Exile

Last year I described my time at Australia's largest Lego Event. http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=50928&st=0&p=903202&hl=brickvention&fromsearch=1entry903202 Now I'm Back to do it again Today is Friday, it’s morning, you have organised the day off work and believe you are ready for the coming three days. Your MOCs are already set up on tables around the hall depending on their type, you know most of today is fun and games. YOU ARE WRONG. You arrive two hours late. You trusted that damn iPod again, (note to self. Stop doing that) the Lord Mayor of Melbourne has made his speech and the first round of games has ended. You grab your badge and showbag. The only LEGO Certified Professional in the southern hemisphere is half way through his presentation. You sit down and take in the information while wondering what you have missed. Lunch time comes and more games, the competition you excel at is starting, Build in a bag. No problem 5 minutes later you have a completed model and are high in speed over all the rounds. There are a lot of places to eat in the Melbourne, the city prides itself that you can find quality food on almost any street so you head to the QV center and hit one of the department stores first, you grab the first roll of left over Christmas paper you find, a tape dispenser and there you see them. Brand new on the Lego shelf in time for Dirty Brickster, the Death Star bauble with the pilot Minifig and Interceptor, you grab that and the equally new Genosian cannon you need the blue hood and the bug wings are sweet as well. Happy you go up to the good Japanese place and with food return to the convention all is well. HA HA, they send you out in the break between the official guy from Lego and the games. Your Japanese curry is persona non grata in the hall in spite of the fact you have been eating it all through the speech literally under their noses, you finish eating outside and the same guy that threw you out is sent to get you in again. You’re in second place and now it’s the final of Build in the Bag they can’t play without you, take that you beggars next time treat the curry with the respect it deserves. Five minutes into Build in the Bag you go down in flames the bag has too much air and no holes except the one that just popped out the back and lost you a couple of 1x1 round plates. You don’t know this of course you’re heading for first no problem, except you can’t find those plates did they sabotage you? You start looking at the resealed bag and then notice the shine of a pair of neon orange 1x1s in the crease of your pants. Bluebottle comes to your brain “You rotten swine you.” Did Not Finish. The auction doesn’t interest you; you bid half heartedly on a couple of sets that you know Lego won’t allow in Australia for another 5 months but know the others will get them. You wander off to the sellers, Ooo M-tron you will have that and a 918 in box, Santa Yoda I’ll have that and the 1970’s knight with complete visor and near perfect printing sure him too, you grab 6 series 6 minifigs to play which pack with and open one there and then “Score! Roman.” And the last thing you buy there is another classic space 6927 all terrain vehicle in box. More games speed sort and speed build you collect your Bricklink orders and tidy up the look of your MOCs {ALERT} your 1 Orc short for Minifig Heroica you run around asking the sellers if they have any. NO, Bugger. You try the other exhibitors, YES he has one it’s at home but he will bring it in. You thought the Fantasy Castle sets were more popular than that, oh well. The raffle is on you want that lightning dragon set. Return of Bluebottle “Waits for Applause, Not a Sausage.” (Note to self. Stop going to sleep listening to the Goons). You don’t bother eating the curry was good and filling. It’s time for Dirty Brickster you open a new police kit not bad, it’s gone. You steal a box of minifigs it has a Blacktron and a white Exploriens robot , oh look it’s gone too. I want that robot, open a box. Breathe deep, don’t panic it’s not fatal some bastard tainted the pool with Magicus, your slightly twisted mind starts thinking of ways to get someone to steal it. Your train of thought is derailed however by an eleven year old wetting himself with joy he found out someone put a Death Star that’s not supposed to be out yet into the pool. He is sitting on his chair hunched over it like Gollum and the ring, you see something snap inside him when one of the Star Wars loonies steals it. You don’t know what happened, a mate of yours has fallen on his sword a taken Magicus just to see what your fevered mind would come up with it’s a simple choice the Death Star has been stolen again, this time by the certifiable Star Wars loony, you take it and see he is only just breathing and is twitching strangely it’s a joy to behold. You sacrificed your play in the game but the laughter from the others is worth it. After the game you meet the guy with the robot and buy it from him, another pair come over, the Star Wars loony is still twitching you trade him the Death Star and swear he says something like now he has a tree topper. You go home you know tomorrow won’t be as interesting. SATURDAY: You got the two hours sleep doctors recommend for con goers and even slept in for ten minutes, you scold yourself for weakness and pickup your bag and get going. Today you will be guarding your main MOC, it’s nine 48 x 48 plates of Heroica built in scale to play with minifigs, it looks beautiful and only took three months to build and design. You get a flashback to last year {Wibble Wobble} You’re soon standing inside a table ring surrounded by Space MOCs, you pick tiny hands off delicate robots and answer the same questions for 200 people.{Wibble Wobble} wow it’s like it’s happening this year as well. Oh, it is except now your wiping up drool as well. When the kids that see it recognise what it is you can see the “Why isn’t mine like that?” go on behind their little glazed over eyes, you explain the rules to the adults, the kids explain the rules to the adults you can see the words “Not a gamer, don’t care about Lego, why aren’t I at the Australian Open?” go through their hollow heads. Then its one thirty (three o’clock) you forgot to bring Steambot this year and have to rely on the iPod. You eat a chicken roll that was under a copy of brick journal in your bag you think it’s ok, well you’re not dead so there’s a good chance its ok. Back to work, it’s weird now the parents are looking at the MOCs too some even goggle, its almost enough to shake your faith in the average Australian being a sport obsessed drunken dip. Now it's closing time to the public the private function has begun to warm up it’s to help raise funds for asperger’s syndrome. You actually hear the first half of the LEGO Certified Professional’s talk this time you’re satisfied, then it happens. An opera singer singing Bette Middler he’s too loud, you’re already partially deaf from work you didn’t do any thing to deserve this you can hear ringing all night but you are now doing the job for the kids at the wrong end of the syndrome it's almost enough to make you forget that when the singer stopped some clot put "Welcome to the hoedown with Jesus" or some other dross on the public address system. It is now time to go and you will be happy when you take an unnecessarily long walk by the Yarra and make a sacrifice to good taste. As you see a small round shape vanish into the murky water you know the world is a better place. SUNDAY: You are up you don’t even feel tired you must have been blessed. You catch the train go to the shop again and get a Lego set when you get to the con your only half an hour late. There are people viewing the MOCs, you take your place and start shooing little fingers and big ones too you’re feeling good, nothing brightens the spirits like the embarrassed look in a fathers face when he is reminded to move his fingers in front of his six year old. Hours go past and you take an hour lunch and visit another mate that works in the city you can’t stay long but you have a chat then it’s back to work. The kids are back and so are the parents and then come the Heroica obsessives they stick around for hours and take huge numbers of photos and ask for the lxf files, you tell them the truth, they can’t have them the files are on the laptop you left at home today you don’t tell them that like most complex MOCs the files only have a passing resemblance to the creation in front of them, they leave a bit disappointed and you think to yourself how did Heroica get obsessives it's only been out for a few months, oh well at least they're not playing sport and in a few years they will probably graduate to D&D. At five thirty the visitors are repelled and the disassembly gets into full swing and then your on a train and home and now writing this and realising that the showbag you didn’t get time too look at has the equivalent of a $70 set in it as well as a limited edition exhibitor only kit and a special edition minifig. You made out like a bandit this year and it was enjoyable, what could better. This has been a Very Dramatised account of my weekend at Brickvention 2012. Despite wishing it had been no CDs were harmed in the making of the days this describes. Seriously I had a great time this year even though I was exhausted and sore from standing for 30 hours. The kids were great the parents were sometimes odd and often goggling more than their children I'm going to do this next year and possibly double the size of Heroica with the new 2012 sets. Going to your local Lego cons and supporting the people who make them possible and any causes they are encouraging is worth it. Don’t let apathy stop you helping out.

There were transforming batmobiles in the Kingdom Come story line. Seventy year old Bruce Wayne used them to control the streets of Gotham when he couldn't.

Sorry it took me so long, here's the Flickr link. Holodoc, the convention was to close to the two huge ones for a preview unfortunately.

It is now 12 pm Jan 16. I have just spent the last 2 days at Brickvention, Australia’s largest Lego convention and display. Things like this start easily enough you build and alter 9 Lego ships for a display and rework your Brickwars army for it to be display worthy, then you get there and things get complicated. All the bricklink sellers you buy from are there, the shops have the new collector minifigs, ninjago and sets you have missed out on the first time around. There are more MOCs than you know what to do with. You forget to eat because you are trying to figure out the designs and connection systems others have used. Then you are competing in the challenges first comes build in the bag which is what it says except the organisers want the models to be exactly like the instructions, then there’s the speed sort also exactly what you see, sort out 180 cheese slopes into their colours as quickly as possible and just to be bitches they put in 1 more of one colour and 1 less of another and also make three of the colours dark blue, dark green and black. You find yourself counting the number of cows the club accidentally bought from Lego and hid through the displays you go nearly crazy when you find 270+ and when you finally look at the bag of goodies they gave you but you put in your bag and forgot about you see one in there as well you sit down for a few minutes and then are roped in to set up even more tables of MOCs you arrived at 9am and left at 9pm and this is only day one. Day two arrives and you’re going in again of course. 9:30am because you miss the train this time it’s all set up there’s nothing more you’re needed for, what you are forgetting is that day 2 is open to the public you get there and the queue to enter is already around the corner of a city block, you get in and are met with the statement “You’re late its 10:30” you look at the Poke Walker you have been using as a watch, it is set in sync with your DS which you remember is set to get your game of Pokémon more night for you to catch creatures you don’t have. You go in the main hall there are 3000 people there and your ships have been moved. You’re soon standing inside a table ring surrounded by Space MOCs, you pick tiny hands off delicate robots and answer the same questions for 200 people the guy next to you reminds you to go eat, so you go outside and because you’re a bit of a fool are convinced to help watering the growing queue. Two hours pass and you realize the queue is around the whole city block and seems to contain 10,000 people you run out of water and finally go get lunch its 3 pm according to your IPod (the Poke Walker betrayed you and should not be trusted). You like this “food” stuff and it reminds you of something else you haven’t had for a while, sleep. You gave that up when you started re playing Arkham Asylum mid last week. So far no side effect of that. Lunch is over. You go back to queue duty and hand out water for another hour then go inside and sit in a ring of tables and pick tiny hands off delicate trains and answer the same questions for 200 people. All throughout the day you have heard the same announcement “missing child” no problem that’s expected, then you hear “missing husband”. Somewhere in the back of your caffeine denied brain something happens. You tune out and take out the advent calendar parts you had been trying to get around to sorting and 10 minutes later have a reasonable looking steampunk robot assembled and something else in your hand, a receipt with $300 written on it. Then you look in your bag and find an unopened box of the series 3 Minifigs and your money for the week is gone. You know what happened it’s the Joker and no sleep, you went brain fadey and bought the box you wanted. More hands, more questions. The Steambot tells you it’s 6pm (you trust him more than the IPod and Poke walker) the con has closed you get your boxes collect your ships and Brick wars army which somehow became a display and then call your lift. Load up the car and go home. Eat tea (food is still good) and write something for a forum and maybe go to sleep. But you hear it in the back of your mind, mocking laughter. You still haven’t beaten that guy’s face in yet, you don’t need sleep you need to stop the Joker. The preceding is a very dramatised version of my weekend. Brickvention was great fun and allowed me to see people I haven’t seen for ages as well as be surrounded sometimes literally with Lego. If you ever get a chance to work a convention for a thing you love do it without hesitation it is greatly worth it. The last thing I need to mention is that sometimes one thing attracts another and because there was a large area of Star Wars Lego there was also a number of the 501st floating around along with Jango Fett, Boba Fett and various Jedi. It was a great weekend. Go to your local Lego conventions they need support. I’ll post my convention photos onto my Flikr account in the next couple of days. I hope you enjoyed the sillyness as much as I enjoyed the con.

On the topic of the kids hair colour, it technically is possible most light colours are less dominant and as such can be dormant in a persons dna. If two dark haired individuals both have the lighter colour in their family background there is around a 20% chance that a child will have the light colour hair. If you find a set with blond or red head parents and a dark haired child then you can scream or decide one of the parents often visits the dye bottle.

I added "provide us with Mythological themes, e.g. Minotaurs, Oni, Ogres, The Green Man ect."