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I think it was 2 years ago that it was decided to move Gen-Con, the largest gaming convention, out of Milwaukee and into Indiana. Gamefest was created in its wake. It's in the Midwest Airlines Center, the same building Gen-Con was in. Since I work for a card shop and we were setting up there, I got a free ride in. After packing the van we borrowed up completely with our own stuff and consignment product from ACD, we were ready to go. Here are some of the pictures I got.
Even though we were signed up for a small booth, we lucked out with a no-show and somebody who needed our booth to get a nice corner booth that was very close to the gamers area. This is a good idea of where I was for several hours each day. I have to say the booth next to us that you can see in the picture, Titan Games, were pretty cool. Basically, what they did was buy and sell used board games. Apparently, while some can be sold for nothing more than 25 cents at a garage sale, several 70's and 80's board games can sell for over $100 if everything's in good condition. So check your closets.
A bit of a look behind the curtains behind our booth, during some costume contest. While there were a few people who dressed up as recognizable characters, for the most part the costumes ranked under "general fantasy" or "I couldn't wear this anywhere else". The winner of the costume contest for the fantasy category, which was 80% of all who entered, was the girl who was wearing the chainmail bikini that you could pretty much see through. Well, that figures.
During the contest, some guy named Luke Ski and his friend Frozen Dinner came out and performed a couple of songs. One was their smash hit that couldn't figure out what Eminem song it was parody-ing, "Stealing like a Hobbit", and some other song about "Shake your Booty Fangirl", which was about the only lyrics they had. Well, at least it was funny, because it became pretty obvious that the guy really didn't have any musical talent. Also in the picture is someone who dressed up as the female jester from Batman, a Klingon, and the DJ who thinks that Luke Ski is the funniest guy in the world.
My vote for the winners would have to be these guys, the little Jedis. Since part of the contest was kind of like a talent show type thing, people were allowed about 30 seconds to do whatever. These kids did a typical 7-year old's rendition of any light saber fight, in which the little one got killed. He was on the ground lifeless for about 20 minutes, leading some to believe he actually was dead. Because, you know, he was completely still and didn't respond to anyone pushing him telling him to wake up. Of course he was acting the whole time, but he sure did fool a lot of people. That kids got a future as a dead corpse in some major Hollywood movie.
Scotty the pirate was mad that the Jedis beat him in the costume contest, so he challenged him to a good ol' fashioned swordfight. Except the kid gets a pair of foam axes because Scotty doesn't think he can beat him. I myself participated in this tomfoolery, claiming eight victims before being brought to justice by a man in a dress who kept hitting me in the hand. Hey, if people had been doing this as LARPing for 8 years, they would know all the outs to this and when the best time to strike is. The bad part was, as a rule, you couldn't hit them in the groin. What kind of a rule is that!? When I get into a real swordfight, my instinct is to do the ol' sword to the groin, which apparently is what they teach you in ninja school.
Speaking of LARPing, we got to play my famous Live Action Role Playing game, "NBA Courtside". I could still use my Kobe Bryant character, except this time not only could I kick ass slam-dunking, but also got to rape attention-starved teenagers who wanted to visit me.
This picture was taken by "Russel the Love Muscle" who wanted to major in photography. It seems that no matter what I do, every time I develop a roll of film, there's always a picture like this. I don't know exactly who it is in the picture, or if he'll ever be able to see again with the flash being so close. It's a shame this picture turned out yet my hilarious photo of "Fuch's Copy Systems" was barely visible.
When leaving the con to go get food that wasn't a blatent "We have to charge three times normal price" type deal, you could always see this guy. We taunted him and made fun of him until we found out he wasn't real, at which point we kept on taunting him, except this time we knocked him over. Seriously though, at a distance it looks real. Apparently there was a security guard who had worked in the building for over 50 years, and as a symbol of graditude, but a life-like rendition of him in his normal post.
When it was late and we could find nobody to draft, Russel and I decided that we oughta go to Amazing Adventures in Pewaukee. Now I thought the Manitowoc card shop I worked at was cool, but these are some of the coolest and funniest Magic players I've ever seen. The guy who ran the shop was playing board games most of the time and they were open until 2 in the morning, maybe later...bottom line is, if it's late and you want to play Magic, that's the place to go. It's even the shop where Kurt Hahn, the creator of the 5-color 250-card format, plays Magic. He has the nickname of "Fat Man", but it's kind of redundant, because there are thousands of Magic players whose nickname is "Fat Man", so I renamed him "Loud Man", but the same problem applied. So now I just have to call him "I'm sorry I took the Shock over the Silklash Spider second pick, after all I had no idea Russel was going R/U as well as U/G is a weak color combination". Now that's catchy.
Here's a photo rendition of what it was like to show up at Gen-Con at 7 in the morning and have to wait 5 hours in line to get in, with another 2 hours if you actually wanted to play in an event. Chris "Zinger" Benzinger, who has a bad habit of shouting "I masturbate" in front of parents, decides to take out his rage on Nathan Petrashek, while Chris McDonell in the back can only watch in horror.
Now Chris McDonell decides to step in and point his finger at me while Nathan looks on in disgust. Chris McDonell is a funny guy, mainly because he was the one who told me the funniest joke ever. It goes like this, "How many kids with ADD does it take to screw in a lightbulb?". The answer, "Wanna ride bikes?" He's also known for being a general ladies man and driving a red Corvette. I wish I was more like Chris McDonell, but I guess my Escort just isn't working.
Here's a rather blurry picture of Dawn Emmanuele (probably spelled wrong) striking a sharp pose with one of her museum-type replica objects she brought along for her booth. The object was a staff with a snake on the end with ruby-like eyes that could be pulled out to reveal a sword. I wanted the thing, but I wasn't 18 and my fake school ID only proves I passed the 9th grade. As it turned out, she was a professional artist. I told her I was a professional artist too and offered her an art trade. My side of the deal was nothing more than some stick figures drawn on a napkin with a fake signature. She didn't have the time for hers, but she knew that I was the famous artist from New Traditionalists and sweared she'd make it up to me if I would only come to her deluxe hotel room. After fighting off a couple of gang members and kung-fu ninjas, I finally decided that if I couldn't even find my own hotel, there was probably no chance of me finding hers and that if I really wanted to be proffesional, I wouldn't have any time for this jibber jabber. That's too bad, because judging by this picture, she's a pretty snazzy dresser as well, so at least we'd have something in common.
When the guy who ran the store told me that Chessex was going to be there, I advised him against taking his Tupperware container of dice, because Chessex are the dice people. Too bad he didn't listen, because Chessex obviously had us outclassed. There were easily 100,000 dice in here, that could be picked out for a quarter each. Or, if you wanted, you could take a random pitcher for 36 dollars. Me and Justin "strongest man who ever played Dungeons & Dragons" Schnell decided to set the pitcher up against the price sheet and play dice hoops. After filling it up one by one for about 20 minutes, we figured that no one was going to yell at us so the fun was all taken out of it. Since at this point we had gathered a crowd, including some girl in a tight leather suit that was obviously not from any fantasy-type book but was still considered appropriate wear for the con. I told Schnell that we should "quick walk away and not buy it". So we did.
Originally, this picture was unaltered and of a person named, well, let's call him...Chester Merling. Chester complained about his picture being here. It's because he may or may not have knocked over a certain person's huge 250-card deck, causing that person to lose some cards and damage others, because that certain person might be poaching on a deal, even though all he wanted to do was play 250 and only offered his opinion on what a card was worth because he asked if it was worth that much. That certain person thinks Chester acted very unprofessional and arrogantly, but I suppose that the 'certain person' can let bygones be bygones.
I know there's no legal recourse for putting someone's picture up, unauthorized, on a free website. And I also know that taking it down...or modifying it, whatever, is the pussy way out. I have my side of the story and I can tell my people it's true, and he can have his side and claim that to be true to his people. I suppose that his store is much bigger than ours because it is in a much bigger and more popular city, thus making there more professional players play there and, if this Chester gets really pissed over the whole thing, can amount to bad press against me. And besides, if he asks me to remove the pictures and all references to him, I suppose I can be a pal and do it...although what he did was rude, it's not like he slaughtered my family or something.
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