This is my boring 1,000 word Botcon report, except I took out all the parts about Botcon so that it wouldn't be boring (but it still didn't work)

So it's the weekend after Botcon and I'm doing my laundry and I just put all the clothes I wore to Botcon 2008 in the dryer. Nothing puts a fork in my vacation like washing away the food stains from my vacation wardrobe. Seeing that specific combination of clothes I wore to the show going in circles round and round in the dryer reminds me of all the good times I had in Cincinnati (also the crab rangoon I stuffed in my pants).

I like to think of them as little custom reissues of myself

One Botcon memory I will cherish were all the fantastic racks I saw on a lot of chicks. There was this one girl in particular that I didn't get a picture of so I am furiously scouring other people's Botcon photos on Flickr for pictures of this chick that I can hopefully use to masturbate to later. I always fall in love with at least one random girl I see at Botcon, in '03 it was some black chick and there was an Asian chick in '06 and a Canadian in '02. But I already have a son and a wife and unfortunately she has a strict "no repaints or recolors" policy when it comes to me making other babies.

It's not about the show, but the people FOOD you meet EAT when you're there

I showed up in Cincinnati three days before Botcon would open for general admission attendees like myself. I was sure that this super anal behavior would make me one of the first Transformers fans in the area. I was at a sandwich shop Wednesday when the store manager got upset that the girl making my sub forgot to put bacon. I told him it was no big deal but he said it was important because some people get really angry and irate if they don't get bacon on their club sandwich. I said, "Come on, people really get pissed off over sandwiches?" And he goes, "Like you would not believe". IT WAS THEN THAT I REALIZED I WAS NOT THE FIRST TOY ROBOTS FAN IN THE AREA.

Zybotzcon ain't happening anytime soon so just pay your ten bucks and shut the hell up

I spent most of the next three days at the Cincinnati main library looking at old newspaper ads featuring toy robots from the 1980s like Zoids, Starriors, Zybotz, Roboforce, GoBots, TransMoBots and Voltrons. Saturday finally came and as I was waiting in the general admission line I started having thoughts about the general state of toy robotdom in the US over the past 25 years and I decided that Botcon would be great if it weren't so focused on goddamn Transformers. I was feeling sort of disgruntled about how those shitty Zybotz toys will never be getting a convention. After staying in line for an hour they opened the doors and I was about ten feet from walking in the door when one of the Botcon staff asks me "How did you hear about the show?" and I wanted to say "FROM YOUR MOM LAST NIGHT" but I didn't want to set the record for getting kicked out of Botcon before I was even technically in the dealer room.

WARNING: The following video is like Cloverfield because it's shaky except the horrible monster is inside the attendees in the form of an obsessive desire for toy robots



It is okay to crap all over people if they like your crap

I've been making little plastic robot party favors and giving them away at toy robots conventions for a while now. I think that at an American convention about an American line of toy robots (that are made in China) there should be at least some toy robots there that were made in America. This year my anti-establishment convention toy was a tetrajet Skywarp, which if you don't know what that means I would like to thank you anyways for reading this far. It is nice how over the years the feedback I got on my work has gone from a disappointed "You should have done it this other way..." to a disappointed "You should have made more." It pleases me when I invoke the latter type of enthusiastic disappointment in my target audience. It was also nice how I couldn't give them away-people kept paying me!

Un Gato con Chaqueta (de Shogun Warriors)

My homemade plastic robot ships were admittedly pretty lame so I tried to impress people with my bootleg shiny shirts instead. I did get one comment from a somewhat internet famous Transformers celebrity, Aaron Archer on the Shogun Warriors shirt I bought from Kurt's Shirts. Aaron works for Hasbro as the Transformers brand team lead and he just walked up to me while I was (unknowingly) talking to one of his friends and he goes, "Hey I like your shirt!" Dang I should have got a picture with him but I already have an old picture with him so I can recreate an approximation of the momentous (to me) time that I interacted with a member of the Transfan Illuminati.

Dissed by the human Xerox

My personal highlight of the show was getting one of the Hasbro toy designers to do a sketch of a robot that appeared for about five seconds in the old Transformers Movie that I have since named "Evil King Macrocranios". Everybody else was asking for famous robots from the new cartoon, which the designers would do by copying some model sheets they had on hand. I thought my much more (or less) original request would be a welcome change of pace for the artist. Instead, after I supplied her an EKM drawing I did, she turned to the other Hasbro guy next to her and said, "Hey remember that guy that asked me to draw Optimus Prime drinking coffee from Starbucks through a straw sticking out of his faceplate? Well this is kind of like that."

So the weekend came to an end and it was time to say goodbye to my friend John who I only see when we meet up at Botcon. The last one I went to was in '06 so I thought it had been two years since I saw him and who knows when we'd see each other again. But then John said that the '06 show was only 18 months ago, and at this rate they're knocking them out one every six months. And I thought, oh well, crap I guess I'll see you again this October for Botcon 2009.