9:00 a.m.
Breakfast time. A banana, a peanut butter sandwitch, and most importantly, the official bev-RAGE of Chainsaw Buffet: “Time in a Bottle”. It’s not yet available in stores, but you can make it yourself with little effort. The recipe is really quite simple:
Combine the full contents of Mountain Dew and Red Bull into any size container. Consume until pupils become the size of dust specs and time appears to have stood still.
WARNING:Control of time and space may be disorienting at first. Please drink “Time in a Bottle” responsibly, to avoid head explosion.
9:25 a.m.
After mastering control over time and space, it’s time to watch some good ol’ fashioned Saturday-morning cartoons…
Hey, it’s the Care Bears! Holy S#!7!! There’s a cross-dressing cyborg Care Bear!!! I just crapped my pants!!!! I can’t stop using exclamation points!!!!!!!!11111111oneoneoneonewonwonwon
10:20 a.m.
I begin standing in line for the “Voice Actor Extravaganza” panel, featuring Greg Ayres and Johnny Yong Bosch. I’ve been to quite a few of these over the years, and the questions are always the same:
But, of course, I find myself here once again, this time to ask first-time MTAC guest Johnny Bosch the most important question of all:
Exactly how many hours ahead or behind of us is Morphin’ Time? Because I want to set my watch by it …
(His Response:) “What time is it right now?” (Me looking at my watch) … “It’s Morphin’ Time!!”
Well played, Mr. Bosch. Well played, indeed.
11:40 a.m.
I begin standing in what I believe to be the front of the line for the aforementioned Mr. Bosch’s autograph …
12:25
Still standing in line, and no sign of Mr. Bosch. I assumed the delay had something to do with some unfortunate bit of business with a child who was separated from his guardian in the Dealer’s Room. Thankfully, the child was recovered, unharmed, thanks to the efforts of Public Safety- who in all seriousness, has been terrific this year. But more on them here in a second…
As the Dealer’s Room is opened once again, one of our friends comes by to inform both us and the gentleman from Public Safety at the “front” of the line that the autograph signings had been moved to the “opposite” end of the line. Sucks to be me. However, Public Safety sees to it that I get to go not-too-far back in the line. I get my Gankutsuou box set and trusty convention autograph book signed, thank Mr. Bosch for coming to see us here at MTAC, and begin to be on my way when …
UNCHARACTERISTICALLY UNFUNNY SUPER-SERIOUS COMMENT:
I see public safety asking a young lady (who I had noticed had been standing next to Mr. Bosch at the autograph table since the at least the time I had been moved to the correct end of the line) to grab her belongings and leave Mr. Bosch alone and leave the convention. I’d like to take a moment and thank Public Safety for looking after our guests. I know that Mr. Bosch knows 79,378,491,837.12 different ways to kill a human being with his bare hands, but he is (to the best of my knowledge, at least) a human being entitled to the same privacy and safety as the rest of us. I know he’s too awesome to adequately be put into words, but please, at least grant the man a little privacy and respect.
We here at the Buffet salute you, Public Safety, and offer our sincerest apologies to Mr. Bosch, and want to assure him that while we count ourselves among his biggest fans, that we here at the Buffet (and MTAC) wish to treat him with nothing but decency and respect.
WE NOW RETURN TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED MADNESS, ALREADY IN PROGRESS
12:45 p.m.
The Sommelier and I go over to Artist’s Alley and visit the booth for those Rawk Gawds of MTAC, The Man Power. The Sommelier wanted to get his CD signed and let them know he wanted to have their babies, and although I had foolishly left my CD in the room, I decided to salute their rawksome performance from the prior evening in person. Also, I made them aware of my glowing review of their performance in this very blog, so at this point, if you’re reading this, welcome to the Buffet, O Ye Rock Gods of MTAC!
We also had the esteemed pleasure of meeting one of this evenings performers, The Slants, who overheard our conversation with The Man Power and wanted one of our many business cards, which you may have seen scattered throughout the convention halls. I assure the band that the Sommelier and I will be in attendance for their performance this evening and will be sure to let all the internets know just how hard they rocked. They assure me that their show will not disappoint, and based on my Captains Law, I have every reason to have complete faith in them. Should they be reading, we also extend The Slants a hearty-har-har Chainsaw Buffet welcome. Just remember that you invited us up on to the stage tonight when Public Safety comes to drag us away with Chuck Norris-like efficiency. See you at the show!!
2:00 p.m.
I finally decide to make my way into the Dealer’s Room for the first time today. Some nice things are on display today that weren’t there on Friday, such as a rather nice figure of the nameless protagonist from Persona 3.
2:45 p.m.
Upon exiting the Dealer’s Room, it occurs to me that the entire convention is busting at the seams. Bravo, Nashville, as it appears this year’s MTAC is a great success. But seriously, could about half of you fine folks go home right now so I have room to walk around? Where in the hell did all you folks come from anyway!?
4:00 p.m.
After narrowly escaping back to our room with our lives, the Chef, Maitre’D and I decide to partake in the “reason for the season”, if you will. The Chef had purchased some DVDs, and we watched a couple of episodes of a little-known show called Moonlight Mile. For having been a show I’d never heard of, I was quite pleasantly surprised. It’s definitely not for the kiddies, though, since it’s rather graphic and very gritty to be an anime version of The Right Stuff. Definitely worth a watch, if you’re old enough for some of the subject matter, though.
5:00 p.m.
I decided to attend the songwriting panel hosted by The Slants, in hopes of perhaps getting some advice for our first hit single for Kungfutron. The panel’s already paying off, since I’ve already got the first few lines for our first big hit:
Sorry, dude. I didn’t mean to f*#& your mom last night…
She was drunk, and I was bored.
Don’t worry my friend. She wasn’t that good anyway.
She passed out on your bed 90 seconds in and was screaming your name.
Maybe the good folks of Chickenbox would be interested in it.
6:10 p.m.
After visiting the good folks at Chibi Town over in Artist’s Alley to pick up a couple of pins, I felt a percussive blast approaching something close to the mythical “Brown Note”. Turns out, it was the truly amazing drumming abilities of the Nashville Lotus Taiko Team. At first, I was impressed by the force of their drum beats, but then I realized the amount of pure skill involved. These people were freaking insane. I’m glad I was there to check them out before their performance for the evening came to a close.
7:45 p.m.
We decided to order Chinese food for dinner from a restaurant named Bamboo Garden. If you happen to be reading this tonight and wondering what to do for food, or if you just live in the area the convention’s being held in, we highly recommend the restaurant. Good prices, hot food, and they even delivered to our hotel room. Kudos, ladies and gentlemen.
My fortune: “Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.”
…..
I don’t get it.
8:40 p.m.
The Sommelier and I head down to get in line for what we hope will be an excellent performance by The Slants. The line for the concert is fairly long, and we only anticipate it will get even longer as we get closer to showtime.
9:20 p.m.
We’re still in line at this point, but we’re still in high spirits. Apparently, the fine tech folks are having a little trouble getting everything ready to go. But hey, these things happen, right?
10:00 p.m.
After over an hour of waiting, the doors to the main event hall finally open. Volunteers begin working the crowd as everyone starts piling in. Finally, the band begins to take the stage. And that’s when it happened:
My face got completely melted the f*&$ off.
If I were to try to describe what I witnessed into words, I’d have to call The Slants an unstoppable force the likes of which nothing in this world can possibly even hope to slow down. These folks literally rocked so hard, the drum set on stage couldn’t even keep up with them.
Remember now, ladies and gentlemen, that the Sommelier and I had stood in line for over an hour, and yet we were compelled to stand and dance and cheer and try pitifully to match the band’s energy as they rocked the stage while climbing speakers, drum sets, and rocking the hell off of anything and everything that wasn’t melted down.
Hear me, O Internets, and hear me well. Before anyone else may dare proclaim it, I proclaim here and now that we here at Chainsaw Buffet are The Slants number one fans now, and forevermore.
If you are reading this now, oh great rockers, please allow us to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for allowing us to have stood in the presence of true greatness.
11:00 p.m.
As melted faces, dropped jaws, and blown minds are scraped off the floor from the Slants concert, the Sommelier and I (after picking up our Slants CDs, of course) go and speak with one of the only other musical forces that can call The Slants “equals”, The Man Power. We promptly thank the band, as it was they who encouraged us to experience The Slants in the first place. With so many magnificent performances, expectations ran extremely high for the highly touted Eyeshine performance.
11:30 p.m.
Finally, the Eyeshine concert begins. As expected, the band is truly phenomenal. Who could have guessed that an anime convention would hold some of the best performances imaginable?
Sadly, though, the Eyeshine concert was marred by a tinge of disappointment (though I must stress it was not, I repeat NOT due to any shortcoming of the band, whatsoever). Due to all of the schedule delays, the band’s concert was cut remarkably short.
I feel that I should take a moment to point out that, while these things happen (and, as was the case here, can’t be avoided), it was really we here at MTAC who suffered as a result. Still, Eyeshine has a big place in our heart along with all of the other wonderful bands here in attendance. We’re just a little sad you couldn’t stick around on stage for just a bit longer.
Now I know how Brett Favre feels when he runs out of Vicadin and has no way to stop the pain he feels inside.
Allegedly.
1:00 a.m.
After a brief return to our room to grab our glow sticks and down some more “Time in a Bottle” (IMPORTANT NOTE:While we here at Chainsaw Buffet cannot speak for other attendees, we can assure you that our evening was not brought to you by the letters “X” and “E” … Allegedly), the Maitre’D and I go back downstair with some of our female friends (includine my lovely wife, of course) for the Greg Ayres’ always popular rave. Sadly, the aforementioned issues mentioned earlier which caused Eyeshine and the other acts of the evening to cut their performances short caused the rave (the evening’s last event, scheduled to go on until early that morning) to start a little late. To their credit, however, the crew got everything set up for the event very quickly, so that …
1:30 a.m.
The room finally opens up for the rave, and the Maitre’D and I make our way to the front of the room. Wait a minute … the Maitre-effing-‘D!? If he starts dancing, that will surely signal the End of All Things, and everyone at the rave will be reduced to puddles of orange-flavored Tang (insert juvenile Tang joke here).
Oh thank God. The Maitre’D isn’t so much at the rave as he is standing still in the rave. Still, it’s kind of hard to get your rave on when one of the members of your group is just kind of standing there beind you, just looking on with no idea of what was going or what to do … just like Isiah Thomas coaching the New York Knicks, only this didn’t go on for four years. (Tradition dictates that I use the word “allegedly” here for both humor and continuity’s sake, but this really happened, so no “allegedly” is forthcoming. Sorry, Isiah.)
2:00 a.m.
We’re all getting our rave on and having a glow-stick induced good time when some random guy walks us and says, “This guy is the worst DJ ever! Is this guy paid or is he a volunteer? Someone needs to tell the staff to get this guy off the stage!” I smirked a little and told the “gentleman” to go right ahead, and the guy walked up to Public Safety to, I imagine, express his opinion … and possibly menstruate all over the rave. Allegedly.
Admittedly, I know nothing about disc jockeying, and next to nothing about music. But I do know that we here at the Buffet enjoyed ourselves (for the most part, anyway, but more on that later), and nearly everyone else did, as well. And for an anime convention, I can’t imagine a better situation than having a well known and respected guest such as Greg Ayres officiating. It’s like having Jose Canseco hosting a pool party at a BALCO company event…
…..
Wait for it …
…..
Allegedly.
2:15 a.m.
The fun train got derailed a bit when one of our female companions lost her digital camera. That meant, of course, that your trusty Busboy was called upon for cleanup duty. It is my job, after all.
So I trudged forth into a nightmare forest of ravers and glow sticks, scouring the grounds for our companion’s lost camera. Sadly, I was danced up on by 3,782,389,423.5 otaku for naught.
3:00 a.m.
Earlier than expected, the rave ends. There are various rumors flying about as to why this was done, but these are unconfirmed, and your trusty Busboy is, of course, an objective journalist. As the room was emptied out, Public Safety was nice enough to let us back in long enough to search once again for the lost camera. Sadly, not a trace of it was found. So if anyone reading this happens to come across an orange digital camera with lots of pictures of Naruto cosplayers over the age of consent on it, be sure to let us here at the Buffet know.
RSS Feed
Podcast
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube Videos