I've gone on a couple different adventures over the past two months, and my semester at home has actually managed to improve in quality quite a bit. One of the things that sealed that deal is that I've finally gotten the housing situation under control for next year. I've decided to get a place with Steve Dimino and Steve Gotter, and from what I've seen in pictures, the house looks very nice. I would have also liked to go with my MLC friends at the place they were getting, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be. The houses will be in such close proximity that it won't matter really. I'll be taking a look at the house sometime this week, but it looks spacious, has a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, and a garage and a basement. I'm looking forward to rooming with both of the Steves, I haven't been able to make it down to Whitewater very often to visit anyone aside from Leah and Heather. Or anyone else I was planning on hanging out with this semester, like Josh and Kristina. I should have foreseen it coming. I'm completely swamped with school and trying to find a job, as well as other things like weekend plans and hanging out with Leah. If only I was that dbag from Clockstoppers...
Nah.
So yeah, Anime Milwaukee. It was...meh. I can now consider myself on an entirely different level of nerd now that I've finally gone to an anime convention. I probably wouldn't have liked it nearly as much if Peter Miller hadn't gone with me. We were a different breed of humanity than 99% of the people there. As I expected, there were tons of cosplayers, and I think I counted one or two decent ones (one of which was Mario, who isn't even an anime character). Most of them were extremely fat, and extremely ugly. Like, Return of Jafar's animation ugly. Me and Peter caught quite a few terrifying whifs of death, malice, and destruction whenever a big group of people would walk by. Everyone seemed to be an attention whore of some sort, creating a competition to see who could cause the biggest embarrassing scene in public just to make their existence meaningful. It sounds like I'm being harsh, but hey, shut up because you weren't there, alright?
I went to Anime Milwaukee for two reasons: buy anime stuff at the vendor room, and play in the numerous amount of videogame tournaments available. Since this was more of a casual affair than the Midwest Gaming Classic as far as tournaments go, it wasn't as well organized nor were the prizes as good. Although, the prize for the Pokemon tournament was a copy of Soul Silver, which would have saved me a good forty bucks. But I'll get to that.
The first tournament was Halo 3, and as I thought it would, it ended a bit on the depressing side. Not because we got our asses smashed, but moreso because I really think we could have won. Me and Peter were so, so very rusty. I couldn't aim worth a damn, and I was making the most basic of mistakes. They also picked Guardian, and the two idiots on the other team mumbled some sort of voodoo chant at me when I asked them to change the map. I saw nothing about picking specific maps in the Halo 3 tournament rules, so I'm guessing my hypothesis can't be too far off. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure the rules said "both teams have to agree on a map before play." I guess that translates to"Team Satan picks Guardian." Personally, I wanted the Lockout remake, appropriately titled Blackout. And no, Guardian is not a Lockout remake. Guardian is Lockout's annoying red-headed (Sorry Blake...and anyone else) cousin.
So, the odds were not stacked in our favor. Rust, strange combatants, a bad map, and a noisy room all blocked my concentration. We lost by about 10, but that was only one tournament out of the whole weekend. Their still remained Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, Brawl, Street Fighter IV, and Pokemon Diamond/Pearl. We headed back to Kyle Bence's for the night to rot in his basement and prepare our teams for Sunday. Thankfully the Bailey's was a lot kinder to me than my luck in the Halo 3 tournament. Winky wink. The following morning, we set out for the Union once more.
I'm not legally obligated to talk about Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, so I won't. Let's just say, I managed to get in one hit. On one of the rounds.
Brawl was the only tournament of the weekend that went somewhat well for me. But before that, I want to take a short look at Peter's experience. Peter got a bad draw and received a strange, mute, overweight opponent dressed in all black. On top of this, we weren't exactly sure of the gender either. Let's just call it Rick, and we'll use she for the third person singular to cover all the bases. Peter and Rick decided to use the big TV to broadcast their fight, which was a big mistake. Peter picked Pikachu, his main brawler. After this, things started going downhill. Rick, who had picked Lucas, immediately switched to Pikachu, as if to mock Peter. After this, Rick called forth several different false gods and gained a swift upperhand against Peter. Twas a sad defeat, and a bitter victory for Rick. She offered no sportsmanship handshake or anything of the sort to Peter after the match was over. She just got up and left.
It was a tough personal debate between using Meta Knight or Zelda, but in the end I felt swifter and more comfortable with Meta Knight. I did fairly well in my first two matches, but following these I went up against a smelly guy dressed in a red zippie and wearing a hat that mimicked the head of Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog. He used Link, who really isn't all that good in Brawl, especially when compared to the much more agile Toon Link. Nevertheless, he beat me in a heartbreaking loss. It was bittersweet. Mostly bitter. The prize for winning wasn't all that great (none of the prizes for any of the tournaments were really), the room that the tournaments were in was always boiling hot, and we wanted to get back to Kyle's to clean ourselves up for a Milwaukee party.
We were stuck there for a few hours waiting for Kyle to get home from work at Chili's, but Peter, Jake Rothe, and myself found plenty of ways to entertain ourselves, mostly derived from tabletalk with Kyle's sister and a girl that the three of us came to know as Sneeks. The two of them shared their daily Prep lives with us and some other details, and then it was time to head out. If you're reading this, Heather or Sneeks, me and Jake still want to go to that movie.
It was a party. A fun party. Got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time, and on top of that all of the pizza was free. I really don't go to parties very often anymore, as a matter of fact I haven't gone to a party since that very party a month ago. I think I'm growing out of it, which may be a good thing. I don't really like being classified with the "Asher Roth generation." I just like pizza. On a semi-related note, I was driving through Whitewater on St. Patrick's Day and everyone was drinking in their front yards and acting stupid everywhere I drove. And my girlfriend told me that apparently professors give extra credit to the students that show up to school on St. Patrick's Day instead of skipping to go drink. Is that what this generation is coming to? Seriously? Anyways...
I woke up in the morning to find out that Peter had somehow ended up in West Allis, which was about 20 minutes away from Kyle and Sam's apartment. After a close call, we made it to the Union in time for the final tournament, the Pokemon tournament. And we lost. It was crushing and we had no chance, just like everything else. Legendary Pokemon were banned, but dragons (which are basically legendaries) were not. So pretty much everyone was using dragons except for Peter and I. I drew a rough sketch of what the other tournament contestants looked like:
And apparently I penciled in "yahoo" after I drew it.
The weekend was finished with some Pokemon Soul Silver and some Noodles & Company, which was well deserved after the weekend's various ordeals. At least I got an incredible new One Piece wallscroll, and my first Gurren Lagann wallscroll. And I got to have a bird's eye view of the bottom tier of society. To quote Peter, "At least we are sexier." Fin.
