BotCon '99 - Hooper X

BOTCON '99: Special Hooperiffic Version Review: FOR THE GOOD!

WARNING: There's the occasional Bad Word in this review. Deal with it, okay?

NOTE: A .html version of this review, along with photos and the occasional .WAV file, will be available ..sometime. When I get my photos back, I guess...

Friday

Day 1: The Phantom Menace

"Hmm.. Is this some kind of ... microphone? Oh god, I can't remember!"
-Scott McNeil, who, for the life of him, couldn't pull off Piccolo.

Arrived in St. Paul around 3PM. Pulled into Rivercenter parking deck on accident. That sucked, and we hadda fork over two bucks, and didn't even STOP. Suck. Regardless, we made it to the Days Inn. Met up with Heather (yay!) and her trip up people. Went with Raksha, Saberwind, Vulcana, and Magic to the Kelly Inn. Wound up riding in Heather's lap, glad Avatar wasn't in the car. Yikes. No sign of Heather's roommates, so it's back to the Days Inn. Heather's in my lap this time. I actually got away with a snide BW Megatron comment within arm's reach of Raksha, and DIDN'T pull back a bloodied stump.

Off to the Rivercenter for the party. Cool. Met up with Liquid Velcro!, Trixter, and the World's Worst People. (Heh.) After that, Heather demanded that we play Uno. We found TLY's Mono, who had a Decepticon QUILT. That was funky. So we played Uno for a while, and then hung out. Met Tonyfitz & Ol' DIrty Steve, who were guarding the potty. Some people were ALREADY selling crap. Some kid parted with his cash for a Laser Op with NO parts, afaik. Heh. Rob Powers appear. He take his pizza and insert it on him mouth. (Sorry.. MG-Dinobot mode... more on that later.)

THE ACTUAL PRESENTATION: I'll let other people cover this. Nothing TOO cool, just the usual "Here are the toys, aren't they cool?"... no... wait... We get to see BEAST MACHINES! WHOA! I *seriously* thought Ace Fipke was yanking our chains, there. That was the big thing. I sat there, on my garbage can, trying to deal with this. Cool. You know, Karl Hartman is a REALLY tall dude.

After that, Scott McNeil was being cool, and I got about five minutes of taped footage. He insisted that I call him Scott. Among the voices I got on tape: All the BW Chars, Piccolo, that dude from Ninja Turtles (and a funny rant on how they used his likeness and didn't pay him..) Various "Monkey Magic" characters, and Pelvis, from "War Planets." I started a horrible running theme. "Scott! If Waspinator and Kenny were on the Titanic, who would die first?" Scott put his cash on Waspinator, and did a brief Cartman "Screw you guys, I'm going home!" Pretty cool, all in all... I took my tape and insert it... wait... anyway, I went down on the street, and played the tape to the joy of a BUNCH of people. After that, Heather went to her room, and I went and hung out with the WiiGii! people (she's no fun, I swear. ) We spent ENTIRELY too much time talkin about G2 Tank Megatron's voice chip... "Walky Attack." That, and drawing in the styles of various comic artists... the Galan-style Megatron ruled. Walky promised to draw my MUSH character, but didn't. So, next BotCon, I will get to kick his ass. About 3AM we all called it a night.

All About the Hotel: Supplemental

"Don't worry. In two months, they're tearing this down and building a Holiday Inn."
-Days Inn desk clerk, trying to be helpful.

The Days Inn Rivercenter was SCARY. The elevators BOUNCED. There was a headboard just NAILED to the wall. No real reason, just NAILED there, in between the two beds. The two elevators were kept running by a BOX FAN blowing on the motors. After two trips on those elevators, I kept to the stairs for the whole weekend. Even when going to the eighth floor. Stairs. I think most of us did... to quote: "Rob Powers going to his hotel room for recharge his venom, but heart attack waiting for him..."

Down the street from the Days Inn was the Archdiocese of St. Paul, which was roughly as tall as Karl Hartman. There'll be a few pics of it in my GOOD review, since Heather shot like, half a roll of film of it...

Saturday

Day 2: Electric Boogaloo

"All will be revealed."
-Hasbro Representative Guy.

Up at like, 7AM. Walked to the Kelly Inn and got Heather. Then, Heather, Zack and I all walked back to the Rivercenter. We played Uno with this little kid, I swear he hadda be like, eight. He did okay. Then this other dude played some. Then the 'Con started. First thing I did was grab a Guiledart for $30 from... uhhh... I *wanna* say Robozone, I'm not sure... Got a MachKick from Rugby's, and a G2 Windbreaker. Gave Heather Windbreaker and Guiledart, like a lovesick puppy, and snagged the REAL prize. Japanese Waspinator, $35 from Hydra and Co. Very cool. Shoving all that in my backpack, I attended:

FAN PANEL #1: 'Zines. I'll be honest. I didn't know WHAT the panel was about, nor did I really care. I was just gonna sit through it and catch Beast Machines. There were OBVIOUSLY a lot of people of this persuasion, and quite a few were either A: STUPID, or B: jackasses. I, personally, remained respectful to the panelists, and kept my mouth shut. QUITE a few people sat there, just jawing with each other while the poor 'Zine people were TRYING to talk. Pretty sad. And then there were the morons. "Do you know where I can find the Movie Soundtrack?" "Is there a Classic CCG?" Little did I know what kind of stupidity I was in for... (see the HasFrame panel for more info) Anyway, the panel shambled to an end, and the crowd poured into the room.

BEAST MACHINES: I won't say anything. Go read Rob Powers' review, or Robotech_Master's. They're GOOD at this sort of thing. Heather and I were HYPED by the soundtrack. Absolutely *incredible* music. Like I told Heather: "It's The Matrix meeting 'The Matrix!'

HasFrame panel: "Can we see Dark Glass?" NO. Goddamnit, you CAN'T see "Dark Glass." It's that simple. And why did I ask Ace Fipke the Waspinator question? Good question. He said that "All will be revealed." Oooh. How... prophetic. ALL WILL BE REVEALED, DAMNIT! "Will we see SIlverbolt again?" "All will be revealed." "Is Rhinox dead?" "All will be revealed." "What is for dinner?" "All will be revealed." "What is the meaning of life?" "All will be revealed, damnit. Now shut up and listen."

I'm sure everyone's heard all the good news, Waspinator May Or May Not show up, there's a new BigAss toy size, new Little Ass toy size. (Yay! Cannon fodder!) Yay! More things to spend money on! And goofy looking Fox Kids repaints! "Someone Crapped On My" Rhinox! "Someone Poured Ketchup On My" Dinobot! "Help, I've a Bad Case of Scabies" Cheetor! "Covered In Green Crap" Scorponok! (Ok... that one was a joke...)

I'm sure you all want to hear about the Beast Machines toys... Well... you're out of luck. I didn't get a good look at them. So ah... screw you. Anyway, what I DID see looked neat. Cheetor continues to look more and more like Chirpy the Mutant Hellbeast, and the Vehicon we saw was PHAT. I still wonder how they're gonna engineer the Blackarachnia toy, tho. Maybe a GiganoDragon-style "zipper" transform...

After that, it was time to eat. Went with the World's Worst People to Burger King. Mmmm. It was FREAKY to see a Star Saber, just SITTING on a table in BURGERKING. I had a Rodeo Cheeseburger, which are actually *really* good. At least, as good as Burger King fare gets. And only $.99 SPeaking of cheap food, according to Hasbro, there's no BM Happy Meal promotion planned. Waah. No REALLY cheapass toys.

Returned to the 'Con for the MUSH panel. Very basic, how to connect, how to play, brief overviews of the MUSHes... and the TLY music video. Raksha made this lil' video, to some song I didn't recognize. It had some still footage of the various MUSH characters (many of which were drawn by Heather, yay!) and such. One interesting point: The screen showed a loop of Soundwave playing a recording while the lyrics said "and the music played on and on." Neat. After that... well... it degenerated into "Decepticons are cool. Here's why." There was one guy there, who will remain nameless, mainly because A: If you were there, you know who he was, and B: He might be reading this, and plotting to kill me at BC 2000, who was extremely disturbing in his message. Decepticons rule, it'd be a good thing if they drained the earth of all energy and killed all the humans, and Thundercracker is cute. I'm not going to get into it, but it all boiled down to "Well, you're thinking about it like a human" or whatever the quote was. Kudos to Perceptor (the WWJD one, not the TFWW one) for bringing up the "Isn't genocide, generally speaking, a BAD THING?" question. I won't get much farther into this, suffice it to say that he was creepy. That, and he owes a certain fanfic's author an apology. "Maybe the human race deserves to die." Sheesh. With you in it? "Oh. Me Grimlock no think about that." Or something.

We get to see BM again. It's still neat. Yeah. Primal's still ugly, BA's still pink, and the soundtrack still rules. And if someone codes a MIDI of the theme, I will name my firstborn after them. Even IF it's a TF name. "Walky! Come here, son.."

Hung out with the WiiGii people again. Yay! This time, we gathered in Tonyfitz's room and messed around. There HAD to be about 20 people in there. Got to see THE Diapered Fort Max, a Deathsaurus, a StarSaber, Orgytron, Overlord, and some BWNeo guys. VERY cool. THEN, we took our cassette decks, and did *A READING!* WWFF: Trial Of The Century, As Performed By Various People in Tony's Hotel Room. That went over well, so we broke out some MG-Dinobot fics. I read for Rattrap, Scorponok, Rampage, Quickstrike, and various computers. Heather did a KILLER Blackarachnia. Very cool. Then, Heather wanted to go home. So, Trixter was cool and drove us to her place. I went back and hung out more. It was cool. Someone (Swift_Eagle?) had a 10$ "Tyrannosaur-Bot" knockoff that we dubbed "Mega-Rex" after the questionable protagonist of later MG-Dinobot stories. He was weird. The only TF I've ever seen with a halo. We tried to take over the room we were in earlier Friday, but some Decepticon fans ahad claimed it as Decepticon Story Time. Heh. They had the old UK kids books. "Laserbeak's Savage Fury," or something.

Sunday

Day 3: Five Faces Of Stuff

"We had two daughters... and a Land Rover."
-Heather, as Brawn's widow.

Up early, caught the ass end of MTMTE. It's still cheezy after all these years. I CAN however, see where the 'Con fans get their "cons love each other" stuff from. That and what I GUESS was supposed to be Ravage giving exposition. Heh. He had a neat scratchy voice. Meow meow kitty.

MST3K Presentation: Started off with the WONDERFUL ":Think Transformers" ad. Then a lil' video with ManOrAstroman? music. The actual MST was great, except that the riffs were occasionally hard to hear. The riffed episodes were: "Dark Voyage," "Fire On The Mountain," "The God Gambit," and, the classic... "CARNAGE IN C-MINOR!" *whee!* You haven't lived until you hear Basso Profundo say "Once ah et a bahbeh!" BRAWN LIVES! (and he's apparently married to my girlfriend!)

Voice Panel: Very cool. Mostly people kissing McNeil's ass. Someone asked Jim Byrnes MY Waspinator/Kenny/Titanic question. And screwed it up. Not to mention Jim Byrnes had no idea what the person was talking about. Various WiiGiiers got McNeil to say "Hungry? TALK FOR YOU!" Cool. "Could Scott McNeil do any G1 characters?" "Maybe." Kinda funny that Jim Byrnes has NEVER SEEN AN EPISODE of BW. McNeil's seen a couple. HOWEVER: Scott McNeil reads fanfic! How cool is THAT? I only hope he's read good stuff (Neale Davidson?) and not bad stuff (MG-Dinobot?) According to McNeil, Dragonball Z has moved its dubbing studio, and, as such, he won't be Piccolo in future episodes! WAAAH! He also SANG in Waspinator's voice. "You're having my baaaby... what a wonderful way to saaaay that you love mee....." On the way out of the panel, someone got McNeil to deliver a foul torrent of cursing in Waspinator's voice! "F***in' s***, man... d'ohhhh F***!! F***in' s***..."

THE SINGLE COOLEST THING I SAW AT BOTCON: Scott McNeil, on the FLOOR in the MIDDLE of the dealer room, signing autographs and hanging out with fans, as the Hartmans tried to get him to go where he was SUPPOSED to be, behind a table somewhere. Got my Japanese Waspy signed. Scott McNeil is a god. Jim Byrnes is up there too. He was quite content to sit back and let McNeil get all the raving fans. Somewhere along the way Zack picked up a GiganoDragon. That dude RULES. I can't wait for the US release. With only a few dollars left, I swagged a set of Kabaya kits from the Japanese table, for 5$. Pretty cool. The lil' Megastorm RULES. He's guarding my Monitor now, along with my "Decoy" Jetfire. Also swagged a $10 Dinobot knockoff. Now, I can re-enact MG-Dinobot fics! "Hungry" TALK FOR YOU!!! At some point I scored a MOC GoBots VanGuard. Heather can explain it way better than I can.

The Last Panel: The Hartmans are here, and they had good news! BotCon was IN THE BLACK! Yes, that's right, the Hartmans did *NOT* lose money! YAAAAAY! Also, for those of you who HAVEN'T heard... BotCon '00. Fort Wayne IN. Woo. (Atlanta is apparently out of the question, it's too expensive. Same for Houston and a few other cities... looks like that Southern BotCon might NOT happen... Miami?) Final Attendance: 1050. WOW. Notes: TM Terrorsaur and TM CHeetor were considered as exclusives. Also, some of the G2 molds from BW2 were apparently made available, but not used. (aw, hell... I wanted a BC exclusive Trypticon!)

Nifty Music Videos!: Well, as a last special treat, we got to see Blue-Jackal's Neato Videos. They were extremely cool. Lots of neat usage of video capture stuff. THe real highlight was during the "nyaaaaaaah-naaaaaaa" bit in "Instruments Of Destruction" where Inferno seemed to sing along. Neat. Those were just cool. I still wanna see a "Dare To Be Stupid" one, tho. Lots of WAAAAAZPINATOR! Yay!

That was about it. One last trip to Subway with Heather, and it was all over.

PEOPLE I MET: Trixter, LV, Walky, Windchaser, Picard42, Perceptor TFWW, Perceptor, Skyjammer, Hydra, Steve Stonebraker, Blue Jackal, Doug Dlin, Swift_Eagle, Ol' Dirty Steve, Raksha, Tonyfitz, Vulcana, Rob Powers, Mono@TLY, Geist@TLY, Elita-One@TLY, Saberwind, Dalmation, Ben Yee, M Sipher, Megatron33, Billy (Friend of Trixie), Skyflight, and uh... a buncha other people.

PEOPLE I DIDN'T MEET: (IOW, Where the hell were you?) Dave Van Domelen, Neale Davidson, WARendfeld.

See ya next year!

Hooper_X