Well, as I promised, here is a brief bit about StarCon 98. Or, as I prefer
to call it, Insanity on $80 a night. ^_^

	I've taken a few photos, and when I drop them off at WalMart, I'm going to
have them made into a photo cd so I can share them with anyone who wants them.

	I wrote most of this convention diary at the con on my laptop, grabbing a
spare moment or two when I could. Editing it later for you to read was..
interesting. ^_^

	Enjoy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Friday morning, August 28th...

9 am - ready to hit the road.

9:15 - Dad called.. he has legal papers to sign over in the next town and,
oh, yeah.. he has a UPS package coming soon.. could I pretty-please stay
home till 11 to sign for it when it arrives? ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!
<hammers head on nearby convenient hard surface>

11 am - ready to hit the road _AGAIN_.

11:30 In Sterling, gassing up the car and heading to Denver!

2:45 pm - In Denver, checking in to the Holiday Inn Convention Center!
YEE-HAW! Fortunately for me, they reserved a room that's
handicapped-accessible, with grab-bars in the bathroom and shower. It might
sound funny, but since the stroke, I've become grimly fearful of falling in
the bath.

4 pm  - Shopping in downtown Denver until the con starts at 6. Took a load
of used paperbacks that friends had gifted me with during the hospital stay
and traded all the duplicates for ones I didn't have.  Whooops.. forgot
batteries for the camera. D'oh!  Quick stop at a drug store. ^_^

6 pm - Gawd.. the anime contingent is stronger than ever. One table has an
_entire_ set of bound Ranma novels (not the color comics, the B&W
translated manga), and the DP graphic novels, along with Warren's BGC
manga.. wonder if it's worth buying? There's more anime here than you can
shake a stick at.

8 pm - Watching X-23 Part II: Electric Boogaloo. BWAHAHAHAHAHAH! Sick,
utterly sick! The funniest film I've ever seen! Spliced together from
various anime and sci-fi shows, the plot is that Buckaroo Banzai (yes, THAT
Buckaroo) opens a portal between the live action show universe and the
anime universe. The anime universe then declares WAR on the universe of
live action tv shows! The Enterprise-D vs Space Battleship Yamato! The
T-800 and T-1000 terminators attack Largo! Leon McNichols and Dailey Wong
are assigned to capture John Connor! Captain Harlock bushwhacks Khan
Noonian Sing, who vows to avenge the death of his buddy Kirk at Harlock's
hands! Darth Vader defends the Earth from the Gamelon empire! See Luke
Skywalker battle Akira!

11 pm - After laughing so hard, I actually hurt myself, I wander up to my
room to record what's happened and get some sleep. I GOTTA get a copy of
Electric Boogaloo.. if only so I can share it with the list. Have to find
someone in the AWOL group who can tell me where I can buy a copy. <snicker>
Tomorrow is Red Hooded Cha-cha 1 & 2, along with UY tv episode 1 and Orange
Road OAV. And that's just the first part of the morning. Gonna have some
decaf coffee, take a sleeping pill and get some rest.

Saturday

7:30 - Quick cleanup and a dash through the breakfast buffet. Talk about
cholesterol.. bacon, pork sausage and scrambled eggs with ham and hash
brown potatoes. <Ryouga would've had a fit> And enough salt to turn the
entire Fan Fiction Mailing List into walking sticks of beef jerky. 

Got a quick email reminder from my sweety to take my blood pressure
medication. Love means never to have to remember your pill schedule. ^_^

9 am to 11 am - Watched Red Hooded Chacha, a hilarious comedy anime I
highly recommend if you like magical girl _parodies_. A real send up of the
style, it had me giggling the entire hour. A hoot! UY 1 was as funny as
I've always remembered it.

11 to 3 - Shopping and lunch. Bert (Skyknight) Van Vliet's gonna kill me. I
went and bought a copy of Adam Warren's Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal manga
from Dark Horse Comics. So THAT is where the author of the fic 'Point of
View' got the idea for the neurophages. *sigh* Despite being written by
Warren, AND having seen what he did to the Lovely Angels (I gotta side with
Zen on this, folks..), I still have to shamefacedly admit that I enjoyed
BGC: Grand Mal. The artwork is lovely. I'm glad I bought it. Though it's
probably gonna irk Jeanne Hedge and Panda too. Heheheheh...

3 pm to 5 - More anime.. Vision of Escaflowne 1-2. Wonderful. I'll have to
get a copy of my own. The cute catgirl reminded me so strongly of my
beloved Aili. And the magical mecha had a certain Dark Age charm with the
spikes and studs and elaborate metal decorations. 

Gunsmith Cats ep 1 was next.. the BATF agent was delightfully slimy as he
blackmailed the girls into helping him bust a gunrunner. Heh.. and so
utterly certain he was god's gift to women everywhere.. Leon McNichol with
fewer sexual morals and a 'I don't have to care about you, I'm with the
government! I have a warrant allowing me to screw you over' attitude. Gotta
see how much it costs. Maybe next Christmas.. *sigh*

Bastard ep 1. Dark Schnider was as evil as ever, but it's terribly hard to
be a properly evil, world-conquering monster when you've fallen in love
with a cute virgin girl. Particularly when her father is the priest who
sealed you away in your magical prison to begin with! And he makes SUCH a
cute innocent little boy when he's trapped in the prison.

6 pm - dinner. Nothing special.. but in honor of the anime room, the dinner
buffet was stir-fry. Beef or chicken, your choice. I had both. <smirk>

Next anime was Tenchi Muyo - The Mihoshi Special. I skipped that to see
Roxann Dawson, the actress who plays the half-Klingon Engineer on Star Trek
- Voyager. Mihoshi.. 'I'm beautiful, I'm blond, I'm brain-dead.' No thank
you. ^_^

The Not-Quite Ready for StarCon Players were next with their Saturday Night
Live skits. They did a South Park Parody, and Ms. Dawson played Kenny. And
*this* time.. KENNY WAS THE ONLY SURVIVOR! BWAHAHAHAHAHA! We didn't even
know it was her until 'Kenny' stood up, ripped off 'his' hood and shouted
"Hello, StarCon, It's SATURDAY NIGHT!' ^_^

9 pm - Watched the parody play, 'Deep Space Voyager', then listened to Neil
Norman and His Cosmic Orchestra. Then headed back to the room to write
this. In a half hour, it's midnight madness in the dealer's room.
Everything in there must sell for $10 OR LESS! But cash only, no checks or
credit cards! Can't wait! Might get lucky and find more anime! Must buy
more anime! Must buy more anime! Must buy more anime! Must buy more <slap!>
err.. sorry about that, folks.. it got a little ugly here for a second.

Tomorrow is Child's Toy 1-2, Mighty Robots (in English), Ranma 1/2 tv #1
(got that, been there ^_^), Evangelion, Video Girl Ai #1, Detonator Organ
#1, and a MST3K'ing of Fist of the North Star (English dub). Then The
Slayers tv 1-2, Mobile Suit Gundam and Giant Robo. That's the end of the
con and I'll be driving home. <sigh> Why do all good things come to an end?

I've been taking photos, and with luck, I'll be able to share some of the
weirder sights with you all, both anime and non-anime related.

Gods, it's fun. But I wish you were all here. The AWOL (the Denver Anime
group showing all the anime this con) seems to consider fanfiction as
something slimy that just crawled out from underneath a rock and they go
running from it screaming 'ICKY! ICKY-POO!'.  You'd think they were a bunch
of virgins faced with a bloody ARMY of slavering tentacle demons...<sigh>

Oy. Well, maybe _someday_ I can find a con that I can travel to that has a
fanfic panel.

And..... it's off to midnight madness!!


Sunday:

4 am, and Jason Carter (Marcus the Ranger of Babylon 5) is almost arrested
by the Denver police! Invited to a drink or two in the hotel lounge by a
contingent of Klingons and a guy in a wheelchair, it turns out Jason is a
student of the Peter O'Toole School of Method Acting. ie.. get blotto with
booze at parties on a regular basis. Heh! It got so rowdy, he drank *all*
of the Klingons under the table, then the cops were called because Jason
wanted more to drink, and the bar had closed. ^_^

Got up, cleaned up and totaled my purchases at midnight madness. Lovely. I
even managed to get ADPolice 1 & 3 for $15 a piece by making an under the
table deal with a dealer for the next morning. Also got an _advance_
version of the graphic novel for the upcoming sci-fi movie, 'Virus'.
Chilling. The stills from the preproduction that they were allowed to
include were seriously eerie. The cast reads like a roll-call of movie
greats.. Donald Sutherland. William Baldwin. Jamie Lee Curtis. Definitely
gonna have to check it out when it hits the theaters.

9  am - Couldn't quite figure out what Child's Toy is about, it was
un-subbed. But the commercials were a hoot. I'd never seen Tony the Tiger
hawking Frosted Flakes in japanese before! ^_^ It seemed to be a show
sponsored by Tomy Toys. Still, a lot of fun.

Skipped 'Mighty Orbots' and Ranma #1 (First was awful! Second I already had
at home) to go pick up the ADPolice tapes.

11 am - Caught Evangelion episode #8 and Video Girl Ai #1. Evangelion was
interesting, Video Girl was *fun*! ^_^

Skipped lunch to see Detonator Orgun #1. VERY nice.. I'll have to get a copy.

1:00 to 3:00 - Saw Richard Hatch (Captain Apollo; Battlestar Galactica),
Chase Masterson (DS9 & the Sci-fi channel.. you know, the Dabo girl!) and
Jason Carter (Marcus Cole; Babylon 5). And the costume contest that was
sandwiched in between. The grand prize winner was a little 18 month old
child whose parents had him dolled up as a little Klingon baby.. how
utterly cute! ^_^ Overall prize winner was a young man who had a SPOOKY
(pun intended) resemblance to Fox Mulder.. so much so that if he had a
small nose job, he's got a career ahead of him as a star impersonator. He
was THAT good. Eerie.

>From 3 to 4 watched Slayers (tv version). Still as fun as I remembered it.

Mobile Suit Gundamn wasn't subbed, so I skipped it to make one last pass of
the dealer's room. Yeah. So sue me. I can't understand Japanese, and it's
difficult for me to learn a new language since I took that chunk of
shrapnel in the head. Like it or not, it's subs or dubs for me. *sigh*

Left the con at 5, an hour early, to beat the traffic.

8:45 pm - Arrived home. Gawd, am I tired.. and my back is on fire from the
3 1/2 hour drive AND losing my damn muffler thanks to a nasty bit of
construction work on I-70. *bleah* But it was worth it. A hell of a lot of
fun. The only thing I regret is that we didn't have enough authors there to
hold a fanfic panel. That, and AWOL's snotty attitude towards fanfic. Oh,
well. Still have to admit that it was.. Fun, fun fun!! Can't wait til the
pictures are developed!

Now to get a good weeks sleep. ^_^

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

	And that's all, folks!!!

	Ed Becerra
	September 3, 1998.


	"Dreamers may die, but the Dream is eternal.."