trick. There were also a couple of people with video cameras and one of the security guys said he caught somebody inside actually sitting in the front row and trying to film the thing before he got chucked out. Dunno if that was a permanent chuck out or just "Go put your camera somewhere". I hope the latter.

Once the concert started, as I suggested earlier the gophers checking badges dropped back from the outer doors to inside the hall that they were playing with. Partly so they could enjoy the show and partly because it was easier to badge check there. So then Blood began to play.

Straight from Osaka in Japan, BLOOD are one of the biggest Visual Kei bands in the world - and they're making their UK debut at Ayacon! Witness the first Visual Kei gig ever on British soil!

The gig was pretty cool. I'd never heard their music before but it was pretty cool. The main thing to say about them though was their look. Visual Kei is apparently all about the look, Kei meaning something like "style". They had what I can only describe as a "glam goth". There were over the top costumes, glitter and beads, blood effects and vampirism, and they were all bishounen. I actually wouldn't have realised from looking that they were all men. The dresses didn't help this at all.

When I was told by one of the gophers that I didn't need to help with the doors I went and enjoyed the show. The place was set up with the seating removed from the front of the room and the sloped seating still in place. I was actually very surprised (as I always am) to see so many people sitting down for a gig. I, naturally, went and joined those standing at the front. I had my camera in my pocket and took a few photos. Many of them crap (think fo the lighting) but a few of them are not too bad.

I bounced around a fair bit and then decided to go see if anything needed doing gopher wise (when I started getting bored of bouncing). I wandered around a bit but nothing much needed doing so I went back down to catch the end of the gig and Fu-ki's birthday cake.You see, it was the lead singer's birthday so two of the fangirls who were helping to organise things got him a small cake. They presented it to him with lit candles and everything. It was amusing that due to the outfit he had on that he needed help to blow out the candles to make sure neither he nor his costume cuaght fire as he came close enough to it to blow out the candles. I can't remember why but for some reason the guitar player was helping with the cake and in top comedy fashion made a good attempt to smash it all over the lead singers face. I hoped that there would be an all on rock band food fight on stage but alas, it was not to be. It was funny though. :)

And then the concert ended. There was supposed to be a full closing ceremony but due to the overrunning of the concert and the fact that the committee actually had no real parting words except the thanks it was done to the crowd as they left. It went along the lines of "Thanks to everybody. If you've lost anything go to ops and if you're not out of here within fifteen minutes then we'll release the hounds." This was repeated later to those who were standing around outside for it as well and in fact repeated a couple more times too to those who came up and asked.

I hung around in the main hall though as people filed out. I then got to act as security a bit more as brave fangirls made their way back in to see if they could meet the band. One delightful girl told a wonderful story of why she should be allowed to go and talk to the band. She was indian and as the first indian to have ever been to a Visual Kei concert this was a very important moment and she wanted to tell the band this. Luckily for her though I told her that she could go join the queue for the signing that was outside and that she could talk to them then. I was impressed by the story, partly because I wasn't sure why it was so important that she was the first indian girl to have listened to the music and partly because I wasn't sure how she knew that she was the first. Still, being a hard ass bouncer was fun. She wasn't on the list so she didn't come in. :)

I lurked around a bit more inside and then went outside once it was clear there was no more help to be done inside. Outside the band signing was happening. I did a bit of proper gopher work (go for this, go for that) and then stood around helping with "crowd control" which mainly involved watching the queue to make sure nobody jumped, etc. During this little bit of work I was landed with the honour of a radio of my very own! There were eight or so radios that were used to keep in contact and, to be honest, the only reason that I got one was because as the guy with the radio left to go home I was the only one of the 5 gophers (well, mostly committee) standing around that didn't have one. It was kind of cool having a radio to hear what was going on. Especially when people were communicating over the radio and for a change I could actually hear what was coming back. :)

After the signing was over I joined the queue at the end and got a photo of myself taken with the band. Not a very good photo unfortunately. How he managed to get the camera shake so band I don't know but he must have been making an effort. :) And then the band disappeared back stage to get changed and go back to their hotel. Somebody outside handed me something that the band had left behind so I headed backstage to give it to them and there had the rather amusing chance to see what it was like onthe other side. The band had all got out their mobile phones and were making us stand around posing while they took photos of us. It's kinda cool to think that this big band has pictures of me (and others) on their mobile phones.

So I helped out there for a while and helped them carry their stuff to where the minibus was picking them up to take them back to their hotel. And that was pretty much the last duty I did as a gopher.

Again there were gophers sitting around doing not a lot while waiting for things to happen. A lot of us I think were feeling a bit exhausted and for my part at least I had a stonking headache building up. Fortunately for me one of the other gopher's was a star and had ibuprofen that sorted me out nicely.

The evening was the gopher party, something of a tradition in which the gopher's all get together and get pizza and such like provided for them and they drink and make merry. My plan was to go to the party and, on the assumption it would finish at midnightish, drive home then. I was already knacvkered from the weekend and thinking about calling in a day's holiday and short notice the next day. I knew there was nothing urgent on so didn't think it would be a problem. The plan went a little awry though come midnight.

The evening was a good laugh. I got to play spy games with aquapixie (for those wondering about the name cropping up she is one of only two people that I know the LJ of and the person I hung around with most because I suck at talking to strangers so once I'd managed to get to know one I pestered her far too mcuh ). I did get a bit down at one point in the evening and had to wander off for some quiet time. This did mean I got to see poor Fuki, the singer of Blood (they turned up to the gopher party as guests of the committee) get mobbed for photo opportunities as he came out of the gents. I guess that's what you put up with as a rock star. :)

Also there was a table full of random stuff donated by the dealers for the gophers to have as presents. The queue that formed was huge and since I wasn't that bothered I didn't bother to queue. I was just heading back in as the queue was finishing off but got distracted briefly so the queue disappeared and it was opened up for a free for all seconds. SO by the time I got there there was two VHS video tapes left and that was about it. AS I say, nothing much that I was after though. On the plus side (sort of), they did have spare con badges and I got a complete set of 9 nice blank ones. This is the same thing that some mug paid 50 quid for so in a way I got 50 quids worth of stuff. I'd feel bad about selling them on though. :)

After the gopher party closed down I ended up tagging along with the followup party that went back to rooms. I'm not sure how many of us there were that went back there but I'd guess around 20 or so maybe. As I got back there I started feeling a little down so I wandered into one of the empty rooms to sit for a bit. liceas wandered in as well to say hello. I'd been talking to him a bit earlier and we started chatting a bit more. And so we formed the quiet room.

My earlier claims to have been partying with rock stars was, to be honest something of an exaggeration since I didn't really talk to them that much at all and was mostly in another room entirely. I stand by my claim that it was the same party though so I've partied with rock stars. I dare say if I'd been drinking I'd have been more up for it but with having slight down periods drink would probably have been a bad idea and of course my intent had always been to drive home fairly soon since I had nowhere to actually sleep (though the suggestion of the car did come a bit later).

The quiet room gained in popular and gained a laptop to go with its internet connection. And having seen one episode the day before we ended up watching a heck of a lot of "My little Transformers". An animation using my little pony and transformers to great comic effect. I highly reccomend people to go find it. If http://www.mylittletransformer.com/ is not the right url from memory then I'm sure a quick google will find it.

It was entertaining, to say the least, as the live gossip came out of the other room as people wandered in to chat in the quiet room for a bit. So first we heard that the band were trying to arrange an orgy, then that the guitar player had wandered off with somebody to one of the unoccupied bedrooms. Then that the lead singer was trying it on with somebody. Reports came in that the only reason the bassist wasn't pursuing similar courses of action was that he was falling asleep (they had been on the go for some time). We were amused by it all and making a lot of jokes about it. Unfortunately one of the girls got a bit upset that she hadn't been one of the chosen groupies. Fuki had actually stayed around while the other two had got a taxi back to the hotel. This girl was a bit upset and the jokes that we had been making and the general mood of our room didn't help her at all.

The sense of humour failure can best be demonstrated by her running into the room we were in with a look on her face that told of something horrible having happened. Expecting her to say something like "Can somebody call an ambulance" she waved a small cigarette of the type fuki was smoking and said "Does anybody have a light." We all dumbly shook our head as she stormed off on this vital mission to find a match or lighter. We mocked slightly (though I feel guilty now). She returned a few minutes later, still waving the unlit cigarette and said, "Is there a light? Any kind of light will do!" so I pointed at the light fitting on the ceiling. Her eyes followed where I was pointing and she said with some scorn, "Not that sort of light, you muppet." I had a very very sarcastic reply ready but fortunately for me a slightly sarcastic, "No, really?" was all I came out with.

Anyway, not long later the party started to break up and so I wandered off. On the way out I bumped into people waiting for a taxi and stopped and chatted. It was half past three so I figured another half hour wouldn't make too much difference. So I chatted with people for a bit and so on until the taxi came. Then wandered back towards my car with some company. I said my goodbyes, exchanged LJ addresses (this was aquapixie and liceas that I was with at this point) and then got in my car to go home. In hindsight I probably should have just asked one of them if I could crash on the floor but I still was determined to stick with the original plan of going home.

The trip home was one of those bad ones. Various tricks to stay awake weren't working so I stopped at some services and had a 30 minute power nap in my car before resuming the trip home. I got hojme in the end at just gone 6am and snuck in and collapsed in my bed, dead to the world.

And so concludes Ayacon. It was brilliant. As the length of the writeups probably proves given this is about as much as I've written for most of the rest of the year. :)



[1] This really was just a plain cardboard box. Actually, it was a cardboard box signed by Snake (Metal Gear Solid or something like that) that had been used in a pretty cool sketch at the masquerade the day before. It was, naturally enough, a charity item though which I suspect is one of the reasons that it fetched the high price.

Comments

[tyasante.livejournal.com]

::wibbles:: You saw BLOOD? Why wasn't I there?! Next year, I wanna go!

[chrisvenus]

Saw them, chatted to them, had them take pictures of me. You know, the usual. :)

And I don't know when they are next going to be in the area. Ayacon runs aevery two years I think, with amecon doing the alternate years. I don't expect they'll be there at amecon, and quite possibly not at ayacon either. They were largely only here I think because it coincided with the end of their european tour.

Wow, I can't believe I actually know somebody who has heard of them! :)

[tyasante.livejournal.com]

:: continued wibbles:: I missed BLOOD. I may no longer call myself a dedicated fan of Visual Kei. [removes her choaker] Wah!

[(Anonymous)]

wahhh long journal of madness.. i´ve read abit but i can´t stay on the net long, so i´ll read it when i get home... but YAYAYAYYAYAYAYAYAYAY for spy games that was fun and the journey home was interesting.. he kept asking if i was avoiding him or something on saturday night.. so i giggled and said we were playing the spy game... i win \o/

[old-aqua.livejournal.com]

crappyo that was me.. i don´t understand this icelantic computer XD

[chrisvenus]

Its ok, the context kind of gave it away. I guess I shouldn't be surprised in hindsight that he thought we were running away. I'm surprised he didn't start thinking it earlier though... :)

[chrisvenus]

then I staggered in and annoyed you instead

Nah, it was good. Part of the reason I was feeling down is because I seemed to be partying with a group of strangers that I didn't know at all so having somebody I didn't really know come and want to talk to me was exactly what I needed. :)

And yeah, I do remember some very evil concoctions coming into that room at times. I'm glad I had the excuse that Iw as driving at times. :)

And it is a long report but I had a very quiet weekend to fill up. :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I'd feel bad about selling them on though. :)

I'd sell 'em like a shot if it was me (and needed the cash ;-)

[chrisvenus]

If somebody offered me money for them I'd probably accept. However the target market is pretty small and getting good money (the price they went for in the auction is unlikely to be reached by a fair way I'd say) is probably more effort than its worth.

Not that I've thought about it. :)