FUKU!! (a MEGA AX recap)

Ok, now I gotta make a whole, long recap of my AX experience for some reason... Well, I'm gonna tell mah story.

 

I got to Anaheim on Thursday, July 1st.  I had warned Sergio (the kid I was traveling with) that something always went wrong on these trips. I was half serious about it, but mostly just teasing the poor newbie. Everything went just fine, we arrived at Tijuana on time, got to the border safely and crossed over with no casualties, except for a little wating time in San Isidro to change buses. Some nice lady told us to check in our luggage and tickets, and it was a good thing she did, or we might have been stuck there to this very day, wondering what was taking so damn long.

 

We got to Anaheim around 4pm, took a taxi to the hotel where, thankfully, two of our friends were already waiting for us. We found everyone else okay, and sent the poor suffering pre-reggers to rot in line for three hours while David, Javier, Betsy and I went to get our press badges (gotta love that press pass!). The rest of the evening was pretty bleh, except I got to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force for the first time (WTF is up with that show???).

 

Next morning I got up first and, as is always the privilege of the first one up, I threw pillows at everyone's sleeping, drooly faces, jumped on their beds and took pics of them (gotta love the fact that my body was still on work-time, and I normally get up before 6). We got dressed and went to opening ceremonies, where I had my first FuKu encounter of the con. David and I were sitting front row, and right behind us were these loud, annoying proverbially cliché FnO fangirls who were insanely loud and meowed when the screen went blank. Thankfully I had to get out of there early so I could change for AX Idol. I changed in a hurry and got there in time to greet some familiar faces, got up to sing, and didn't make it to the next round. Oh well...

 

After auditions I changed again, and the rest of the afternoon is pretty much all blurred now... I think I just hung around and went to the dealer's room... got something to eat... if that day was the Yoko Ishida concert, then I went to that. It was teh lame. The girl has an okay voice but the stage presence of a bowl of oatmeal. Oh yeah! I went to the arcade to ParaPara too. I had never danced the second mix and it was pretty appealing to the dying FnO in me.

 

Later I went to karaoke prelims. I sang, I did okay, I didn't make it to the next round. Oh well... I got to hang out with some of the regulars, and it was a fun time. Later that night, feeling a wee bit bummed about the contests, I went to my room and watched Adult Swim again, while eating a big bag of Doritos with salsa. Hmmm... salsa...

 

Saturday... what the hell did I do Saturday morning?? was that the day of the Seki Tomokazu pannel? no, that was Sunday I think... ah hell (goes to get her AX schedules) ...

 

yeah. That was Sunday... Saturday morning I did... stuff I guess ><>

 

So, I'm guessing most of you can gather from this report so far that my con experience was being a little bit to dull, and it was. I was begining to wonder why I had bothered to go again at all, seeing as how I could have spent the money on more interesting things, like flip-flops in every color of the rainbow. But things were going to change dramatically (DUN DUN DUUUN!!).

 

So, I get to the karaoke room a little before midnight, sign up for a song and wait. Just then I save the FuKu meeting by being the only person in the room at the appointed meeting time. It was a bit awkward to say the least, but it all got a bit better when we all started to gather in the staff room. We got to use the service doors too, which was freakin' awesome, there were carts with plates!!!111 and cups and saucers and stuff!!1!!111! SO, anyways, I got to meet everyone who was there, and the fun began!

 

Now, you must allow me to be very succint when it comes to telling the tale of the FuKu meeting, it was just a total sensory [sp?] overload (this means I'm too lazy to write it all). I just remember there being a lot of myrth and merriment. That night we got to meet the girl from the Nekki Basara story, not to mention we got to see the man himself, there, sitting, cosplaying, being... to our overwhelming delight. Then later we sent Janice's (are we still calling her that?) friend to get us some donettes for breakfast, and he came back a wee bit too late, telling the tale of how he had been arrested for drunk in public. That was weird. Since he seemed to have such good disposition, I sent him to get me a smoke (I don't really smoke anymore) and that was the last we saw of him that day. Then golbez, Val and I went to the arcade to play (insert name of drum game which I do not remember) and ParaPara. Val demolished one of her drumsticks, which was cool. At this point it must have been almost 6am, and I was quite sleepy, so I bid everyone good morning and went to sleep.

 

Sunday. I got up after a precious few hours of sleep and got ready to go to the Seki Tomokazu panel. Thanks to the powers of press pass, I was able to get there really late and still get a seat up front. Fangirliness ran rampant at this event, moreso than in any other I attended during the four days of AX, and there was much shouting of the forbidden words, like k*waii, and some went as far as saying stuff that I believe signified "marry me" in japanese. Oh, that, and not to mention stupid questions like "do you like cats - nyoooo??"

 

Nothing interesting happened the rest of that afternoon. I secluded myself in my room for a couple of hours and brainfarted some lyrics for the adequately named write your own lyrics mini contest. Little did I know that just minutes after signing up for the contest the FuKuteers got together in the karaoke staff room to watch anime pr0n. Sucks. That had to be a million times more fun than masquerade was, not to mention less messy.

 

After masquerade I went back to the karaoke room and waited for the contest to begin. Just then, to my surprise, I saw that the entire FuKu clan was coming out from the service doors, most of them looking quite dipomatic (or as much so as one can look while being mildly drunk), and sitting down, ready to judge the contest. I considered this quite funny. I sang, I won. Wow... that was different. Later we all got together for more merrymaking. Val and I hosted our own, two person mini-pannel of ex-FnO shame. The night went on as the one before, with a lot of laughter involved. Mickey taught me a valuable lesson of liquor and beer, which surprisingly turned out to be true (who'd've thunk!). It was a fun night, so says my right boob, and my right boob never lies.

 

Monday was the day I decided I would stay an extra day. We checked out of our room and started the tortuous journey to our new, skanky hotel. I was carrying WAY too much sh*t because I had, in a true lapse of traveling common sense, packed enough crap to last me the three weeks I was gonna stay in Tijuana after AX. This made for one mighty heave suitcase y'all, and I had to drag it's overpacked ass all over the place. When we finally checked into the other hotel, I went back to the karaoke room. I said good byes to Mickey and golbez (although I had hoped they could go to dinner with us too... oh wells). In retrospect I consider it was quite fearless of me to just go along for the ride into LA, not knowing untill the last minute if I was even gonna have a ride back. I just decided "to hell with it! I've never tried curry."

 

Val, Tommy and I got to the karaoke place first, and we wandered around the stores for a while. I played ParaPara at the arcade, making sure I kept two tokens so I'll have a reason to go back there again :P. As it turned out, Hank and the others who had stayed behind waiting for AX staff to get the stuff out of the karaoke room got held up there too long, and as it was getting late, we decided to skip karaoke and go straight to dinner. Curry was good, I guess I can call it asian mole (mole is a mexican dish, dunno if any of you have ever tried it). After dinner Luke gave me a ride back to the hotel, where David and Sergio were pigging out on cheap snacks, most of them orange. I went to sleep early, for I was mighty tired.

 

The next morning we missed our shuttle, and Sergio missed his flight to Hermosillo. He ended up staying at my relatives' place with me overnight because he couldn't find another flight that day. I just told him "see? something ALWAYS goes wrong on these trips".

 

Well, here's the original recap, which just incluided highlights from the FuKu gathering. You can either add them on as an epilog [sp?] or interject them into the rest of the recap. Whatever :)

 

-First interesting moment was sitting by myself in the karaoke room when Chiriko excitedly asked over the mike who was there for the FUKU meeting... It looked precious when a lonesome, bony hand went up. I looked around and thought "oh great, I'm the only hand up..." Well... maybe it wasn't THAT cool, but you'll all never know because you weren't there , HA! Learn to be on time, children...

 

-The terrorizing of random otaku was also quite memorable... I don't exactly recall the beginning of this particular conversation but a group of people wandered into the room answering to the call of Chiriko's FUKU! yell. The whole discussion was going well enough, when suddenly one of them wanted to know why we disliked Love Hina. All us fukuteers veered instantly, salivating with anticipation at the impending roasting of these poor souls, sat on the floor to face them, and the whole thing gets kinda blurry from then on, probably because I was laughing oh so very much...

 

-That moment when we learned Nekki Basara was in the karaoke room and we all did our best impression of a bunch of people tripping over each others' asses to get there in five seconds flat and have a look at the man who inspired the legend.

 

-That moment later in the evening when we learned Nekki Basara was in the karaoke room SINGING and we all did our best impression of a bunch of people tripping over each others' asses (we went in different directions that time... so as not to appear obvious) to get there in five seconds flat and have a look at the most grating three minutes in karaoke-dom... Nekki Basara singing a parapara song. O the humanity...

 

-I got to fake-sneeze FUKU! into the mike at the write-your-own-lyrics mini contest... also, not knowing I had won when I went onstage to get my prize. Not to mention how endearing all the fukuteers looked coming into the room to sit at the judges' table.

 

-Not being the oldest person in the room... I won't say who was the oldest tho... (*pokes golbez*... *poke*poke*... *snort*).

 

-My right boob obtaining richly deserved notoriety.

 

-The Crackpr0n antics, which incluided stripping onstage and dancing para para in boxers at 5 am.-Having a small otaku anonimous meeting with Nuriko.

 

-And on a more personal note... my very own FUKU moment came when I sang Haruka Kanata at open mike (that was only half the moment, since that song later became banned ><), and some random otaku held up a sign in mid-song, brazenly declaring  "YOU ARE HOT". Dear God... well, at least I have to thank him for not SHOUTING it out I guess, but what really got to me later was noticing that he was holding up a different sign for every girl who went onstage! And not only that, the guy had the gall to let some girl friend hold up the signs for him! THE NERVE! Hold up your own signs, lover boy, and pick a girl, don't be toying with all our fragile affections or noone will ever be able to consider you a... nice guy! *sniffles* *runs away*

 

-The coining of the word FUKU! which can now be used as a noun, adjective, interjection, and God know what else.

 

-Just meeting and getting to spend time with everyone was really awesome, going to Curry House on Monday was also really cool. And I'll just leave it at that, I'm sure anything I might have missed will be picked up by the others.