As promised in my DJ, yes, I'm finally getting around to making my report of the weekend. Didn't get to yesterday like I wanted, got called out to help at the farm and got back late again.
Left Friday morning early to get up a day ahead of time. Three hour drive from here to the Cities, and with the con opening at 10 Saturday morning, and a line to China if you don't get there at 9, I'd be up way too early and arrive way too tired. We just stay an extra day and screw around at the MOA.
Got to the Mall at around 11, found Mo at work at Sears, chatted a bit and agreed on a time/place for lunch, then let her get back to work. Had lunch(yummy, Taco Bell!
), chatted, then she had to get back to work and we had to kill a few hours before we could even check into the hotel.
Spent most of that time in the arcade playing either DDR or the Star Wars Trilogy game down there. Most of the rest of the games down there aren't that great, but I can play forever on those.
Walked around a little bit, too, and discovered that the fourth floor in the main rotunda where all the nightclubs and bars were when it opened up, it's all closed. They had a couple of arcades up there, and those are closed too. All that remains up there is Hooters of all things.(Yes, the MOA has a Hooters restaurant, oy. Nothing special IMO...
) Turned out a couple days later that I read in the Pioneer Press that all that's closed up save Hooters, and the Mall owners and admin and whatnot is trying to figure out what to do with that floor, if they want to turn that into more stores and restaurants, make it into more nightclubs, or what.
There's also talk of a MOA 2.0, a kind of expansion. Been talking about that for ages, it's gone nowhere. They've also, yes, talked about a casino there, but I think the Governor has shot that down. That went nowhere too.
The rest of the Mall is as it's always been. Always changing, always the same(yes, that reminds me of an oldschool TMNT ep
), still fun to go once in awhile.
Left for the hotel around 3 'cause that's when they let you check in, drove across the Cities to Roseville. Hit not rush hour traffic, but crappy construction. They've been working on I-494 all year, expanding it to 4 lanes, and they're up to 494 North heading towards St. Cloud, and they closed off the ramp we use to get onto I-394 to get over to our hotel.
Took a detour that was marked as heading to Ridgedale Center. Believe it or not, I think that mall was used in the movie "Drop Dead Gorgeous"(kinda silly, movie making fun of beauty pageants, set in MN.=) They call it the Mall of America in one short scene in the beginning of the flick, but as a native, lol, there's no
way that's the MOA, and knowing the area, I suspect the scene was filmed at Ridgedale...
Anyhow, I've been there before a couple of times, knew that I could easily get on/off 394 from there. Wound around on Minnetonka Blvd, got completely lost. I knew I was headed in the general direction, but I had no clue where exactly it was that I was driving. Found a road that I knew looked familiar, that I'd passed under an overpass marked with the same name, so I knew it would eventually cross 394. Still wasn't sure, so we stopped at a gas station, sure enough, all I had to do was follow the road, and I would be back where I needed to be. Just a couple more miles.
The rest of the ride to the hotel was fine, usual traffic and whatnot, until we got to the road our hotel was on, and they had the first block cut off for some sort of road work/construction. Took another detour, but thankfully, it wasn't as nasty as the one onto 394. That plain sucked. This one was shorter and better marked, and in fact, I ended up using the road it led us onto instead of our usual road, just to avoid the stupid detour.
Ended up getting turned around a lot anyways due to the way they had that particular road get onto Snelling(which is the road we take to the con), just had it all marked funny.
So we got in, relaxed for a bit, then went out to an Irish pub down a few miles on Snelling to Co Rd E. It's a pub, bowling alley, and arcade. Guess what I played there.
Yeah, that's my favorite DDR spot. Did a bit of that, went back to the hotel, ate, chatted about what we were gonna do at the con, some fanfic/RP ideas, and watched Episode III on pay-per-view.
On Saturday, we got up at 7 for the continental breakfast the hotel serves(sparing us one more meal to pack food in the crammed-full cooler for
), and then once we were done, we watched a bit of TV, read the free newspaper they gave us, then headed over to the Con around 9. Part of that is for parking, they don't have the best of parking at the Fairgrounds(no fun parking lots, just a
lot of evil parallel parking.
The rest was to get into line before we had to stand two blocks back for it.
We got into the con, got our wristbands and freebie bags, then started looking around. Earl and I both thought it was bigger this year, but strangely enough, it turned out that there weren't many dealers actually selling comics. There's usually more than there were. Seemed like this year, it was more people selling bootleg DVDs and action figures.
Even the one booth that's usually wall-to-wall statues(and I
mean wall-to-wall...from Wonder Woman to Phoenix to PPGs and various other stuff, they have tons of statues and maquettes and busts and everything) wasn't there, which really shocked me. I can't recall them ever missing a year. Was hoping to actually stop by, see if they had any of the cold cast TMNT for a good price or any other statues I'd want, but they weren't there.
Did some comic digging, but sadly, no Turtles this year. I've been having trouble getting Turtles for a few years now, simply 'cause I have almost all of the back issues I'm missing. Most of the time, I dig, but I have 'em all already, so that wasn't really anything new. But even the Star Wars comics I wanted and some of the ones Earl wanted were hard to find, there were so few comic dealers there.
Ended up getting more in terms of toys than anything. Did see a few TMNT toys, but I had those already, too.
We also did get a haul of art, though, on top of our haul of figures.
This was the first year I'd actually looked at the guest list. Didn't go to their site enough to realize they posted who was gonna be there until Ivey asked about it, and I really looked for it.
Turns out, there's a local artist by the name of Grant Gould who did Star Wars sketch cards and was selling a few there. If I'm not mistaken, he actually had his work on some of the Episode III trading cards(some of which, yes, he had there to sell in a case, but they were upwards of $200!). I bought three sketch cards, one of Fett, two clone troopers, and got him to do a commission of Pandora and her daddy. Not sure if I'll post the link here, or if I'll just drop that in the #TMNT RP area.
lol, heck, I'll do both. If you don't see it here, it's there, too.
He's got it posted on his blog, so I'll give the URL. I hesitate to actually post the pic without his permission. Very nice guy, really made my weekend when it turned out we weren't having much luck with comics.
http://grantgould.com/art/blogshots/fallcon05_4.jpg - There's Pandora and her father, done in B&W, but it turned out
beautifully, that I almost cried when I saw what a lovely job he did.
And the sketch cards I bought...
http://grantgould.com/art/pcgallery/gould_pc_bobaf.jpg - Boba Fett
http://grantgould.com/art/pcgallery/gould_pc_shockclone.jpg - Clone Shocktrooper(aka: Commander Thire)
http://grantgould.com/art/pcgallery/gould_pc_clonety.jpg - Clone Commander(aka: Commander Bly)
I would've liked to buy more, but those were $30 apiece. Still not bad for sketch cards. I've seen sketch cards go for way more.
Got most of our haul on Saturday, and headed back to the hotel to relax and read our comics. Did a little bit more DDR later that night at the pub, and went to dinner at Arby's on Snelling.
Sunday had us up at 7 again for breakfast. Got packed up again, and checked out a little bit before nine. Got back to the con an hour early, even though our wristbands meant we didn't have to pay again. Was just about parking that time. Chatted a bit about the day before, some more RP ideas, and then went in.
Picked up the Pandora/Boba art that Grant did, picked up a couple of more figures, then we were out of money, so, we decided to either head home early or, because Mo had the weekend off from work, see if she wanted to do lunch and hang a bit. Called her house, got the machine, figured I'd try her cell.
Turned out, she was working 'till 11 that day, which worked out, and so we decided to meet for lunch again on the third floor food court at noon, depending on how long traffic took. I knew the ramp onto 394 was closed, didn't know if getting back onto 494 South was as bad. It turned out, it wasn't. Had a normal ride out to the Mall for once, no traffic, no construction snags. Probably took us our usual 45 minutes.
Played in the arcade a tiny bit, then headed up for lunch.
Had chinese at Panda Express this time, talked, and then walked around the Mall for a few hours, just talking and screwing around. Then Mo had to leave, and the Mall was starting to get really crowded, so we went down to the arcade to play SW, just to rest our legs, then we headed home. Way too noisy and crowded by then, to where even I was starting to get a headache.
Ride home wasn't bad, was actually better than it was going up to the Cities, got back to the Farm at around 6:30. Mom and Dad weren't home, were off loading a load of cattle to be taken to Granite(yes, for butchering, we raise our own cows for meat
). Switched cars, got a couple of loose kittens in the house(they were supposed to be in the garage, and I thought their mama had gotten out of the broken window and taken them with, but Mom told me later she'd let all three out
) in a warm box with towels until Mom came home, then headed back to the apartment.
Got home around 7 or so, wasn't really late, but too late for me to be online, and I was wiped anyways. Got all unpacked, ended up going to bed really early.
So all and all, a fun weekend. Wasn't the most spectacular Fallcon I've been to, but then again, the whole weekend was kinda weird anyways, and any and all plans I'd made before I left kinda fell apart or got derailed, so meh, lol, just chalking it up to a very odd weekend. I still had fun, still planning to go next year.
And with the wedding coming up in June of 2007 for me 'n Earl, FallCon is about the only place we'll be going next year, on account of putting all our money into the wedding. It's small, nowhere near even the size of Novi Con, but it's still a fun con, and an excuse to spend two nights in the Cities.
