Ah Saturday, the meat and potatoes of a convention. What? I forgot about Thursday … FUCK!

OK, so yeah. Disorganization XIII actually got down to Anime USA on Thursday, the day where you get to have a con before a con … or at least we would have if we didn’t spend seven hours on the road mostly lost in D.C. having to pee our brains out! I don’t know whose bright idea it was to make a road who has exit numbers going up to ten, and then down from ten again at an arbitrary point … but it is a stupid idea … please die in a fire.

After I expelled urine from my bladder sack, most of Thursday was filled with unpacking, getting drinks at the bar, and playing dominion with some awesome guys we met (Big Will and Kayen we are talkin about you). Later in the day, we browsed through the Hyatt’s porno collection. Oh we didn’t order any, we just laughed at the descriptions. One of the descriptions said “If you watch porn to get aroused, this is the title for you.” I wonder what else you would watch porn for? Background noise?

FAST FORWARD!!!

So Saturday, the meat and potatoes of the con. Saturday morning my sinuses were killing me, partially because I spent a night sleeping on a cot with a bunch of sweaty guys, and partially because I had already felt the beginnings of con plague setting in. Luckily enough, I had been taking 25 times the recommended daily amount of Vitamin C for several months and my immune system was made of steel.

I woke up first, as I always do for some god forsaken reason, off little more than 3 hours of sleep. I totally should have drank the night before to help with sleepy times, but I didn’t, because I am a moron. After tiptoeing around my roomates, I got dressed and decided to stop downstairs to check in on the NASFIC table.

NASFIC is a convention that will be held in … some-ass place down in the south … one of the Carolina’s? I don’t know google it. Anyway its basically World Con when World Con is someplace else. A couple of our friends were running the NASFIC booth, and the day before they offered to let us use their projector if absolutely need be in return for us hanging out with them. We ended up not needing their projector, buuuut I hung out with em anyway, because they are cool and awesome for offering to help us in the first place. I played and won two games of dominion (SCORE) and later met up with some other DO XIII members to play some Magic: The Gathering, in my favorite format THE CUBE!

Several hours and discussions about the merits and flaws of Mind Twist later, it was panel time. Our first panel was Fanfiction: From Mary Sue to Shakespeare. Now, we didn’t get as many people as we could have, due to the misprinting of our panel title “Mary Sue and Shakespeare” on the signage. However, we mostly yelled at people in the hallway to come in and it worked well enough.

For some reason, I was very tongue tied in Fanfiction this year. My jokes were pretty much all falling flat, and I seem totally and utterly incapable of furthering the discussion. I can’t even really blame it on being interrupted like I did with the RPG panel. For some weird ass reason, I actually just ended up coming down with stage fright. Weird. I’m fairly certain it was because I was afraid something was going to screw Spoiler up. Luckily enough, Rob and Sherna TOTALLY came through for me. They really took the panel by the horns and kept everyone interested the whole time. Sherna (number DD) is INVALUABLE on that panel, and I am happy to announce she will be continuing her work on the fanfic panel in coming cons. Way to be girl!

I left Fanfic early to check up on the spoiler room, which, unfortunately, did not have a projector or speakers in it … DOH! Luckily enough it only took a short run down to the gaming room to fix this. Spoiler went of wonderfully. Originally there wasn’t a whole lot of people in the room, but as expected the riot started, the line formed, and we filled the place to the brim. The Spoiler crowd at AUSA was amazing, AMAZING! They all got into our comedy and we LITERALLY had people rolling in the isles. Once again, Uncle Yo did not show up *GLARE* but I’m sure any of our adoring fans can tell him how much we kick ass. I think it is a testament to us that we went up against… Joe the anime comedian … or some shit, and still managed to have the biggest draw of the time slot.

Spoiler the After Party went down great too. Scott’s MTG spoiler was well received. Kudos to him for trying a silent spoiler bit, but I think he will be even funnier when he speaks. We did a lot of our older stuff, and had a good amount of fans stay to watch it. We really did want to have cookies for you guys, buuuut that didn’t pan out.

A weird thing has started to happen since our last Spoiler show. Fans, from all conventions actually, have started sending in their own Spoiler bits they want us to read. Yes, it is true that if you send us a bit that is funny, we will do it, but, and no offense here, first and foremost it has to be funny. There is a fine line between roasting something or someone and just being mean without humor. Remember that! Also, a couple fans have been disappointed that we didn’t read their stuff, but they sent their stuff to us a few days before the convention. Guys, just letting you know, we need at least a month to edit and rehearse this stuff, so sending us a spoiler bit on Friday does not mean we will be able to do it on Saturday. We love you guys, we really do, and do keep sending your shit in, but remember we take the greater portion of a year to make Spoiler work in front of an audience, so it will take us more than a couple days to get your bits to work as well.

Saturday night after our panels was like a gigantic weight was lifted off of our shoulders. We went to a diner, where we got some of the shittiest service ever. SHITTIEST SERVICE EVER! They overcharged us, didn’t cook our orders right, some of our orders were undercooked, and they just plain gave us attitude. Note to self, go to the strip on 23rd to eat from now on. It’s gotta be way better than anything local. After we spent forever arguing with them just got get a friggin cup of barbecue sauce, we headed back to the hotel.

It was late at this point so we needed to spend our time wisely. How would we spend it … MORE DOMINION! Yes, we got the crew together and went up to the board gaming room to meet some random people who were playing werewolf. We didn’t join in, mostly because we burned ourselves out on werewolf in college. We played a few games of Dominion, introducing some new players to the game along the way, and then made a break for the rave.

We caught DM Ashura’s set which skyrocketed us straight into heavy BPM techno. This was a shame, because I am actually a fan of DJ Luminal’s electro-house, which he would have played if it weren’t for the fact that Ashura already had the house wigging out on the heavy shit. I danced my ass off, but mostly felt awkward. I didn’t bring my glow spinners, so I had very little cool glowy shit to do in front of people. I stayed for about an hour and then broke off to see Afro Samurai Resurrection with a couple of my friends.

Unfortunately, I didn’t make it through the entirety of Afro Samurai Resurrection either. You see, it was late … it was REALLY late and we wanted to pursue the lovely convention tradition of getting drunk and telling stories. We left a couple of our members behind at the rave and at the movie, and went back to our room to have BECHAROVKA WHICH IS ONE OF THE BEST LIQUORS EVER! Also there was other good shit, but I was rocking the Becharovka. We told plenty of good roleplaying stories before finally going to bed in preparation for the trek home the next day.

We never stick around for a convention on Sundays … mostly because it always manages to depress us. Fans are battered and broken, sets are half demolished, people are all trying to pack up, and the programming is generally subpar, no matter what convention you go to. Sunday was our time to shuffle our asses out of bed, drag ourselves to our cars, and drive ourselves 5-6 hours back to North Jersey. What a time. After saying our final goodbyes, and making a stop off at Freddie’s (which needs its own post again) we headed home, with fond memories of another AUSA past. We will be coming back next year, and it will be better than ever! … hopefully! … sort of!

So yeah, despite the major drama and carnage revolving around tech, AUSA was major kick-ass this year. Anyone who hasn’t checked it out yet should go next year. You won’t be disappointed.

Man did I really spend 2 hours typing that? Shit I wish I had this much drive in other things I do.

AUSA fans, be sure to come see us at Mokucon this Saturday. It’s free! Until next time. Stay way past cool!