...and
this trip ends a run of four conventions on four consecutive weekends
in four states. It took 2,000 air miles and 1,400 road miles to get to the quartet of events.
And the traveling isn't over, since the author of this page hopes to get to
a few more conventions before the year and the money runs out. Two weeks from
this writing comes Anime Reactor, another first-time Rosemont, Ill. convention.
Of course, the author expects people to want him to compare the events, so
stay tuned for the big review. The author plans to be on hand for Anime Reactor
to sell more cosplay books and prints to cosplayers.
So the author returned to the road for the greatest challenge in anime convention travel.
Greater than racing trucks in the fog around Lookout Mountain. Bigger than
the cab ride through the East River tunnels in New York. More intimidating
than the security lines at the Baltimore-Washington Airport. Scarier than
turbulence in the spring rainstorms over Virginia. Stranger than rolling
down construction zones on two-lane highways, following tomato trucks headed
to the Red Gold sauce factory in Geneva, Ind.
Yes, it was time to take the chance of driving on the Tristate tollway around
Chicago. Handling the traffic is a challenge: sit too far back from other
traffic and you get cut off. Rush too close to traffic ahead and you get
to test your brakes.
On Kazecon's Friday, the author got caught in two clots of stop and go traffic.
One was caused by a wreck in the opposite direction where traffic had to
slow for a fire truck in the fast lane. The author still doesn't know what
caused the second slowdown, because he was caught in a maze of trucks and
didn't dare look off to the side. Turning on WBBM-AM for information on the
slowdown didn't help much: listening to the fast-talking traffic reporter
was like trying to decode a tobacco auctioneer.
The toll road trip provided the author with his most embarrassing moment
of the weekend. He was leaving the toll road for I-190, rolled up to the
toll machine, rolled down the window and threw 20 cents into the basket.
Nothing happened. The author looked around and saw that that toll was 40
cents. He grabbed more change, threw it at the basket, and missed. Other
drivers started to impatiently line up behind the author. He grabbed a handful
of change and threw it at the basket. Finally, the happy green "thank you"
light came on and the author was able to get out of there without being run
over.
After the second Anime Central was held at the Ramada O'Hare in 1999, the
author thought he'd never be at that hotel again, so he had to dig into his
book of memories to remember how the hotel was laid out. Kazecon swapped the
locations of the dealers' room and the main events hall, but otherwise the
layout was the same. The Ramada has an odd design with branching concourses
and a main tower, limited in height because the O'Hare airport is so close.
You understand the limits when you hear the roar from overhead, look up and
see big airliners skimming over the hotel.
Kazecon may have had the smallest turnout of a 2003 convention attended by
this site. It felt a little smaller than the previous weekend's C-Kon and
a lot smaller than the inaugural Tekkoshocon from March. The turnout, said to be only a few hundred, was small enough
to lead one dealer to start packing up to leave while the dealers' room was still
open on Saturday afternoon. (In fairness, the author also had to leave on Sunday morning to get back to his real-world job.)
Whether that had to do with the competing convention two weeks later wasn't
clear, but it always helps to remember that there's a lot of competition
for the entertainment dollar in the Chicago area.
When the author was running his long power cable from a wall outlet to his
picture and book sales table, he saw something bright and shiny on the carpet
that looked like broken glass. It was broken glass, several pieces worth,
which the author gingerly picked up and tossed in the trash. One wonders
how the broken glass got there and how it stayed on the floor until the author
found it.
Of course, Mannheim Road in front of the hotel was torn up, which made for
adventuresome street crossing when it was time to head to the McDonald's
for lunch. Fortunately the convention was in Rosemont, not Chicago, which
meant that Kazecon missed the spectacle of piles of Chicago trash left over
from the strike by that city's sanitation workers. The strike ended just
before the convention weekend.
As had happened the previous weekend at C-Kon, Friday at Kazecon was quiet,
and a bit too restful for the author, who kept dozing off at his table. At
least he didn't snore. And at least he didn't fall and hit his head, which
happened to hapless Greggo, another one of the people who was part of the
four-conventions-in-four-weekends deal. At a Friday night dance, Greggo was
playing the role of the happy host, but that ended when he bumped into a
friend and took a big fall. At first, people assumed that Greggo was just
joking, but then it sank in that he wasn't going to get up right away. So
a friend helped a groggy Greggo to his feet and took him back to his room.
It was a wicked bump, but it wasn't permanent, as Greggo was up and around
on Saturday.
The fall didn't hurt Greggo as much as sitting in the hotel's sports bar
on Saturday night, and watching his beloved University of Tennessee football
team lose in a rout to Georgia.
For a while, it looked like Greggo had taken a shot from Kevin Nash, the
pro wrestler spotted by a fan in a restaurant not far from the convention
site. According to the fan, the huge grappler was spending his money on one
of those games where you drop a claw into a pile of prizes (anime fans know
them as UFO catcher games). Nash apparently didn't do as well as the anime
fan, who took one turn at the machine and came up with a big purple plushie.
Actor Stephanie Nadolny's misfortune was more boring: she didn't get to the
convention until Saturday afternoon. Nadolny had been scheduled for an earlier
flight, but the shuttle to the airport broke down, which made her miss her
flight. Forced to a second flight, Nadolny arrived several hours late, but
was still in good spirits and working to appear at a future Chicago-area
event.
Saturday was far less restful for the author, who sold a few cosplay books
from his table. Part of the fun of working at a table is to watch the reaction
of fans to the sample cosplay pictures on display. One enthusiastic group
of fans gasped and giggled over most of the images, but they really liked
the Inu-Yasha groups, a picture of a big Totoro from the 2002 AnimeIowa and
the battle costumes from the Oh My Goddess movie.
This convention trip happened during the National League championship series,
which featured the Chicago Cubs' struggle to get back in the World Series
for the first time in nearly sixty years. It was the most amazing sports
coincidence on a convention trip since 2002, when the author happened to
travel between Toronto and Raleigh when the cities' NHL teams were battling
for a spot in the Stanley Cup finals.
When that Friday night dance was taking place, there may have been as many
people in the hotel's sports bar, watching the Cubs' extra-inning victory
in game three. And when the Cubs won game four, fans at the (late-running)
costume contest kept getting inning-by-inning updates. During the halftime
judges' break, the crowd sang "Take Me Out To The Ball Game."
One of the odd Friday convention sights was of a fan carrying a Neon Genesis
Evangelion bag that also had a Howard Dean for President sticker. The imagination
reels at the combination: campaign slogans like "No more impacts!" or "He'll
finish the Human Instrumentality Project!"
