So I woke up this morning and saw (via Facebook) that Gus from Red vs. Blue has posted a blog post about the first RvB convention appearance.  The post included the photos I uploaded last week from the event in question: DreamCon.

2004 DreamCon in Jacksonville, FL
(Click the photo for the complete set.)

After reading the post, I decided to write out the rest of the story of Geoff and Gus’s appearance at (what turned out to be) a one time Florida convention.  Here, in completely scatterbrained order, are the details:

HOW: In 2003, the organizers from DreamCon contacted my team at Wasabi Anime to provide Japanese animated entertainment for the convention.  They asked who we would like to see as a “guest” for the con, and instead of suggesting the usual suspects (voice actors) we suggested Red vs. Blue.  I had watched some of their videos at a Wasabi Anime: Treasure Coast meeting and that it was some really funny shit.  It seemed (based on crowd response at DreamCon) that others agreed with me.

WHERE: Gus points out that he can’t remember the exact location in the post.  The hotel was the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront Hotel in downtown Jacksonville.  The place is snazzy and had a pretty cool view of the river.

WHAT: The photos of the guys selling merch is at the Wasabi Anime table.  The convention didn’t have a place for Geoff and Gus to sell stuff since, per their own admission in the blog post, they didn’t think about doing so until the last minute.  After they hosted their first panel, we volunteered our table (outside the anime viewing room) for them to sell their wares.  Good times.

WHY: “Why” is a question we asked for a couple weeks afterwards… as in “Why did we post that video?”  Somewhere in the same box of discs that produced the photos I posted is a video file of the very first Red vs. Blue convention panel.  Back in the “before time” website hosts charged severely for bandwidth.  We posted the video on the Wasabi Anime website and (for the next week) Kevin from our team had to keep calling in with a credit card to pay for more bandwidth because the video was getting downloaded over and over again.  WasabiAnime.com would suddenly stop working and have the message “This site has exceeded its bandwidth.”  That’s right kids: the age before YouTube.

I’m sure the video will surface at some point.

After DreamCon, we had Red vs. Blue come back for some awesome appearances (JACON) and some less noticed ones (Assimilation.)  They are always great folks to have around.

For those of you who have NO IDEA who or what I’m talking about, watch this: