William Chow's Personal Web Page

San Diego Comic Con 2003

Below I have some of the photos of great times that were had. Feel free to click on the thumbnail to enlarge it.

 

This year was the first time I had a gone to the con for a year since I skipped over last year. The new convention centre was not finished last year but now it is done.

Our passengers this year were: William, Warren, Victor, Paul and Dave.

 

Go on to Page 2

 

 

 

This is a detailed but rough iternary of the Seattle, Los Angeles and San Deigo Trip.  Information and numbers are as follows for reference.

It all started when someone was asking about the conventions in general. I don't usually go to things like Anime Expo. But San Deigo, is really nice, so I decided to look it up. Last time, I used Amtrak, so I looked into that again. They had a seat sale, pay for one, second person rides for free. So the trip from Seattle to San Deigo was $162 US, return trip, for 2 people. Holy crap! The last time I did that it was like $199 US just for myself. So, I figured out to add $46 for the bus from Seattle to Vancouver and sent my con registration in and I was in business!

The hotel of choice again is the Ebassey Suites.

It was a bit rocky at points, as the person who was planning to go decided that he couldn't afford to go, that was Dave. So, Paul who just came off a trip to Japan and who just came back from Anime Expo, decided to take up that really cheap ticket to San Deigo.

It turns out in the end, Dave ends up getting a $200 USD travel voucher for voluntarily missing a flight on a trip with his brother to Las Vegas. He uses this chance to do Seattle to San Deigo.

Warren and Victor has never tried a convention this large, and they both were a point where they can afford it, so why not.

That made 5.

 

 

Actually, we had 6 down with us. Dave had a travelling companion, Maris. She opted to save the $15 to stay at the hostel. We were thinking, what?!?! Isn't like a nice shower, free breakfast, free happy hour and air con worth $15? But no, she chose to be in a noisy room with jillions of other smelly and unshowered strangers, a metal cot, in a room that was 10 degrees hotter and more humid than outside. Oh well....

 

Monday, July 14, 2003

Today it is bright and early in the morning as I get ready to hit the train station. I pack all my usually things like camera and this laptop that I am now using to type this report in.

Victor volunteered to help give me a ride to the station at 5:00am in the morning. I packed a lunch, and dropped by the 7-11 to pick up some Powerade for the trip. The drink was good because it still tastes good even warm. However, in restrospect, the sandwich was a bad idea since the border was rejecting all meat products so I had to eat it or throw it away.

Paul met up with us at 5:00am at the train station. The bus rolled into the station on time at 5:45am and we were off.

Victor and Warren were going to take Air Canada, so we will meet them when they get to San Deigo.

The bus travels to the border where this year, they were being really picky about what foods we were bringing into the country. Not so much weapons or drugs. They usually feed our baggage through the X-ray machine but all they did was put a hand into my travel bag and asked if my lunch had any meat or fresh fruits. I said no, I threw it all away at trash can at the front door. She waved me through.

I slept the rest of the way to Seattle Station, which is perfect since stayed up all night to make it easier for me to fall asleep on the bus and train.

I used my normal techniques for travelling the train to maximize my own comfort.

1) do the opposite of everyone else, and you will have more room for youself. So this means during the day, stay at your seat and bank hours of sleep.

2) at night time, stay in the lounge, as it is one of few places that has AC power outlets and has good tables to type on. Thus I am able to work on my pages on my lapop. When I run low on battery power, I have a place I can charge up.

3) If I want to curl up and sleep at night, the lounge car also has the longest seats to stretch out in.

The train was late leaving Seattle. Apparently, a grain frieght train had derailed earlier. When the train that was coming into Seattle, a wheel on the dining car got screwed up by the warped tracks.

So it was delayed about 3 hours out of Seattle. This gave me and Paul a good chance to walk about Seattle's international district. We found the Kinokynina bookstore area. The grocery store was closed and was changed to some weird furniture store. The bookstore was open and I went into have a look.

 

I found two artbooks of interest by Aioshi and Fujimawa. I was hoping for breastman's new book "Love" but that is ok. I am sure I will find it at the con.

 

I met some interesting people on the train.

One woman who had a laptop was travelling from the East coast was in the need of power. I chatted a bit with her while both our machines were down.

I also played a round of cribbage with a kid, who a real cute cousin. However, I was able to out peg him and won that game.

I also met of couple who woman had just taught her companion the card game Crazy 8's. I played a few hours with them and all I can say was she was good...

 

By the time we were coming into the Los Angeles, the train was almost 4 hours late. It was so bad, the employees had a pool going on how late it was going to pull in. Pretty sad... You could hear them on the intercom: "The official time is 1:12am.... , We are pulling into LAX at 1:12am...., Ohhh.. It is 1:13am... The train stopped at 1:13am!" Great.... It is not like, we were suppose to be here like 10pm but what do they care.

Paul and I connected to the bus to San Deigo. A rather uneventful ride. I did try to bank some hours of sleep at the end of the train ride to make falling asleep easier on the bus. I came close to getting what I needed.

It was 4:00am in the morning in San Deigo. What the hell do you do? Official check in time at the hotel is 4:00pm. But check out time was 12:00pm noon. So the trick is to kill sometime and hope to get something early as possible.

First, we went to the hotel to check our baggage in at the hotel. That will give us the freedom to walk about.

I showed Paul where the convention centre was, where Ralph's was, where Horton Plaza was. It was at Horton's we found the McDonald's opening up for breakfast. I know, we were waiting for the 6:00am breakfast back at the hotel, but so what, I think Paul needed a cup of java.

I ordered not only coffee but also two of those new breakfast burrito and some two hashbrowns. It came to $4.70 USD which is a total rip off since it goes for about $4.30 CDN. Oh well, beggars can't be chosers and neither can tourists....

Ok, I headed back to the hotel at 7:00am, and had a seat in the lounge. They were in the middle of the free complimentary all you can eat breakfast. I had an old room card from last year, which I kept so I used this to get some food and drink. I fortunately only showed them the back magnetic stripped version of the card because they did change their cards just slightly.

I filled up on a nice plate of scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausauge and bacon. I also had some watermelon to top it off. Paul of course, whimped out and only had a few slices of watermelon. Oh well, I guess the five packs of instant noodles on the train killed his stomach.

At 10:00am, I knew I was still early but I checked all my information in. I needed to kill more time so I wandered off to the Seaport Village. They closed the arcade or maybe they relocated it but it certainly wasn't where it was suppose to be. Didn't matter much as it kinda sucked anyway.

Paul found a Mexican restaurant were I think the Taco Bell was. He order Mexican rice, which in itself must be lame. I fortunately ate for free with breakfast so I just ordered a drink.

After that, we wandered through some of the shops at Horton Plaza and the Office Depot.

At 12:00pm noon, I decided to try to check in. The room was not ready yet. Probably housekeeping hasn't finished cleaning the sperm off the bed sheets and the herpes off the towels. Anyway, I left to try again later.

I came back at 1:00pm and still no luck. I went over to Office Depot to look at the new Pocket PCs and to check to see if Warren or Victor arrived yet. Paul decided to stick it out in the hotel lobby reading his new book he bought at Horton's Plaza.

I came back at 2:00pm and still no luck. I finally asked them what is taking so long. They replied, the room isn't ready yet. I said, if it is just house keeping, I don't care, just give me a room that isn't housekept yet, I will just let the maid clean later in the afteroon.

Finally some other person came and booked me a room on the floor the maids were in the process of cleaning. She finally got us our keys. Yes, it was a close call as the maids had only just cleaned this room and were only 3 rooms away.

 

Paul, was going to shower and get our baggage. I flopped on the bed and passed out.

I missed my 3:00pm rendezvous with Victor, but fortunately, he found Paul and they got in ok..

Dave called shortly after and we all came together fine.

 

 

Here is an shot out off the balcony of our floor down to the lobby all the way down there, and remember this is all indoors. This is me in my Patlabour SV2 Uniform waiting for Buffy autographs.
And in our hotel room, we have the every happy Dave. Paul and I are busy trying to figure out where to go to next.
Here is Vic with Me talking about our digital cameras. Paul is sitting on the ard

San Diego Comic Con

July 16, 2003 Wednesday

Tonight at 5:30pm is a sneak preview night for the people who paid for their tickets in advance. Not everyone will be set up yet, since they might not have their hotel rooms booked, but a lot of the dealer's were there.

First thing you see when you get there is a huge huge line up. How huge is huge? hmmm.. Here is a step by step on how far back we had to run.

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End of the line

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walk

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90º turn at Pole C/building D

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walk to wood over hang E

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walk

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walk to entrance F

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walk to Exit G

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walk to exit H

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Walk past air out take J

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Turn around corner K

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walk to steps L

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up steps L

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on to pillar M

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on to pillar N

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on to Hall A, then B, then C

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to exhibit hall C, marked P

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through door Q

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90º turn, up escalator R

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at R turn 90º

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at S turn 90º again

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walk down under sails to

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line up to get your badge

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get into entrance queue

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the people in line in front part 1

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and part 2

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walk through doors, turn 90º

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through door and down escalator

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down escalator

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at the bottom of the escclator, turn 180º

Once you are inside you can rock!!

 

 

The Con Floor

This place is fucking huge! 400,000 sqare feet over 900 dealers here.

On the second floor , there is a nice window that faces the convention floor. Here are some shots from this over looking the floor area.

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Convention Booths

100

Marquis Models - some sexy chick cards and a comic. models were at the autograph section.

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Save Farscape booth

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200

Casamanga - on this side they sell swords.

California Hot shots - Celeberty photos and prints

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300

Heroclix and Magic stuff

Casnanga - swords as well as EverAnime CDs. Kinda useless selection. However, they did have some artbooks like half price. Breast man's Satoshi Urushihara's Ragnarok City, Love and Yuno all were like $10 USD for 2000 yen books. Also, they had G-Taste figures for $5.00 USD.

There was a Dragonball Z and Yugioh till you puke booth.

The guys who do Jojo's Bizarre adventure was here pleading their video DVD. and Magic stuff here.

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400

Function 410 - lots of cloth scrolls $10

Dumb Eggs - ie. a play on Dumb ASS, but they sell lots of SMUT DVD discontinued Beast City DVD.

Wierd item called a terrorist body bag, with God Bless America on it.

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500

Avanti-Toys - has the nice Guilty Gear X waitress resin kit for $80.

Cool Stuff - sells bootleg tapes (oohh how archaic, Americans know shit about making bootlegs. get with it, DVD man.... Especially when you are charging $15 to $20.

Comic Seller - has Red Light Manga

 

600

Jones Bones - swords and weapons

Mr. T joke toy where you press a button for making Mr. T lines.

Anime Jungle - All their booth was Sentai DVDs and LDs and Soundtracks. Tentacle Master Alan would have loved it here.

Bolt Gallery - a guy built mechas like Space Hulk guys, Star Wars mechas and other machines all built out of garage bits like bolts, nuts, washers, bike chains and nails. Quite cool.

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700

Sentai Studios - basically a Ben Dunn table

21st Century Toys - models of weapons

There is a booth selling regular Asian SMUT DVDs for $10, 3 for $25 each.

800

Great Escapes - real nice Vamperella figures

booth selling calendars like Mad, and Olivia.

old LPs, music CDs, soundtracks and old movie posters

 

900

big display of Gundam Kits, Macross Valkaries, whole bunch of variations and makes.

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Discounted Manga Books - 20% off mangas

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EchobaseToys - figures and toys, ok.

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another bootleg table of tapes. Lame....

1000

Motor City Comics - lots of signed celeberty photos

Art Shades - wall scrolls. They had a real nice Yuna from FFX.

Drunken Master - sells live HK DVDs, totally bootlegged, $15 to $20 USD each. What the hell!?! It is just stupid titles from Jackie Chan and Chow YunFat and etc. You can get them from Chinatown for $8 Cdn. What a RIP!

1100

Stan Sekai table - guy of Usagi Yojimbo comic doing his own comics, sketches and signings.

 

1200

booth with art posters and paintings

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Huge display for Shi.

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1300

Bud Plant - lots of books and hard covers, graphic novels including adult ones.

They had some custom prints selling at $1000.00 each.

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1400

Heavy Metal booth

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XXXtreme Stickers - nudes and almost nudes of Marylene Monroe, Vampirella and etc...

Avatar comics - big poster of 10th muse that they were selling for $2.

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1500

Eros comics had a closed off booth for all their smut. Problem is they brought close to nothing for stock. I did grab the issues of S&M University and what I could of Alice in Smutland. But it greats really sad when you are the publisher with thousands of copies in the warehouse, but you are so lame to only bring a hundred copies to a con of 60,000+

Broad Sword Comics - chicks in cosplay

1600

Bill Cole - comic book supplies

Fathom

Harris Comics - Vampirella and Lady Death and Chasity. Pretty sexy model in leather.

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Neko Press - anime-ish comics

1800

Radio Comix - mangaphiles and other animalorphic stuff

Indy Island - $5 ding and dent sale but I don't have the time to look through all that crap.

Top Cow booth

Simpsons booth

more bootleg DVDs and Movies. Hong Kong DVDs for anime were way too much at $25 each.

1900

Greg Horn - nice pics of Soul Calibur

Games Workshop display

Kabuki - T Shirts and comics

Studio Udon - Derek's old team who did the Last Shot is now making a new Street Fighter

2000

APmanga.com - Anarctic Press guys, I managed to find and buy a Gold Digger DVD. Afterwards, I discovered it to be a DVD-R. What the hell. Commerical company DVD-Ring their own stuff, how sad.

Lord of the Rings Game Workshop

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2200

Cross Gen booth

Dark Horse and Previews booth - has a huge display of upcoming action figures and statues. One of the best ones is a figure of Nadia. There was also a nice Psylocke stature too.

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2300

T3, Matrix booth

Kotobuki - Nadia, Rei and Asuka figurines $99. The Japanese girls at the booth were trying desperately trying to look at my Mikimoto-like diary. I think they thought it was funny why a guy needs to use a diary and what picture it was.

 

2400

Toys Press - huge FFS display

Electronic Arts - big gaming sports booth

Lord of The Rings booths

2500

Wiz Kids booth

More Lord of the Rings booths with one that specializes in staffs.

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Toys Press and the Kinokinoya booth

2600

Wildstorm booth

Alex Ross booth

paintings & prints booth

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2900

JLA booth

Playstation Eye Tag Game display which has a camera to overlays your image into the video game screen using chroma key overlays. Also there was a working demo of Final Fantasy XI Online English.

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Masters of The The Universe booth

Yugioh booth

3100

ADvision/Suncoast Video - selling a lot of their videos at $24 USD, which is useless since I can get ADV stuff as cheap as $20 Cdn.

Upper Deck - displays of Yugioh and Lord of The Ring games. Big wrestling arena set up with tables playing a tournament.

 

3200

Viz - a really boring booth for the most part,, almost all manga

Bandai - big theater you can watch about 10 minutes of Bandai AMVs Spam and they will give you a free Witch Hunter Robin T-shirt.

Tokyopop - lots of sneak preview manga, demos of the Initial D card game and the Initial D PS2 game.

Dreamwave - big display of Transformers

Xena booth - lot of paintings and pictures

3400

Haunted Mansion - PS2 game dipslay

Pioneer - girls in cosplay handing out promo stuff. Booth is full of DVDPlanet DVDs and the prices are ok, but I can get them through my distribution channel for the same price.

Hasbro - Transformers and Star Wars toys

3700

Star Wars card game booth - also had Axis and Allies stuff.

SciFi Channel - pushing their TV

Comics One - famous HK bootleg artist Andy Seto was coming in to do a signing.

Toyami - Robotech action veritechs, Voltron, and T3 figures

3800

more weapons

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4500

Weapons booth

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Media Blasters - smut and DVDs

Urban Vision - small selection of DVDs

4600

T-shirt booth

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King Roach Booth with DVDs and some smut

Anime Pavillion - Steve's store. The usual Taiwan knockoff CDs, but he had a few cool posters his pile.

Macross booth - at the end of the row, a guy had a big whack of Macross kits. The also has a Dan Cougar one at $90 and a bigger one at $235 USD.

 

4700

Toy.com - selling Resident Evil badges, and Silient Mobius and Dark Angel action figures and pewter figurines.

How To Draw Manga - these guys have a booth of books at the end of this row.

4800

J-List - Peter selling his usual range of Smut games and hentai dojinshi and mangas.

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Cartoon Passions - ever anime cds, wall scrolls

Poster Planet .net - lots of great movie posters and stuff.

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5000

Ugly Doll - display of these really ugly dolls. What is the point I wonder...

Tokyo Mint - Love Hina statues, Rei and Asuka statues and a Nadia Statue.

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Tropical Delight - In conjunction with Archie comics, they were making a fruit like drink.

 

5200

Super Heroine - cosplay smut on CDs and DVDs.

Sailor Moon 7 Balls - these guys are selling their usual Sailor Moon and 7 Balls SMUT, the Star BallZ, now they got a new one called Nadia and the Green Tentacle. They also have a some Dojins which were really good. They also have anime cosplay underwear too.

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The Stars Were Out

One thing about the largest convention of media in the entire counry is that you attract a lot of the biggest (and smallest) names in the industry. Though circumstances and time schedules and the long line ups prevented me from getting everyone that I wanted, but this is what I did manage to get a picture....

There were many lines for stars but they are way too long. Some include ones for Buffy cast, Rob Zombie, Anna Jolee (Tomb Raider), Rodney Piper (WWF), and Michael J Straienski (Babylon 5).

I did miss a few due to other planned events like EG Daily (singer), and William Katt (Greatest American Hero). Oh well, maybe next year.

One of the biggest names that I sat in line for was Andy Seto. I was contemplating bringing one of his artbooks down for him to get signed but as it turns out he was here and I bought his new King of Fighters book for him to draw a sketch in. The book is a great KOF book but noticed it has no pictures of Yuri Kankaze in it. So I asked him to draw that. At first, he forgot what Yuri looks like. I had to remind him. I waited almost 2.5 hours for a sketch because he did a sketch for everybody!

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Erin Gray returns to the convention this year. She plays Wilma Deering in Buck Rodgers as well as the mother in Silver Spoons. I got a picture of her in her sexy Buck Rodgers suit last time, so this time I wanted the Silver Spoons picture. Who knows maybe some day I can get Ricky Schroder to add his signature to it.

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Quite a few people from Babylon 5

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There was also a good number of Penthouse and Plaboy models here at the con. Some of them were for the promotion of a product of theirs and some were just here for themselves.

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There was also a few guys in the wrestling community around. Since I am not a big fan of wrestling I don't know who is who, but Rowdy Rodney Piper and RVD were present for autographs and pictures.

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There were many surprise guest appearances. They were not printed in the internet, not in the con guide book and heck not even on the autograph signing board. They just happened to be there sort of thing. One of guys I saw was Lou Feriggno (Incredible Hulk). And yat, he is that big!

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Other people who just showed up include Carter & the General from Stargate SG-1. At another table, the two members of Puffy,, showed up to promote their North American tour. Gabrella from Xena also made a brief appearance.

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Elvira also had a pretty long line up for her autograph too.

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We also have Marc Singer, the guy from V, and the Beast Master.

Marc Singer

As usual, Herb Jefferson Jr. of Battlestar Galactica always shows up.

Herb Jefferson Jr.

Although Anna Jolee was one of big stars due to show up, some of the cosplay was pretty good.

laura croft

My Bootie

Ok, there was lots to buy, and I could have kept going but here is what I did buy. Click on the links to get the pictures.

Agent Aika Wall Scroll

Ai Yori Aoshi Clear Cell

AI Yori Aoshi Wall Scroll

Artbooks for Spiral, smut game of Elf Night, and Satoshi Urushihara (breast man) new art book "Love"

Bible Black Wall Scroll

Chobits Wall Scroll

Name branded DVD-Rs was what I bought while I was at Fry's Electronics.

This is what I found when searching the $5.88 bin at Wal-Mart.

some of the DVDs I picked up on the con floor.

more DVDs from the Con floor.

The Toys Press booth was selling the official Japanese version of the FFS Movie, and it does contain an English Subtitle.

A nice Final Fantasy X2 poster

Love Hina Wall Scroll

Macross Wall Scroll

Noir Wall Scroll

I found this in the half price bin at Sam Goody.

Slayers Wall Scroll

Smut books I found on the con floor.

More Smut, mostly from J-list and the Sailor Moon & the 7 Balls guys.

more smut

Sorceror Hunters Wall scroll

Vandread Wall Scroll

Sometimes it is really hard to grasp just how much junk I get sometimes.

And this is why I take the train in stead of taking the plane.