Tonyous

Alright then, Fabio Capello is going to quit England if they don't get to the next round. I think he'll probably quit anyway because the fans will start blaming him for losing in the Quarter Finals if England get that far. It's true. England's best manager in the last 20 years was Terry Venables, and they got rid of him when it wasn't his fault and England were really good. Since then, getting shite people to manage England has proved fatal. Why the hell do we have to endure a foreign manager controlling England? It makes no bloody sense. When Sven Goren Mobile-Phone became England manager, that was the day I said "Screw England, I'll be cheering Scotland on from now on!" Of course, Scotland haven't qualified for any cups since then either so I've been a bit stuck. I will always cheer on Japan though, they're going to win the cup in the next 100 years. ;) Also, if you think I'm betraying England by wanting Scotland to do well, I am actually part Scottish so I'm not, I'm just choosing my other country! I may have been born in England and live here, but I'm lucky to have another choice... they just need to do better. :D

So Capello is going to quit as manager. That means there's a job opportunity for us all. They will be looking around all the current football managers again. Now if I had to choose our next England manager, I'd easily pick any of these football pundits who seem to know everything. They're on TV all the time during the England games saying what the team should do, so if they know so much, let them have the keys to the England team! JOB DONE! We should easily have the European Cup in 2012. :) As long as the next manager is English, that'll be good. If he is English, I will buy a England shirt again at the next cup with pride.I am going to apply to be the next England manager. I will give my CV to them as well which is impressive. A few years ago, I won all the cups when I had my bout of addiction on Championship Manager 2, and I love FIFA games. Haha. Now we all know this will never happen, I could be rich and famous and I'd still not get the job. They'd rather choose another foreigner who ends up screwing the team up when the games matter instead of someone who can see the gameplay and knows where to have the best players on the pitch for their abilities.

If I was manager of England, I'd be promoting English football. The fans are as bad as the football association. I hate hearing fans of some Premiership team saying how much they spent for an Italian player. To me, that's just one less English potential that's missing out on valuable experience in Europe. I couldn't give a shit if Man Utd spent £100 million on so many foreign players. ALL English clubs should be bringing up young talent from our shores, and only be aloud to have 2 or 3 foreign players in the mix. Chelsea are a bitch for having anything but English players, and it should be stopped for the sake of England. Oh, and are any clubs in the UK owned by any English people anymore? If this country seriously wants to win a World Cup, or any medals whatsoever, then promote English teams!

Don't even mention to me about the Premiership being a brilliant league with a mixture of players. It's that fact that's ruined the England team and our game!

Last bit before I leave this topic alone. Football is ruined more by greed. It's not a sport anymore, it's a business. That's why I stopped giving a toss about the game over 10 years ago and only watch the Euro and World Cups. There's more passion about playing for your country than playing for some team getting stupid amounts of money. Some people may say that they've made it and deserve all the cash they get, but I disagree. Greed has ruined the game more than anything!

It's time for the Expo blog. How did the weekend go for the May 2010 London MCM Expo? Pretty damn good I'd say. I was bloody busy but it was so epic. This is my blog for my sites, if you want to check my blogs for MCM which are the cleaner versions, please go check out and keep an eye on MCM Buzz. For videos, check my YouTube channel...

http://www.mcmbuzz.com

http://www.youtube.com/TonyoTimes

Right then, time to go through the weekend and what I got up to. Of course, I go from Friday to Monday, and if you don't, you should start. Best weekends of the year.

FRIDAY

The Expo weekend always starts for me when I walk out the door with my bags packed, head to the train station for London. I met up with Jodie and we headed off. We got to London a little earlier than usual this time so I managed to get things sorted out and meet a lot of people before heading out to Forbidden Planet and Namco arcade.

I actually bought something from the Planet this time. The last two times I've been to Forbidden Planet, I've left without buying anything. This time I got Prince Of Tennis volumes 35, 36, and 37. I also got Oh My Goddess volumes 4 to 7 for only 99p each. BARGAIN!

Me and the group eventually got to Namco arcade after having a great feast at McDonalds. The plan was for me to film the second Air-Hockey Tournament. I filmed the first one at Namco without any problems, but this time the management stopped me and said it was copyright to film in the arcade. I had a dispute with the manager about having filmed the first tournament in October 2009, and it's stupid not being able to film because the tournament doesn't only bring custom, it also means free advertisement for them via Tonyo Times. They refused, said we could take photos as long as we didn't take pictures with the Namco label in them, and then left us alone. I think it's a whole pile of crap about copyright, and the laws have gone insane and don't know what they're doing anymore. Seriously, is recording air-hockey really piracy?

The Air-Hockey Tournament continued with 24 players taking part. The champion who deserved the title is Daniel Pulley, also known as the man who got us all out of bed for the Sunrise Cosplay Meet on Saturday morning before Expo. That's coming up in this blog in a moment.

After leaving Namco, we all caught the ferry from the London Eye, all the way to the Millennium Dome.. sorry, wait, the O2 Arena. Stupid name change, it'll always be the dirty dome to me! Then we all headed back to our hotels, some to continue the fun and get drunk, others like myself to get a bit of rest before going out at 4am to watch the sun rise. Ohhhh, the funs.

SATURDAY

So after tossing and turning in bed until 3am, I got absolutely no sleep at all. I got up, donned the Professor Oak costume, had a bit of food, grabbed my box of fortune cookies, and headed out to meet loads of people for the Sunrise Cosplay Meet. When the sun came up, it was cloudly and we didn't see anything, but we had some laughs and I made a few videos.

After the meet, me and a few others waited outside the ExCeL for the doors to be opened. We waited at the west entrance, while a bunch of others were waiting at the brand new east entrance, including Joe (Granny Gertrude) who dragged himself out of bed for the madness. Their side won though, they came in laughing at us because were we all still waiting outside. It was still a lot of fun.

We all queued up, got our goodie bags and wristbands, and then waited to get into the Expo. The new wristbands are cool, I think they're a lot better than other events where people have to wear huge badges. Some folks have a problem with the wristbands, I can't understand why they're complaining to be honest.

Half an hour late, we eventually get into the Expo hall. My first stops were getting the masquerade ticket, seeing the guys at Tecmo Koei, and buying stuff. After that, I did a wander video which felt like a chore. The place filled up so quickly it was hard to move around. I only did this one wander which I'm gutted about, I like filming the cosplayers, so this was one of the many fails when it came to recording over the Expo weekend.

After wandering about, taking some photos and meeting people, myself, Georgina and Lee, went to the Cosplay Fever desk and registered ourselves to hopefully get into the next book. Now it's no secret that my ambition for 2010 is to get into Cosplay Fever. Not on their website, that's ok, but I would love to be in the second volume. I didn't know anything about the first one being released so hopefully Professor Oak will be in the new one being released in October. We had to follow a photographer around and we all had different shots taken in different locations and poses. It was fun. This was the reason there was no second wander video on Saturday I think?

The next thing to do was the Nintendo DS World Record. We beat that by 200 so we hold the record now. 586 will be difficult for any country, but if anyone wants a go, bring it! While we were waiting for the Record to start, Stuart saw me in the audience and dragged me up on stage. I had to pick three people from the audience and then had to answer questions to win them prizes. It was Stuart's revenge for making the 'Seriously Stuart, A Cow' video back in February. Now I'm trying to think of other ways to get him back for dragging me up there. I'll think of something when I have more time. ;)

I went back to the hotel after this and got more comfortable in my Japan footy shirt. I didn't take my fortune cookies back to Expo and I'd got rid of more than half anyway, I grabbed my tripod ready to film the masquerade. I can't carry too much, it'd end up driving me insane.

Getting back to the Expo, I went to the Tecmo Koei booth again hoping to record Will and Chin playing Fist Of The North Star. It was far too loud though as thousands of people were wandering around the event. Instead, Will let me have a go on the game, and then Laura had a chat with me about it on camera. I really enjoyed doing that. :) When Will said he wanted to get me for an interview, I thought he'd be dragging me on and asking me questions himself about all sorts of crazy things, but this was a professional set-up and I loved it. Thanks guys, that's one of the highlights of May Expo for me.

Everything was running late, the Masquerade didn't start until 6pm which is usually the closing time for Expo on Saturday. It was worth waiting for, and seeing as I missed Doctor Who as well because the Masquerade finished at 8pm, I didn't care. I can quite happily watch that again after the Expo had finished. The quality of the Masquerade, and seeing the first qualifier for the Euro Cosplay Championships, it was amazing.

After a long hard day, and no sleep the night before, I went back to the hotel to find everyone ready for the Nerf War that I organised. I called it off because it was raining heavily outside, and with it being so late, it wasn't going to happen. What I want to know is, if everyone wanted to play in the rain, WHY DIDN'T YOU DO IT? Don't wait for me, I was never going to play with a Nerf gun or take my camcorder outside in that! You know London rain burns your skin right? Haha.

I got some chips and salad from the Premier Travel Inn bar, and afterwards went straight to sleep. Before this though, someone came up to me asking if he could have a future yum. I told him, as soon as I got my food, I'd be back down with his fortune cookie.. aka, future yum. What he didn't realise was, I was going to give him the whole box. He had a camera, so gave him the box and told him to give it an adventure as long as I got the photos tagged or linked to me afterwards. At time of writing this, I still await the photos.

After food, my head hit the pillow and I was gone. I'd been awake for 41 hours, and before this my record was 33 hours of being awake. I never want to do 41 hours again!

SUNDAY

I woke up after 6 hours sleep, threw on my Nerf War combat gear, and went to queue for 6am. I think everyone was far too tired to mess about on this morning so there's no rave videos or anything. The one thing I did do, I recorded going around the zig-zag queue. That was fun. What did piss me off was the fact grown adults were jumping the zig-zag barrier. I was third in the queue, I ended up way down the line in like 30th. Something has to be done about these lazy people! Don't worry, I got you on camera!

I also found out my Professor Oak cosplaying mate, Matthew, had the fortune cookie box and there were still cookies inside. He's found it in his hotel room on the Sunday morning, so the mystery begins on how it got there. He continued the adventures and took a few photos. They can be found on Facebook.

Once inside the Expo, I went to Tecmo and recorded Will playing Fist Of The North Star. That was totally epic. The game feels a lot more fluid and playable than Dynasty Warriors in my opinion.

I did some shopping after this and took a load of photographs of cosplayers. I bought the seventh series of Naruto on DVD, and two t-shirts with Euro Cosplay Championships on. All in all, I hardly spent anything this weekend because I was busy, plus I couldn't get Naruto series eight, so that sucked.

At 11am until about 12.20pm, it was time for the Crazy Collaboration Network meet. At Expo, five members of TCT were there, two members of ICN, and six from KoC. Haha, I'm one of the members of Kingdom Of Crazyness so we ruled. There will be videos on all three channels, so if you haven't seen them, go have a gander and subscribe if you like what you see. Support the CCN and spread the word, there are 21 members of pure excellentness and we all appreciate any support we can get...

http://www.youtube.com/KingdomOfCrazyness

http://www.youtube.com/ImmenseCrazyNation

http://www.youtube.com/TeamCrazyTrain

After the CCN meet, I went back to the hotel to freshen up again, and then it was back to the Expo to watch the Masquerade. Once again, very high quality cosplays on show. Everyone who went on stage over the weekend needs to feel really proud. It was all brilliant. Thanks everyone who were brave enough to go up there.

In between the CCN meet and the Masquerade, I was supposed to do some special stuff for MCM Buzz, but because of time restraints, and also the organisers being very busy, it weren't able to happen. Next time. ;)

After the Expo has ended, it was time to head back to the hotel to gather a few troops, and go for food. The chippy near the ExCeL is really good, and it definitely fills you up in places that were neglected over the weekend. I know I didn't eat properly. Does anyone?

Some of the funniest moments of the Expo happened after the chippy. We went to meet Luna who was going to do a glowstick meet, but weather-wise and with all the chavs hanging around near the Novotel, we all kind of decided to hang about in the ExCeL. We had a game of Russian Roulette with Corinna's Nerf Gun, that was ace. Joey and Chris did their news report thing again which had everyone laughing so much, brilliant videos were made inside the ExCeL. ;) Then we kicked my sponge football from the west entrance to the east entrance. So many laughs in about half an hour.

When we got back to the Premirt Travel Inn, we decided to play a game of football, so a few of us went to the side of the PTI on some dirt ground and made a Japan verses Scotland match. Of course, I was captain of Japan wearing my Japanese shirt, and Paul captained Scotland wearing his Celtic shirt. The final score... Japan 1, Scotland 0. YES. We started playing another game which only got to half time, Japan was winning 1-0 again, but then the miserable PTI staff came outside and stopped us.

Later on, we tried to do the after Expo chat at the ExCeL new entrance, but it failed because there were about 25 people. Too many people for a chat, and this really made my decision that planning anything over Expo weekend ends in fail. The air-hockey failed, the Nerf War failed, I didn't feel the CCN meet went that well, and then the chat failed. Thanks to Simon, we used his room to have another chat with about 14 of us, and we went through a range of Expo topics. It went very well.

After the chat, some of us (only about 6 or 7 of us) went into the PTI lobby for a early morning chat which we did in October '09 and loved it. Another plan, another fail, the miserable PTI staff said we had to leave the lobby and go to our rooms.

Early hours of the morning, there was a little bit of drama which I wont post in my blog. I got about 3 hours sleep... ah, we're into Monday really aren't we?

MONDAY

I woke up around 9am, finished packing my bag, and then we were off. We met loads of people in the lobby, and we said goodbye for now to Paul and Kaz as they're going to move to China. You'll be missed guys so much.

There was a long stupid journey using buses and the underground to get to King's Cross. Most of the transport services were off because of Bank Holiday Monday and repairing all their rusty rails. Thanks to Rick, who was an epic guide to get us to our destinations, we all made it with no problems.

The problem arised when we got to King's Cross and we got on the wrong train. Our train then buggered off 4 minutes before it should have done, so our 1.30pm departure was fail, and we had to pay £35 each and wait until 4.05pm. That was so tiring. Thanks Joey for sticking around at the station and having a good chat, that was a lot of fun. The things we were talking about can't be put here, but if you've seen that photo of Joey wearing hardly anything and showing some of his bits, then you'll know what the chat was about... ohhh, that's an image I need to erase. ARGH!

So we all got home safe and sound, and already started planning the October Expo. My Monday consisted of staying up late to watch the last Flash Forward and then go to bed and sleep for 14 hours on Tuesday. I needed that. Shame I was feeling ill with a number of thing... I blame the underground!

So another Expo is over. It's sad leaving London, I hate doing that. I'd like to thank all of my friends who made the weekend so amazing. I'd like to thank Sheffield Space Centre for sponsoring Tonyo Times, and thanks to everyone at Tecmo for making me feel so awesome with the interview and letting me film the game again. Thank you everyone at MCM for being so nice, not a single Steward I met was insane this time and I had quite a few conversations with a lot of people working around Expo. Thanks also to MCM for giving me the opportunity with MCM Buzz and being the offiicial Blogger of Expo. Thanks Cosplay Fever for taking my photos, and I really really want to get in the next book. ;) I don't want to thank the Premier Travel Inn because the staff there were really rude, and they've doubled the price of their hotel for May next year which really is beyond a joke. Finally, I want to say, I Love You Caroline and all weekend I was wishing you was with me, I can't wait for your first Expo. xxxx

Tonyous

Wednesday 30 June 2010

End of June 2010

Wednesday 23 June 2010

Tonyo Times - Issue 124

Sunday 20 June 2010

Tonyo.. The Next England Manager!

Tuesday 15 June 2010

Japan and the CCN

Sunday 13 June 2010

Tonyo Times - Issue 123

Wednesday 9 June 2010

Tonyo Times - Issue 122

Friday 4 June 2010

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