Genki Life Magazine
Animé Los Angeles 7 
Sunday, February 20, 2011, 11:02 - Travel
Posted by Star Ocean


After waiting a couple months for Animé Los Angeles 7 (ALA), it finally arrived. This time, Samantha brought along a couple of her friends, Nicole and Jane. Luckily they were allowed to go. We left around seven, Saturday morning. When we finished picking up the kids, we went to get Lawrence. Got some gas and off we went.

Once we got there, registration was a breeze. Unfortunately, “Uncle” Lawrence had a dumbass to register himself and the kids. After we got our goods at registration, we went to the main lobby to get coffee and snacks. Wow, there were already a lot of people in the lobby, cosplayers and convention-goers everywhere. We got our coffee and snacks.

Because we brought the kids this time around, we had to come up with plans on how were should hold of each other and where to meet. Basically to stay in contact. We can’t have the kids follow Lawrence and I everywhere we go. They’re old enough to roam around to do what they want. Their interests are vastly different from ours. Since this is the first time Samantha went with her friends, they have to make their first convention experience their own. Besides, ALA is all in one place and not spread around, unlike Expo. Once we finalized our contact plans, split what money goes to who and showed them to get around the con, we left the kids to their own devices.

Lawrence and I went back to car to drop off Jane’s backpack. Damn it was heavy. Even though she insisted on dragging that big bag along. It was too much for the poor kid. So now, to our first panel. We went to the “How Technology Changed Anime” or something like. I know I should know the title since I worked on panel section of the program guide, but I can’t think of it right now. Anyway it was an interesting panel. It does bring back memories of how it was back then. But I expected it to be more interactive. I could tell that there were a few people, including myself, that wanted to share our stories also. It wasn’t meant to be.



The second panel, in the same room, was next. It’s one I actually really wanted to go to. It was the Bandai panel. I wasn’t there to go through all the new stuff that they were offering, but I wanted to meet up with an old acquaintance from our CF/O-AAJA days, Bob Napton. At the end of the panel, I did meet up with Bob only enough to exchange contact info. I wanted to talk some more, but I know he’s there on business so I’ll get hold of him later.

We met up with the kids after the panel and went to lunch because they were hungry. Also, I forgot I was supposed to get hold of my friend Bill, so I texted him that we were already there. After eating at the only reasonably priced place in the area, Carl’s, we went back to the convention. The kids want to go out and do their stuff.

Lawrence and I finally got a chance to go to the dealers room. It was the same size and “rooms” as last year. I did recognized a couple of the vendors. Again, it surprised me that Anime Jungle wasn’t there considering they’re the anime “largest” retailer in the area, albeit their prices are a little high. Lawrence and I came across some great finds and bought a couple things. Anyway, at the some time, I was waiting for a reply from Bill, but I never got one. I figured that by now, he won’t be able to go.

We took a little breather after the dealer’s room outside. Compared to last year, it was a lot colder. Next we, wandered around the convention, around the con level as well as the main lobby. There’s surely a lot more people that went this year compared to last. Yes, it’s growing. But now I wonder whether the hotel would be large enough to accommodate the growing number of people, considering that ALA is the largest winter convention in SoCal. Personally, I wouldn’t like it, but it will have to eventually. At least, while it’s growing, there was to lack of info going around.

The next panel we went to was the “First Trip to Japan.” It was interesting. The information and stories that the panelists gave was really interesting. Just too bad that we weren’t going to Japan anytime soon. The information was really helpful. On the way out of the panel, we met up with the kids. They were going to the next panel, the Vocaloid panel.

We walked around some more to kill time before the next panel. Just to see what what going on, we went to Artist Alley. No matter how many times I go in there, the dojin artwork it always great to see. There’s just so many, many talented artists there. In our wanderings, we happened to come across our buddy Patrick. Soon after, we came across James. Since they were doing their own thing, we went to the Parent’s Lounge to relax a bit. Good thing we went. There was free coffee available for parents instead of paying upstairs. Also, it was just too funny to see “kids” walking by giggling about seeing parents relaxing in the lounge. Too funny!



The Vocaloid panel should be over by now, as well as most of the other panels in preparation for the masquerade. We left the lounge to look for the kids. Someone with a familiar voice called me out. It happened to be Craig Spurlock, an old friends of mine from way back in the early Expos. We talked for a bit and introduced us to his friend Jennifer. They happen to run the “Whose Line Is It…” panel. Jennifer and I exchanged info for our mutual benefit. After that we went to the Dealer’s Room again to see if the kids were there. Nope. Instead we ran into another old CF/O acquaintance, Jerry Shaw, doing the usual thing at conventions. Talking pictures. Damn, I ran unto a lot of people we know.

The last panel we went to was the “Convention War Stories” panel. In almost every panel we went to, Helen McCarthy was one of the panelists. By far, this was the most entertaining panel where the panelists told wild stories of conventions past. Like the first panel we went to, I expected it to be more interactive. As a matter of fact, most of the panels are not interactive at all—I just realized. But I think, as entertaining as it was, people in the panel, like me, whom are veteran convention-goers, had out own convention “war stories” that we’d like to share.

By now, a line was forming for the masquerade. And we finally found the kids. They were in the room where Kaiji was performing. Funny. When I took Samantha for concerts in the past, she wound complain it was too loud and we’d have to leave. Now I hear they enjoyed the concert...by themselves. Lawrence and I went to the car to get them snacks like they wanted. Then we got in line for the masquerade to save them a place in line. Personally, I wasn’t too interested in the masquerade even though it was a main event. Also, since this was a small to medium-sized con, the masquerade takes place on a leveled room...like Expo back in the “olden” days as the kids call it now.

When the kids got out of the concert, they met with us in line. They took out place instead. Lawrence and I went to the parent’s lounge to relax and to get free drinks. After a bit, we went to the dealer’s room for the last time to buy last-minute things. To kill time we wandered again and wound up in the AMV room. Yeah, we stayed there a bit. But as exhausted as I was, I was falling asleep there, in that nice dark room for almost an hour. I just had to leave. So we left and spent our reaming hour in the main lobby. They main part of the masquerade should already be over by now so the kids should be out to meet them at the designated meeting place. When we met up with them, we left.

One day is not enough to fully enjoy the convention. Even better is go with more friends. Bummer that the friends we asked couldn’t go. Even the ones that were to go that couldn’t make it. I’d say, if I didn’t buy anything, I’d have spent around $30…just parking, gas and food. There was so much to do yesterday, Saturday, there we really couldn’t think where to go and what to do. Yes, there’s keeping to the schedule of panels, but in doing do, there’s no room for lunch, dinner, dealer’s room, talking to people and taking pictures. Rooms were really cheap compared to Expo’s, so going two or three days isn’t out of the question. The only problem is that we had kids with us and their parents wouldn’t want them to stay overnight in the hotel. So, since, I planned the trip, I had to make accommodations for everyone. May next year, we’ll leave the kids home to pick them up at the end of the day and we’ll stay there for a couple days. We’ll see.
add comment   |  0 trackbacks   |  permalink   |   ( 3.1 / 1067 )
Orange County Auto Show 2010 
Saturday, October 9, 2010, 21:05 - Travel
Posted by Star Ocean



Yesterday morning, we met at the usual place. Again, it was a last-minute decision. In the first place, we were supposed to go to the Macross Convention in UCLA. But the night before I change my mind because I looked at the schedule and there wasn’t anything interesting going on. So when Andy called me up, he invited me to go to the auto show with them. I gave in and said okay. So anyway, the plan was to leave at eight o’clock in the morning so we can have an early start. But at least we were able to leave around nine. Since I plan to go to the auto show is so wishy-washy, I wound up driving.

Luckily, the trip to Anaheim was pretty smooth. There was no traffic at all the way there. Even on the way to the convention center, going through the convention center streets was pretty easy. Since I paid for the gas, Andy and Tim took care of the parking fee and my entrance fee. On the way to the entrance, it was how it was like two years ago when we last went to the auto show. So we got our tickets and we enter the convention center. As soon as we entered, we started looking at the Honda cars that were right after the entrance. While looking around, we decided to take a clockwise route around the convention center so could see everything in some kind of order. But that didn’t work out because we started going just about everywhere, zigzagging through the convention, and seeing everything that we could see.



I was thinking around 11 o’clock, we should go eat lunch because around one o’clock there was going to be a bikini show. But as we looked around some more at some of the cars, we lost track of time and before we know it, it was almost one. The bikini show was supposed to start. When we got to the stage, there were a lot of people around the stage so was hard to get a good view. Before the contest started, I was looking around to see what else was going on. And to the right of the stage, there were the lingerie league girls. After little bit, the bikini show started. When the girls were brought to the stage, they weren’t in bikinis after all. They were actually in dresses. We all felt like we were gypped. In the program, it was going to be a bikini contest.

As the girls were introduced on stage, Andy and I were trying to take pictures of the girls. There was one problem though. In front of us, near the stage, there was a douche that had a huge flash coming out of this camera and was blocking our view of the stage and the girls. Of course it was upsetting, but what can we do. We tried our best with what we could do with the cameras. This time around, Tim brought his his SLR camera with us. Since I was tall, I was one that used the SLR to try to take pictures of the girls coming out. It was supposed to be an automatic camera, but it didn’t respond as quickly as I thought it would. There were times when I couldn’t take the pictures I wanted because of the two second delay. But at least Andy was there as a backup photographer. By the way, this time around I actually forgot to bring my own camera. But that’s cool, at least we had two cameras with us and in the meantime I was taking pictures with my phone.

When the contest ended, Tim and Susan were trying to find a place it down because they were tired. Andy and I stuck around for little while to see what was going on. And while we were hanging around the stage area, I took a picture with the WWF wrestler, Chyna. By this time, the crowd was already dissipating so we decided to leave two. It was already around two o’clock and I actually forgot about lunch. So I told Andy and we should call Tim and Susan so that we could go eat together. When we got hold them on the phone, we told them to meet us at the entrance of the auto show.

From we were at from the convention center, it was a pretty short walk to Tiffy’s restaurant down the street on the corner of Katella and West. The last time I was at Tiffy’s was when Tiarra’s cousins from St. Louis came over on a visit. I believe this was the first time Tim, Andy and Susan actually went to this restaurant with me. In the past, I was either with Adrian or Lawrence, Vick and Jason. Since the Jolly Roger on the other street corner closed, this was only decent restaurant within walking distance. I guess this was first time they went to this restaurant, because everybody was amazed at how good the restaurant looked. After we ate lunch, we made it back to the convention center. At this time, we took the other way around. It was a usual way back to the convention center. The front side. By going this way, there was a lot of shade along the sidewalk, unlike on West Street which where he came from.



So when we went back to the convention floor, we entered through the “back side” of the convention center. We went straight into the Ford area. While we were looking around, we met up with Andy’s friend. If I remember correctly, her name was Crystal. She was actually a cute looking girl. But anyway, Andy and her caught up for a little bit. After that, we started walking around some more. By this time, we were going around counterclockwise. But still in a zigzagging motion. About this time, we realized that Mitsubishi wasn’t there at the auto show. And there were also some other car companies that were also missing. One things for sure, this auto show was a lot smaller than the one from a couple years ago. But away, at least we came to the auto show today and actually had a good time. It’s better than staying home and doing nothing but watching TV all day. It was late afternoon and we made it to the other side of the convention center again to where Tim and Susan bought sunglasses. Andy wanted to buy some sunglasses too, so he was looking around. But this time, we were there for a really, really, long time looking at sunglasses. I felt like I was in a department store waiting for someone to finish shopping. Oh well!



It was already late afternoon and we saw what all there was to see in the convention center, but there was actually one thing that we were going to do before we go. It was to test drive some of the cars. So on the way out, we went over to the Toyota place to test out the cars. I didn’t actually test the cars, but Andy, Tim and Susan went ahead and signed up to test the cars. So while they were testing the cars, for about an hour, I was waiting for them and wondering around looking at the Ford cars and walking in and out of the convention center. Thankfully, around this time of the day, it was actually cooling down so it became bearable to stay outside. When they were finished, he called the day and went home.
add comment ( 1 view )   |  0 trackbacks   |  permalink   |   ( 3 / 1153 )

<< <Back | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | Next> >>