Recollections #2: MAG Memories (Or: How I Hit Rock Bottom at National Harbor)

Author's Note: I wrote this some years ago and this doesn't reflect my current mindset, the kind of content I want to make, or really my writing style. However I do think it is a legitimately funny story, and so have elected to keep it up despite dumping pretty much everything else on this blog. If you read it please keep in mind I was much younger when I made this.

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Some people ring in the New Year by singing Auld Lang Syne with the family; by setting new goals for themselves to aspire to as the year progresses; or by getting wasted and committing vehicular homicide. My New Year's tradition has always been attending MAGFest (or the Music and Gaming Festival for you uncultured mongoloids) with a few friends. While at MAGFest I do what every self-respecting young fan does: I make sure to take pictures with slightly overweight cosplayers, eat terribly overpriced food, get stuck listening to some internet nobody in a room with 100 other smelly nerds, and buy large amounts of tacky swag to show all of my friends I am privileged and stupid! Holy shit, that sounds like a terrible fucking ide


The idea of conventions aside though, I have had some great times at MAGFest. But do to extenuating circumstances I will not be attending this year (and maybe many years into the future), and thought that since I can't go and must relegate myself to passively-aggressively commenting on my friends' experiences I might as well make a blog about some of the neat things that have happened at various MAGFests to me. Now, full disclosure on this: If you have ever been to a non-Comic Con or higher-tier convention ("tier" in this case meaning the amount of money and press funneled into it) than these stories will be completely mundane as everyone at conventions on the same level as MAGFest have experiences similar to this. MAGFest is essentially a weekend-long party (unless you are one of those pretentious fags who go to listen to Anthony Burch or Rebecca Sugar drone on about the importance of "nerd culture" and there work within it; in which case please kill yourself) and people do crazy shit at parties. So while my experiences can be viewed as wild and funny by some, for many others it will be wholly average and I do not want to paint a picture of me being some edgy, off-the-rails kind of guy when I am so obviously not.

Rock Bottom - It was my first MAGFest and I was young, stupid, and unprepared. The trip had been cobbled together at the last minute by two friends and I barely had enough money at the time to cover the ticket and hotel fees. But we managed to get going with four people in tow and headed off to National Harbor. Most of the weekend was fun; we met some e-celebrities, played some old arcade games, and took pictures with people wearing the costumes of our favorite video game characters. However, all of us were broke by the end of the first day (we couldn't even tip our waiter at the one restaurant we went to on the trip) and we only had the hotel for two of the three nights we were there. Meaning the last night we were on our own, and we had to brave the wild of the Gaylord National Hotel. At the time I was a young college student who tried to lead an orderly life and live by a schedule (lol), and because of that I wanted to go to bed pretty early. But, since on the final night we didn't have any place to sleep I had to wander across the convention center trying to search for my friends, a quiet place to rest, or a way to end my suffering.

As I walked around the Gaylord I began to feel as if time itself was breaking down around me. Having been ousted from two potential sleeping spots by security, I had simply begun to wander across the convention center (which was growing steadily more quiet as the night went on). I had some guy wearing only his boxers come up and slap me on the back, giving me a thumbs up and saying "Good night!" I returned his kindness with a half-hearted smile and thumbs up. Eventually, around 3AM I believe, I ran across one of the people I attended with. She was laying in the corner of some forgotten region of the convention center and just happened to see me. We reunited and explained how we had come to this pitiful state. Then we realized that it was our fucking fault for attending this place completely unprepared like a couple of retards. 

Anyway, as we were laying on the floor in what can only be described as a truly pathetic site, we had a lot of passersby comment on our situation. One pair, two large, burly, shirtless and handsome young men spotted us and yelled out "NERDS HIT ROCK BOTTOM! NERDS HIT ROCK BOTTOM!" Our wills were destroyed; there was nothing we could do but laugh. One gentleman, dressed in a jean-jacket adorned with various buttons with a blue skinsuit underneath began filming us with his phone, asking us to exclaim "HOT SAUCE!" I made an ahegao face.


Finally as dawn came we were pushed from our spot by another security guard, and decided to move to the lobby in the hopes of passing our other two friends (who unbeknownst to us were holed up fucking in the car like the assholes they were). In the lobby we met the final figure that rounded out our strange venture outside of time: Jeremy. Or maybe it was Jack. I can't remember. Anyway, he was really fucking drunk and his friends asked us to watch him while they got their car. While he was with us he spun a grand tale; a tale of his trials and tribulations; a tale that will forever hang in the halls of the Gaylord National Hotel alongside his horrible breath. He told us about how this was his 2nd year at MAGFest as a volunteer and how he wanted to get James Rolfe's (the Angry Video Game Nerd) autograph for his younger brother, who wasn't allowed to watch James's videos because they were too vulgar. He told us about his job at Shoprite (or Superfresh or something; I can't remember) and how his boss liked him so much that when Jeremy left his boss paid for his first computer. Finally, he told us about how one day he was riding his bike home from getting Chick-Fil-A when two guys jumped him and tried to take his bike. Jeremy related how at this moment he summoned up all his courage and sacrificed his orange soda by throwing it at the younger of the two assailants. My friend and I were so taken aback that when Jeremy's friends finally returned (after a fucking eternity) we felt truly alone.

This is getting too fucking long and boring so I'll wrap this up. We found our friends about an hour later, one of them is a fucker and "lost" his wallet so we had to stay an extra two hours when all of us were dying, and on the way home we went to Olive Garden and didn't tip (again).

Moral of the story: Fuck MAGFest.