Obsidian (which included Josh, T-Ray, his son Donald, Shane, and I) went to Dallas to attend an anime convention called A-Kon to promote Neverwinter 2 (enough links for you?). We were invited there by one of the organizers, Joe, for which we are inordinately thankful. Thank you, Joe. You have the patience of a saint.

I have included a lot of text in the forefront of this blog both as an obstacle and to allow the many pictures following it to be slowly and sluggishly loaded onto your computer. I assure you, most of the pictures are worth the wait except, of course, the ones you hate.

(BTW, any quotes or apostrophes omitted from this blog are not my fault, blame MySpace's "omit punctuation" function.)

I was concerned because everyone I talked to seemed to indicate that Austin would have been a better place to go than Dallas, but once the plane landed and within five minutes of driving down the freeway, we'd driven by three adult bookstores and a strip joint, it just made me wonder how wild Austin must be. (Then again, the whole handgun thing and the death penalty seems to be there as a reminder that, "hey, have a lot of fun, but if you cross the line, we will not hesitate to open fire." So I guess that sobers up folks from doing anything outrageously dangerous. Except Shane.)

BTW, Joshua will no doubt have pictures up somewhere as well with some choice shots he snagged during the convention. He got some beauts.

Fun facts to start off with:

- If you dont know what anime is, it's Japanese animation. Basically, if I were to boil it down, it just means that every character you see has huge eyes, a small mouth, and is likely to be violated by tentacles.

- Based on our plane to and from Dallas experience, I cannot stand women who have little dogs that are always being held. Christ, let them run free. It's horrid, and I blame Paris Hilton for making it more popular than it may have been. Even if she had nothing to do with it, I still blame her.

- I cannot keep up with anyone from White Wolf Publishing who drinks alcohol, which seems to be all of them. Thank you, Oscar and Justin. I fear both of you.

- You really can't make enough Crying Game references at A-Kon, apparently.

- It is really no wonder why you can stay up til 4AM in Dallas when you realize it's actually 2AM California time. This will not answer why you are wandering around outside your hotel room in your underwear at 5AM, however, which still confuses me. I am still sticking to the story that I thought it was the bathroom door I opened, then suddenly I was outside the hotel room by the elevators, very confused.

- Shane is fearless when confronting cops and sticking up for his friends. This is much better watched from a distance. Still, it is comforting to know that when reduced to what I like to call the "lowest drunk denominator" where the true, irrational self comes out, that Shane's inner child is fiercely loyal to his friends.

- If I tell Shane I am going to bed when in fact I am going to hang out in the bar and drink more, he will pour water on me without hesitation.

- We had the worst cab experience in a long time with a cabbie who said he knew how to get to a bar, but upon reflection, didn't, and didn't have the skills to press the three digits of "411" to find out.

- Dallas is, like, hot. And whoever designed the freeways must have been very, very, very drunk.

- Lost my phone again, but only briefly. I have narrowed the culprits down to my absentmindedness and the fact that both times in recent memory when I have lost my phone, it was due to the specific pants I was wearing while they are loose, comfortable, and drab, nothing seems to want to stay in them for long.

(Pictures are imminent.)

As a disclaimer, "somehow," we got NO shots of us partying. Interestingly enough, it is almost as if we made a silent pact that there would be no such pictures. Thursday night we all crashed, though Shane hit the Lizard Lounge to be amongst the goths (which I went with on Sunday night), Friday night we went out to dinner with some super cool con folks (Robotech guys, Joe, Audrey, Dustin, Tony - thanks all) at the Spaghetti Warehouse, got rip-roaring drunk (uh, I mean the White Wolf guys and me only) at Pete's Piano Bar, then Saturday night we got rip-roaring drunk (repeat previous parenthetical statement) at a restaurant called Sambuco, then went bar-hopping in downtown Dallas and ended up at some Lemon-named place with a great roof bar. We also tortured everyone with renditions of "Jump" by Van Halen, then around 4AM we all (again, repeat parenthetical expression) went to sleep, then I woke up around 5AM outside my hotel room half-naked, which confused the shit out of me. Sunday, the con got all wrapped up, then Shane showed me where the goths in Dallas hang out on Sundays, at a place called the Church, or the Lizard Lounge, or... well, it had a lot of names. Apparently, it used to be a speakeasy, a brothel, a bar, and perhaps a torture chamber at one point. Free whippings out by the patio, and lots of Skinny Puppy being played by cool DJs, so we hung out and headbanged and danced there with the goths until we finally crashed. It made me miss the Liquid Lounges hard rock night on Sundays, which is no more. I am sad. But in Dallas, it still lives, so I have hope.

Due to a scheduling snafu, T-Ray was the only one who got a free room, Josh and I had to pop into the "overflow" hotel, the Westin, which was actually pretty cool. Its located in the Plaza of the Americas. Heres one corner of the outside. I think the statue might be entitled "justice," or more likely considering the shops inside, "greed."



Inside, our balcony faced out onto this.



BTW, you can't take pictures here, according to some jackass security guard.

So just for spite, here's another picture, showing the ground level. These children are actually being tortured to run this orange cone gauntlet and beaten if they fall. This is why no pictures were allowed.



Dallas has awesome architecture. I was able to walk around a bit before and after the con, so snapped some pix.



I laughed out loud at this sculpture.



And then sobered up fast.



So we got to the con.



Immediately we observed violence and peoples' brains being consumed. Nobody intervened, we all just stared and watched. It was Kitty Genovese all over again.



Here's a wide scale shot of the con. That guy in the green, btw, is from Katamari Damacy, but I never got a chance to get a close up shot of him. He had this little ball with stuff glued to it.



This next picture pretty much summed up how many costumed folks there were in attendance. (I bought five of these.)



And at the con, there were mighty group dances.



And here's the exhibit room before it's flooded. It seems so peaceful, doesn't it.



So much anime. And you could also buy plush microbes, Hellboy's Hand of Doom, and play Guitar Hero if you wanted.



You could also buy knives in cool shapes.



Here's the exhibit hall, when it was opened up.



This poor guy turned into a robot within the first hour. He didn't say much.



Here was a rival mech. The only thing I could think of was how hot he must be inside that get-up, but then he pointed a gun at me, and I peed my pants.



More famous celebrities appeared.



One of the first weapons I saw. Behind them was a delicious smelling sausage and pepperoni pizza, and the guy here totally could have killed them and took it, but he didn't, because that's what being a hero is.



This kid had a six foot long sword - study the perspective, and how far away he is from me.



But this guy would not be outdone. Sword envy is a dangerous thing, and possibly Freudian. I'm not sure what having six swords would actually represent, Freudian-style, though, now that I think about it.



This is the elf chick from Record of Lodoss War, which is an anime that resembles a classic Dungeons and Dragons adventure. I think her name in the anime is "Deedlit," which is probably not embarrassing when said by someone with a Japanese accent. Probably.



Here's Hellsing, in classic pose.



Lots of Sephiroths. I probably misspelled that - he's a villain from a popular Final Fantasy game who probably swings both ways. He spends a little too much time on his hair in the game is all I'll say.



Most of the Final Fantasy group was lounging around the second floor.



Except for (a correctly gendered) Tifa, who was downstairs - and a slowly simmering boyfriend off to the right who probably got increasingly pissed off as the show advanced.



He should have calmed down, and instead heard the beautiful, calming music of the chocobo. Apparently, there was chocobo racing later on, but I missed it.



BTW, we were actually there on business, even though none of our photos can really prove it. We did two panels on "Getting into the Industry," thankfully helped by Mike, the QA manager for Ritual, one panel on "Obsidian and Neverwinter Nights 2," two demos of the game in the main conference room, and a bunch of interviews with local folks, coordinated by Shane. He is "coordinating" in the picture below.



Here's our lead programmer, Donald, who's only eleven. Behind him is Josh trying to make the projector work, since it was acting all sassy and loosey goosey. Those are very technical terms, dont ask me to explain.



The room filled up fast, and the game showed pretty well, so we were happy.



Our handler was Darth Sunshine who was lucky enough to have a beach in San Diego named after her, and next to her is T-Ray. Darth Sunshine showed us around and made sure we knew what time our panels started, when they were over, and where all the bars in downtown were. If T-Ray gets mad at me posting this picture, then he can walk down from his office and threaten me, but I won't care. In the background, Josh has figured out the mystary of the projector.



Went to an art fair outside a local museum on Sunday when things calmed down.



Cool horse. Must get tired standing like that all the time.



Cool house.



Cool church. And I'm not even religious, but I do have religious architecture envy.



A little closer.



BTW, I quickly discovered when I turned away that it seemed to be the church of Ben and Jerry's. Note that I almost wrote the "Church of BJ's," but stopped myself just in time.



The Illuminati is everywhere. Somehow, the pyramid is always present, in some form or another.



And finally, this seemed to be the motto of the show. Thank you, and to all a good night.