How lucky can you get with the weather? Imagine what would have happened if that storm had hit when fans were trying to get to the Hyatt Regency Crystal City. The blizzard closed every highway and airport from the Carolinas (where Raleigh, N.C., the home of Animazement, got nearly two feet of snow in five hours) to Maine. By the time of Katsucon, temperatures rose into the 50's and nearly all of the snow had melted.

To the author, the most interesting aspect of the event was the appearance of adult artists Kondom and Hiroyuki Utatane. Inviting these artists was a bold step in a time when childrens' shows are driving the spread of anime fandom. It probably was no coincidence that the appearance of these artists was accompanied by an appearance from the executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which faces the challenge of defending the books those artists draw.

While the author didn't speak to every fan, no one at Katsucon seemed offended to have Utatane and Kondom on hand.

In 1999, Katsucon didn't have full use of the Hyatt Regency Crystal City. In 2000, the convention got to use the entire hotel - although they had to wait until mid-afternoon Friday to get into the main ballroom (Bell Atlantic had a meeting there).

Getting the entire hotel meant that Katsucon could follow Otakon's lead from 1998 and use a large mid-level space for the dealers' room. There was a line of people waiting to get into the room for most of the weekend. 40 people were waiting for the room to open on Sunday morning, and the author paced off the length of the Sunday afternoon line at around 200 feet. However, part of the reason for the long line was a concern about theft.

Con chair Keith Mayfield mentioned at the closing ceremonies that merchandise had been stolen from the dealers' room. A dealer told us that four people were caught stealing from Katsucon dealers; one person supposedly had taken merchandise from several tables, and two or three others were working together, passing stolen material from person to person. The dealer and Mayfield said the discovery of the thefts led Katsucon to cut back on the number of people allowed in the dealers' room on Saturday and Sunday, which in turn cut the sales those dealers made (Friday sales may have been better than Saturday, the dealer said). Fortunately, the thefts were discovered and led to arrests.

The "new millenium" hasn't changed Katsucon. It was packed with fans who were anxious for the start of the 2000 convention season - especially those who had worked on some impressive costumes for months. It also had the usual degree of disorganization, with late events (an hour late on the cosplay) and the usual share of circumstances where one person said something would happen, and another said something else would happen.

Strangest of the weekend was the trouble in finding which cosplay award went to which cosplayer. The award announcement on Saturday night was confused. Even the costumers weren't sure what awards they'd won. To learn the results, check the Katsucon web page later on, the author was told by the cosplay staff.

Still, despite its flaws, Katsucon was a good event. The convention was a great chance to meet old friends, imaginative costumers and hard-working artists.  And Mayfield mentioned that the hotel plans to add another ballroom, which could let Katsucon move the dealers' room to warmer surroundings.

Some things did change over the off-season, beginning with everything on this page. It's all new, although you probably don't notice anything different. That's because the switch happened without you noticing. This page had been housed with a web hosting company, but its bulk (over 100 MB of files before Katsucon began) outgrew that company's limits. So, two weeks before Katsucon, the site was moved to a new location. The switch of the domain went smoothly and the page never went down, although it took a couple of days to upload the 8,600 files.

Also, there's a new camera for this page, a Casio. The new camera has a longer zoom range and takes pictures faster, so you can expect to see more and better pictures on this site (as long as the batteries hold out).

Another thing: in previous years, the author has delighted in complaining about the shortcomings of US Airways. It's only fair to note this this trip to Reagan National Airport and back showed that the airline has changed for the better. The trip to Virginia left on time, arrived early and the ground crew quickly got the bags to the claim conveyor. The return flight was cancelled because of a maintenance problem (it was a DC-9, so there the author had no complaints after what happened to Alaska Airlines' similar plane a couple of weeks earlier). The author was at the end of the rebooking line when a US Airways employee motioned him to a service desk with a much shorter line. Then, that same employee popped up out of nowhere with a revised ticket for the new flight, without being asked. And he came up with a meal voucher to compensate for the three-hour delay. That sort of service deserves a high compliment for US Airways and that worker.

The Katsucon weekend saw the passing of cartoonist Charles Schultz, who died one day before his final Peanuts strip appeared in Sunday papers. The Washington Post devoted a large feature story on Sunday to a critical analysis to Schultz' work over the years. As one veteran fan noted, Schultz' death signaled the end of an era, and events such as Katsucon show the way for a new era.

Finally, the author notes the passing of some racing friends, Marieanne Kenyon, Ed Dykes and Tony Bettenhausen. It's a cruel irony to the author, who spends so much time in the air traveling to anime conventions, that Dykes and Bettenhausen died in plane crashes. It's a chilling thought that Bettenhausen's death came in a private plane crash on the same day that the author returned home from Katsucon - and in a location that wasn't very far from the flight path that the author's airliner used.