BotCon 2004 - Ravenwing

Friday

My maps rule. I found the Pasadena Convention Center on Green Street without a hitch and went directly there to pre-register. Parking was $7 a day with no in-and-out privileges, so I left my car there the entire day. I parked waaaaaaaaay on the wrong side of the parking lot and wandered around for ten minutes before I found the right door out. They really need to supply a map for the freaking parking lot. I found the Exhibition Building, but... since I came up from the underground via a secret elevator, I was on the wrong side of the building. I tried two sets of doors, but they were locked. Right building, wrong entrances.

Lo and behold, as I wandered towards the front of the convention center, I saw Melissa (Ghost) and Jake (Phantom), and we were able to locate the pre-registration area. Here's where it gets tricky: the convention center has underground entrances to the two flanking exhibition buildings. So you have these three buildings, and the only way into the exhibition buildings is by going under the central building. It has an east/west underground hallway running from the panel rooms and art room in the east building to the dealers' room in the west building. We headed over to the dealers' room to have a few words with Raksha, who was inside with Scott (Solar) setting up her table. We left her a portable two-way radio and operating instructions then headed off to check me into my hotel and do some errands. Found my car in the parking lot, grabbed my suitcase, and boarded the Jake and Mel Express to the Vagabond Inn.

The Vagabond Inn was about two miles down Colorado Blvd. from the convention center. Oh, and north a block, too. The hotel wasn't very attractive. In fact, it looked a lot like a low-class motel in the bad part of town. I checked in, got my room number, and was handed a message from my prospective roommate Ryan (Omega Supreme@2K5 or simply Taco). Although he told me that he would be getting in later that night, he'd actually arrived much earlier. Early enough that he walked to the convention center, picked up his pre-registration envelope, and walked back to arrive just as I finished registering at the hotel. So we collected our stuff and dropped it off in the room. As I passed the elevator, I noticed that the soda machine was out of order. Uh oh... After loading us all into the wagon, we headed off to Kinko's.

Why Kinko's, you ask? A top secret mission for Mel, that's why. Don't ask for any more details, or we'll have to kill you. While she went to Kinko's, the rest of us walked to Target, which was a bit further down Colorado Blvd. Mr. Taco Supreme bought weird cereal to take back with him (must be a Canadian thing). Actually, he makes a habit of taking weird American stuff back to his friends in their igloos at the North Pole. He also wanted Hamburger Helper. Geez. I bought a 12-pack of Diet Pepsi and a cooler. Gotta have my Diet Pepsi. We packed our booty in the back of the wagon and headed back to the convention center to rendezvous with Raksha and company. Jake and Mel conferred with Raksha over radio to set up a meeting for dinner at a Japanese restaurant across the street from the convention center. Not with them, though. Mel was trying out for the voice auditions that night at the hubby's urging, plus they already had plans for Japanese food in Little Tokyo later in the week.

Conveniently located across from the convention center was a two-story outdoor plaza shopping center. I can't remember what it was called, but it ran a block between Green Street and Colorado Blvd. There were shops, restaurants, and even a grocery store. It was also hosting a sidewalk art contest. The name of the restaurant we were looking for was visible from the street. Second floor... somewhere. Ryan and I wandered a bit before finding an elevator up to the restaurant. Being the first arrivals, we reserved a table for eight and waiting for Raksha's contingent. They arrived fifteen minutes later: Raksha, Scott (Solar@TLY), Anne (Cinder@TLY), Cat (Midstream@TLY), Liana Bluestar, and Suzanne (Flamethrower@TFDD). The food was great, cooked right at/on our table, but $30 for a steak is still way too expensive. Lots of talk, most of which I couldn't hear because the chef was noisy. J Afterwards, we went back to the Sheraton and met Jake and Melissa in the lobby. We sat around chatting until way too late and didn't get back to the Vagabond Inn until 11:30.

Sometime that night (or most likely early the next morning), a car alarm went off just outside my window. I stumbled out of bed, grabbed my glasses, and peered outside, since I thought it might have been my own car. There in the back parking lot (what a nice view we had) were a couple vans with a bunch of guys partying. They reset their alarm -- not mine after all -- and they continued lots of loud talking for another ten minutes then went inside... to the room above ours, where they indulged in jumping jacks for another half hour. Ryan, bless him, slept through the car alarm but not the elephant dance upstairs.

Saturday

We woke up at 7:30. Holy s**t. Turns out that I lost whatever form it was that showed when and where the breakfast was. Surely, I thought, it would be at a civilized hour like 8 am. Alas, it was not. It started at 6 am and ended at 8:30. Although we hustled, we didn't get there until 8:15. I use "we" lightly, since Ryan didn't have a ticket for the breakfast event. I found the right place in the east building, but I was too late for whatever happened during the breakfast other than, well, eating. One solitary caterer was still standing by the buffet table, and she was so kind as to fetch me a plate and fork. Thank you, ma'am. About all that was left were the fried potatoes and some muffins/rolls, and that was my breakfast. The one for which I paid an extra $55. I walked back to the west side to join Ryan and Suzanne, who were just two of dozens of Transfans sitting in line against the over-warm hallway's wall waiting for 9 am, which was when the dealers' room was to open. While waiting, I took a walk down the line, which had grown to over a hundred people, looking for Tom (Venture@TLY). No sign of him, but I found Jake and Melissa. Oh, and Anne, too. Anne spotted Sheng (don't know her real name), who she apparently knew from somewhere else. No sign of Tom, though. The convention organizers gave us a nice countdown then officially opened the doors at a few minutes past nine.

The dealers' room was huge; you could easily fit a supermarket in there. Thank goodness it had air conditioning, or I would've died. Directly facing the entrance was Raksha's table. She was selling everything from Decepticon symbol stickers with varied backgrounds to My Little Pony and Spongebob Squarepants stickers, ConQuest magazines, and artwork by her friends. With her were Solar and Liana, displaying their own merchandise. Against one wall was a coffee shop offering such treats as coffee and soft drinks... at $3 each. There was also a soda machine around the corner stocking Diet Pepsi for, yes, $3 each. I must've spent over $20 on those ?!@#$ sodas over the next two days. Raksha missed me at the breakfast but at least pointed me to the organizers' table against the front wall, where I was able to get my exclusive mini-Breakdown. I'm not a toy person, but this is apparently tied to a Stunticon exclusive at a previous Botcon.

Thankfully, she also had quite a few extra chairs, because my feet were killing me after standing in line for half an hour. Yeah, yeah, those young whippersnappers had no problem at all, but I'm a fat old lady, and the most standing I've done in the past fifteen years was walking between my car and my home/workplace. Despite that, I did surprisingly well and didn't slow down the others too much. Most of my time at Botcon was spent sitting in one of those chairs. Oh, I sold some stickers for Raksha, so I wasn't entirely useless. I saw some pretty nifty costumes go by. A Flashback, Rumble and Frenzy, a Bluestreak, and some gal dressed as Tai from RiD. Lots of people were there, none of whom I knew outside of our small group. About the only name I recognized was Rob Jung, who stopped by a few times with his little boy to talk to Raksha. The kid was fascinated by those rainbow Decepticon symbols, and Rob bought him two.

My own purchases were few. A polyester blouse just isn't very comfortable at conventions, so I made a beeline for the t-shirt place and bought an official convention t-shirt for too much. $30 for a t-shirt? Ouch. Still, it was for the comfort factor, not for the souvenir value. On a black background, a list of previous Botcon conventions and their dates were listed in yellow on the back, and a drawing of Gaea bursting out of a planet was shown on the front. Once I had that, I headed to the ladies' room to change. My blouse, I stuffed into my purse. It was much better after that. Another purchase was triggered by Scott's appearance with a metallic purple dogtag on a chain around his neck. Engraved on one side was the Decepticon symbol, and on the other side were his character's name, function, and quote. I had to have one of those, so I made my way to the dealer's table on the far back wall and bought one. What else did I get? Oh yeah. Anne told me about someone who had drawn Cinder for her. While I didn't get it done until Sunday, she reminded me to put it on my list.

Yes, I did more than just sit around all day, but not by much. I wandered around the dealers' room, but I'm not really into the toys, and that was the majority of it. There were two tables that ran almost the width of the room, holding Tony Preto's huge collection. Geez. The guy must have put thousands of dollars into it. I visited with Sharon (Tut) and met her fiance Daryn. Nice guy. Once the art was set up, I headed over to the east building to have a look at that. I would catch an occasional glimpse of Ryan, buying stuff like it was the last Botcon: expensive stuff, big boxes. Jake was carrying some of it for him, because he'd bought Jake a pez dispenser. No, I don't understand the significance of pez dispensers, so don't ask me; I barely know what pez is. Alas, Mel didn't win the voice audition. They announced the winners, a man (to play Atex) and a woman (to play Nightracer). The woman was the one in the Tai costume, Emerald Iris or something. The man was someone from the Allspark. Frank (Fusillade) turned up around noon, bringing his tiny Brazilian what's-its to sell. I'm not a toy collector, remember? J Frank brought his mother from Las Vegas, a nice, friendly lady who wasn't intimidated by all the weird folks there.

I missed the Dan Gilvezan (Bumblebee) panel, and I'm sorry I did, as I heard later that it had been great. The Japanese toy panel I also missed, for lack of interest. There was a directing session with Wally Burr, but I think that only the two voice audition winners were allowed to attend. They were practicing for the Peter Cullen panel later that evening, I suspect.

Instead, Ryan and I went across the street to a market to buy cheese, crackers, chips, grapes, bananas, and apples for the poor starving folk chained to the dealers' tables. I had a yummy chocolate Coldstone ice cream cone for lunch just before that, bad me, but at least I didn't finish it. We delivered the goodies once we got back, and folks were accordingly grateful.

The Hasbro panel wasn't of much interest to me either, so I skipped that one. We basically hung out at Raksha's table until the dealers' room closed at 5:30 pm. That left us with half an hour to get dinner and rush back in time for the pre-reg-only Peter Cullen panel. We walked a few blocks to the Subway on Colorado Blvd., bought our sandwiches, and hurried back to the convention center for the panel, carrying our dinners with us.

Peter Cullen was great. Hilarious. He took questions and quote requests for an hour or two, a surprising number of which were about Ironhide. Did I mention that Liana is a hardcore Ironhide fan? There was a lot of reminiscing about his fellow voice actors and recording in the good ol' days. The poor guy really didn't know much about Transfandom, and that's not too hard to figure out. He was asked to quote the Voltron preface, but could only remember a single sentence of it. Despite the fans hearing it at the beginning of every episode, you have to understand that the poor dude only recorded it once. It was a miracle that he remembered that much of it. The soldier who changed his name to Optimus Prime was mentioned, and Mr. Cullen had never even heard of that either.

The second part of the panel was a skit directed by Wally Burr, and it incorporated the two convention guests who won the audition competition earlier. They participated with Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime of course), Mike McConnohie (he did Cosmos, Tracks, and a Japanese dude), and Wally Burr (Kremzeek!) in the appearance of Kremzeek at Botcon 2004. Kremzeek escaped containment in Japan, traveled to Botcon via a communications link, messed with the lights, and generally wreaked havoc with the Autobots here to cover for a Decepticon attack. Nightracer (the woman who won the audition) was coordinating the attack but had to handle the entire affair herself, since Megatron was late and called in to say he was busy in the dealers' room buying a bubble-headed Starscream. Needless to say, the Autobots won, aided by the heroic Atex (the other audition winner). J

Afterwards, we all headed back to the Sheraton's lobby again, but there were a lot more people around that time as compared to Friday night. I didn't know the half of them, but I assume someone did. Or maybe not. Just generic Transfans coming and going.

Sunday

Sunday, thankfully, there was no rush to get ourselves to the convention center, so Ryan and I were able to partake of the hotel's snazzy continental breakfast. Toast, muffins, and apples. Wheeeeeeee. Oh yeah, he discovered earlier that our television set didn't work. The soda machine was still out of order, too. One of the things that did work well was my cooler. Fill it up with ice, and it lasted 24 hours. Thank heavens, since I really need my caffeine in the morning. Off to the convention center.

While I hung out at Raksha's table, Ryan took himself off to get his Prime autographed by Peter Cullen. Oh man, was there a line for that. In fact, you had to buy a ticket in advance to even stand in line. He was still waiting a couple hours later when the rest of us went to watch the G1 Writers' panel.

That was cool. They bickered back and forth like old married couples, told all kinds of discreditable stories, bemoaned how if they'd known which voice actors were going to be used, they could have tailored the dialog to be more fitting, and slyly stabbed each other in the back. As with Peter Cullen's panel, they took questions. Raksha thanked them very nicely for giving the characters such depth. Unfortunately, there weren't as many people present for this panel, but it was definitely worthwhile. Afterwards, there was an autograph session. Suzanne had to leave in the middle of the panel, since her flight home was scheduled for that afternoon.

Back in the dealers' room, I finally motivated myself to commission an ink drawing of Ravenwing by a guy named Sherard Jackson. Nice guy, very talented. Apparently, he did some of the Transformer character drawings in one of the comics. I think. I get the impression that he was involved in Beast Wars, of which I know little, so I can't say what he's done. It took close to a half an hour, which is a respectable amount of time, but I think the sketch is worth it. I'm waiting to see what Raksha thinks it should be, since it didn't seem right to her, and after that, I'll probably tweak it. Alas, I gave it to Mel to keep safe in her sketchbook, and she has it still.

No sight of the missing Tom all day, though I had my suspicions that he came disguised as Flashback. As I wasn't interested in the Dreamwave panel, I headed out for a solitary lunch of surprisingly cheap Chinese food across the street then hung out again at Raksha's table waiting for the convention's final event: the organizers' panel.

After saying a few words, they opening up for questions, of which there were few actual questions. Instead, most of the speakers simply thanked the Hartmans for their Botcon work over the years. Raksha presented them with a short speech and a plaque signed by a number of convention-goers thanking the Hartmans for what they've done for Transformer fandom. Someone finally spit out the question that everyone was wondering about: would there be any more Botcons? The answer was something like this: this is the last UNOFFICIAL Botcon. Yes, there was noticeable emphasis on "unofficial", which all but confirmed that they would continue IF they get the official rights back from that infamous fiend, Glen Hallitt.

They played a retrospective video compilation of donated footage from all the Botcons with added music. Something I learned from the retrospective tape was that Joe Dawson from Highlander the series was a voice actor in Beast Wars. I was wondering what the heck he was doing in that.

Back to the dealers' room to pack up everything for departure. I took the time to thank the Hartmans personally and bought my last $3 Diet Pepsi. Never again! There was a lot to pack up, but the room opened into the underground parking lot, so Scott could drive the RV almost right up to the door. Did I mention that Raksha and Scott arrived in a mini-RV? Well, I just did. J

Finally, off to the Sheraton's main lobby to celebrate. As is apparently the custom at Botcons, our group ordered pizzas, and we scarfed them down in the bar, since we weren't allowed to eat in the lobby. Lots more talk and speculation, perhaps a few thoughts of offing Glen to clear the way for the next Botcon, and that was it for Botcon 2004.