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My Anime Expo experience started at five thirty in the morning when I had to drive to LA to help Vance move all of his stock to the LA Convention Center. Once I returned, the first morning I had back home started at five thirty as well, because I had forgot to reset my alarm clock. Reflex Gamer is in Little Tokyo, on Alameda and Third. About a forty minute drive, but I learned that LA traffic gets up pretty early so parts of the 5 were slow. The first trip was store shelves which I had to pick up from a fixture store. It wasn’t open when I got there so I hung out for a bit and enjoyed a cup of horchata from a gas station. The shelves were too long for my car so I had to drive with the seats all the way forward just to get the back door closed. I was fairly certain that I would die in an accident of any sort because the steering wheel was lodged in my stomach. Fortunately, the shelves made it with no problem and we began to set up at the convention center. The second trip was some merchandise, and I implored everyone that a few more boxes would fit in my car, because the third trip ended up having Vance hold a bunch of boxes in his lap and more shoved around his legs. I couldn’t see out of the back of my car at all and we had to bungee cord the door closed because the shelving unit we had back there wouldn’t let the door shut all the way. Actually unloading at the convention center was an ordeal, as we kept getting told to drive further down the loading dock and further away from where our booth was. Especially obnoxious since any sort of handcart is not allowed, and if you want help from the guys running the place, it’s $125 an item just to have them wheel it around on a cart of forklift. Once we were done, I had to haul ass back to Orange to pick up the suit I found for five dollars, which my mom made me get dry cleaned because she figured it had been pulled off of a corpse for that price. Unfortunately, I did not make it back as soon as I would have liked, making the plans I drew up for my awesome sheet and pillow fort could not be enacted. I would have named our fort “Heaven’s Fist”, and it would have served as the last shining beacon of hope for humanity against the scourge of socially awkward anime fans that we endured for the entire time we were there. The fort will live on inside of my heart, and may be reborn if the opportunity arises in the future. I had an exhibitor pass, which allowed me to enter the exhibition hall before it was open, stay past when it was closed, enter the hall through exits (much to the attendee’s dismay) and be a jerk to staff when I had the chance to. Since I had an exhibitor pass, and was wearing a suit for most of the convention, a lot of people asked me questions about the exhibit hall, like when it opened and so on. They asked me these questions even when I was on the phone, because suits make people super important, but also very accessible apparently. I also received a number of questions about the nature of my mustache, and a few compliments regarding the cuteness of my watch.
Work itself consisted of dealing with socially awkward people and people trying to haggle over the price of new games which don’t provide much in terms of profit. I was dead on my feet on the first day the hall opened. Vance and I took a step out a few minutes before the hall opened for the first time to see the entire West Hall full of people, shoulder to shoulder. A Dead Rising reference followed shortly, much to Vance’s delight. Friday gave me a chance to run around in my blue spy costume for longer than a jaunt between the halls. I had worn the entire thing twice on the first day. Instead of masks of the other Team Fortress classes, I had made masks of Haruhi Suzumiya, Hiiragi Kagami and Kitan from Gurren Lagann. Anyone that did not understand the nature of my costume stared at me like I needed a helmet, but I did make a number of people laugh, as I had intended. I attended the Haruhi cosplay gathering and stood in the back. Only a few people noticed me at first, until Calson yelled “That Haruhi is a spy!” and then all eyes were on me. Earlier, we ran into a red pyro as we were talking about how I had been fortunate enough to not be spy checked. Just I had said that, he shoved his prop flamethrower in my face and yelled into his gasmask. I took off down a hallway, changed masks and came back pretending like nothing happened. I also followed a few red team members around and told them I was Jim, from red team, and that I had left my wallet in the intelligence room if they could kindly direct me to it. I asked a number of the import movie booths if they had a copy of Pistol Opera, but to no avail. One man was kind enough to give me a flyer and tell me that if I contacted him, he would send it to me with free shipping. Later, I looked at the flyer to find that he was part of a store called something along the lines of “Yaoi Paradise”, which apparently carries imported movies along with large amounts of homosexual pornography. Leaving the convention center was less of an ordeal, as Vance sent me with five hundred dollars in my pocket to walk through LA to a rental place to get a truck. I was sure that I would have been shot, especially in the really seedy places I went through, because Mapquest always takes you through ghettos. Getting the hell out of the convention center is anything goes, as all the rules were out the window. We played a game we called “Wasteland Scavenger” as we went through booths that had already packed up to find stuff left behind. Mainly food, a couple of toys. For now, I am tired, and glad to be home. I learned that having to deal with awkward people wears me out, oh, and maybe all the heavy lifting too.
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