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You might have noticed that I missed a couple of days to post blogs, and that’s because I was at [MAGFest] from Thursday to Monday. It’s a music and gaming fan convention with lots of live music, tons of games to play from consoles to arcade machines, as well as many other things pertaining to that realm. When I think about it, this convention encompasses the four main elements that I base this blog on – I listened to a lot of music, I worked out multiple times, I did some gaming, and I drank a fair amount of beer. It’s difficult to get my thoughts together on this weekend filled with non-stop action, but I’m going to attempt it. Thursday I flew out with a nervous knot in my stomach, but I couldn’t really tell you why it was there. I was excited to be headed to MAGFest, and wasn’t worried about anything in particular. Thankfully, it went away as soon as we took off. I opted to read on the plane, so I started and finished the [The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds book in the 33 1/3 series  ] and got about 100 pages into my Jeet Kune Do book.Once we got to the hotel, my friends on [The Shizz] started popping up out of the woodwork. I had flown in with one of them and rode in the shuttle to the airport with a few of them, and once we all got to the hotel, I started seeing more and more of them. That's the best part of MAGFest for me – seeing all of my old friends again. Eventually, we congregated in a huge circle on the lower lobby level and began talking about anything and everything. It was a lot more fun than celebrating the turn of the new decade, as some of us were waiting in line to get into the room with the celebration when midnight struck. We did manage to get in a little after midnight, but the band wasn’t to our liking, so we went back to the circle of conversation. A couple of us went back in to watch [virt] do some chiptunes, which was definitely high energy and enjoyable. After that, I spent a lot of time with my friend John, who does chiptunes under his project entitled Zio and TEH LOLZ and has three releases on Concatenation Records – [Face Stomper], [Chemicaldyne], and [Subfusion: Ice Light Army]. Being a New Jersey native, he was kind enough to bring a case of beer from the [Flying Fish] brewery and we had some good conversation about music over some tasty beer. Unfortunately, this conversation was interrupted by the alarm, as there was an electrical smell coming from the 11th floor, so we all had to evacuate to the lobby. Hijinks ensued from there, but that happens when you’re drunk at 3 AM and have to go somewhere you don’t want to. After the incident, I went back up to John’s room, grabbed some of his CDs to sell at the table, then went up to my room and went to bed. Friday I started my three day routine of eating breakfast, working out for an hour, showering, eating lunch, then hitting the Concatenation Records table this day, though I had to sneak in a trip to the CVS between eating lunch and working the table to get a couple things. On the way back from the store, I saw something in the bushes that intrigued me. It was a black squirrel, which is probably quite commonplace to folks in Virginia, but we don’t have them here in Seattle. After getting back, I spent four hours at the table and was able to sell around 35 discs, with about a 50/50 ratio of people I knew and people I didn’t. I was able to do some networking with [Original Sound Version], so when I get a new release on the label, I can contact them and they’ll announce it and possibly do a write-up. Very cool! The three concerts that night were all really enjoyable, and the acts that played were [Armadillo Tank], [Rare Candy], and [Metroid Metal] – the latter of which blew me away even though this is the third time I’ve seen them. They threw a pretty good shout out to [Meshuggah] by adding a section of “Future Breed Machine” into one of their songs, and they absolutely nailed it. So good! After the concerts, I made my way to the Shizz Suite, wherein I enjoyed many tasty beers and danced it off. There was a quick trip back to the concert room to watch [naxat] play a short set (which was great), then it was back to the Shizz Suite to dance it off some more until I couldn’t. I don’t actually remember getting back to my room that night, but I know I did without any trouble. Saturday The weight room was rather overpopulated on this day, but I still managed to get a full workout in. I wasn’t quite as successful at the table, but around 25 CDs were sold in four hours and more networking was done. John was kind enough to join me for quite a while, which made the time go by faster. As far as the networking goes, I spoke with a woman in a start-up gaming company looking for either background music makers or jingle writers. Considering I wouldn’t know what to do with the latter, the former sounded more intriguing. I’ll get back to her this weekend and get a better idea of what’s going on with that. The rest of the evening consisted of music, music, and more music! I watched sets for [Select Start], [Armcannon], [The OneUps], and [Temp Sound Solutions], and all of them were extremely impressive. Then I spent three hours at the [Dwelling of Duels] listening party, which was probably a bit much, but I powered through it. Then I slept for a minute or two. Sunday I did my morning routine and worked the table for six hours, selling around another 25 CDs and this time networking with a podcaster that’s going to get in contact with me before he starts using tunes from the site, so it’ll be interesting to see what he chooses for his show (and to check out his show as well). I managed one show this night, as I saw [The Smash Brothers] and they put on an excellent set even though their lead guitarist was pretty hammered. I hung around for the DoD results (which I didn’t fare well with) and The Shizz Family Photo before heading to the Shizz Suite – which was completely empty save for one person sleeping it off. There were some shenanigans going on out in the hall and those eventually settled down once the Sidequest (aka the Traveling Dance Party) returned to incite new and different shenanigans. Then we all went into the suite and danced it off for a while. A quiet room formed just off of the suite and a few of us went in there and talked for a while. My buddy Zach (founder of [Good-Evil]) got a [Stylophone] for Christmas and was showing it off to everyone – it’s a little keyboard that you play with a stylus and can twist a knob on the back of it to alter the pitch and make it sound something like a Theremin. Very cool! Exhaustion soon took its toll on me, so I found John again and we went back to his room so I could get some more of his CDs for the trip home. He hooked me up, then I went back to my room and finished the last Yuengling that I had and went to bed. Monday The last day of MAGFest is always the worst, since it means saying goodbye to everyone that you can find. After cleaning up, packing up, and turning in my room keys, many goodbyes were said in the hotel lobby and there was a lot of waiting around for the shuttle to take us to the airport. At least things ended well with a late lunch/early dinner at a restaurant in the Reagan airport with a small group of my friends. The flight back to Seattle seemed to take forever as naps, an Alaskan Amber and a shot of Crown Royal couldn’t make things go faster. Eventually, three of us landed in Seattle and then we went our separate ways – one continued on towards a flight to Anchorage, one went to the baggage claim, and I went home. Back to the Grind I went back to work yesterday morning and a severe case of “what am I doing here?” washed over me. After spending four days with some of the best people I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet, coming back to this part of my life seems like drudgery at its finest. Going from being busy for every waking minute and loving every second of it to having almost nothing to do and being bored out of my mind was quite the annoyance. My trip to MAGFest has made me more determined to put 110% effort behind my projects this year, so that I can eventually jettison the dead weight from my schedule, focus on said projects even more and enjoy future opportunities to spend time with the people that I consider part of my family. For the love of MAGFest! Discuss this post at [The Forum of Jason Vincion]! Posted on January 6th, 2010. |
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 Compilation Volume Three |
 Shizz Block Volume One |
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[Being Overambitious] [Working a Merchandise Table] |
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