NRA 2014!

Good times at the National Rifle Association convention, April 25-27 in Indianapolis, Indiana. This is something I can share with my parents, who aren't as into anime and superheroes as I am for some reason. NRA's bit of a different crowd than the anime/comics/pop culture gatherings I usually go to, but there were some similarities.

Sixgun and ammo's real, and live steel on the knife, but they'd otherwise be right at home with any cosplayer.

Me and an Emma Frost cosplayer (or spokesmodel for EAA Corps' line of European gun designs).

Red Alert 3 cosplay (representative for Century International Arms' Red Army Standard line of ammo).

Hit a couple panel discussions -- guns of Battle of the Bulge during World War II and guns of Vietnam's MACV SOG. Just Powerpoint slides with no actual guns to show off, which was kinda disappointing for an NRA convention, but the speakers were interesting. The SOG panel was by Maj. John Plaster (ret), with first hand stories from Vietnam.

Exhibit hall was massive. It's a swag feeding frenzy, filling sacks full of free catalogs, hats, t-shirts, and other stuff. And gun makers stock their booth spaces with thousands of rifles, shotguns, and pistols of all sizes and shapes for people to examine and handle (play with).

Pick them up. Work the action. the slide.Try out the trigger. That's why they're there!

People weren't playing with this one.

Another Gatling, a minigun mounted on a VW bus. Gunmakers are not without a sense of whimsy.

Shotguns powerful like a motorcycle and elegant like pretty violinists!

Beretta had a green screen at their booth, for free pics. I picked an ARX160.

Lots of celebs I wanted to see scattered about the exhibit hall at their sponsors' booths. WIll Hayden and Joe Meaux of "Sons of Guns" on Discovery, up from their Red Jacket Firearms business in Louisiana to hang out with Mossberg.

They seemed down to earth. "I never know what to say to people," I heard Will remark to Joe as I walked up.

They seemed down to earth. "I never know what to say to people," I heard Will remark to Joe as I walked up.

Shooting champ Doug Koenig.

Self defense expert Massad Ayoob. I've been reading his stuff for decades.

Jerry Miculek, his wife Kay and their daughter Lena for Smith & Wesson. Jerry is a longtime trick shooter known for speed shooting revolvers and pistols.

Youtube's Hickok45 and his videographer son, John. They are very tall.

Hickok45 has more than a million subscribers to his youtube channel, filled with videos of him shooting guns at his home in Tennessee, not far from Ft. Campbell, where I was stationed a quarter century ago.

Excellent musical entertainment Saturday night in Lucal Oil Stadium, home of the Colts. It was an NRA event, so that means country music! Alabama and Sara Evans, with special guest Cheryl LuQuire. We sat far from the stage but it was all good.

Alabama sings their new song, "(Aren't We) All Americans?", a conciliatory number about compromise and understanding. Applause seemed lighter for this one -- we weren't there for that kind of stuff!

Excellent show by Sara Evans!

Up-and-comer Cheryl LuQuire opens the show.

Singer and songwriter Cheryl LuQuire performed some excellent foot-stomping independent-woman type songs along with some heartbreakers, so I went to get her CD, autograph, and picture -- my usual fan behavior. I was in line for that when Sarah Palin gave her speech with that odd waterboarding-as-baptism line. Sarah got a bit carried away, I suppose.

Cheryl and her guitarist husband Adam Stark. They sold out their CDs, which was cool. They had boxes of the things!

The whole convention was also a social experiment of sorts. Understandably catching flak some time back for banning civilian guns at that year's convention, this time folks with concealed carry permits were welcome to bring them, and no permit needed at all to open carry (I think). Banning loaded guns at an NRA convention isn't a bad idea, with all the gun handling and trigger pulling going on in dense crowds, but it's laughably hypocritical. Many believe guns in and of themselves increase people's proclivity towards violence, so such a gun-saturated environment should have pushed some of those loaded-gun toters right off the edge into let's-just-shoot-people territory. Certainly, local letter-to-editor writers and facebook posters thought it would. But it didn't happen. So now we know that, at least.

Almacon

Turns out I felt kinda bad about my rebellious streak at Ohayocon, so much I wanted to make up for it. When I saw a Facebook post asking for volunteers at Almacon a week before the convention, I impulsively filled it out and sent it in, even though I'd never worked at a convention before nor previously even considered it.
They must have really needed volunteers because they promptly put me on the schedule. I clicked the "5-8 hours" button for availability, and they scheduled me for seven hours. Spread out over 13 hours total. Well played, Almacon!
Two hours watching an autograph line -- no shenanigans from signature seekers like I pulled, fortunately. My line was kind of short. J. Michael Tatum's line, which was much longer, was later so I didn't have to deal with that.
Two hours checking for wrist bands at the dealer's room. It was at capacity, so I also had to control access, zero-sum-game style, two go out, let two in, which made it more complicated. There was a line, but I got them all in by the time I left.
An hour in one of the anime rooms, which was cool. Durarara was streaming on Crunchyroll, so all I had to do was remaximize the screen each time a new episode would start. That I can handle.
Lastly, two hours watching the door for a game of Cards Against Humanity, 10:30-midnight, played by some of the celebrity guests for the entertainment of the audience. Adults only, so I had to check IDs. Michigan provides special driver's licenses to minors - vertical format instead of horizontal, which made it easier. An apparently intoxicated cosplayer (Catbug?) decided she wanted to sit in with the guests and had to be escorted out, but I didn't have to deal with that cause I was way back at the door.
Lots of down time, so I still got to do the usual convention stuff.
I met comics creators Comfort Love and Adam Withers and got a print.

Star Wars! It's going on the wall. I'm wearing a coat over my Voyage Trekkers Marine costume cause it was cold.

A married comics creating couple, like some others I could mention, they publish The Uniques, Uniques Tales, and Rainbow in the Dark, and they live in Flint, like me! The Star Wars print is Adam's. Comfort showed me one she's working on, featuring prequel characters, which will probably join its mate when it's finished.
Also, a panel, with Chuck Huber, Mike McFarland, and J. Michael Tatum talking about their careers in anime and other stuff.

Almacon is at Alma College, with classrooms and chalkboards.

And see what fellow cosplayers were up to.

Lenalee Lee and Komui Lee from the anime series D Gray Man. The characters are brother and sister, members of the Black Order, tasked with fighting evil Akuma demons. The yellow thing she's holding is Timcanpy the golem, a cross between a radio and a Predator surveillance drone.

Deadpool and a penguin themed character? It was getting pretty late.

Rorschach from the Watchmen comic, ready to liquify some filthy miscreants.
The patterns shifted on his mask, which was pretty cool!

Ohayocon cosplayers!

Ohayocon 2014 was filled with awesome cosplayers, as I've come to expect from these things.

Some of whom are on these stairs in the Columbus Convention Center.

 From anime...

Team Natsu from Fairy Tail! Minus Natsu and Gray. Those guys are always late!

Mikasa from Attack on Titan! You can tell by her trademark scarf.

I don't recognize this character, but she has a bear, as does the girl on the left.

American animation...

The Scooby gang! I think they also had Fred and Daphne with them but they weren't around at the time.

Queen Elsa and Princess Anna. This was a great cosplay idea with the weather we've been having! I heard them say they also had the post-Let-It-Go Elsa outfit.

Comics...

Iron Man versus ... one of the Venoms?

Here's a Venom. I don't know how he could see out of this thing.

Daniel Halifax and Cecily Parkinson, as SuperDan - the chestplate symbol is Kryponian for "H"! Grown adults who make costumes and go to conventions - people after my own heart! He's also got pics posted of himself as Iron Man and Batman, which is awesome!

 And lots and lots of different variations on various themes...

Samurai Vader!

A mix of anime, video games, webcomics? They seem concerned about the blue fellow.

My own cosplay so far includes Soldier A, desert and woodland variants, marine from Voyage Trekkers, sack brigader from The Other Grey Meat, and a samurai from a show to be named later once I get in some decent progress on it...

Fake sword for my samurai outfit and fake rifle for Soldier A. I should work on something to combine the two!

Ohayocon 2014

First anime convention of 2014, Ohayocon in Columbus, Ohio!
I've been going to probably too many of these things lately, especially in the snow and ice, but I wanted to get to this one mostly for one reason - meet voice actress Brittney Karbowski!

To attend her panels, and also get her autograph.

She plays Black Star, the last remaining unautographed main character on my Soul Eater banner. Black Star is this guy.

He's Black Star! His opponents quake in fear of their impending deaths!

So it was early Sunday afternoon, after more than an hour in Brittney's autograph line, almost up to the front, when con staffers came around with the last thing an autograph seeker wants to hear - "we're sorry but..."
Her scheduled time was up and she had to catch a flight, leaving me, the dozen or so folks in the room with me, and the hundred or so waiting out in the hall sans autograph.
Much grumbling was heard from my fellow signature seekers, filing dejectedly out as Brittney started packing up her stuff. I didn't grumble. I lingered, though.
"Since there's only one of us left...," I pointed out to the staffers.
"Please exit out the back door," they responded.
One option left - a direct, personal appeal to the artist herself.
"Brittney," I called out desperately, as staffers closed in. "Just one more?"
Time does indeed stop in situations like this. She looked up, figured out what I was doing there, and had to decide what to do with me.
"Sorry, I have to go" would have been truthful and fair. So would ignoring me have been.
What she said was, "Yes, of course." And she signed it. And all was right with the world.

With cool Black Star logo! And Xs and Os so I'm pretty sure she wasn't mad!

So now it looks like this.

Blair the witch cat, played by Leah Clark, remains unautographed, but I don't know if she goes to cons out here.

I also managed to tell Brittney I like "Angel Beats," the anime show that got me hooked on anime shows because of its awesomeness, and in which she plays one of the leads, which was cool!
On my way out, one of my fellow autograph seekers seemed surprised to see me.
"Did you get it," he asked, incredulously.
"Yep," I said.
Then he gave me a high-five. I hope no one saw that, cause I didn't want to rub it in. Maybe this wasn't the best example for me to provide to those younger, though perhaps it could be a fortune-favors-the-bold thing. I certainly am not prone to such acts of open defiance!
Perhaps it had to do with what I was wearing.

I'm with voice-actor-extraordinaire Vic Mignogna. Snappy salute, sir! I looked it up, left-handed salutes are permitted in at least the Navy if the right hand is busy, and anyway he's a civilian.

I wore my Soldier A outfit, woodland pattern, on Sunday to meet Brittney and Vic. "Soldier A" is from a song of Vic's of the same name, my first attempt at a cosplay outfit. I wanted him to see what it was he inspired. He seemed to appreciate it, which is very cool!
Saturday, I went with my new, not-quite-finished Samurai outfit.

I'm with Tia Ballard again? Yup!

I bought the wooden sword and kimono at Anime Crossroads in Indiana last month, and a set of samurai-ish sandals online. I still have to get whatever it was samurai had on under their kimonos, so I just wore regular pants and my Blue Milk Special tshirt.
The headband I think I got at Kings Island around 1986. This would be the first time I have ever worn it in public. I'm pretty sure it's the kanji for "matsuri," meaning "festival." I should wear this at Matsuricon!

Anime Crossroads / Con Alt Del

I had a plan last weekend to visit two conventions in two states, neither of which I live in. However, with snow and ice covering the entire midwest, I put common sense and personal safety ahead of my anime ambitions and stayed home.
Just kidding, I totally went.
Vic Mignogna was a Con Alt Del in Chicago. I'm about 80 pounds lighter than the last time I met him in February.

And I've joined the Galactic Union!

His autograph was required on my two banners. His character is top center on the Soul Eater print, Spirit Albarn, "Death Scythe," dad of Laura Bailey's Maka Albarn.

Only two characters left to get!

And he's one of the characters actually on the Fullmetal Alchemist banner - Edward Elric, the titular Fullmetal Alchemist himself (he's the smaller one, the one not made of metal).

Pointing to Vic's autograph is Emma the cat.

I'm also a fan of his work on Star Trek Continues. He's a long-time Trek fan and cast himself as Capt. Kirk.

With fellow voice actor Todd Haberkorn as Mr. Spock.

Also on there now are Johnny Yong Bosch and Stephanie Sheh, who were at Anime Crossroads in Indianapolis.

Johnny plays Lujon, a character who was murdered by Laura Bailey's Lust character. Stephanie plays a minor character's little sister who doesn't even have a name!

Not huge roles in Fullmetal, but the more, the merrier! I actually wanted to see them because of another anime show they were on.

Johnny plays Itsuki Koizumi, who's not actually on this print, and Stephanie is Mikaru Asahina, in the bunny suit.

Stephanie's character is a featured player in my webcomic Living Room Wars.

LRW Asahina is a time traveler like in her show.

So meeting her was cool.

I like this shot - the photographer knows to fill the frame!

Johnny also leads an indie alt edge rock band, Eyeshine. I listened to one of their CDs on the way home. They rock!

I'm with the band, Johnny at left, Maurice in back, Ginny, and Polo in front.

Also, the awesome cosplayers across two states!

Two Edward Elrics at Con Alt Del to meet Vic.

Maid Cafe! She looks like she has two heads but she doesn't.
I got some German chocolate cake and a cream puff at this one.

My new samurai cosplay outfit was going slow (about two inches of stitching in two months) so I decided to speed things up a bit, courtesy of the Anime Crossroads dealers room. Late Sunday is a great time to buy at a weekend convention!

50% off this kimono, imported from Japan, and the wood katana was also quite reasonable! (Lizzie was full price, though)

I was tempted to wear it at Anime Crossroads but figured there was only a couple hours left. I also have to figure out what to wear on my feet. And how to use the sword. I'll have something figured out by Ohayocon in January.