Steve's BotCon '96 Spam Thursday, July 11 I got off from work at about 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon, hurriedly packed my bags, loaded the car, and set off from my hometown of Indiana, Pennsylvania. I am to spend the night with a friend who is staying at our college this summer doing research. Being that I go to school in Delaware, Ohio, just north of Columbus, this is actually a decent halfway point for my journey. I travelled the PA and OH turnpikes, ate my first of many (MANY) fast food meals for the next week, and eventually pulled in to the dorm where my friends are staying. Spending the night here offered me my first experience with community bathrooms. (Wheee.) Friday, July 12 I drank a Cherry Coke for breakfast and spent most of the morning with my friends at their job, getting to see the research they're doing. Around 11 or 11:30 I got moving. Along the way I had another Coke that I picked up from a rest stop. This served as my midafternoon lunch. As my car AC is broken and it was quite warm, I spent the day driving with my window open, and got one of those lovely one- side tans, making me look like I had just had a Close Encounter. I even got slightly sunburned on my upper arm, something I haven't done for at least several years. As I entered the city I passed under a large friendly sign reading "Welcome to Chicago, Mayor", and was simultaneously surrounded by crumbling brick factories, run down housing, and random debris. It was easily one of the ugliest areas I have seen in a long time. A few minutes later as I went through the city I hit a moderate traffic jam on I-90. I was in good spirits, however, and the traffic didn't bother me. I just put in my tape of Pet Shop Boys "Very" and sang along with my windows open as we crawled down the interstate. I arrived at the Ramada (next door to the Clarion) around 6 PM, and ahead of roommates Phil Zeman and Doug Vander Hoek. I sat down to wait, but then decided waiting was boring, so I walked back to my car to get a book to read. On the way to my car I saw two twenty-somethings heading towards the hotel. On a hunch, I walked over to them to find that they were indeed Doug and Phil. We checked in and spent a few minutes sitting in our hotel room to unwind after the drive. I found that Phil and I shared the same tanning pattern, right down to the white wrists where our watches were. :) Around 7:00 Phil, Doug, and I walked over to the Clarion to see what we could see. There was a line of about 10 people at a small table in the hallway where preregistrants were checking in. Among the people in line were Pema Galang, Sarai Feria, Mark Tisdale (names which may be familiar to att'ers), and Brendan Crispin (who probably isn't familiar), all of whom I'd been looking forward to meeting. I talked to them briefly before they left and I rejoined my roommates. The check-in procedure was being run by two people who were a bit confused and uninformed. It seemed through a lot of the weekend that Dennis Barger was really the only MIB person who knew what was going on. Prereg's did have to show a picture ID when checking in, but then for identification they received torn squares of paper upon which their name, one day versus weekend status, and (if applicable) the words "dealer day" were scrawled in green ink. I was only asked to show my pass a single time during the entire weekend, which made paying $12 for it seem a little silly. And, like most people at the 'con, I spent the entire weekend without a nametag. It seemed inconceivable that not only had MIB not brought enough nametags, but that they didn't bring more after running out. I considered making my own out of a sheet of paper, but wouldn't have been able to fasten it to myself anyway, so I didn't bother. Doug and Phil checked in, and then Phil took his Dealer's Day pass into the Dealer Room, promising to come out in half an hour since Doug and I didn't have passes for ourselves. Doug and I waited around with nothing to do and, sadly, very little to say to each other. After wandering back and forth a few times and a vain attempt to locate the rumored video room we sat down in a hall with several other people who were equally without options. It would have been nice for there to have been a gathering place for those without Dealer Day passes, but this is just one more example of how the 'con was really oriented around buying toys rather than enjoying TF's and meeting people. At about 8:00 PM Doug got sick of waiting and watching the constant flow of TransFans leaving the Dealer Room with Victory series TF's under their arms and upgraded himself to a Dealer Day pass as well. I knew that getting a Dealer Day pass for myself would be pointless, because most of the toys I would be interested in buying were not things that would probably disappear. Now I had even less to do and I sat by myself outside the Dealer Room, listening to conversations and trying to get a decent look at the loot people were bringing out. After trying to take a picture of someone's Star Sabre box my camera jammed, and I had to open it up, thus loosing at least the first 4-6 photos on the reel. (The true damage of this is yet to be seen.) By 9:00 I couldn't stand sitting around anymore, and went down to the room where TF:TM was supposed to be starting at that time. I found two other TransFans sitting outside the ballroom, discontented with the lack of activities and unhappy that they were just now starting to set up the room for the movie. I sat with them for a bit and watched the comedy of errors as MIB personnel attempted to get the room ready. ("We need a power bar for the TV... does anyone know where to get a power bar?") By sheer luck, Pema and Sarai appeared out of the elevator behind me and told me that the table was now selling weekend passes for non-prereg's. I purchased my pass, decided to pick up an Onyx Primal but not a t-shirt, and went back downstairs to the ballroom where the big screen TV was set up. Pema and Sarai were sitting together with a few other people I knew vaguely (Tony Buchanan, Lizard) and I joined them. MIB decided that they were going to show "The Ultimate Doom" first, and then the movie later. It had been many years since I saw those episodes (probably since the last time they were shown in syndication -- if they were ever on G2 or Sci-Fi, I missed 'em), and I really enjoyed this viewing. Those of us who were there MST'ed the eps softly and had a lot of fun. Partway through TUD Pema and Sarai left to try to find Mark and Brendan, who had disappeared earlier that night. We went upstairs to their room and found Mark, Brendan, Ozzy Mendez, and Michele Quevedo hanging out there. We brought them back down to wait for the movie. They interrupted TUD before cutting the cake in case anyone wanted to take a picture of it. Thinking I might want to, I tried to peek over the mass of other TransFans who had huddled around it. I was singularly unimpressed once I saw it... Plain white frosting with some trim and icing roses, and a written message (in cursive no less, not even a TF font) which I didn't bother to read (probably "happy 10th birthday, tf:tm" or "botcon 96" or something). No Optimus Prime graphic to match the plates and napkins, no Bot and Con symbols, nothing TF related at all except for the uninspired writing. MIB had promised cake and ice cream for the movie's birthday party, and managed to deliver on half of that... There was plenty of cake, and it tasted fine, but there were only forks for the first batch of people (sort of like the name tag fiasco). It's not easy to eat a two-layer cake with your hands. The ice cream was nonexistent (they didn't even say "sorry no ice cream", there just wasn't any) and the only beverage readily available was a tank of water -- not even some sort of punch, or that McDonald's orange drink that often gets put in that sort of cooler. :) So, I topped off my diet of two Cokes for that day with a piece of cake and two cups of water. Dennis held a brief Q&A session regarding the convention, and I got a chance to ask when, if ever, we were going to have a schedule of events, so we didn't just have to remember what he mentioned, and hope he mentioned everything. He said that they had gotten the BotCon books in that day, but they had to be sent back to the printer because of mistakes like upside down covers and multiple copies of some pages. He promised to have them by the end of the movie. When Men In Black was ready to start the movie, Dennis stood at the front of the room with a giant cardboard add for the video release of the movie (I yelled out a bid for it, but he didn't seem to notice :) ) and a videocassette and had us sing "Happy Birthday" to it. He then tried to make a big deal out of the fact that the tape he had was a "brand new" copy just purchased that day. Of course, that wasn't at all impressive to most of the people there, and to me it even meant that the picture quality wouldn't be as good since the Avid Entertainment release of the movie was in a slower recording mode than the original FHE version. Dennis also announced that after the movie ended we would be treated as the first TransFans to ever actually see the fabled Unicron prototype toy. This was exciting news indeed. Sadly, the tape suffered from unbearable tracking problems, either due to its own shoddiness, the fact that BOTH of MIB's copies of the movie had been left on top of speakers during the showing of TUD, or because the VCR's tracking could only be manipulated with the remote control, which nobody had and nobody knew where to find. They stopped the VCR and tried their other tape, but it had the same affliction. While Dennis and his staff tried to decide what to do, Doug Vander Hoek went to the front and offered to bring one of his SP copies of the movie back from our hotel room to use. They apparently said "yes", because Doug then jogged out of the ballroom. After a few minutes a Man In Black located a remote control and they started the movie for a third time, and after a little work, got the tracking problem fixed. Doug then came back in, only to find that the movie was starting, and that his sprint to the Ramada had been a waste of time and energy. The friday night viewing of the movie was really wild. The MST'ing was fierce. In fact, there was probably more audience involvement than at a typical showing of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". People were reciting lines, cheering for characters (during TUD, Shockwave nearly got a standing ovation), responding with "die!" every time Daniel asked what he should do, and singing along with the songs. Of the other BotCon reviews I've read, the majority of people expressed displeasure or disgust with the crowd's behavior that night, but I am among the smaller faction who had a blast. I admit that we were a bit out of control, but it was only slightly more raucous than I had expected, and in fact, hoped for. It was by orders of magnitude the best time I have ever had watching any movie. This is not to say that there weren't some comments during the movie that I didn't appreciate. Although the Decepticons on the newsgroup will probably disagree, I didn't particularly like it when the slaughtering of the Autobots in the shuttle scene elicited applause from the audience. (There were a few cries and "ouch"es, which were appropriate.) Some of the commentary bordered on the inane -- a few of the comments directed towards Daniel and Wheelie weren't in the least creative, they were just dumb. It did all end with a good line, though: As Unicron's head flew across the screen, someone got a round of laughter by calling out "Look! The first headmaster!" After the credits rolled the TransFans filed out of the room and to the small landing where a table with the Uni prototype was set up. It took a few moments to negotiate the other people and get a view, and when I got it I was moderately disappointed. The toy wasn't a complete let down as some other BotCon spams may lead you to believe, but it really didn't look very good. He was shorter than Fort Max, his colors bland, his legs spindly, his body completely spherical, his arms poorly shaped (they become the planet's ring in robot mode -- ack), and his voice chip nonfunctioning. And, when he arrived into MIB custody his right shoulder wasn't latched correctly into position, so that it dangled near his waist from a pole which probably supported the ring in planet mode. MIB had been instructed not to transform him, and they didn't want to risk replacing the shoulder for fear of damaging the toy. This may sound wimpy, but the plastic used for toy prototypes is apparently very soft and probably hand- sculpted, so their caution was warranted. My other roommate for BotCon, Doug Dlin, had arrived near the end of the movie, and Phil, DVH, and I met him at the Uni prototype. We picked up our convention schedules and decided to retire to our hotel room for the night, but before going to bed Doug Dlin exhibited for us the Japanese robot toys he had brought along for show and tell. They weren't Transformers, but came from several other Takara transforming robot toylines that came out after TFs died in America. There was one I liked in particular, the bad guy from its series, who was a three-part gestalt, comprised of Death Tiger, Death Dragon, and Death Eagle. :) We went to bed late, sometime around 2 AM, and set our alarms for 7:30. Saturday, July 13 We woke up only slightly behind our alarms and began taking turns at the bathroom. I let Phil and DD both go ahead of me, but as DVH was still lying in bed with his eyes closed, took my turn next. At about 8:30, when I was clean and awake I came back out to find DVH motionless and unconscious, and DD and Phil using their energy to calculate with pencil and paper how many HeadMaster phases would be necessary for Fortress Maximus to be the height cited in a Japanese story he had read (the answer was somewhere around 7 or 8) as well as Fort Max's likely height with only the Spike-Cerebros-Maximus steps (about 60 meters, and a "city" mode the size of a nice apartment building). Eventually DVH reached a state of semi-consciousness, at which point we told him we were going to breakfast and would see him later. The three of us went to the restaurant in front of the HoJo next door and had good food and slow service. After breakfast, we went over to the Clarion to explore the Dealer Room. This was my first time inside, although I had peeked in the night before. There were probably 20-25 dealer tables there, most of whom were selling TF's (at least two dealers had no TF's at all). I browsed a bit, and picked up my first purchase relatively quickly. A G1 Grimlock, no accessories, good condition, for $7. Most of the toys here cost more than I would want to spend on them. Although I did entertain the thought of buying a Star Sabre, I decided that it, like most of the other Victory Transformers, looked a little too chunky, even a little cheaply made, and basically just not cool enough to warrant the cost. It seems that a lot of the worth of the import toys is in the status that accompanies buying them, and while that is a neat thing that I wouldn't mind having, I'm more interested in the toy itself being cool than it making me feel cool. If they were priced as they were in Japan, with no import costs, I would probably have bought some, but as it was I could find much more useful places to spend $100+, so I just bought american toys instead. At 11:00 I sat down with Brendan to watch the first two episodes of "Beast Wars" which were going to be shown on the big screen TV (now moved to the dealer / panel room from downstairs). At 11:30, the shows actually started. I had not seem them yet, and was rather impressed by the quality of the graphics. The dialogue was only stupid or corny in a few places, and the rest of the time was at least entertaining, sometimes quite interesting. The fact that the TF's have to call out "Maximize!" or "Terrorize!" to transform to robot mode is pretty lame, but I'm willing to ignore it. I also didn't like it when they would show Optimus Primal (he's an ape on the show, not a bat like the toy) standing on his hind legs like a human. It looked unnatural and just wrong. I hope they keep him hunched over more in the future. After BW finished showing I ran into Phil and he offered to pick me up some lunch because he was heading over to McDonald's. I gave him my order and then browsed the dealer tables a little more. I found Doug Dlin talking to a few people in the seating area near the TV and went over there. I was pleased to find out that the people were Kendrick, Jameel, and Eric Pronko. I sat with them a little bit later when the representatives from Kenner had their panel discussion. Also there were Robert Jung and Naomi Novik, although I never did introduce myself to either of them... d'oh. The Kenner reps basically had nothing but good news. The one who did most of the talking, Anthony, even hung around for at least the rest of that day (I think I saw him on sunday as well) and talked to fans in the hall for hour upon hour. He was incredibly friendly, very easy to talk to, genuinely interested in what we TransFans had to say, and personally excited about what Kenner has in store. He was a Transformer fan himself. At one point during their presentation he said that they had been a little worried about coming, expecting the turnout of the convention to be very small, and expressed his joy and amazement at the number of TransFans that care enough about the line to come. He was really pretty impressed. :) After doing their own little speel at the beginning of their time, the reps opened the air for questions, and a _big_ line of TransFans formed. Most of the questions were good, and most of the answers were informative. As for what we actually learned about the future: They recognize the problems that existed with the G2 line, when their philosophy was basically to get their toys out there without regard to their quality. There are 30-45 new Beast Wars toys to be released in the next year or so, of which only 4 will be recolors. The toys will reach new levels of posability, some with so many points of articulation that it almost makes you wonder if they're going to have separate fingers. :) Several of the new toys will be very large, including the t-rex Megatron, ape Optimus Primal, and a humongous "MegaAnt" which will have _three_ modes. Aside from such triple-changers, there will also be teams and gestalts, and a set similar to the Japanese MultiForce, where any two robots can combine to make a larger robot, and they all fit together for one super-robot. The TV show is going to be aired twice a week, and the animation quality and special fx that they have in store will blow away the first two eps. (They are using Jackie Chan films for a starting point in planning the fight scenes!) New characters will be introduced by having the "escape pods" from the Maximal ship fall to the planet. The pods are not yet Transformers, but a sort of blank slate which will choose its form once it lands and can then be programmed / influenced by whoever locates it first, be they Maximal or Predacon. Kenner insists that they want BW to be a science-fiction epic, and not JUST the toyline (and they're on the right track; writers from "Babylon 5" will be working on first-season BW eps). And, the possability of a BW comic from Dark Horse looks very good. There are also plans to start making vehicle Transformers again. Kenner will be introducing old characters with new forms. They did not make it clear just how similar the new toys would be to the old ones, but the vehicle toys will probably have a futuristic look to them, and the robot modes will have as much posability as the BW toys. There will also be a separate TV show for the vehicle toyline, and both series will be tied together by the people at Kenner -- there will be a definite story dictated by Kenner and, hopefully, no blatant continuity problems. Lastly, a BW video game is on its way for both Playstation and N64 platforms. The genre was described as some sort of a cross between Doom and Street Fighter. Figure that one out for yourself. The game will use the same character designs as the show, which means the TFs in the game will look just like the ones on the TV program (albeit they'll certainly have less texture and be made of polygons instead of being round). After the Kenner guys were done the Hartman's began their Toy Variations Panel. This was, sadly, rather dull. I watched the beginning of it but soon decided I would rather be elsewhere, so I started wandering. I found Anthony talking to fans in the hallway, so I stopped and listened for a while there. Then I made a purchase of a TF:TM poster and watched some people play the TF:Battlecards game for a bit. The Fanzine panel, which was next on the schedule, was also pretty sad. Basically, the 5 or 6 people on stage each got the microphone for one or two minutes, said the name/cost/content of their 'zine, and handed the mike to the next editor. At around 5 Phil and Doug Dlin went off to dinner with a bunch of other att'ers. There was some confusion surrounding this, because Phil remembers telling me that I was invited, and I don't remember hearing it. I was under the impression that it was a MUSH get together or something, which was silly because Phil doesn't MUSH... So anyway, I didn't take part in the saturday night festivities or get to see Nixtr in Raksha's trunk. ;) Instead, I looked around the 'con for someone to hang out or grab some food with. Jameel, Kendrick, and Eric were there, but on their way out, and therefore unavailable. I bummed around a while longer, listened some more to the Kenner rep, and eventually went to find Pema and Sarai. I went up to their room and was happy to find them occupying it. We hung out for a while, went on a few covert operations, and tried to figure out how to assemble Michele's new Trainbot set into Raiden without looking at the diagrams. :) Later in the evening, after the doors to the 'con were officially closed, we went downstairs to join a gathering of fans for an impromptu cartoon marathon. MIB were kind enough to bring the TV out of the Dealer Room, and I don't know where we got the VCR, but several people had tapes with them. We started with a fan-edited tape that Tony Buchanan brought in -- they had chopped up the movie to put dialogue from one part along with the visuals from another, leading to such things as Ironhide saying he would rip open Ultra Magnus to find the Matrix, Prime and Megs using the universal greeting, and Hot Rod callously asking "Fish are jumping today, huh, Dan-o?" as Prime fades out. The tape was a riot, and will certainly be back at future BotCons. Tony said they were working on creating larger scenes by piecing together cartoon episode clips, and would hopefully have some ready for next year. Next we watched a bunch of Headmasters and dubbed Victory shows (the victory eps had come originally from Pema, and filtered through enough people to make the tape quality a bit shoddy before it reached _Roll Out_ editor Jennifer Ulm). There was a wedding party or something going on in one of the other banquet rooms, and we were warned to stay quiet. Since the viewing wasn't a scheduled event, it wasn't really "authorized" by the hotel, and if we were to disturb the paying people next door, we could get kicked out. So, we kept relatively quiet for a while, and then the other gathering started making an enormous ruckus, so we stopped worrying and let ourselves be loud. Once the att crowd came back from dinner and from hanging out in Rob's room, Doug Dlin showed a tape he had put together of scenes from post-TF Takara robot cartoons. As it turned out, a large portion of the tape was transformation and combination sequences clipped from the programs, showing extremely cool robots forming gestalts, summoning giant swords, and blowing the crap out of the bad guys. It did drag on a little near the end though. No matter how cool a "form feet and legs" sequence may be, after watching a hundred of them you get a little bored. <8^/ Around 1:30 I, and most others, called it a night and turned in for some much needed sleep. Sunday, July 14 Unfortunately, I didn't manage to keep track of events on paper for sunday like I did the other days, but I'll see what I can patch together from memory. After waking up, Phil and I headed over to the convention without the Dougs. I stopped at a Coke machine for breakfast. (All the pop machines in both hotels cost a full dollar for a can!) I did some more shopping -- through the course of the day I picked up a Technobot set and a new OP cab, because mine hasn't stood up for at least ten years. I paid $65 and $10, respectively. I also caught a Strafe during one of the free toy tosses, but since I had just bought Computron, traded it to Phil for the Slingshot he'd grabbed. One of the dealers had decided to put a Japanese Nintendo 64 on display, running Mario64 for people to try out... I was quite impressed by the system, and a bit confused by the game (I only played for about 60 seconds), and confirmed my intense desire to get one for myself when they're released in the US in September. :) Later in the day, a Sony PlayStation was hooked up instead, and it was quite easy to see the decrease in graphics quality... the frames per second and "niceness" of the texture mapping were both below what the N64 had been doing. Dennis and MIB held a little panel which was listed in the schedule as "Panel '1997 International Transformer Convention'", making it sound a little like they were going to discuss BotCon '97. Instead, MIB told us their plans for "RoboCon '97, featuring: Transformers", a MIB operated convention which in no way is connected with or replaces BotCon. Basically, it's just them trying to make more money, and tricking the TransFans into listening to them talk about it. :) Some of their ideas were good, and some of them were stupid. Around 1 PM, while Tony Preto conducted his panel on foreign non-toy TF items, a large portion of attenders took the opportunity to leave for lunch. Phil, Diana Calder, and I ate at the Clarion's interior restaurant. Nick Morency (TheNixtr) was supposed to join us, but got caught up at the hotel desk trying to check out 2-3 hours late. :) We had reasonably good food, and a helpful but slightly clueless waiter. We left in time to get back to the convention for the Trivia Contest, slated to start at 2. While we waited for it to be enough past 2 for MIB to start it, I _finally_ introduced myself to Raksha. Earlier in the day I got a chance to meet Stan Lui, as well, although I had confused myself into thinking I had had a certain email correspondence with him long ago, when it was in fact someone else. Oops. :) Some other att'ers I met over the weekend who I haven't mentioned were Hex, John Kierstead, Andrew Frankel (although he didn't remember who I was -- dork ;) ), WRUTAN, and M Sipher. So eventually the trivia contest was ready to begin. MIB decided to run it like a Jeopardy game, selecting three contestants to pick topics, and then throwing the questions to the audience if no one on stage knew the answer. Along with about 20 other TransFans, I lined up along one wall to be considered for the game. We picked numbers, and the contestants were chosen. Number 1: Robert Jung! Number 2: a little boy whose age was on the order of 10 years. Number 3: Me! Yay! I got a few cheers from people who knew me as I went up on stage. :) The contest started out with movie questions, and I swept every question in the column except for the $100 gimme, the name of Spike's son, because Rob got his hand up faster. Grrrr. ;) Some of the other categories were darn difficult, though, particularly "partners" and "tech specs". The game was mostly a battle between Rob and I. The little kid didn't get to answer a single question, although Rob (nice guy that he is) deferred his choice of questions to him a few times. Two or three times the MC handed the microphone to Robert and went to talk to the scorekeepers, and Rob took advantage of this by making witty announcements and hitting us (and himself) on the head with it to hear what sound it made. When we got to Final Jeopardy, the score was Rob-500, kid-0, me-1700. Of course, Robert had just missed two 500 point questions (and I one of them as well), so if not for that we would have actually had to bet for Final Jeopardy. As it went, we ignored wagering and just took the question: Whose motto on their tech spec is "Prepare for oblivion?" The answer was Megatron ATB, the special Dreadwing recolor that had been on display in another room during the convention, with the back of the box facing away so it couldn't be seen. Grrrr. >8^/ But despite the silly last question, I won the contest. I was pleasantly surprised, and got first choice of the three toys donated by the Japanese dealer for my prize. I chose an "Ultra Magnus Junior"; it's a white UM cab in a small box. The front windows are painted light blue, and his head is detached from his body -- I can't quite tell, but it looks like there is a post on the top of his body that the head would fit on if I were to (heaven forbid) open the box. Certainly, there are people on the newsgroup, and people at the convention, who could have beaten me if they had been selected, but I couldn't help but think it was somehow appropriate for the writer of the FAQ to win the trivia competition... :) After that ended, the winners of the art contest were announced. Sadly, the winning 3D piece was the "Yarn Masters", models of OP, Huffer, and Megatron made out of those plastic grids used in some sewing and, of course, sewn together with yarn. They did look neat, I'll admit, but they were not my first choice. Or even my second or third... *sigh* Rob Jung's Jetfire (a modified Hooligan) was one of my favorites in the 3D area. (It's cool that you made a Circuit Breaker, Robert, but she didn't look as nice...) I also liked the Dinobots 2099, the stained glass Ravage, and the both chrome TF's... a "Headmaster Megatron" made out of, among other things, an Overlord chassis, and a modified Dreadwing with a Megatron head on it. My favorite drawing was M Sipher's Shockwave portrait. While Raksha was doing the art contest stuff (first running around the hotel, and then up on stage), Lizard was snake-sitting for Avatar. It was my first close encounter with a python, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Although I knew she wouldn't be slimey, I was surprised to find her smooth, soft, and warm. :) She was a little antsy, though, and gave Lizard a hard time, as well as putting his leg to sleep before calming down to wait for Raksha's return. Next came the auction for Toys for Tots. I didn't stay for most of this, finding it only slightly entertaining. It was neat to see what people were bidding, but the items being auctioned, for the most part, were pretty boring. Ah well. I used the time to make a few last rounds of the Dealer Room. I got a few freebies... extra OP napkins and a British "Big Looker" storybook. The convention closed up at about 4 PM. After a little wandering, Phil, Doug, Doug, and I went to the Clarion lobby to wait for a pizza we had ordered. Joining us were a number of other TransFans; those whose names I remember were Tony Buchanan, Raksha and Eva, and Stan Lui. The pizza was a long, LONG time in coming, frustrating Stan, who needed to get going... Doug Dlin entertained the lot of us with readings of a few different printed materials (including some TF names badly translated from Japanese, like "Thunderclucker"), and we had other random TF discussions. People staying at the hotel for the Kiss concert went out, stayed out, and came back (most of them full of alcohol) while we sat there. Eventually, late, like at 11 PM or so when I had sort of wanted to be getting to bed (I hadn't gotten a full nights' sleep in over a week, and had a long early drive to wake up for) we moved to our room in the Ramada to hook up Tony's camcorder and watch a video or two. We watched Tony's movie clips again (about the fifth time for me in just that weekend), then Doug Vander Hoek's BotCon '95 tape, "Call of the Primitives", and a TF commercial collection that DVH bought from (ack) Tony Preto. Not too long after midnight we kicked everyone out (politely) to get some shuteye. Monday, July 15 I got up again at 9 o'clock. Phil was awake and out of the bathroom before me, and I took the next turn. I loaded my car, left my keycard with Phil, and headed out. I was on my way back to Delaware OH for another night before continuing my road trip for another two days in Ohio, doing other, non-TF things. :) Final Thoughts: BotCon weekend was easily one of the coolest times of my life. I got to meet a lot of net.friends, I bought a few TF's, and I went on my first vacation alone. It was a cool feeling to drive cross country without anyone along, taking care of myself. I spent a lot of money, but it was worth it. I can't wait for next summer. :) The convention was a lot of fun despite MIB's near ineptitude in running it. Since a lot of att'ers seem interested in running BotCon next year, I'm looking forward to a more fan- oriented event, where spending / making money is not the focus. To everyone I met: it was cool to meet you. :) See ya' next year.