When the topic of going to a convention comes up, the amount of planning for any given con is based on a wide variety of factors—mostly monetary issues, but things like how badly you want to go and even the convention itself can sway the issue in one direction or another. Otakon, for example, […]

Do you know what sucks about not having a phone with GPS, or rather, getting driving directions from a computer and printing them out? Aside from trying to read them while bombing down (up?) the New Jersey Turnpike and having to switch your attention between the road and the paper – made especially difficult with […]

Traveling up to New York City to meet friends living in the area isn’t always an easy for me. The trek to the city from South Jersey can take two hours if I’m lucky enough that the roads up in north Jersey have been completely abandoned. The further north you go and the closer you […]

In 2004 or thereabouts, while on winter break from college, a friend of mine suggested, “Hey, we should totally go to Otakon this year!” I at that point only had a slight familiarity with cosplay and knew next to nothing about Otakon, or conventions in general. Our journey to Baltimore for the convention was, for […]

When last I was at Anime NEXT, it was the ’09 event at the previous year. Back then, I saw the convention as a spur-of-the-moment affair – somewhere between a tune-up for Otakon and a weekend long distraction. There were times last year when the con seemed to really drag on, mostly because I spent […]