TalonMan's Epic E3 Journey: From Patty Melts to Booth Babes - P5 - Article
by Pat Fass , posted on 28 June 2010 / 2,245 Views
Introduction
In the articles that follow, I will be bringing you along my fantastic adventure through Downtown LA - from the pre-flight jitters to the mess my final leg of the journey became, I will detail every exciting moment of this trip. I will outline what the E3 experience delivered for me - while giving you a glimpse into what it was like to meet some of the 'anonymous' personas of VGChartz that up till this weekend, I had only known through IM's and avatar pictures.
So, take a break from the bombardment of E3 media for a few minutes - sit back and enjoy the ride, as we hit the ground running and explore my very first E3 journey...
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
Wednesday - June 16th, 2010
E3 Day 2: My Last Day at E3
8:30am - We all wake up extremely refreshed and ready to take on E3 in full force. Unfortunately, as an E3 novice I haven't planned things very well. I have a scheduled flight out of LA at 7am the next day, so in essence this is it for me. Knowing that I would have to leave the hotel at 5am to catch my flight, I've already decided I won't be sleeping tonight - good thing I got so much between yesterday's nap and early night. But I have two goals for the day, and I will absolutely make them happen - play the 3DS and get as many pictures as possible with the booth babes!
10:30am - We are all showered and we head down to the Convention Center. We quickly wind our way through the hall. Brett has a meeting to get to, so he disappears into the crowd along with Dean. I wonder around a little bit with Liam - he takes a crack at the new Tron game and then we play a little co-op on Donkey Kong Country.
12:00pm - Liam gets a text from Dean that he's in the media hospitality room eating free lunch, so we make our way over by him. 5 minutes after we get there, every scrap of food is gone!!! Good thing we got there when we did!!! We finish our lunch, Dean does some last minute checks of his equipment, and we are off on the babe hunt!
We start at the Nintendo booth because for no other reason, they simply had the MOST women at this show hands down. After Liam had his picture taken with one of them (nearly trashing all of Dean's sound equipment as he dropped it all in his haste to stand next to one of these pretty ladies), I asked her how Nintendo could possibly find so many beautiful women at one time - she told me that Nintendo hired 160 women from a modeling agency. Let me say this again - THANK YOU NINTENDO!!!!
The three of us mull around for awhile capturing as many ladies as we can. At one point, one of these darling ladies looks at my shirt after being told we work for VGChartz and asks, "What's a Pat Fass?" - uh, that's my name, honey. Oh well, who says you have to be pretty AND smart???
Dean and Liam have a 1:30pm meeting with Crytek, so I'm on my own at this point. I make my way back to 3rd Party hall and locate the E3 souvenir shop, figure I really need to bring something home ESPECIALLY for my 8 year old son - he's a huge gamer and would not forgive me. I managed to find the coolest shirts for him and my 18month old daughter. His shirt has 'Player 1' printed on the front, and the one I bought her has 'Player 2' on it. Ok, you can all say it now - Awwwwwwwww....
3:00pm - I can't seem to reconnect with Dean on our quest for more babes, so I decide that this is the moment I will get on line for the 3DS - come hell or high water, I'm playing this damn thing before I leave!!! I get on line and am immediately greeted by one of the pretty Nintendo ladies who is walking through the line with a 3DS tethered to her waist - I decide, even with my crappy camera on me, I'm taking a picture of the first person to let me touch this device. She immediately snaps the DS closed and tells me I'm not allowed to take any pictures of the screen! WTF? I told her I didn't want a picture of the darn screen, I wanted a picture of her!!! Eh, whatever.
4:30pm - I made it! The moment has arrived and I am now on the makeshift Nintendo 3DS stage. There are at least 100+ 3DS's setup on long counters, behind each one is a smiling lady inviting you to come over and try out whichever demo happened to be playing on that particular 3DS. I get to watch demos for Paper Mario, Resident Evil, and the Disney movie Tangled - as well play the Steel Diver demo (meh). And then, it was over - my 20 minutes was up and I had to leave. BUT I DIDN'T GET TO SEE KID ICARUS!!!! Unfortunately, while they had so many units setup - you had no idea what you were going to see until you saddled up to that particular 3DS and put the headphones on, so there was no way to know which games were being demoed and where, and 20 minutes just isn't enough time. BUT, I did get to touch it and feel it and marvel at its technology. YEAH!!!
6:00pm - I get back to the hotel room. Brett is there by himself, working on the site (as usual). We decide that, since this is my last night in LA we'll make a nice night of it. Good food, good drink - send me on my way in style!!! I'd been gushing on about the sushi I had the night before, so we agreed that we'd go there for dinner tonight. And, since as I had now just discovered, Brett had already been there the night before and really liked the food he'd eaten - this was a no brainer.
We listened to Iron Maiden for awhile - UP THE IRONS, BABY!!! I played this crap DS game that, for whatever reason, I was absolutely determined to fight through and finish (Crime Scene), and waited for everyone to get back.
8:00pm - Everyone's cleaned up and in their evening best, we head back over to Takami. If I thought the previous nights food was good, this night it was even better! I finally found out what the Robata part of the restaurant name is - they are skewers of different meats that have the most amazing flavor, you would never believe. We had duck, we had angus, we had lamb - we ordered tons of different kinds of sushi. I kid you not, this was the meal of all meals. And not only was the FOOD great, but the waitresses were even BETTER!!! These two could have EASILY just been working the show floor down at E3 as a side job.
As we were finishing up with the food and continuing to drink our Japanese beers, Liam noticed that the outer ring of the restaurant was actually outdoors! Sure, there was a ceiling, but there were 15 foot windows surrounding the area that were wide open and we were allowed to smoke out there. That settled it, this was the greatest restaurant man ever created. Beautiful waitresses, delicious food, excellent drink, the ability to relax with a cigarette, great company - you could not find a better way to end the night... ...until 2am when the restaurant closed and that old familiar song seemed to pop into everyone's head at the same time - you know where we were headed now.
2:30am - So here we are, after having just gorged ourselves on a $350 meal, back at IHOP. This, of course, was a necessity for me as I was heading to the plane in a few hours - but for Brett and Dean, it was an addiction that simply had to be satisfied. Who knew something so simple as a patty melt, could bring out such strange behavior in people???
4:00am - We're officially full. I pack my bags, say my farewells to the guys going to sleep, and head out to the lobby for a quick smoke before leaving. Liam follows me down to "pinch" one last cigarette from me. A homeless (or crazy - I'm still not decided) woman decides to sit down next to us and chat. She asks if we're staying at the hotel and whether we'd like to "party" - I tell her I'm leaving for the airport, but that Liam might be interested! LOL!!! She asks for our email addresses (email, eh? this is one high-tech homeless person!), I tell her I have one but can't remember the address - Liam makes one up, and we go back inside.
We head back to the room, I grab my bags, and make my way back down to the parking garage. My day is done, my E3 experience is over. I'm sad to see it end so quickly, but I'm also happy to go home and see my family. I settle up the rest of the tab with the parking garage, hop in my car (after three trips back to the room because I would forget something!), and off to Alamo I went...
