So now you know why the author wasn't at Ani-Magic in Lancaster, Calif. The real world interfered with racing stuff (and it wasn't the race the author really wanted to attend) that forced him to stay home, a kind of payback for the last-minute trip one month earlier to New York. So the author made up for that frustration with another irrational trip to two conventions on the same weekend. It took four flights to get to Anime USA on Friday, AnimeNEXT on Saturday and head for home on Sunday.

The rain never stopped all weekend, one of the wettest of the convention season. The weather didn't lessen the contrast between the regions in which the conventions were held. 

Anime USA was in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., in an area built in the last two generations. The ride from the Dulles airport passes green hills dotted by dot-com office buildings. AnimeNEXT was in old-line industrial New Jersey. As you leave the Newark airport, you pass a prison and mountains of shipping containers. Anime USA was along a commuter route in an office park. AnimeNEXT was in the middle of the "Meadowlands" swamp, within view of Giants Stadium.

Sadly, the author didn't have the time to visit New Jersey's eggplant farms, which were said by a convention fan to be the largest in the United States. However, it wasn't hard to miss the Anheuser-Busch brewery next door to the Newark airport. Parked at a Newark terminal gate was an All Nippon Airways 777; the author wondered how much it would cost to charter that plane and haul anime fans to Japan. Probably more than the cost of the tour buses from Quebec which brought a group of middle-aged adults to the AnimeNEXT hotel - and you should have seen them look at the passing cosplayers as they waited in the lobby for their buses.

Despite being in the middle of a couple of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S,  both of the conventions were small events. The author figures that total attendance for both shows was around 2,000 or so. The small size didn't stop the conventions from attracting some good guests. Each convention had prominent Japanese artists (Hidenori Matsubara and Hiroshi Aro at Anime USA, Kia Asamiya at AnimeNEXT), enthusiastic male voice actors (Scott McNeil at Anime USA, Jamie McGonnigal at AnimeNEXT) and tall, red-haired, opera-singing female actors (Keli Shayne Butler at Anime USA, Kristen Nelson at AnimeNEXT).

Since the author often wears racing shirts to conventions, he was fascinated to see that Asamiya was wearing something familiar, a shirt from the Jordan Formula One racing team. Two weeks earlier, the author had been taking pictures of the Jordan cars at the U.S. Grand Prix.

The author's Sunday morning departure from the New Jersey convention depriced him of a chance to see if there would have been a clash of cultures between anime fans and the people who would have been at the hotel before the Giants-Falcons game just down the road. (Those fans probably would have been upset after the Falcons won, 17-10.)

For those interested in the cosplay book: Steve Bennett of the soon-to-be renamed IC Entertainment (formerly known as Studio Ironcat) informed the author that he had better get started on things like putting together pages if he wants the book to be published early next year. The author got the message and is going to have to shop for a upgraded desktop publishing program - fast.

The purchase of the weekend, in the Anime USA dealers' room, was of a "Spirited Away" DVD that was labeled "DVD fansub" on the back and packaged with a convincing color cover and disc art. Looked like someone had been busy with their brand new DVD burner.

At the New Jersey hotel, the author watched as hotel and convention staff ushered a video projector out of a ballroom. It turned out the extra attention came because another projector and a notebook computer had disappeared from a (supposedly locked) room the previous night. (Jimmy Hoffa probably borrowed the projector to watch DVD's under the Giants Stadium end zone.)

The author enjoys conventions because they get people away from reality...but the weekend trip was uncomfortably close to major trouble.

A week before Anime USA came the first word of a series of shootings in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. Someone, generally described as a sniper, was gunning people down on random streets, killing most of them. At first the shootings were far northeast of the convention's location in the Virginia suburbs, but that was still too close for the author's comfort. Then shootings were reported in Fredericksburg and Manassas in Virginia, southwest of the convention site. 

When the author arrived at Dulles International Airport on the first leg of his convention trip on Friday morning, he found dreary rain, low clouds and people looking intently at TV monitors in the terminal. A glance showed that another person had been shot and killed at an Exxon station near Fredericksburg, a couple of hours before the author's flight arrived. The shooting was about 45 miles south of the Sheraton hotel where the convention was held and even further from the District of Columbia, but it transfixed the entire capital area. The taxi radio was tuned to WTOP-AM, which broadcast nothing but bulletins on the shooting. The newsreaders announced that schools in the area had been locked down and outdoor events had been called off. Over and over again, they broadcast the description of a white van that had been seen leaving the shooting scene.

The author counted 15 white vans during the cab ride to the hotel.

So how did Anime USA fans react to having to go to a convention in what news reports made to seem like a free-fire zone? The Friday on which the author was at the Virginia convention was the quietest convention Friday this year. (The author was told that AnimeNEXT had been just as quiet on Friday.)

The author had never attended Anime USA before, so there's no direct way to make a comparison with previous years. The Virginia event has had a reputation as a small conventions. However, when you consider that school systems and community groups around the Virginia and Maryland suburbs canceled events in the wake of the sniper shooting, and when you add that anime conventions are mostly youth festivals, it's probably not a stretch of the imagination to conclude that reaction to the sniper shootings kept some people from going to Anime USA. Regardless of the convention's setting, which was in a hotel with an entrance that wasn't visible from a distance and held all of its events indoors, the worries about individual safety so transfixed the D.C. area that this weekend wasn't a good time for an event.

And on the Monday night following the convention, another possible sniper shooting was reported near the Seven Corners suburb, five miles southeast of the hotel where Anime USA had been held.

The shooting story probably helped cement the idea of severely limiting - or banning - prop weapons carried by cosplayers.

The Virginia event had lots of familiar faces. AnimeNEXT saw a lot of people who had been at the Big Apple Anime Fest and Anime Expo New York one month earlier. The three events seemed to have energized some fans; a group of cosplayers was trying to organize a Halloween party at Rockefeller Center

The author usually doesn't say much about airports unless something goes wrong, but he'll make an exception for the new terminal at the Detroit airport in Romulus, Michigan. Airports can be functional, dreary places, but the new Detroit terminal takes airport design to a new level: terminal as theme park. 

The first thing you see when you walk off the plane is the train. Several airports have trains between terminals, but most hide them underground. The new Detroit terminal places the train on top of the gates, like something out of Disneyland. It's quiet as trains go, running on rubber tires and pulled by what looks like a rubber rope. Too bad the author didn't have the time to ride the train from one stop to another.