NOTE: Gomen, minna-san... I got carried away.
Ten pages of notes in my handwriting translate
to about 36K of material... and I skimmed over 
some parts, too!  So, I'm sending this in two parts
- hope that's okay with y'all

***

Another con, and this one practically in the Ucchan's backyard.  Gotta 
love it.

Actually, there are some unique wrinkles to being only the distance of 
a typical urban commute from the convention center, not all of them 
good.  Sure, you get to go home in the evenings, and save money on the 
hotel bill (which you can apply to either more anime paraphernalia... 
or babysitting expenses), but you also *have* to go home in the 
evenings; you can't crash at the hotel after a late-night round of 
watching stuff, 'cause you're not staying there!

Then there are some more unusual aspects of this, uh, benefit...

FEBRUARY

Gotta get signed up to go... last time I went, it was on a lark (hey, 
I'd only gotten a week's notice, sugar), but it's cheaper to sign up 
earlier.  Hmm... Midwest Anime Promotion Society's mailing address is 
on Emerson Street in Mount Prospect.  Why, it's only two blocks away 
from our local library.  Next time we're by, we'll just drop off our 
payment and maybe chat up a few of the M.A.P.S. members, ne?

Wrong.

Didj'all know that, when you see a suite number in a mailing address, 
it could be just another term for a P.O. box?  We didn't.  We do now.  
Just a tip for the rest of ya.  I doubt that *any* of the members of 
the Society coulda fit in there.  Guess I shoulda known; as a volunteer 
staff, why would they have a full-time office, ne?  Live and learn... 
so we mailed our reservation in, just like everyone else.

APRIL

Sent out invitations (with Konatsu-chan's assent) to my fellow 'Pencils' 
staffers: any of you wanna come to ACen, you're welcome to stay at the 
Ucchan.  As far-flung geographically as we are, I guess I knew it was a 
long shot; only JD Farber was able to take me up on my offer (Zen was 
coming, but had already made other arrangements), and even then, he had 
to back out a couple weeks before due to unforeseen circumstances.   
Pity... it'd've been quite an outing... anyway, JD, this report's for 
you.

Okay, okay... enough grousing (or bragging).  Gotta get ready to go, 
after all... it's...

FRIDAY (April 23)

Managed to talk Kunou-kouchou into giving me Friday and Monday off from 
Furinkan (didn't even have to cut my hair for the privilege, either!  
^_^), so I'm looking at a four-day weekend.  Plenty of time to take in 
EVERYthing...

***

The day opens grim and rainy.  Well, it IS April in Chicago, after all.  
Still, it's worse weather than I've seen at any of the cons I've 
attended to date (not that you can blame the organizers for that).  
If it's any consolation JD, what with the rain and wind and fog and 
all, it might have been pretty touch-and-go for air arrivals, especially 
from the east.  Not that driving in this stuff would necessarily have 
been any better...

I should mention at this point some more disadvantages to proximity.  
We stay at home, and Dan-chan stays here too.  Wouldn'tcha know, he'd 
decide to sleep in *this* morning, of all mornings?  I sure hope we can 
make the opening ceremonies, but it's gonna be a close call...

Oh, and one more thing; since we're not staying at the hotel, I've 
decided it wouldn't be prudent to take my laptop with me, so this is 
being written longhand and retyped.  Needless to say, that's gonna make 
this plenty disjointed.  Just warning y'all... expect a lot of ellipses 
in this report, more even than I usually use in my fics, okay?

***

I hear that some of our guests at ACen include voice actors from 
Revolutionary Girl Utena.  And right now, I could use Miki's stopwatch.  
It looks like a 16 minute drive from the Kuonji ancestral home to the 
Ramada, so that means maybe 20 minutes to the Ucchan.  The place is 
considerably closer to home than the previous year's con.  Cool... maybe 
I can persuade the other fic writers to head in our direction for this 
evening's get-together.

Registration is every inch the madhouse it was last year, even for the 
pre-registered.  Gotta expect that with crowds like this (we had 1,200 
otaku here last year, and all evidence points to an even larger crowd 
this year).  And once that's accomplished, we get to queue up to get in 
to the main ballrom for opening ceremonies (and Konatsu-chan's nudging 
me as we stand and wait. "See?  I *told* you we'd make it.")

Okay, it's eleven o'clock, open the doors already!  Ah, there we go.  
The ballroom's a bit chilly; maybe they were having troubles with the 
thermostat before they opened the place up.  We get some really nice 
seats in the thrid row, and begin an animated (ah, heh-heh) discussion 
with a relative newbie to the fanfic scene about various series, the 
merits of DVDs, and okonomi-yaki receipes (A girl sitting next to me 
recommends a mayonnaise-like sauce.  I know that's Osaka style, but I 
just don't care for it personally).

The guest introduction sequence has its share of technical difficulties.  
Granted, the idea of playing clips of each guest's work before 
introducing them was an inspired touch, as it helps to tie the person 
to their work.  However, it's preferable if the clips actually *play* 
when they're supposed to.  One of the technical people mentioned on-mike 
that he was planning on decking Bill Gates at the earliest opportunity.  
I imagine he's taking his number right now...

Apparantly, there were a few behind-the-scenes mishaps, too.  Poor 
Tsukasa Kotobuki and his friends got a rather, uh, thorough greeting 
from U.S. Customs on their arrival in Chicago.  It was enough that one 
of them simply stated to the con audience that  "I haven't much to do 
with the manga/anime industry.  I am a terrorist;" well, at least, that 
seems to have been what the government thought.

Is there some stigma to working in the anime/manga industry?  As each of 
the Japanese guests were introduced after that, they all denied having 
anything much to do with it, insisting that they were either terrorists 
or dancers.  Well, we'll find out tomorrow evening, won't we?

Well, Steve DeJesus is doing his little dance for us all right behind 
Lorraine Reyes' back.  Wait till she finds out... he's gonna get 
smacked.  Oh, Jason... not another Clinton impression!

First we had Amanda Winn Lee, now we've added Lisa Ortiz... gosh, it 
looks like we've got enough firecrackers here for a reasonable 4th of 
July bash.  This should be interesting...

***

The opening ceremonies finished, we head for the dealers' room - along 
with the rest of the herd, it would seem.  Sure, the place is bigger 
than the one at AnimeIowa; heck, the place is at least half again (if 
not twice) the size of last year's ACen dealers'room, but the place is 
still wall-to-wall people.  It takes us nearly an hour to go through it 
to our satisfaction.  Of course, that does involve three, four cycles 
around the room.  You could really blow a ton of money in this place 
real quick.  I find a good example in a rather professional-looking Ah 
My Goddess doujinshi - asking price $70.  I think I'm going to despair 
of ever finding a decently priced Ranma doujinshi... especially if it 
were to have a scene with me and him in it.

Finally, the programs for '99 arrive (the information packet included 
the newsletters from the '98 con), but they *still* don't include 
schedules for the four(!) anime viewing rooms.  Looks like we'll just 
have to head over there and hope that the schedule's posted outside of 
the rooms themselves.

But first... there's this girl named Margaret that needs our help.  
Seems she needs us to walk her to her room.  Not that she can't find it 
(more on that later), rather, dressed as she is, she'd rather not have 
to fend off fanboys en route.  Given that she's wearing a fur bikini and 
boots outfit, I can understand.  We see her to her room... and proceed 
to have some difficulty finding *our* way back to the main lobby (well, 
it was bound to happen... I seem to pull a Ryouga at least once each 
con, and since it wasn't on the way to the place, well... at least it 
happened while we were doing someone a good deed).  The upshot of all 
this is that, between this errand and the fact that the main ballroom is 
on the exact opposite side of the hotel as the viewing rooms, it takes 
us as long to get from the one to the other as it took us to drive here 
in the first place.

Since it's twenty to two, most of the series running in the rooms are 
running down, but I do catch a bit of episode four of Evangelion 
(Konatsu-chan didn't bother, and warned me once again not to get 
hooked on a series both so long and so grim), and then catch up with 
Konatsu watching a bit of Fushigi Yuugi.  'Natsu-chan thinks it 
resembles 'The Never-Ending Story;'  I didn't think it was *that* 
long...

After that, both of us head in to watch Dragon Half.  What a hoot.  
I don't think I've ever seen a feature that took itself less seriously.  
And I know that some of you are saying stuff like "Obviously, you 
haven't watched Slayers yet."  No, we haven't.  Unfortunately, we 
didn't see it listed on today's program.  And hey... this was pretty 
darn cool, if you ask me.  Good enough for us to go out and promptly 
get a copy.

On the way back from the viewing rooms, where we pass an *enormous* 
line of folks waiting to register, we encounter a family with mom and 
daughter dressed more or less identically.  It turns out to be the 
Wildes, Jamie, Bridget and little Rachel.  They're the vanguard of 
the fanfiction crowd that suddenly swells into the lobby from nowhere 
and everywhere.  Sean Gaffney, Nick Leifker, and... Lara?  Lara Bartram?  
Sorry, didn't recognize you  ^_^;;

Everybody starts in about fics in progress and other ideas.  The topic 
morphs to the ethics of fansubs when Rich Lawson and Mark Engles show 
up.  Rich and Mark are checked in already, and some of the others have 
decided to wait until the line dies down, so we traipse off to Rich and 
Mark's to drop off luggage in the meanwhile.  Well, all except Zen, 
who's put in an appearance as well, but has decided to lug his ichimonji 
with him into that massive line.  We wish him luck before following the 
others, including the Wildes, who aren't staying at the hotel either - 
Bridget's parents live in Elgin, less than a half-hour away.  As it 
turns out, so is Mark and Rich's room: they had referred to it as 'the 
end of civilization,' and in terms of distance, they aren't far wrong.

Once the others have unloaded their stuff, the general consensus points 
to the dealers' room.  Meanwhile, Konatsu-chan's getting hungry, and 
we've got at least two hours before the fanfic panel even *meets*, let 
alone eats.  This looks like a job for... Con Suite!

If we can *find* the place.  At least it's on the ground floor this 
time, but honestly... it's a labyrinthine path.  By now, only Sean is 
with us, but Gary Kleppe and Travis Butler have joined us (and Lara 
follows soon after, actually).  Travis has his ubiquitous PowerBook 
with him, and this time he's got title themes from the original Dirty 
Pair series (the "real" DP, he insists), as well as a really funky pair 
of fan-created title tracks entitled "Kodocha no Evangelion"  The sight 
of Rei Ayanami dancing... whoof.  As Sean says, whoever created this 
must have had some really good drugs when they were doing it.

Most of the others take off, including Konatsu-chan, take off to spread 
the word about the closed-circuit channel.  The con organizers have 
gotten permission to broadcast anime on a 24-hour basis on the hotel 
channel, and I turn it on (how better to advertise than having it going 
in the con suite?) to see.  Whaddya know... Ah Megamisama!

Well... Chibi-megamisama, anyway.  Little shrunken goddesses, and their 
rat friend.  No Keiichi, though, and no subtitles.  Wild.

***

A couple of hours later, we convene at the other end of the hotel again. 
Twenty fanfic writers in the space of a hundred square feet or so.  
Someone points out that "you'll never get this many egos in one place 
like this again" - I don't know who, but they're probably right.  Not 
in this small of a space, anyway.

Of course, it's not like a *clash* of egos.  There are a fair number 
of mutual admiration societies going around here, evidenced by a garage 
kit sculpture of Priss that Rich and Nick Leifker present to Jeanne 
Hedge.

Still, everybody has their opinions about everything... including 
dinner.  It takes quite a bit of back-and-forth before we settle on 
a nearby Denny's (which disappoints me, in particular - as a local, I 
know a fair number of *reasonable* places for Japanese cuisine)  Now 
that 'where' is settled, we move on to 'how'... are there enough cars?  
Yes?  Maybe?  Okay, let's load 'em up and move 'em out... I guess.

We do all make it there, eventually, with Zen and whoever was with him 
once again proving to be the exception.  But we don't arrive all at 
once, and this is giving the Denny's staff fits.  All of a sudden, I'm 
glad they didn't take up my suggestion.  The folks at my favorite 
beefbowl place would never let us in again:

"Oh, you're the folks that brought that huge crowd?  Get out!"

Anna Johnson, of Negaverse fame, talks about sympathizing with Sayonji 
(from Utena).  She *would*.  Personally, I think he belongs with Nanami, 
and that way, justice would be fully served both of them.

Beyond that, I can't say as I remember much of the conversation.  Real 
life isn't like, say, the MUCK, where you can tune into multiple 
conversations and save hardcopy logs for later.  Bouncing back and 
forth between circles, I wound up missing a LOT.

I *do* remember Gary suggesting, when the bill came 'round, that we 
charge the lot to White Wolf.

And afterwards, someone gets the bright idea of getting a group photo 
for posterity.  We catch a limo parked outside the place (now, who would 
go to Denny's in a *limo*, tell me that?) and swarm into position around 
it.  Two flashes later, and we're off, trying to make our separate ways 
back to the con.

After stopping at a convenience store for Anna and Nick to get film, 
we drop them off at the door and head off for somewhere else to park.  
At $8 a pop, the Ramada is no bargain.  But all the other lots in the 
area either charge or threaten to tow, too.  There had been some talk 
at the opening about how ACen attendees could get a discount on parking, 
but the instrucions we were given told us to validate our ticket with 
the concierge, while the concierge insisted that we talk to ACen 
registration.  So *that* story turned out false.  But now, another 
rumor... next ACen won't even *be* in Rosemont, thanks in part to this 
parking schtick.  One of the candidates for next year's venue?  A Hilton 
no more than three miles from the Ucchan.  I sure hope this turns out to 
be true.

Anyway, the upshot of all this for us is that we don't go back to the 
con, but head home.  Pity, really... I'd heard that either Rachel Lillis 
or Leah Applegate (who do voices for both Utena and Pokemon) was going 
to sing the 'Jiggypuff' song in its entirety at the karaoke party.  I'd 
like to have seen if anyone would stay awake to hear it all...

Still, speaking of sleep, it's probably prudent we got a bit.  Same for 
Dan-chan.  Tomorrow, as Scarlett O'Hara said, is another day, after all.