AnimeUSA '08: Friday

After lunch with friends and some last-minute Kabuki Ball preparation, Red, Cup and I begin the quick drive to Crystal City. Here's a tidbit of our conversation on the way there:

(joining mid-conversation)
Red:	Well it's all about appearance. Ben Franklin made sure that he was always carrying a different book every day, and seen going in and out of the library by his professors. It made everyone think he was smart.
Red:	...do you think that if you pretend to be something long enough, you take on that role?
Me:	I think it has a lot to do with what you're pretending to be. If you pretend to do manual labor for years, you're bound to become great at that job. But people can fake intelligence for a long time without actually getting smarter...
Red:	What? Ben Franklin became president!
Blue & Cup:	...what was that?
Red:	Are you guys kidding me? He's on the 100 dollar bill!
This is where Cup and I start laughing hysterically.
Red:	Wait, are you guys fucking with me?
Cup:	No, I'm trying to figure out if YOU'RE fucking with ME
Red:	Shit...are you serious? ... Oh God, can we not tell anyone about this?
Blue:	Yea, I won't tell anyone. But you can bet your ass this is going on the blog

After we arrive, we see something amazing. AnimeUSA is our first hotel-based con. Do you know what hotels have that convention centers do not?

A BAR!!!

So after a bit of social lubrication, we make our way down a few floors to the Artist Alley Operations room. The Head Op isn't there right now (what a cool name for a con job, by the way), so they tell us to kill an hour and a half. What perfect timing! Just across the hall is the ballroom, where rehearsal for the Kabuki Ball is just beginning!

The rehearsal was a lot of fun.
Here's a picture of us with our instructor. He teaches and competes professionally. That's his "competition" clothing.
We learned how to Waltz, Foxtrot and Rumba.
Dance lessons pretty much made up for the entry fee. $50 for an anime con and ballroom dance? Good deal.

So after rehearsal, we set up our table arrangements and then head out to a sports bar for dinner. Red proceeds to get happy on a few jack and cokes. Then we dress up and head off to the real ball.

The Kabuki Ball was surreal.

I've never seen so many properly dressed otaku gathered for one thing. Not only that, but dancing? You had me at hello, AnimeUSA.

(You also had me at hello, Cup)

There were also some very cool couple-cosplays at the ball! Aside from this Tenchi Muyo pair, there was this awesome Fate/Stay group. The Rin had a dress that played off of the sweater that she wears, and her Archer looked pretty spot-on. I can't seem to find the picture, though :3
Also a Wang Liu Mei and Hong Long pair from Gundam 00. The lighting wasn't very good for my shitty camera, though... so a few pictures didn't come out well ;~;


The ball was great. This alone made the trip to AnimeUSA worth it, and we didn't even have a table yet!

Rejection can be rough, though...

Oh well, it was a time for celebration! It was the Con President's (or maybe Pope's?) birthday! A cake was brought out, and as expected of otaku, immediate conspiracy theories about the "truthfulness" of the cake at hand. (The Cake is a Lie, for those of you can't think with portals)
Please take note of the shirtless man on his cake. God, I love otaku.

After the cake, we pretty much stayed and danced a couple more hours until they kicked us out for FreezePop!

We were too pumped to wait in line for the show or go home. So we ran around the con, caught some cosplayers, and went to the "Anime Dating Show" and "What Not to Say to a Female Otaku" panels.

We probably should have gone home earlier, considering the table preparation we needed to do for the next day :x