The Creature From the Karaoke Room
~by Chiriko

You'd expect the staffers at an Anime convention to be among the worst of the worst in terms of fucking otakudom, wouldn't you? Well, while you'd be right about quite a few nonspecified staffers at any given con (a general rule of thumb would be that the more bullshit anime convention politics surround a staffer, particularly higher-up, the more of a chance that person is a fuckin' otaku), it doesn't apply as a blanket statement. Lots of people staffing anime cons are just regular fans, who do it for a change of pace (when the con scene gets boring as attendees, start staffing!), to help a friend or significant other out (Evelyn wouldn't be there of her own free will), or perhaps to get a con room or crash space. Staffing an Anime convention is hard work for most staffers, because aside from having to do actual work in regards to whatever you're doing, you have to deal with fuckin' otaku in both your fellow staffers and con attendees who expect that "staff" badge to mean you know where Video Room 3 is, despite having just arrived at the con and gotten your badge at conops. (Hey. Fucking Otaku. They give you a map of the facilities and it TELLS YOU WHERE STUFF IS.)

In terms of fuckin' otaku within the con staff, of course, there are some real boogers in any convention staff; the only thing worse than an otaku with power issues is when he actually gets his hand on some sort of mid-level management position or situation of control -- say, hospitality or conops -- and insists on showing you who's boss. However, Evelyn, Rin, and I (and of course our other pals) have been free of the stupid bullshit that plagues most departments (aside from the occasional "Hey, doesn't Yasha have a shift now? Why did she go to the masquerade?") thanks to a couple of important factors: We've vowed not to get involved in con politics, are perfectly happy not being high on the ladder of fake corporate hierarchy that dominates anime conventions, and have all been brought on board by our badass friend Hank, who heads the Karaoke division of Interactive Events. With all this said, I can fairly confidently say that working AX Karaoke has always been a relatively pleasant experience. We hold no beef with any of the hardworking AX staff, or of any con we've worked, even the occasional conops nazi or screaming volunteer-wrangler. (Why would anyone be a con volunteer? Are there people who enjoy pain and humiliation that much but don't want to get into hardcore BDSM?)

Before I go on to recount a horrific tale from one attendee at AX, let me say that I also worked on AX attendee relations, handing out freebies, prizes, and AX candies to people waiting in line. I did not encounter one problem in doing this in regards to being harassed or annoying by otaku (the girls in our group had a couple) -- for the most part, the attendees were well-behaved, polite, and about as normal as you could hope at an anime convention. =P

No, this story -- and believe me, this is by far the most amazingly unbelievable fuckin' otaku encounter I've ever had in my life -- concerns one of the attendees of AX 2003, whose true name has been lost to the ages (no matter how hard I've tried to find a picture of his Macross Ensign Machizaki costume), a foul creature of the night known to us only as... Nekki Basara. Any names other than the monicker he insisted on choosing (and our names, of course) when he sang Macross 7 Fire Bomber songs have been changed to protect the specific guests involved from public humiliation. Nekki Basara, on the other hand, didn't seem to care much about public humiliation judging by the screaming he did in the karaoke room filled with people. ;) With that said, let's begin.

It was Saturday night, and the post-Masquerade rush to open mic karaoke was beginning to set in. Evelyn and I were working the karaoke sign-ups with a radical eyeball-fetishist by the name of Nichole. Our friend Val, among others, was popping in and out and we were generally hanging out, having a fun time. The guests, too, were having a fun time; one girl who we'll call Janice was being flirty with me and generally fangirlishly annoying, which Evelyn just loved. Janice came by and asked us if we had her CD in our stack; apparently she had signed up with her old contest song CD for open-mic and left it there because she knew we'd keep it (as if we're her librarians... yeesh). I took a look around and didn't find it with the others, so she shrugged and bounced off to her group. About 10 minutes later I came across it and called out "Oh! Janice?" thinking she was still in the general area. "Janice? I found Janice's CD."

Big mistake.

A nerdy, somewhat beefy Caucasian guy (you saw that coming) wearing glasses and a perfect costume of  an obscure Macross ensign (Specifically, Machizaki, the guy in the show who always whines to Misa that the bridge bunnies are constantly mocking him. Christ. He can't even dress up as someone who's not a completely emasculated loser.) came up to the table. My otakudar picked up the dangerous signal and klaxons began to blare in my head, but it was too late. "I don't know where Janice is. She should be here," he said. Sure, I guess I'd noticed this guy signing up at the same time as Janice's group, and, yeah, he did use his IRC handle instead of his real name, but, c'mon, who would've thought they were actually acquainted? The problem is, Janice had run off somewhere. And left him behind. With nobody to talk to. See where this is going?

He started off by asking us to change the name he had signed up with. Since he was doing a Macross 7 Fire Bomber song, it was only appropriate that he change his name to Nekki Basara, the protagonist of the series or something. (I've never seen it.) Nekki Basara, the guy who sings the songs in the fake band in the anime that this otaku would be singing said songs from. Oh yeah. You see where this is going, too. We complied -- changing a name in the queue is easy enough, and it's a normal enough request; say a couple of geeks decide to change what they'll be called when it comes their turn at the mic from "Stephanie and Florida" to "Psychedelic Ayumi." Whatever. It's all in good fun. The problem came when he wanted to really get into character:

"So, can I run in late after they call me?" he asked.
"What?" I replied.
"Can I come in late? Nekki Basara is ALWAYS LATE, so I have to be late! Can you just have him call me a few times and then I'll come running in?"
"If you're not here when we call you, you'll lose your place." I thought that would be enough to stop him.

And that was good enough for him, but I thought maybe my not giving him his way (and holding up our other singers for his dramaticism) would perhaps cause him to sulk off and find someone else to talk to. Alas, he hung around and began prattling about the most inane shit, occasionally wandering off but always inevitably coming back to annoy us. A few times during this Evelyn would mutter "We don't care," and "Shut up!" to which he was oblivious.

Something had to be done. I asked Nichole, quite a talented artist, to draw a picture of me with my eye out, my arm hanging off, my leg falling off, and my shirt off -- and an erection. She complied (hey, it was a pretty cool picture) and I showed it to him the next time he came babbling by, hoping it would deter him from hanging out with us. Unfortunately, it had the adverse effect, as he then went "Reminds me of the time I lost most of my face."
"Whoa. How did that happen?" I asked, feigning polite interest. I mean, what do you do when a guy tells you he once lost most of his face?
"Car versus bike. I lost. Luckily they were able to reconstruct most of my face." (Were they really?) I wasn't sure if he was lying or just monumentally unlucky, but I recall thinking that if I had lost most of my face in a horrible accident where I had a brush with death, I wouldn't be spending my life being an otaku. He continued to prattle on, quickly eroding the pity I had briefly developed for him and being generally obnoxious. I'm sorry, but I'm not your friend, Nekki Basara. Social skills would've done him a large bit of good. However determined I was to keep both my customer-service face and my more specific hey-this-is-good-website-fodder optimism, I was really sick of him annoying us and impeding the signups of other attendees by blocking their way and monopolizing the signup desk. It was around this time Nichole managed to escape to go buy some snacks and left half-asleep Evelyn and I to deal with the scumbag alone. (Well, Val had since shown up, so that was fortunate!)

Unfortunately, when it came time for him to sing his song, the lyrics printed from AnimeLyrics.com were incorrect. He came back and started bitching to us about how the lyrics in our database were totally off and they screwed him up at the end of the song.
"Yeah, AnimeLyrics gets a lot of song lyrics wrong," I told him. "You should send a nasty email to SailorBacon." SailorBacon, even though you are also a fuckin' otaku, wherever you are, I would like to extend my apologies for what I'm sure was one hell of a scathing email from Nekki Basara.

At some point Janice came back, got her CD, sang a song, and then ditched him again, so he started really annoying us. It was time to really let loose and ward this guy off. No holds barred.

I had to run upstairs and get something from my room, and I took the opportunity to put him in a position his otaku ego wouldn't be able to handle: say something he'd disagree with and leave on my errand before he could argue back. I waited patiently, and told Rob I needed to make an announcement after the next singer. I went up. Truly, this was my moment to shine. "Attention, everyone," I said, clearing my throat. The room grew silent in anticipation of this important announcement.

"Minmay is a stupid bitch."

I walked down the aisle and, predictably, he screamed "WHAT?!" He stopped me, the silence in the room indicating quite a bit of amusement from the crowd. "Waitwaitwait! A-Y or E-I?!" he shouted, referring to the Japanese Macross and English Robotech versions. I looked him in the eye, let the hatred take control of my body, and shouted "BOTH!" with all my heart and soul.

He dropped to his knees and screamed "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I swear to God. I walked out of the room with utter triumph in my heart. But it would not end, and I knew this. No, indeed, the saga of Nekki Basara was only beginning.

When I returned, in a nice refreshed state of mind, I once again took up the helm at the desk. Surprisingly, he did not come by to question my hatred of Minmay/ei, but he did come by and start annoying us again. It was time for a last resort, so I pulled out my ultimate weapon: a random shota doujinshi that was far too hilariously disgusting to pass up. The cure for heterosexual otaku plague is vitamin shota. I picked up the doujinshi and began to read it the next time he came around.

"What's that? Is that yaoi?!" he asked.
"It's shota!" I said with the most energetic, friendly voice I could muster.
"I thought so. I'm not so into boy-boy stuff." (Well, no duh. Why won't you go away?!)
"Oh, that's too bad!" Even Vitamin Shota wasn't curing this plague. Perhaps he needed a bigger dosage. I carefully angled the doujinshi so he could see a corner of the page. The action on the page caught his eye, and that's when I put it down, opened to a particularly graphically obscene page.

He physically leapt back in horror. "Ah--ah... I'm not into that kinda stuff!" He didn't come back for a long time. Unfortunately, the story does not end there.

Tanzy and Rin came by to relieve us of our shift, but they arrived a little early, so we wound up hanging out with them a bit. I told them about the adventures of Nekki Basara thus far and then he came and proved quite quickly the things I had been saying about him, annoying all of us with questions on why we didn't have songs from Macross 7 that he wanted to sing, and so forth. He finally opted to sign up for a song and went to practice it in the hallway. A little bit later he came back and started annoying us again, this time with Tanzy and Rin at the controls. This is where things got really delicious. ;)

"Do you have a setup to put MD players in through the speakers?" he asked.
"Nope," we all replied. He wandered off for a bit, then came back.
"Could I, like, take my MD player up and put the headphone up to the mic and sing to that?"
"No, of course not."
"Aw, c'mon, please? You don't have the song I want to sing and--"
Rin slammed her hands down on the table. One cannot accurately reproduce the fire and thunder that was in her voice. "LISTEN. OUR EQUIPMENT, OUR MICROPHONES, AND OUR SETUP IS FAR TOO EXPENSIVE AND SENSITIVE, AND WE'VE SPENT FAR TOO MUCH TIME FINE-TUNING IT AND MAKING SURE IT'S WORKING, AND IF YOU DO ANYTHING TO SCREW IT UP, I WILL BURNINATE YOUR HOUSE INTO A SEA OF FLAMES."
"I... I was just kidding!" he chuckled.

We thought the fear of Rin had been scared into him and he wouldn't be back. But some guys never learn, do they? About half an hour later he came back, beet red.

"THAT BITCH! THAT FUCKING BITCH! You'll have to cancel me from the list, I couldn't get my mp3 player from my room to practice in the hall because that BITCH Janice is probably out getting DRUNK with her friends again and she has my room key! She got drunk off her ass last night and then I CARRIED HER INTO THE ROOM and let her stay in my room even though my mom made the reservation on HER credit card and INSISTED I NOT LET ANYONE STAY WITH ME, but I let her do it for FREE out of my own niceness, because I'm a NICE GUY and NICE GUYS always get fucked over!!! Now I don't know what to do, I don't have my key and that BITCH took off with it and I'll be in SO much trouble!" I will interrupt the story here to point out that this guy had to be at least 26, and his mom was making hotel reservations for him. Uh-huh. I should also say that the "nice guys always get screwed over" act is the most annoying and utterly malevolent thing I hate about the sexless male otaku. But, anyway, back to the story. The time it took you to read this is about the time we sat there staring at him in total perplexed silence.
"Well, that certainly is a reason to be upset..." I tried in vain to diffuse the otaku time-bomb.
"Well you couldn't tell my mom that! It's apparently not OKAY to get upset when YOU GET SCREWED OVER!!!!!!! NO!!! THEN THEY MAKE YOU GO TO THE DOCTORS AND THEY MAKE YOU TAKE THE PILLS!!!!!!! I ALWAYS GET SCREWED OVER BECAUSE I'M A NICE GUY!" This was causing quite a scene. He then resorted to whining about his pathetic situation.

Luckily, Rin has her own AT-field, and she'd had just about enough otaku bullshit that weekend. She stood up and slammed her hands down on the table HARD. "LISTEN. YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS. 1. SUCK IT UP. 2. BE A FUCKING MAN, GO TO THE CONCIERGE, AND GET A NEW FUCKING KEY. EITHER WAY, BITCHING TO US ABOUT IT IS NOT GOING TO HELP YOUR SITUATION!" With that, he finally went away.

Satisfied with such a resolution, Evelyn and I headed up to bed, but the night was not over for Rin and Tanzy. According to Tanzy, about 20 minutes after we left -- so, around 4 AM -- Janice, in fact, came back. And Nekki Basara, not satisfied with the scenes he had made earlier, unleashed all his fury on her.

"WHERE WERE YOU?!" he screeched. I am not sure what she responded, or if she even had a chance to respond.
"I WANT YOU OUT! OUT OUT OUT!!!!! GIVE ME MY KEY! GIVEITTOME!" he snarled, snatching the key out of her bewildered hands. For all her annoying antics, and even though her screwing Nekki Basara over was indeed wrong in theory, I have to give Janice credit for not sticking around to put up with this fanboy acquaintance's abuse. She turned around and walked out, and he stormed out a few minutes later to go to bed, alone, in his hotel room.

So ends the tale of Nekki Basara, the most obnoxious, foul, vile, and annoying personification of every bad otaku stereotype rolled into one experience with one single person over the course of a few hours in one single night.

May we never encounter him again.