I'm selling LiveWire after not performing as that SodaRoo in quite a while.

https://www.furbuy.com/auctions/1106296.html

I hope there is a better home for the character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asGQFhMQTlw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSQMMQ21b08

I finally did it. After 6 or 7 tries (over 7 years), I finally made the floor at FWA for the dance competition finals as part of a group with the talented  jdpuppy and  HumphreyE45

Not only did I make it to the finals as part of a group, but we won 1st place. I'm still in shock.

The good: I won!
The bad: People be expectin' moar.

Some people say trends cycle around 20 years. I say it's 23. This might actually make it more like 19.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IAXp48xiKs

Nuff said.

I had more fun at Megaplex than I did at AC. Reminds me why I like smaller cons. AC is just too much everything and not enough time.

A couple shout outs to:
 milkboneunderwear for dancing and hanging out
 neo-reveng for judging
 thediesel for dancing
 musicpaws for teh dancing
 yippee for hanging out a bit in the headless. Sorry livewire didn't work out here. Perhaps at FWA if you'd like!

and this guy for being awesome like always in suit (this time one of mine):
 mangusu

Of course I'm not listing everyone. There's of course  media for being there for me always, and all the locals that know me.

Thank you everyone for your support and comments. I think this is finally the breakout year for the con. Closer to the airport for travelers, a much improved hotel, and space to use. We broke 800 this year.


Also there's this (didn't place and didn't expect to. There's real dancers in the house now boyeeez.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-RjthFo4xM FRONT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtML-dmAodc SIDE

Evidentially (had to say it) my fursuit is on the cover of an alternative lifestyle magazine that was at the ultra lounge in Pittsburgh. anyone have a copy they could send me?

I will be arriving on Thursday sometime around two pm I would guess. perhaps a little earlier.

hope to see y'all there. all 5k+. see all the things.

... now to figure out what song to dance to in the next 24 hours (assuming I make the cut to the finals)

I believe I am late posting this.

I am at fwa. not the biggest fan of the hotel. I don't think con space should be on four sperate floors. this hotel doesn't have the floor space to consolidate though.

So I decided a while back, I am going to MFF. Feel free to track me down while I'm there. With any luck I will be in the dance competition.

I guess they really love the shot of me with the glowing light-snot. I believe this is the second year I've been on this.

http://www.furhold.org/furloween/

So Megaplex was a con. Overall I felt it was pretty...average. Just felt like another year of this Orlando-area con, nothing too special. I hope it moves to a new hotel asap. The current hotel obviously is not putting in much effort for maintenance. They had a 'renovation' and did bare-minimum changes. The rooms and halls are tiled, and the rooms have nothing on the walls, and not even a throw rug. I hung out a LOT with  tailbiter and quite a few others.

So yeah, the other part.  mangusu was running the show for the dance competition. I was glad the list was fully filled fairly early on.  arbokx had a new suit and threw down hard in his performance. Very energetic and he did really well. I personally was going in a little uneasy like I normally do. Did my thing, watched snips of other people down the line. I wasn't expecting much since my previous history in trying.

Here's my previous history. FWA 2011: total failure. Used a random song and wasn't even feeling it. FWA 2012: Talent pool was ridiculous. I had a slight chance of making it on the list for the finals, and missed it. AC 2012: Made it through the first cut, failed on the second cut for the final list.

So I was thinking there was maybe a chance for third if I was lucky. There was a smaller pool of 'known' dancers like  zoomba and  omgsparky that have made it into the finals before.

Well, turns out I went up there at the end for the final results. I stood right in front of the stage and heard there was a tie, and my name was dropped. I thought "Eh, it's got to be for third." Then Zoomba was named 3rd. I took second and I think "Matsi wuff" got first. I am not entirely sure because I don't know the guy's name. I do know I 'accidentally' ended up in a dance battle with him the night before thanks to the dance floor clearing when an old school hip-hop song dropped.

Overall I'm still a bit stunned. Especially since Zoomba has made AC and FWA finals, and I haven't. I'm obviously getting better.

For those that love Adventure Time and would love to have an awesome Adventure Time character style icon, click this:

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3531551/
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3531551/
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3531551/
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3531551/
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3531551/

So worth it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS9r.....ailpage#t=167s

Goes on for maybe 30 seconds. I didn't make the cut. I've gotten input from two dancer-furs, and I would appreciate any additional comments as well. I already realize foot movements/overall movements are lacking. I'm already working on that.

Some people may be interested in what happened during this convention. So here we go.

Well ok, this starts with the day I got to media's, aka Media/Jeff.

Wednesday
Nearly got in an accident going to work. An idiot pulled into a left turn lane and ducked back into traffic while nearly stopped right in front of me. Glad my lil' fit has anti-lock brakes. Work went ok, proceeded to run home and grab stuff to then go back to work and pick up pens I forgot to borrow for my costume. Got to the alley for pre-bowling about 6:20. Found out Jeff needed a ride, so didn't pre-bowl till about 8. He hit his ankle with a 15 lb ball in the 3rd game during a delivery...and that game got hosed because of it. Upon getting back to the house the entire plan for leaving became up in the air because of Jeff's room-mates. They assumed we weren't 100% on taking remy's car. So we talked about options, mainly using her car and mine. Then she proceeded to explain we should chip in for maintenance costs on her vehicle because she had to replace brake pads last year because of the driving to FWA. Jeff and I decided right then and there to go with a new plan, to use my car and ripner's. Texting and plan-changing ensued. He arrived, we got the ok to use his 2-door civic. We all didn't really get to bed till 1am.

Thursday
Got up around 7 in the hopes of leaving by 8. This didn't really happen. ripner was passed out on the couch and Jeff's room-mates slept in and didn't finish packing for a while. While packing the vehicles it was plainly apparent even getting everything in my fit with both seats folded down wasn't possible. So we would have had to use 2 cars regardless. We left closer to 9, flew past all the traffic trying to go from I-4 to the 408 and were clear of O-town in a hurry. Well a relative hurry. We all decided to go 55 mph the entire way. I made it all the way to about 40 miles short of Atlanta going that slow. Calculated it later, with a passenger and tons of cargo I got 41mpg. Got into Atlanta right at 5pm. The 1-2 miles by the exit was the hardest part of the trip. Hotel unpack, blah blah. I danced that night to get into the mind-set of the dance competition, and we went to Trader Vic's. Live music at a Tiki bar rocks. Theramin players rock. $6 Mai Tai's rock. Spending $160 for one night of food and drinking....not so much. I had a $45 plate, and it was worth it. I also covered Jeff and I had a total of 5 drinks, so it added up in a hurry. The plate was worth it for the lamb alone...it was amazing. We headed back and I danced...we all were up till about 3.

Friday
Yeah. This day. My entire focus was the dance competition tryouts. Every little bit. I went to the peachtree mall and subway. Most efficient subway I have every been to. 5 people working it. 1 for bread/meat/cheeses, 2 for cheese/toast/veggies, 1 at the register permanently and 1 to run around and handle re-stocking of sandwich stuffs. Ended up going back to grab food for Jeff. He was working on fursuit repairs and whatnot, so didn't have a real option to leave. Time flew...then the auditions came up around 6:30 I believe. Jeff skipped the first day to keep it out of mind. I half wish I had. That room was packed. 30 people easily, 24 actually trying out. The big name dancer-furs were there; V, Phor, Doryuu, Bit/Skroy, Step, etc. It was nerve wracking just waiting to go up. Especially when Phor and V auditioned. For those that watched the event on Saturday...the closed tryouts were...different. Both V and Phor showed off to a high degree. Watching Phor's routine on stage closely and seeing the tryouts...it's apparent nerves got to him. Same was true for V. The comradery and encouragement in that small room brings out the best in most of these dancers (there was one big name that fouled up the first audition, came back on the second day and nailed everything). Eventually my turn came up, and I practically blew the whole routine. I focused too much on putting certain moves in certain spots, missed some queues and well, screwed up some moves. I felt like absolute shit. I also knew there were at least 3 really good dancers not trying out that day. Jeff did talk to me after and got my spirits back up, but not really that much. I ended up playing beatmania and watching the Ebel concert to get my mind off of things. I skipped the dances that night and didn't feel real positive about things in general. At that time I felt like I shouldn't even be trying to compete in the future. Went to bed nearly crying.

Saturday
Woke up around 11 to go get food prior to the parade. I hit up chick-fil-a, and ran into momocon attendees in various costumes. Found out it's an anime con the same weekend that is a bit bigger than us. I then woke up Jeff on returning. He was quite...not awake and irritable. You could see it during the parade if you knew what to look for. Anyways, the picture was done inside, in a cram packed full main events hall. 366 suiters. Way more than last year. Parade ended, they had awesome water bottles handed out. We hung out in suit a little and went back upstairs to just come back down. I think this is when I ran out to get business cards all done for Jeff. We both decided I should go try out for the auditions again. This was because of one main reason. Cyril, Jeff's coworker hurt his back. From his audition he was a shoe-in to the competition even though he didn't feel good about it. We go down to the room and find out there's...another 18 people. 6 were re-tries, but still this meant 36 in total. Crazy. Malo decided then there would be at least 20 spots and not 15 like originally intended. I felt a little better. The time flew by, and they had to move the event for the 6 of us re-trying. I felt a little better when I went up. I dropped some moves I knew I couldn't do, but I was too energetic and went too fast and out of control. I felt more comfortable near the end, but I knew the chance was 50/50 at best. I waited around, went to the headless lounge and waited for the list. When it came out I was half-crushed, I wasn't on it. I went up and told Jeff he was in, Cyril was in (to be dropped) and a few others on the list. I felt a little down, but then I went back downstairs and looked at the list in more detail. Some big names that are normally on the list weren't there. Twitch, Clementine, and a few others. I felt a lot better knowing that. Those two people at least were staples every year. It was just to show competition at this event is getting a LOT harder every year.

Then the actual dance competition came up. Prior to this I explained to Jeff that I felt like the dancer-furs were a clique and kept other people out. He convinced me to hang out backstage. I did so, and I am glad I did. There's a huge comradery, a brotherhood of sorts. Mangusu, the winner of last year said a few little words to everyone. Then the 22 people got into a huddle and amped each other up. That room was packed, the most I've ever seen for the event. There was at least 3 separate cameras and angles for the judges and the screens on the side. They had tons of lighting. The calls for 'on-deck' were fast. The performances flew by. Everything seemed great. I saw the performers watching through the seams in the curtains. Then Jeff went on-deck and 0r30 was up...or not. He had a panic attack right before his slot. They had a runner get on the floor and say "Next up is number 8" to give the a/v crew a notice to change names as well as the judges. Jeff went up then, 0r30 was skipped. He came back later in the line up. Then there was another performer (name escapes me) that came off stage and broke down. Practically collapsed in a heap crying. So much pressure. At the end there was the MC coming back and quick-changing into suit and performing his 'super gay' ice-cream-cone dance thing. Then the judging. Big shocker moment for sure when V was announced as a honorable mention. Then the 3 top dancers, Phor, Bit and Kandi. Those 4 belonged in the top, but ordering was sure off. The judges mentioned a .5 point difference between the top end.

Tigerpaw invited Jeff to the party he was hosting and we eventually went up to it for a little while. We both felt semi out of place and left for another room party Cyril was hosting. It turned into "Whisper-con" thanks to bitchy hotel security staff. After that we hung out in the lobby, chatting with Twitch and Trigger and a few others. Probably went to bed at 5-6.

Sunday
Woke up to get to the Florida furs panel at 11. No one else was willing to wake up that early. After that I grabbed business cards and gave them to Jeff. Then decided to hit up the kangaroo panel. I joked around saying "Well I'll go to it. There will probably be 3 roos there." I nailed it. Exactly 3 other kangaroos. Funny stuff. One of them basically talked for the whole hour referencing several things in his life. He was in Iraq when he realized he was gay. Essentially woke up from a vivid dream involving oral-sex on the main character from the novel "Waterways". When he woke up he was mid-lick of his cot. The cot also had a massive stain of saliva and his tongue was swollen and raw.

Anyways, was half thinking of getting photos. Ended up not doing it and instead playing more beatmania. For the initiated, they had a custom setup involving a PC running a copy of Resort Anthem, a large tv (probably plasma) and a iidx arcade home controller (the expensive 2 player konami one) that was hacked. By hacked I mean the internals were ripped out and rewired to an ardurino controller so the turn-table now works like the newer ones (so it can do turntable spin holds required in resort anthem and up).

I eventually found myself at closing ceremonies, watching the slide-show hoping for a group fursuit photo (wasn't in it), and found out the numbers, 1902 and 366 (attendance and fursuiters in parade respectively). The bigger news was the move to the new hotel. Next year it's going to be in the Westin in downtown. Aka massive tower hotel that's one of the top ones in the world. FWA may be super-nice next year.

Anyways, after all that I hung out a bit in suit with Jeff and for a short short time with V. Mike-furry hung out with us in the headless lounge. He's like me, wanting to improve when it comes to dancing. Last year he honestly was a bit annoying to hang out with, but this year he was a lot better. He's learned a lot and has become more comfortable. Last year was his first ever furry convention, so I don't blame him for seeming 'odd.' After 'dicking' around in suit we went out and got 40's. Not legal in Atlanta, so we had to do it. This was on the way back from dinner at Truva, a nice Turkish restaurant. So yeah, hung out with 'Bootsie and Kilcodo' (Travis and Jen if I remember real names correctly) and had my first '40' experience. Found out Budweiser doesn't suck like bud light and the other super light beers do. I got a bit drunk so I was fooling around. We got in suit again and went up to the room party Tigerpaw was holding (yet again!). I played pool in suit and schooled a few people. I had to take the head off after a while though due to vision issues. Eventually I was no longer drunk and the party wound down. I know Jeff and others like me drunk (I'm more open and quite funny from what I'm told). We eventually got back to the room and I fell asleep probably at 3-4.

Monday/Tuesday
Of course a travel day back. I woke up around 11 planning on an orderly noon departure (hah!). Of course it wasn't till 1pm that we called for a bell hop and whatnot. Drove my car around and we loaded up both my car and Ripner's. Of course Jeff was a little late coming down because he had to say bye to everyone. Then Ripner and the room-mates all smoked a cigarette each. After that people were still standing around. We said 'fuck it' and just drove off to let everyone know we should be leaving. This put our departure at nearly 2pm. Of course the other car called us curious why we were leaving all of a sudden.

Ripner's vehicle ended up going 80 and passing us. As we drove at 55 we eventually saw a '93 nissan sentra pass us, the car that Robbin and friends were driving in. Jeff made a comment how it was a stupid idea to drive it that far and that he had fixed the car a ton of times. Queue 10 minutes later. We had just passed the Tifton exit, where there's a nice Titan missile on the side of the road you can see from the interstate. We had commented about it. Then Jeff's phone rang. Robbin's car had broken down. We u-turned and stopped off there, deciding to help them. We got to the gas station and looked at the missile, took photos and looked at the car. The accessory belt was burning when the engine was running. Something was seized along it's path. Jeff was hesitant at first because you can't really see the entire thing and definitely not while the engine is running (having your head a few inches from a belt that snaps...yeah). Jeff eventually crawled under the car and moved a piece of the metal undercarriage and watched it from there. He immediately went "Awesome" and grabbed a utility knife, crawled back under and cut the belt in all of a minute. He had a guy start up the car and all was well. The AC compressor had died about 2 years ago, and the bearing had seized. The accessory belt only went to that compressor. So cutting the belt and removing it from the loop didn't do any harm. We were probably there for 30 minutes by the time they were off and running. Before hopping on the interstate we did see a massive crane hauler. Like 16 massive wheels on a segmented body thing. It was empty though, like it had delivered the crane and was heading back home.

On the way home we hit firehouse subs for lunch and that took time. Then the breakdown. So here we were, nearly 9pm and not even to Gainesville (2 hours from Jeff's). At that point I knew I wouldn't be going home that night. We decided to stop in Gainesville at a place called BJ's. It's a microbrewery and bar type deal. Think of cheesecake factory to compare the menu size. http://www.bjsbrewhouse.com/ We had a nice meal there. I had two sips of the beer Jeff ordered. It was a red ale and was pretty damn good. By the time we left there it was after 1030. We also had taken some extra stops since Jeff drank a lot of liquids. This included a rest stop and two pull-overs on the side of the road.

By the time we were getting close to his house, I think either on I-75 or the Turnpike there was a truck passing us, and I heard a "WHOOOM-thud thud thud, groan groan thud thud" type noise. The trailer blew a tire...in front of me off to the left. Luckily it was dark, so I couldn't see most of the carnage. I just weaved when I saw big pieces and moved over to the side without panicking. Eventually got to Jeff's around 1am and passed out soon after. Well sort of. I had jumbalia for dinner and kept waking up with heartburn and the need to go pee. So I really took a lot of 1-2 hour naps! Eventually went bowling and ran home to help my mom with her broken down car. Before leaving I noticed a little piece of rubber with steel cables in the crevice of my hood. Yup, one little piece from that tire.

Anyways, eventually found out my mom's car had a broken fuel pump. Luckily it's been less than a year so replacement will only be labor costs. Though while waiting we ate at a Sonic's and I dropped my phone. After a good two years I finally did it. The screen cracked. It's still usable, but I'm looking at replacing my phone. My room-mates hopped over to sprint too, so I can axe the t-mobile family plan.

Overall FWA was ok. The theming was inconsistent (Hooray, red balloons and windmills. Wait, that's it?), and it went by pretty fast. The headless lounge was huge and pretty nice. Probably needs one more head-rack now given the population of suiters. The pocket schedule was an absolute disaster. I figure the person handling programming quit or something last year because they didn't have a grid system like every other con, and they didn't contact the 'myconbook' developer to get the programming schedule into the mobile app.

So  media and I have been bowling a LOT since about the end of September (personally 142 games through today, it helps when alleys have once a week $.50 or $.25 games). I've personally gone through two balls and am on my third bowling ball thanks to a pro-shop error with my second one.

(For those interested, went from a Brunswick Power Groove to Brunswick Proactive Riot Zone Purple Pearl and now to a AMF300 Megafriction)

I've been compiling a bit of statistics on how I've been doing, and I'm a little surprised how I'm progressing. In the 2 months or so here's what's happened:

Average 120 -> 150
Open frames Average 7 -> 4
Average spares 2 -> 4
All time high score 131 -> 226

Of course there's other things. I used to be 'happy' if my score as I progressed in a game was above frame number*10, aka 10, 20, 30, etc.

Now it's about 15* frame number; 15, 30, 45, etc. I want to hit 100 by the 6th or 7th frame.

So yeah, maybe one of these days I'll join a league.

Why must this exist? It's cute and funny...but yeah. Thank you internet for this cute waste.

http://neoslashott.deviantart.com/a.....-Cat-257852702

Blah blah, Furloween; blah blah dancing; blah blah videos.


http://qik.com/45455537/5db9ab39
(Not in it, but check out  eaglebeagle and the general setup )

http://qik.com/45455600/8bc515ac
(Me doing whatever till  loathsomevermin shows me up at about 2:55)

http://qik.com/45455769/1090fd1f
(4th place "hip-hop" dance off. According to this I got 6th I guess. Whatever.  media and I were Kris Kross for those who didn't get it, like at least one of the judges)

Videos were taken by  carenath

Hey everyone. Seems I'm a little famous.

http://www.furhold.org/furloween/

(note who is in the banner)

Anyways, besides shameless self-promotion due to being the guy in the main page banner for Furloween, you may want to go to the event if you're anywhere in central Florida or just really want to hang out with the central Florida furs.

Reg is $30 paid at the door, possibly $40 if you don't register. Hotel if you want is $79 a night.

In general it's a one night event and a picnic the next day. More details are on the website.

Radda Radda Radda. Goto 21 minutes on this thing: http://www.justin.tv/megaplex/b/291399979 (part 5 if it doesn't auto load that)

I DANCED. I competed and performed. The big part, I didn't suck! From the feedback I could gather, there were quite tight groupings for placings, and I ended up around 6th/7th out of 13.

To be totally honest, once on stage I had the usual loss of remembering what I could do. I at least remembered a few little choreography/lyrics movements to go along with the song.

I'm really hoping to get up to snuff enough to make it through the preliminaries at FWA next year. Given the talent in the fandom now, placing isn't even on the radar for me yet. Just being able to perform alongside some of the better dancers will be enough for me.

So a while ago I decided it'd be best if I go and get TB prior to Megaplex starting. So I am going to voluntarily get TB on Thursday prior to arriving at the con. I will definitely be spreading TB around while at the con.

So I really hope you will enjoy TB like I do!

So today I decided to do some house cleaning and put away the badge and a few things from Anthrocon.

In the midst of doing so I realized I've been to a loooot of conventions and similar events.

How many?

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/pho.....eat=directlink

For those that count, that's 26 events. Maybe there should be some mini-badge or pin for 25, 50, 100 and 200 cons as some sort of overarcing body keeping track of this thing. I mean hell, there's pins/coins for hitting certain numbers of geocaches. /Retarded Rambling

The only reason I did this is because KP a while back posted on his livejournal about finding old Megaplex badges/books/etc. I'm sure he's gone to at least 50 'badged' events at this point.

So yay for my laziness.

Both my suits made it into the single-elimination rounds.

The first round has ended.

Livewire has been knocked out by 9 votes.
Daverab lives on by a 23 vote spread.

So those sodaroo lovers out there have to focus on MonsteRoo now. He's up for a vote tomorrow.

Just reminding those that didn't know, I'm going to be at Anthrocon in a few days.

Also, for those attending, there is a kangaroo photoshoot on Friday at 1pm outside the Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom.

Livewire and MonsterRoo will be at the shoot for sure for the fans of sodaroos.

So Livewire is up again against someone. This time it's nearly at the end of this whole qualifier affair.

http://fursuittourney.livejournal.com/110282.html


C.M.Y.K. is owned by  midwestcougar


Over the last day and a half I keep going from a tie to 2 votes ahead to a tie to 1 or 2 votes behind.

IT
IS
SO
CLOSE

So I'm probably going to stop watching it till midnight....maybe.

So, it looks like Livewire is going to lose. Good thing the first rounds are double elimination.

Anyways, to vote/check out what's going on: http://fursuittourney.livejournal.com/101080.html

The short version:

Draw Dr. Pepper, MonsteRoo and Livewire together in a 'famous trio' pose. Winning entry gets their art plastered on the sodaroos page and a poster of a shot of the three of them from the FWA photoshoot.

The long version:

See this: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2278649/