Best. Night. Ever.

Seriously.


Right, so, Olivia, an aquaintance from my painting class (whom I now cosider a sister-in-arms) saw some Fullmetal Alchemist over thanksgiving and fell fully in love with it, as her Very First Anime. This, over the course of some work-frenzied and therefore mentally unstable days, in which many of my firends and I were spending twelve hour days running around the art building processing film, painting trypitychs and preparing print stones, evolved into a huge and silly ongoing joke. Together with Rory, one day in the lounge (a small purple room with macs and couches) we came to the revelation that we all loved Hughes. Furthermore, we reasoned, Hughes Never Dies. We made masking tape badges and branded bathroom stalls, pop machines and members of our photography class. We became Hughes' Army, and using that name in various displays of silly graffiti (esp. The List of Things That Are The Best. That was pretty the best). Somehow, we decided it would be brilliant to snag a projector and a laptop and begin showing the series in the lounge...thusly...The Friday The Thirteenth FullMetal Marathon was born. Olivia checked it out with the VAS. I booked a projector and speakers, and plastered posters all over Lebel and main campus (where art student never go, since we're ghettoized a good fifteen minutes away).

The evening approached (Hughes Never Dies) and we wound up having to go through three laptops (Olivia's PC, my Mac, and Nyar, Amy's PC) before hitting on Paul's PC, Maybe You've Been Brainwashed, Too, which worked with the projector. Thank goodness Artsises are never without technology. Also, thank goodness I brough my homemade subs on DVD. Olivia's files decided to hate us. We agreed beforehand that we were most certainly NOT the anime club, on on-campus group comprised mostly of heavyset, poorly washed male students defending stuff like Chobits and asking for silence. No. No, we were treating Fullmetal Friday as an MST/Rocky Horror event. There are subtitles, so why shouldnt we talk through it?

Rory started it. Rory always does. She;s brilliant. She cut up a small cardboard flyer so that the words "Wow" showed through, and she held it up whenever alchemy was done. "Wow" became "Mom" as episodes progressed, and was soon joined by "Lies", OMG", "Pwned" and a variety of accesories (mustahces, glasses and bras, all on sticks). By the end of the night we had signs reading "Boring" "Lies" "exposition" "in bed" "Pwned" "crap" "OMG" "fuck" and "LOL", a speech bubble with "Oh Noes" in it and six different hearts with "Hughes" in the middle. We began to create contractions (mostly with Paul)... "Boring Lies" "OMG Crap" and "Oh noes, Mom!". An octopus showed up as an accessory. The commentary went on, involving the Roy Foghorn, A Magical Night in the Meatlocker, Sexy Hobo Scar, Plot Device Nina, and so on. Fricken' amazing. Amaaaazing. We eeven had some non-arts majors make the trek out to Lebel!

We're definitely going to have to make a tradition of this. I'm keeping all those signs. SO. MUCH. FUN.

Hughes Never Dies.