hey there georgie girls post

Originally posted by misterkitty at post

Hey there, it's Tuesday and time for another Georgie Girls strip! You can also watch a musical slide show of an earlier GG strip here at Mister Kitty's YouTube channel!

AWA part three

So. Sunday night I had spoken with an admin, who said he'd nail down some rides for my 15 passengers Monday. I had the parents' van, so that took care of 5 (6 if they're friendly), so we still needed one huge van or two large cars or 3 small cars.

Anyway, around 3am I recieved an FB message from my admin contact, who had to make an emergency room run and would be unable to secure rides for us. Of course, I didn't see this message until I got up Monday morning. So that's some Monday AM challenges right there. Not that it wasn't anything I hadn't been dealing with previously. Greg and I packed, Greg and Neil and I got breakfast, I put the word out for transport on FB and Twitter, I put Greg and Neil in the van, and got them down to the airport. Upon arriving back at the Waverly I had ride offers from my brother, Darius, and two guys I didn't even know beforehand, Alex and Justin. Justin had a Flex and Alex had a mid-sized sedan, so we were covered! Thank you social media!

Meanwhile, we were waiting for Ardith and Shocker to get back from their Toys 'R' Us run in Bryan's car. Apparently there had been a minor fender-bender in the parking lot, which was resolved amicably, but it did cause some lateness. So we assembled all our tourists - a mixed bag of The Konjos, S*H*S, and VLOMIQ - in the lobby and prepared for adventure.

The vague, original plan was to take 'em to the World Of Coca-Cola. That got changed in favor of doing some antiquing. Apparently shows like American Pickers are big in Japan. Go figure. Anyway if you know me you know that I know where all the antique malls are, so up Cobb Pkwy we went past the Big Chicken to the antique mall across 41. And yeah, we drove right past the B-29 in front of Dobbins Air Reserve Base and nope, I didn't say a darn thing about it.



Yeah, they had a Scopitone. Yes, the video jukebox from the 1960s that I'd never seen in the wild. The antique mall employees were tremendously bemused to be invaded by a platoon of Japanese tourists. One asked me, "are you here with the orientals?" I explained that they were in town for an animation festival at the Galleria. The whole crew pretty much swarmed all over the place. I found a few things myself and Ardith uncovered this amazing pointillist Goofy artwork. Didn't buy it, though.



After a while, everyone exhausted the shopping possibilities and it was time for Shocker to announce over the store PA that all Japanese folks should make their final selections and head for the front of the store.



The staff got a big kick out of this one. Anyway we collected everybody and discussed our next port of call. There was some talk about eating at the Big Chicken and then going to the square in Marietta, but that got veteoed in favor of The Varsity. So down 75 we went. Soon we were parked and Ardith was translating my comments about the Varsity being open since 1928, it being where college students and game-day spectators would eat and it being a landmark, etc. And then it was time for hats.



Ordering was a bit of a challenge. Shocker got what I got, which was a Glorified and a chili dog, except he was very specific about Mr Pibb, once he learned they had Mr Pibb. Alex and Ardith assisted the others in ordering as we commandeered a group of tables in the far end of the restaurant. I had a back and forth, halting, half-Japanese half-English discussion with Shocker about Spectreman and how P Productions got the rights to Ambassador Magma (it involved drinking) and how in high school he once accidentally broadcast the "Gamera" theme song to his entire campus over the emergency broadcast system.

After lunch there was more discussion about where to head next. A consensus was reached for the Georgia Aquarium, but then it was discovered that the place closed at 5 and it was 4 already so no dice. We settled on simply driving past the Centennial Olympic Park area - the Omni, CNN Center, the new Ferris Wheel, the World O' Coke, the Aquarium, etc. You can imagine what the traffic was like at this point - really terrible. We lost Alex's vehicle, and Justin and I pointed our cars north and headed back to the Waverly, where our intrepid crew went its separate ways with many 'thank yous' and photos. And then it was time for me to get my bag out of the checked bags, tip the bell guy, get on my tablet and find out where Alex was (they stopped at the World O' Coke gift shop, which is what we should have done), load my stuff into the van, and head back to my parents' house, where a traditional dinner at Scalini's awaited.

So that was pretty much my whole convention there. I feel the show leveled up. Bigger main events, better signage and trade dress, more people, more guests, angling itself to be more entertaining to the general attendee. Less of my time was spent on private-party stuff, more of it was spent on big-picture events and special assignments that benefited the convention as a whole. Certainly I enjoyed the show more myself, what with the Shonen Knife and all. The icing on the cake was getting to enjoy the antique mall with people from the other side of the world who share not only my obsession with dumb cartoons, but with random mid-century Americana.

I have no idea what the plans are for next year... I have a few refinements in mind for a few events, but other than that, the con season is over for me for another few months. Whew.