Nerding Event

Last Saturday Celia and I went on a nerding event, which is what she dubbed Armageddon, the comic/anime convention held at the Christchurch Convention Center last weekend. Now neither of us had ever been to such an event, but she was excited because she loves anime and video games and all that good stuff. I was curious at the comic book artists/writers themselves, so off we went and even before we got there it became apparent it was stupid day.

We took the #5 bus downtown around noon. Now as most of you know city buses are pretty big and pretty hard to miss but just blocks from the bus exchange where we got off, a mini-van totally missed seeing ours. It was in the left lane, we were in the right and that idiot driver decided he was going to turn into a parking lot on the right and turned right in front of the bus. Smash! How he did not see that bus I will never know. I mean really, how could you not see it? The poor driver was totally shook, the back end of the van was crushed, but luckily no one was hurt. So after all that excitement and drama we hopped off the bus and walked the rest of the way to the convention.We knew we were going the right way very shortly as "Jedi" and other interestingly dressed characters started appearing on the sidewalks before us.

The convention itself was interesting enough. First they give you a good bag filled with nerd fuel (Oreos, Doritos, and Easy Mac). Then it was off to check out the booths and get stalked by Stormtroopers. There was some decent art, but nothing mind blowing and the local NZ comic booth was total amateur hours skills wise. Got to see some information on their local digital and animation arts school programs, which was interesting, but like much here, more in the line of mediocre skill and creativity wise. Lots of folks running around in costumes, I'll post some pictures below. We watched an ice cream eating contest, which was pretty funny. Then came the Dragonball Z power calling contest, where the contestants basically pretended to be calling up the powers of Dragonball Z. Now this was pretty damn hilarious as well, particularly when one rather stupid contested thought he would be original and actually urinate on the stage. I kid you not, he whipped it out and urinated all over the stage! Not only was everyone, including the host shocked and disgusted but I'm betting there are several youtube videos of this guys idiocy. Needless to say security hauled him out quite roughly and the contest continued. Ironically, no Dragonball Z costumed contestant won, instead it was Mario and Luigi for the win. Those guys were a total riot. But like I said, it was a really good day for stupid people.

After all that I wandered out for a smoke while Celia wandered booths and amazingly enough she did what we had pretty much given up on, she made a friend. She and this Asian kid named Sam struck up a conversation, found they like similar anime and stuff and both loath Christchurch so I was left solo for the rest of the afternoon, which for that reason I didn't mind at all. Over all an interesting day and experience. Don't think I'm quite nerd enough to enjoy such events as others seem too, but it was definitely a different experience.