Friday I had just arrived in Huntsville where Inubito and Kagami were waiting on me. my bus was an hour late and I wanted to just grab my stuff and go but this Creature-thing wouldn't let me get my stuff. it wasn't male or female.. but it had long saggy breasts and spoke what sounded like garbled ebonics. freaky. anyway...

on the way there Kagami had only (luckily?) a minidisc player so we listened to his music on the way. traffic wasn't bad up until two hours later in Nashville and I wanted to get something to eat before the con since I rarely get hungry at these things. I got a cheeseburger and fries and before you knew it we were in at the Clarion!
In the lobby Inubito and I were discussing what volunteer jobs we were running when a staffer came up and told us where to find everything....unfortunately.. all the way on the top 11th floor, ugh. the con was deserted. only people who were here were staffers and non-otaku hotel people. our room was on the 9th floor and oh MAN did we get a good room. this was the end-room of all end-rooms. so big it even had double-doors. and a closet with space enough for 5 costumers! the TV wasn't blocked off so we set up our PSX, DC, PS2, and DVD players all together with the aid of Kagamis cool adapter. Dealers room was so-so. only found one both selling HK CD's and they were all J-Rock. however, they Were selling weapons and goggles, yes, Goggles and multiple colours and flavours too! Inubito and I both bought a pair. CDs were overpriced but the selection was pretty good. a Smile.dk CD and Eurobeat Disney 3, which I later bought. we headed to the game room where we found DDR5thMix was already set up with a slew of other games and systems. even a Saturn with BomberMan! yay! the guy running it, Chris was really cool and was glad I brought ParaParaParadise so we could set that all up. and thats... pretty much it. for the next several hours we just kind of played videogames. these two little 5 yr old boys kept talking trash saying they could beat people on all the fighter games so Inubito and I took them out; several times. after awhile they were left on 1-player mode begging for people to play with them. not until around 7 or 8pm did any new people show up. we were quite surprised to see that Kevin Lillard was at this con. other guests were showing up around now too. Mike and I got to see Sonny (?)'s Hummer in the hotel parking lot Totally dope'd out in DBZ stickers. rockin'.
it started getting late and we couldn't find any parties, and from what Mike's friend Lothar was telling us things were getting really cool over at a hacker convention "PhreakNIC5" down the street a mile at the Days Inn. we found Inubito's cousin Scott in one of the videorooms and asked if he could drive us there. we all managed to fit in his truck (Mike's a contortionist) and made it there. it WAS walkable distance but it also involved crossing multiple lanes of traffic and and it was dark (daylight savings is the Devil!).
As soon as we showed up we could hear the techno Bass kicking from the main room. about 20 computers, all homemade and brought by con-going hackers were set up. smoke filled the air and it seemed like everyone was really enjoying themselves. it didn't end there! lined up through the hall people were having multiple room parties; every one of them had at least 3 computers running. Firewall TCP/IP Linux BeOS on the first floor and Counterstrike on the second. Lothar was nowhere to be seen, since he was probably at the anime con playing DDR5thMix, so we had no room to go to except multiple room parties. one room seemed to be smoking. we weren't sure what was going on until we got a closer look. A Fog Machine~! it was great because these two guys had totally set up a dark and grungy scene playing Death Metal music and had a few strobe lights/lava lamps set up in their hotel room. more craziness came later when the asian kid came in wearing a straight jacket and yelling things everywhere. this con does Not sleep I swear! ^_^ but eventually we needed to and there was no way we were walking back at this hour (3am? 4am?). this girl Stacy said we could use her room but then some drunk guy was trying to kiss her, and she freaked out and left the hotel. later that night they gave the drunk guy the "Mr. T Haircut". Lothar eventually showed up and let us crash in his room. we slept on the cold floor next to the cold broken AC... so cold... err.

Saturday morning Inubito and I drudged up and hoof'd it back to the Clarion, stopping at Lenny's for some sponge-pancakes. since when is Orange Juice $3 BTW?! ahem.
The con was definitely more popular now. costumers were popping up here and there and a few panels were underway. Grabbed a few pictures here and there then decided to get more on video. I sat through the voice actors panel which was quite the learning experience. afterward they were signing autographs but the line was going to take at least a half an hour so back I headed to the videogame room. The earlier DDR pads were totally broken so Chris went out and BOUGHT a new pair just for the con. that's dedication man. sides, he knew if these broke as well (they did) then he could get a 24-hour refund ^_^. Inubito was here now in his DDR5thMix Rage costume and Mike was Mikki from ChronoCross (shudder). We all headed down to get COSP and Cos-Men group pics, all.. uhm 10 of us? ^^; then I went back to get autographs. Staffer guy with weird eye (he bought one of the special Blue contact lenses) was telling me I couldn't get in. Pulled an old trick out of my bag here: "I went to get some water". yup, got me in just fine. Got to talk to Krillin's voice a bit and tell him how much my friends and I love the "Destructo Disc" line, and also how I had recorded lines from DBZ dubbs that could have double meaning. dangit, I couldn't recite ANY though! I choked or something because we used to say those back and fourth in school all the time. anyway the WAV files are still HERE if you want to hear. got an autographed Krillin card too. Kira is so adorable ^_^ I got to get a picture or two with her!
Took some pictures of cosplay also. didn't sta for too long but it seemed to be going really well. Dan T made some funny comments while hosting it and even though the audience wasn't more than about 50 people they all looked like they enjoyed it.
This con actually had a few films I wanted to see. for the first time since watching Initial D I actually sat through a few anime episodes. Excel Saga, FLCL, and the Cowboy Bebop movie. during the first two one of the lil brats from the video game room earlier kept talking during it. "What movie is this?" "Why aren't they talking American?!" "Why isn't he dead? didn't he die earlier?!" "Whos that guy?" I swear their parents must have dropped them off and left for the weekend. not only that but he kept moving around and waving his arms so people sitting behind him constantly told him to sit down so they can read the subtitles. >_ The dance was now starting. they originally planned to use the hotels main floor bar but it was Karaoke night for some old fossils so the con had to move it to the LL floor (LobbyLobby!). there was good amount of space but it was all carpet. they had projected images from anime playing on the ceiling and walls so that looked neat. but the music played was all anime themes. the DJay couldn't upload any tunes we brought, but he tried so no biggie. it never really got that popular so I left to go to the BigFire party.
Several conventions ago (OhayoCon) i heard stories about a party all of the bigwigs attend at conventions that they call "BigFire". special guests, artist, voice actors and head staff all get together in a private meeting and drink themselves into the night. i somehow managed to sneak in at OhayoCon and i did it again at this one. i was first stopped by the same weird-eye staffer from earlier before i even got to the door of BigFire and he told me to leave EVEN THOUGH i was on the ConSuite staff. i ran into Heather and Sara luckily of the AsylumAnime dealers booth and they got me in. It was pretty packed too! they had tons of alcohol laid out there (which i could now LEGALLY drink!!) and you could tell that most everyone had already had some. they were watching music videos and later DDR Project Music Videos shown recently at AWA7. Krillin showed up and took a few pictures and even Kira! ha ha, i got to give her a foot massage too. she came in during mid-discussion i was having with an AWA Staffer about improving a con. we were both on pretty cool status with each other since we had Lee to sorta moderate everything in-between us. i couldn't help but laughing through half of the argument! not sure what the end result was, but its pretty clear that AWA Staff does not want us back unless we intend to say its the best con of our lives or something like that. DanT and Lee combined powers to make me some fruitpunch/oj/margarita/tequila mix which tasted great, and did quite a number on me. somehow i managed to end up in the Yaoi room watching an anime called Bronze. its gay. everything else that night was just freaky fun. The videogame room was winding down and there were more people getting into DDR. one girl (shampoo) was playing when she kicked down the fan and broke off the front part so the blade was open to slice anyone up. Danger! then some room needed an extra TV so i had to transfer over one and move out another (sorry BishiBashi fans!). Capcom VS SNK 2 never got tired all through the night, never!
Didn't wake up until around 11am Sunday and by then it was time to go. said goodbyes to all... uhm.. 2 people we knew at the con and did some last-minute shopping in the dealer's room. it was a hard choice between Smile.dk's first CD or Eurobeat Disney Vol 3, but i chose the latter. Could have bought Final Fantasy X, but it was a whopping $95! i thought they would have discounted it by the end of the weekend, guess not.

MTAC wasnt bad, but it was small. and this isn't always a bad thing. Being their 2½ year, i thought it would be the size of Sugoicon at least but it was smaller than that. Hotel was fine and elevators were NEVER more than 30 second wait! there wasn't an ATM for two miles unfortunately but i guess that's good because it kept me from spending much. Guests were cool; Hi Krillin! Love ya Kira! Videos were nice and rare, mostly fansubs (DivX owns you!) which is always a good thing. Videogame room knew what was going on and even though it should have been larger, it got the job done by such a cool guy running it. BigFire was the bomb, i need to go to all of them if i can find them! I had a good time. maybe if i knew more people and there was more to do than videogames it would bring more people. ill probably go again since its local.

PhreakNIC5 was crazy! i don't think the hotel put any limits on the sound or rules for them as the hackers seemed to be doing pretty much anything they wanted. the "badges" for the con were 3.5 Floppy discs with scratch & sniff Anthrax labels. indy DJs were playing music in the main room, parties, multiplayer gaming, hacking, phreaking, boxing... everyone had their own user Handle there and their own custom computer. it was a fresh dose of a new type of convention and was cool since everything happens at night. if theres more out there like this one i want to go!