Chicks Dig Nerds, Right?

PAX 2008 (Finally)

It took me most of a week to get caught up on everything and actually sit down to write this down, but here it is.  Nicks in parentheses to help the IRC crew put names together.

Thursday:

Chase (Nextreme) had been in town for a couple of days by this point, but mostly we hadn’t done anything other than wander around Bellevue with Phil (Niali) and Chelsea (Sinaeh) and check out a few restaurants.  Picked Micah (Xellos) up from the airport around 10:45 and headed to downtown Seattle to pick up his and Chase’s badges…except Google Maps led us all astray and I basically got us lost on Cap Hill for an hour.  When I say lost, well, we were on the same street twice at one point, and went the wrong way down a one way street once.  Battery Street will forever be emblazoned across my mind as the place I nearly pissed myself in the back of DJ’s (Dejos) car.  Nearly.  We made it to the will call area at the convention center about 45 seconds too late and didn’t get to pick up badges.  It was totally worth the adventure, though.  We piled back into DJ’s car and headed back to my place where Mo had already arrived and Jason (Sparky) had returned from picking up Jack and Jeff.  Ryan (Uller) met us there and we piled back into a couple of vehicles and raided the Denny’s over in Redmond.  It’s the only Denny’s I know of that actually has passable food.  Got everyone introduced, got the humor rolling, generally had good times.  Piled back into the apartment, kind of half-assed sleeping arrangements for eight people and crashed.  Well, tried to crash.  DJ was cranking out some epic snore action.  It was kind of a running joke, excecpt it regularly woke myself and Micah up in the middle of the night.  Dude, Breathe Right strips.  Christmas is so easy this year.

Friday:

We had originally planned to wake up early this day.  Sparky was supposed to wake me up on his way out the door.  Jack had an interview over at Privateer Press early in the morning, and that would have given me time to get up and get ready so we could beat lines and get badges.  Well, Sparky forgot, and apparently everyone in the apartment had developed a serious fear of rousing Jake.  I still don’t get this.  I finally fell off the couch somewhere around 10:45 or so, got cleaned up and some of us piled into DJ’s car to go to Nibbana for “breakfast”.  Enjoyed ourselves a pretty good meal and then headed to the con…and got lost again.  If I took any lesson away from this weekend, it was Google Maps + navigating from the backseat = failure.  We finally got to the convention center and got parked, though (holy balls, $18/day).  Hit the con itself around 2:30 and wandered the exhibition hall for a while.  Rock Band 2 was set up just across from the Starcraft 2 booth, which is basically where we spent most of this trip to the exhibition hall.  Mo Loves Her Some Starcraft2.  She had basically that exact expression for about 90 minutes while Micah and I stood in line to get our hands on the playable demo.  I think we all got some amusing pictures there.  My thoughts on SC2: Well, uh, I should have played the easy AI.  In the brief period before zealots plunged into every orifice they could find and/or invent I got to see some of the new Zerg stuff.  I think I preferred the old static defense buildings.  I wish I’d had more time to formulate some specific opinions.  It certainly looks pretty, though.

From there we headed to the main theater hall to catch the second half of the PA Q&A panel.  I don’t know what it was about this year, but the questions were, by and large, fairly unimaginitive and, well, shitty.  Mike and Jerry were awesome, though.  Mike certainly seems to be much more comfortable on the stage this year.  The medication is doing its thing, apparently.  Definitely an improvement in stage presence for both of them this year.  We were pretty hungry by this point, so we met up with Uller and Luke (ithil) and wandered over to Pike Place Chowder (”Everyone should eat at PP Chowder at least once!”) for some dinner.  Seriously, everyone should eat there at least once.  I don’t care how wrong “PP Chowder” sounds.  It’s serious chow.  Mostly just hung out in one of the handheld lounges, rocking out on some Sumo bags.  I’m starting to seriously consider getting some of those for the apartment.  They are wicked comfy.

We finally headed to the concert and caught the last few songs from the One Ups set.  If you’re not familiar with them, think video game music with soloist/jazz accompaniment.  They have some pretty solid tracks, including their encore song this year, which was a cover of the Tristram theme from Diablo.  The next hour or so after this was a serious test of will.  Maybe I just don’t get synthpop, but Freezepop is just downright horribad.  I’ve endured some shitty bands to see bands I like, but this one tops my list.  It was certainly worth it, though.  Jonathan Coulton gets better every year, and he certainly didn’t disappoint this year.  High points include: Felicia Day coming out to sing Still Alive with him.  Rickrolling the crowd after Flickr, and then again in the Mr. Fancypants remix.  Basically everything else he did.  Seriously, JoCo makes for a fun show.  Stood in line for about half an hour to have him sign a poster and take a picture.  My comedic timing made for an amusing picture.  Seriously, though, I wanted to put my hand on her ass.

Saturday:

Woke up late again, but no one really cared.  Walked across the street to get some breakfast at Panera Bread.  Managed to get mildly lost again on the way to the con.  I definitely know how to get there now.  There wasn’t a lot I wanted to see, so I spent most of my day in the exhibition hall.  Unfortunatelly my incredible susceptibility to distraction caused me to miss the screening of Nerdcore Rising, and the PA make a strip panel and autograph session.  Played a little Pirates of the Burning Sea, drooled on some Fallout 3 and watched some more SC2 action.  Saturday night, though, oh damn.  Talk about a badass concert.  Anamanaguchi surprised me by rocking pretty hard.  Take music from NES games (run through an actual NES connected to a Macbook Pro), run it through a mixer for some minor effects processing, and then add in some pretty solid guitar, bass and drum playing.  They’re definitely a fun band, and you could tell that they were totally blown away by the crowd’s response.  I hope to see them again next year for sure.  After them came another band I’d never heard of: The Darkest of Hillside Thickets.  Someone in the crowd described them to me as “Lovecraftian power punk”.  I went into this skeptical, but they didn’t disappoint at all.  The rest of my group disagrees with me, but I thought they put on a pretty awesome show.  Definitely Lovecraft fans, definitely rocking.  They’re basically the reason I lost my voice (more on this later).  Once Thickets was done, though, the real show was up.  None other than MC Frontalot.  Basically the biggest reason I go to this convention.  Well, the biggest musical reason.  By this point the crowd had shifted enough that I was only about six feet back from the stage outlets.  I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun at a live show.  Front graced us with his usual awesome dance moves, and a few tracks from his as-yet-unreleased (but purchasable at PAX) album Final Boss.  Including a joint venture with JoCo.  My glee was indivisible.  I’m not into The Minibosses, so once Front was over, I shuffled out and met up with the rest of The Group and we headed home.

Sunday:

Oh god, everything in my throat is on fire.  I rocked out so hard my voice decided to move out and trash the place as it went.  I basically sounded like Mickey Mouse and Selma from The Simpsons put together.  Hilarity ensues.  (Sparky shot this as we were walking back from The Taphouse after dinner, for reference.)  Caught the “Family Feud” game before the second PA Q&A panel.  I’d avoided this in previous years, but there’s so little going on on Sundays, I think I’ll catch it again in the future.  Serious comedy value here.  Q&A panel was better this time around, culminating in the guys getting sniped by the Bad Horse Chorus, which was awesome all over.  The relatively small amount of stuff going on culminated in all of us deciding to leave the con early and go get some lunch at The Taphouse.  That poor waitress.  From there we walked back to the apartment and got some more serious drink on.  Uller definitely wins for fastest trip through the stages of binge drinking.  He basically just grabbed a bottle of Whaler’s and started tossing it back.  He passed out pretty early on…in the hallway.  Not a traffic obstruction at all.  It was funny, though, so we left him there.  The rest of us attained various stages of drunk and played some eight way Halo 3 for a while.  Mostly just hung out and had a totally hilarious time.  Definitely something I look forward to at next year’s gathering.

All in all, I’d have to say this was the best PAX for me so far.  It’s my third consecutive, and by far the most fun of the three.  I’m hoping we get some more people next year.  I’ll probably get a shirt designed and printed off so we can spot each other more easily in the crowds.  To everyone that came, thanks a lot.  You guys really helped make this a lot of fun.  I think our goal for next year is to make it even more epic.  I think we’re up to it.