At the risk of alienating Birmingham readers, I would just like to say that the city is a boil which deserves to be wiped off the face of the Earth. Previous trips there have been remarkable for both armed robberies and the unpleasantness of some inhabitants, whose surly and aggressive nature puts Londoners to shame. The latest atrocity to come from this city is being near-mugged by vagrants for your fast food, an experience which befell four of us in town on Friday night. I now have a suggestion what to do with all those unwanted nuclear bombs: drop 'em on Brum. End of rant!
A new location for D-cont this year, the Grand. And very posh looking it was too, with a main video room you could park a spaceship in, and three hundred anime fans scattered throughout the building, plus at least one sad individual who phoned the organisers asking if "Akira 2" was going to be shown, and enquiring about "Manga flick-knives". Let's hope he was joking.
As ever, I wasn't there to watch anime; I can sit in a dark room at home and do that, though I unfortunately don't have a state-of-the-art, rear-mounted, mega-beast video-projector like the convention had, which was probably capable of showing anime on the face of the moon. I was there to meet friends, splutter furiously at the outrageous bar prices, and sell large amounts of junk. The con rated highly on all three categories; I'll keep nameless the member of the committee who insisted on first choice of the dodgy Japanese mags... except to say he was also the one who complained loudly later, when the dealer's room unofficially opened on Friday evening!
Saturday night proved a major blast, with the first masque I'd actually got to see (missed them at previous cons). Highlight there was a scarily cute Gally - I use the word "scarily" as it was actually a bloke... This was followed by some of the most anticipated items in the video program, the subtitled "Dragon Half" and "Plastic Little" (now known as "Silicone Little"). Unfortunately, the ring main for the video projector staged a walk-out at this display of pulchritude, which prompted one committee member to stage a vicious, unprovoked attack on a poor, defenceless marble pillar. I did the decent thing, and hid...
Saturday was my habitual all-nighter, with a small but perfectly formed crowd enjoying everything from Jackie Chan to Godzilla. Mind you, I'm not so sure about the latter: I dozed off myself while it was on, and woke up to find the film had finished, and we were well into the next item on the tape ("Michael Moore's TV Nation"!), but no-one seemed to have noticed... Still, as far as I'm concerned, I'd be happy to sit and watch my favourite films on a nice big screen, even if no-one else was there!
Sunday proved a slightly moist squib, as ever. Thanks to the vagaries of British Rail ticketing, I had to leave just after the official close, but by all accounts I missed nothing. Overall, a good con - at least, I'm still spending my dealer's profit, two weeks later! - though it was sad and annoying to hear there had been some security problems with two thefts and an act of vandalism over the weekend. Such are perhaps the penalties of a city centre location, or perhaps, such are the penalties of holding the convention in Birmingham at all!