-The Pre-Trip Jitters-

My buddy Rob Robinson gets to bowling Green on Friday night, we go see Shrek (not a bad movie, but not as good as I'd hoped) and play Caesar on my roommate's computer. We go over things we MUST look for at the Con (Anime, collections of both The Authority and Stormwatch etc, etc...)

-The Trip-

Rob yells at me because he makes a wrong turn and highway construction leads to us having to make a 1 hour detour... hilarity ensues as Rob can't take the "Best Of Sentai" Cd that he made himself... We finally arrive in Novi, MI for the con.

-The Con-

$15!! For one ticket! You must be out of your mind! Some annoying con-volenteer keeps bugging us to fill out the "Drawing lottery". I inform little 14 year old that I won't be here long enough to collect a ridiculous prize. Rob has flashbacks of the last thing he won at a con (New Mutants 1-24? They couldn't give it away as Rob begged them to give it to someone else)

We hit the anime tables first. Rob asks me to keep an eye out for certain series. I tell him to forget the mondo commercial stuff like Yu-Gi-Oh and HunterXHunter and shoot for the weird. The result... all 6 episodes of FLCL (the best way to describe this show is "... and then robot came out of the kid's head!"), the truly insanely funny Excel Saga (any show where the closing song is barked by a dog with Japanese translation of the barking is worth owning) and the old Night Flight Epsidoes of Dynaman! He also scores Cat's Eye (Live Action movie with hot japanese chicks dress in vinyl body suits... mmmm, form fitting outfits!). The capper for me was picking up the first 15 episodes of the wacky romantic comedy Love Hina.
I hit the celebrity booths and tell Shane Helms I hope the new WCW will have more direction than the old (He responded by saying "We had direction in the old one?"). Shane makes fun of my anime hobby since it prevented me from buying a $25 signed Shane Helms pic. I then mosey on over to Virgil/Vincent and tell him that I remember the feud he and Bill Dundee had with "Down Under Thunder" George Barnes. Needless to say, the former Soul Train Jones cracked up and gave me a hi-five for remembering old Memphis rivalries.

Next came the highlight of the con. I met the one true Batman, the original, the man who would beat the crap out of Clooney, Keaton and Kilmer with his left big toe... ADAM WEST! Now you have to undestand, I've beena batman fan since the age of 5. To me Adam West is Batman. Plus he was a class act, super nice talked to every fan that came upto him for at least 3 minutes and glet you take polaroids of him for free! I told him that I loved him as "The Gray Ghost" on Batman:TAS and he said that was the best thing he ever did because it was giving the man he considered his true heir (Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman in the animated show) the rub. Adam West is classy daddy!

Rob and I hooked up again, scavenged the tables one last time and went home. I counted the tapes we made off with and it came to 15 (11 for Rob, 4 for me). Rob likes to spend large sums of money on things with limited redeeming social value and boy did he prove it at this con. Me, I got 4 tapes (the 4th tape was free :)) and was happy. Hell, I got ot watch old Dynaman episodes in englis, what more could I ask for?

Much better than last year's con as the bootleg japanese wrestling tapes were in smaller numbers and most of it was DDT and FMW. In fact most dealers were replacing the bootleg wrestling with bootleg asian porn (remember kidz AKIRA FUBUKI RULZ!)

The only let down of the con was finding the Dr. Who special starring Rowan Atkinson and not having enough moolah to buy it. Man that was a find!! They also had the "Black Adder Again!" special from last Christmas... CURSE MY LACK OF MONEY!

James