Thursday

So Thursday we were picked up by Jeremy on his way down I-71. After loading up the Giga and me we swung around and snagged the Evebird and heading southwards.

I was happily allowed to hook up my Sirius and got to listen to Stern on the way down which always makes me happy.

Anyway, it was only a 3 hour drive so it was just in my tolerance range for driving/riding.

We met up with Wil at the hotel and I went out to dinner at a very good Mexican placed called Jalapenos or something like that. Wes' plane was delayed so he was basically at the hotel when we got back.

The fun really began much later when I got sick of paying $4 a bottle for beer and the barchick basically told us of the liquor store right down the street.

God help us Jesus! God and Baby Jesus help us! A liquor store right down the way!

I wasn't in the mood to splurge so I got some of what I was told was "pussy beer" and what's funny is during any other time I would normally have had something imported or a Killians. The others got bottles of run and coke to mix it with.

Getting quite lit and doing room-to-room trading was actually quite a lot of fun and I was happy to run into Kristin, Greg, and Tom who I had such a fantastic time with last year. I quickly snagged up his loose Sam's Club RID Optimus Prime. After talking with Kristin for a bit we headed on to other rooms, the bar area, and baby jesus knows where else.

I think I finally got to sleep around 3ish and honestly, since I don't drink much anymore I didn't think it would whip my ass like it did.

Sleep. It was moderately good.

Friday

Friday morning we managed to hook up with Professor Mrs. B. She and Mr. B. got the dates confused so they were actually in Cowtown instead of Lexington. At least we got breakfast.

Giga and I headed back to the hotel and basically putzed around killing time until we could get our registration and toys and shit.

We eventually headed out to a local ToysRUs and all scored the Classics Deluxe figures. We bought them all up and brought the extras back to sell at the con. I ended up selling 2 of my extras for cost so basically I didn't fuck over people like some actual people did. There was a guy selling Classics Optimus Prime for over 200% mark up. That's just cruel and bullshit when you know you have a captive geek audience.

I watched a geek make a beeline to the ATM and pay what the guy wanted for a toy that'll be at retail on the shelves all over the place.

That's just not good toy karma in my book.

Then again, I also don't try to be a dick to people. (Well. For the most part.)

Anyway, we got our stuff and did a few panels to kill more time.

Then came the major Nala observations of geekdom and jockdom that I relayed the other day.

Dinner was had at the very good Mellow Mushroom.

In a weird way I was recovering from the previous nights drinking and totally skipped out on the midnight Transformers The Movie showing.

I really didn't plan on attending since I find it hard to watch these days. I've seen the damn thing so many times that it just gets boring. I never liked any of the parts after the Earth battle anyway.

Sleep. It was good.

Saturday

Saturday was pretty much the same old shit.

The Hasbro panel was without incident or any real news. They wouldn't say a damn thing about the movie, future cartoons, or future toys so it was kind of a pointless thing. More news can be found on any of you TF sites than at this panel.

I bought things from the dealer room and did that circuit again.

It finally came time for the dinner/casino night event and as is my style, I tried to be as degeek as possible and dressed up for the thing. Giga even did too.

Of course, it was totally pointless since though they ask for no tshirts and shorts you still get tshirts and shorts.

But the dinner was just an awful experience for all in our party. Well. Wil probably liked it but I'm pretty sure Giga, Wes, and possibly Evebird were less than thrilled.

I'd have to say they overbooked the damn thing or they still can't do basic dinner event planning.

The line to get in wrapped around the entire food court area and was indicative to of the chaos to come.

Simply put... there were too many people, not enough tables, and definitely not enough space.

All 500+ people were made to go through one chaotic food line that was a disorganized mess. There was not enough to drink and no knives.

There were few tables and the entire area that was for the gaming was a non-food area.

My anger got quite high really since I'd gladly have avoided the whole fiasco to have gone to a nice restaurant somewhere in Lexington. Hell... I'd have bought the frigg'n dinner just to have been able to have a nice evening.

We eventually made our way to the food court so we could sit down.

I was not amused.

We ended up standing around observing people's behavior. I was especially observant of a kid who I've named "really bizarre melon boy". At first I didn't notice him and then it became apparent he may have some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder. He would walk around in patterns and then go back to what I assume is his mother. He then would do his wandering again, sneaking the melon off the tray in quick swipes. He never spoke to anyone and never ever seemed to look at anyone or make any form of eye contact.

It was very strange but it gave me something lame to do for the evening.

Oh. That's about the time Crazy Steve popped up and said he was a plasticcrack.net reader. That was shocking actually.

But anyway, the finest moment came about 45 minutes later when we just gave up on the whole thing and headed into the elevator.

Wes jokingly walked in and said something along the lines of "The announcement was that Botcon is done. No more. No more toys. Nothing." to which a deep voice came from next to me "There will be another Botcon" and lo and behold, it was Peter Cullen in the elevator with us.

He then flipped up the brim of his hat and made some really bizarre strange noises and stuck out his tongue.

It then became apparent that he probably had quite a few cocktails.

While Wil and Wes were talking to him I thought I had my video camera on to capture the insanity of the moment.

There we were in the elevator with what we think was a cocktailed Peter Cullen and there were two non-TF people there that had no idea what the hell was going on!

The doors opened, Cullen stood in the doorway, and then announced to us he had a 3 picture deal and Wil gives him this huge hug and the doors start trying to close on them.

It was just insane. The whole thing.

And MY CAMERA DIDN'T CATCH ANY OF IT.

Suffice to say, I was a bit mad.

The one really funny and totally absurd moment of the entire damn trip and I didn't catch it.

I ended up back at the bar area drinking again and talking to some people in the lobby.

We did some room-to-room stuff again and that was pretty much the night.

Sunday

More roaming around the con and the inevitable trying to get the Japanese guys to drop the price of the Super Fire God Convoy set.

Jeremy noticed that they had a sign stating they'd do $400 in trade for a Botcon set.

I quickly went and bought one for $269 but since they ran out of the Tigertrons I got another damn Flawewar from last year.

Well on closer inspection the sign was "Boxed set with Tigerton".

Well, eventually it all worked out.

Jeremy gave me the Tigertron he got for volunteering. I swapped him the Flamewar to sell on ebay.

I traded the now complete box set to them and they had dropped the set to $300 as well!!!

We had $100 extra to work with and I got Jeremy an e-Hobby exclusive from them as well as some other miscellaneous stuff.

I finally possess one of the figures I've wanted for years.

It truly was the happiest thing that could have happened.

We didn't win any door prizes. Jeremy's diorama didn't place. And we didn't win the trip to next year's con so I have no idea if I'll go now.

While waiting outside with all the luggage, I started to talk to Richard Newman, the voice actor for Rhinox. We chatted for about 15 minutes while he smoked.

Great guy. It was his first con and he really didn't know that he had such a following for work he did 10 years ago. I wish I had met up with him earlier. He'd have been a lot of fun to have a few drinks with.

I wasn't going to bother him but since he was so much fun to talk to I did a "fan thing" and asked for a picture. I never do that kind of thing. I even went so far to pull out the silly ass boxset and point to his character.

Totally lame, I know, but he was really happy to oblige. Great guy. I was the lame ass there.

Oh well. Sometimes that fairly controlled fan in me breaks out.

After that we left.

That's it in a nutshell.

It was an anthropologist's dream so that really was great for me. I had geeks to observe. I had the anti-social to observe. I had haters to observe. I had "really bizarre melon boy" to observe. I had jocks to listen in on in a reactive state to the TF world. I got drunk on "pussy beer".

All kinds of bad craziness.

It was a repetitive but enjoyable time. The company I kept made it tolerable when it got so godawful boring.

The thing that's important to remember, and I can't stress this enough, is that in the end, it is just a bunch of toys.

That's all. They are all just pieces of overpriced plastic.

And with that said, I'm heading outside to douse everything I bought this weekend with gasoline and am going to light it all on fire.