FanExpo 2010!

Okay, so FanExpo is over. Three days of chaos at the end of the summer break. I met a lot of great people and saw a lot of neat stuff (pictures below). However, before I continue with this account of what I saw and did there, let me just say that Hobby Star Marketing (the company that runs FanExpo) really screwed up on this one. They're known for not giving a damn about what their fans think, but this time was really bad. If I've pre-ordered a Deluxe Pass, I shouldn't have to wait in a three hour line to get in. It was bad to begin with, but on the second day the building filled to capacity, and anyone who left (ie. to get lunch or something) was forced to wait in a massive line that could only move when a large group of people came out (so that's three people at a time with a wait of several minutes in between. You do the math!). The problem is, Hobby Star kept selling tickets! Now, I'm all for letting everyone have their turn, but if the building is full to capacity and you've got eight hundred people waiting to get back in, I think that's a pretty good sign to stop selling entry passes.


Anyway, now that I'm done ranting...

I apologize if any of the pictures are grainy/blurry/too bright etc. It's amazing that I got my camera too work at all.

I decided I should wear my Union costume again (that I wore to Anime North). It's really comfortable, and I love the colours (that's Canadian spelling for all you Americans out there). Not to mention that Canada is a member nation of the Union in Gundam 00, so it seemed befitting.

I took the train into Toronto every day, because it was simpler than driving, and cheaper than staying in a hotel.

Real men take the train.

Upon actually entering the convention, the first things made evident were the large booths in the middle of the showroom. For the sake of simplicity, let us call these the TRON booth and the ALIEN booth.

The Tron Booth, in all its glowy glory.

Stuff at the Tron Booth

Black Guard's Helmet

Just a side note, these suits and helmets are apparently what they actually what they wear onscreen. No CG involved here, folks!

The Alien Booth was in fact meant as a promotion for the new Alien Anthology BluRay. It featured four opening cryo pods, where you could "sleep", and be sufficiently terrified out of your wits.

Weyland-Yutani is bad people.

Some employees of "The Company".

Oh, and they had free cardboard facehuggers. What's not awesome about that?


Hasbro also had a booth, which included numerous dioramas dedicated to their products. Perhaps the best one was the battle of Hoth diorama.

It's no wonder the Empire won.

Trench Warfare

One of the caves

A view of one side of the hangar

The whole diorama was filled with interconnected tunnels, and even had Han and Chewbacca shooting at the Probe Droid.


The Gaming section had a Halo Reach booth, but I couldn't be bothered to stand in line.

All they had was Firefight... I want Forge!

Convention guests this year included Stan Lee, William Shatner, Peter Mayhew, David Cronenberg, Summer Glau, and Ogata Megumi. If you don't know who even a single one of those people is, shame on you (and go look them up). Unfortunately, due to the Con being overcrowded, I have no pictures of any of them. I do, however, have pictures of THE BATMOBILE!

Dadadadadadadada Dadadadadadadada BATMAN!

Of course, as with any convention, FanExpo is really about spending money. Of course, that means there's plenty of awesome merchandise to go around.

Perhaps the most interesting dealer's booth for me was this place that carried video games not released outside of Japan. Of course, most of it was extremely expensive (for my budget anyway).

Haruhi has a game? I didn't even know that.

Code Geass!

I was especially pleased to discover that they had this in stock.

A brand new copy of A.C.E.: R!

Properly called Another Century's Episode: R, this is a Mecha Fighting Game featuring machines from Gundam, Code Geass, Macross, Full Metal Panic, and Armored Core, to name a few.

Some Gundam Games

And that's just one vendor! They had everything else geek-y under the sun.

More stuff! More I say!

I think I'll talk about costumes next... Or maybe just show you.


But since I'm incredibly tired right now, I'll save the costumes and loot for part 2.

Oh, and for those who met me there and want my email, it's Jern_Gundam@hotmail.com

They Mock Me....

The gods of irony have lashed out at me once again.

Why?!!  Why do you taunt me?

I had a copy of Halo 3: ODST pre-ordered (of course), but with my Xbox in the shop for an undetermined amount of time, I now have no way to play it.  Which, as you can imagine, has me pretty... miffed.  Grrr, and all that.

Well, when I get my console back, you can be sure that A Real Pity will be making the move to ODST.  Until then....

Fun stuff!

...until then, I've got things to do.

No news is good news?

I have to ask, are you guys even reading this blog? Because it's gotten kind of lonely in here, what with nobody commenting. IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE!? HELLOOOOO! ANSWER ME! GIVE ME A SIGN HERE!

And now that the echoes have finished rebounding through the the vast, empty, expanses of my blogging universe, we come to today's "news". Which is that my Xbox has now been repaired! Huzzah!! After three days of sitting at home and doing absolutely nothing, not even Gunpla, this is the only thing really worth talking about right now. Yes, A Real Pity; alias Jern, is back!

See you all on Halo 3, hopefully!

360: Experimental Surgery

I'm going to take my Xbox to the local repair shop today, where they'll probably perform all kinds of Tech-Butchery on it. We can only hope that the "doctors" don't break anything.

With any luck, A Real Pity will be back on Halo 3 within the week. I'd love to finish some of my maps so that I can talk about them here.

My Xbox - A Tragedy

I decided to try my Xbox today, because it's been overheating less lately, but I underestimated Halo 3's processing requirements. That was probably a mistake. It overheated in less than five minutes, which was in simplest terms, annoying. So I'm going to get it repaired as soon as possible. In the meantime, I'll try to work some more on my gunpla, so that I can get some photos up.

That's it for now.

Photo Shoot

Well, my Xbox is overheating like crazy, and I think the seals are melting (or some such technobabble), so since I can't use it I've decided that this weekend I'm going to get my camera and start taking pictures.  What kind of pictures, you ask?  You'll just have to wait and see....