The journey to Los Angeles was a smooth one. Muncho and
Legumasaurus Rex sang a little bit but then fortunately fell asleep after
about an hour. We stayed at the USC hotel, which was a mere few
minutes’ journey from the Los Angeles memorial sports arena where
the convention took place. All you had to do was to hop into a barrel
and float down the aqueduct. Both Muncho and Rex would not stop
gushing about how nice the hotel was and before I could stop them
they had drunk all of the complimentary tea in the room. Ollie was
furious. He completely lost his bearings. Also, he thought I had drunk all
the tea, which made me look pretty bad.
“Sorry buddy, I was just suddenly really thirsty,” I said feebly, my
code in tatters. The serenity was peaceful, and the staff were so nice
to us. They even put on bowler hats and cobbled the corridors to
make us feel at home. That helped Ollie get his bearings back. That
night we were too excited to sleep. I sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Ollie to
help him calm down but it didn’t help. Then I pretended to rescue him
from a burning building, which I was really good at now, but he said that
put him on edge. I got no thanks. Muncho wanted to read to him but
again I reminded him that Ollie would not be able to hear and that I
wasn’t ready to tell him about Muncho. It was a shame though
because Muncho had moved onto Jane Austen for source material and
‘Pride and Radishes’ had turned out pretty good. The same cannot be
said for ‘Sense and Scents-of-broccoli’ which was far too salacious.
In the end I put on some soothing light machinery sounds and we
drifted peacefully off to sleep. Fortunately, I’d packed a few dozen
digital alarm clocks so we didn’t oversleep. We were going to interview
BTS and we needed to practice. Ollie acted as BTS and I interviewed
him. After an hour or so, when my slow eye had finally opened, I
suggested we try it without dancing, just in case.
The convention lasted for two nights and the turnout was massive,
meaning that there were a lot of people. Fans were screaming and
having the time of their lives. In that moment, I missed my brother-
buddy Jordan. We had had the time of our lives so many times and it
seemed to me that if he were here, this would be another time of our
lives. The convention had a glorious array of Korean food, fashion, and