Paved with good intentions

What happened Saturday?

Saturday's show was scheduled in the same room, State Room 2, only two hours later then Friday night's HELL. Did I mention that State Room 2 had a max capacity of 100 people? Yeah, only a hundred people. It makes HELL an intimate experience.

Like Friday night, I showed up an hour early and watched folks line up at the door to HELL. But, compared to Friday night, there were even more people who wanted to get into HELL. The con staffer in charge of the panel rooms, who Bruce informed me went by the handle of Fuzzy, tells me that despite informing the A-Kon programming directors of the problem nothing could be done. We were stuck with State Room 2 and it's smallish and intimate qualities.

So, that was that. Nothing to do but to make the best of it. Sure, HELL fills the Main Programming of other cons, but not at A-Kon. Nope.

But it seems that A-Kon couldn't ignore the number of folks who were queuing up for HELL. The line had gone all the way down to the end of the hall and back up the other side of the hallway to where I was sitting, opposite of the door to HELL. Soon Fuzzy was joined by other A-Kon staffers to work out some sort of solution.

And the first solution was that nothing could be done. So everybody in line was told only the first hundred would get into hell. Which sent most of the line away in disappointment.

Then, as the folks in line slowly wandered off, there was a second solution. They could move HELL into Video Room 3 if we were willing to start an hour later. A Midnight HELL seemed like a good idea to me if there was enough room for everybody in HELL. So everybody in line was told that HELL was now at Midnight in Video Room 3.

I gathered up my gear and off we went to Video Room 3, which was just around the corner from HentaiFEST and the Dance. Problem solved. Well, not quite.

First the word got out that everybody would be carded, suddenly HELL was an 18 and up Show. I had to try and convince the A-Kon Staff, and Bruce for some reason, that HELL was an all-ages show. Then it turned out that Video Room 3 didn't support microphones so we were moved once more to Video Room 2.

At this point I was surprised that anybody stuck around to get into HELL. But they did. And I'm grateful to all the folks who did come to the show. Thanks for coming out and supporting HELL, if it weren't for you guys I would've given up on the whole thing long ago.

I wanna thank the A-Kon Staffers for all the trouble they went through getting us into a video room and AV Staff we tormented with our crap audio setup. Thanks to Bob and Emily for the Kawaii TV opening. And, of course, thanks to Bruce, Avery and Katie for doing the thing they do, too. Maybe next year.