Hail the Conquering Heroes....

If by conquering, you mean broke...we conquered the outmoded concept of going to a convention to make a profit.

HAPPY 2015!!!

The Dread Dormomoo and I went to Anime Kaiju, a first-year con in Nashville with nary a Godzilla nor Pacific Rim nasty in sight, which was held at the quasi-venerable Millennium Maxwell House Hotel. Yes, that Maxwell House. (It would be venerable had the original not burned down.) First year con. January 2-4. YAAAAY! The youngun's will have their Christmas money!

Unfortunately, Grammy doesn't give Christmas money anymore. The ungrateful wretches never sent a thank you card. Not once. So now they get a $10 Amazon card. Or an ugly sweater.

The Aardvark does not swap for ugly Christmas sweaters. He might consider 8-packs of Hanukkah socks. The con organisers were great, really lovely people, and I cannot fault them, beyond the paucity of their advertising efforts. We met some sweet people, including guests like Professor Shyguy, Chris Patton, Eric Stuart, and Veronica Taylor. The kids attending were great, all several of them. There were the obligatory few "on the spectrum", but were also tolerable. All, all, loved our shirts. Few, few made that a commitment.

Again, this was at the Millennium Maxwell House, and if the Millennium is anything like this, the End-Timers are barking up the wrong eschatological tree. When does a historical hotel cease to care? The staff were nice, especially housekeeping. The room-make-nicers all spoke English as their first language. This smells like a miracle. They went out of their way to speak and be welcoming and friendly, besides, oh, doing their jobs well. The front desk, save for Heather, were lackluster, and seemed intent upon making it to the end of the shift. The restaurants, now, there's a horse of a different color. First night after setting up our tables, we went to Maxwell's the grill and bar, as that was all that was open. I ordered a French Dip, who took umbrage at my bossiness (no, the sandwich, silly), and herself ordered a cheeseburger sans bun. We did not hear the telltale sounds of bovine slaughter, which was the only conceivable reason it should have taken so long to get our food. It tasted fine, but I had a rumbly in my tumbly in the middle of the night. Good times. Breakfast was at Pralines, the actual dining room of the hotel. There was the usual overpriced a la carte fare, as well as the obligatory, usual hotel breakfast buffet of scrambled eggs, bacon-ham-or-sausage, bread larger than the toaster slots, grits-or-hash-browns...like that. It was entirely marginal. This, the home of Maxwell House Coffee, served Maxwell House brown water. It tasted like diet coffee, or water with a brown crayon dipped in it. The accountants apparently count coffee beans. Our Millennium Hotel food experience was eclipsed by Pizza and Chinese delivery! Best Wok REALLY was, though they offered neither mushu nor kung pao anything. Their garlic beef with pork fried rice was worth the price of admission.

OH! We had NHK World on telly. Always a treat. We learned that wabi-sabi is cool!

After we packed out this afternoon, we went to the restaurant we had promised ourselves: Demos'. True to form, the best Italian places are run by Greeks. This one is legendary. Garlic brown-butter spaghetti, anyone? Their meat-sauce is amazing, and I hate them, for it is better than mine. Then again, I am not Greek. The DD had chicken mozzarella, with thin-sliced ham and marinara sauce, GF-friendly! Will was our waiter, and was efficient and amusing. Please to note how much time I spend on food commentary. I wonder why I really go to these things.

Toodle pip...I must shower and sleep.