Billed as part of this weekend’s TwitchCon, Games Done Quick Express is the latest video game speedrunning event from Games Done Quick, the group that wrote the book on speedrunning. Since 2010, the event has raised many millions of dollars for worthy causes, including more than $2.3 million for Doctors Without Borders this past June, all while logging insanely fast run times of classic games. Highlights of this weekend’s event include death- (and time-) defying runs of Dark Souls III, Earthbound, and Silent Hill II, while money raised will go to important foundations like St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Games Done Quick
Oct 26, 6pm, $89+
McEnery Convention Center, San Jose

“I’m just beside myself that we’re actually paying money to put our kids in front of all this marijuana.” HempCon 2012, baby!

Parents of young girls volleyball players are reportedly “appalled” to find out that their daughters’ tournament this weekend at the San Jose Convention Center is taking place at the same time as HempCon, according to an article in the Mercury News.

By slippery slope logic, these poor girls will walk into the Convention Center as bright-eyed promising athletes and walk out terrified, wondering if they’re going to die or just really high.

But paranoia aside, it doesn’t seem matter to these parents that entrance to Hempcon requires a person to be over the age of 18, which should make things difficult for participants in a 17-and-under volleyball tournament.

“I know there are a lot of great things about San Jose, but this weekend I feel like it’s one big Burning Man,” said Narda Skov.

In his column, which is unsurprisingly headlined “Reefer Madness,” writer Bruce Newman falls in line with the parental hysteria by calling the confluence of culture a “den of inequity.” But if having volleyball tournaments in the same convention center—yet an entirely different building—is a “bad juxtaposition,” we should probably start having kids cross the street and avert their eyes when walking past a dispensary, or just not attend college altogether.

Fortunately, not all of the volleyball parents are trying to keep their children handcuffed and blindfolded in a cave, where there lips will never touch a marijuana cigarette.

“If my daughter wanted to buy grass or dope, she could get it in downtown Berkeley, we don’t have to drive all the way down to San Jose,” Carrie Dovzak told the Merc.

But for Narda Skov and her family came to the Convention Center in January, when FurCon was in town, the indignities have become just too much to stomach.

“First we had the fuzzy people, now we have HempCon,” Skov said. “Come on, San Jose! What’s happening?”

Sounds like Skov needs to chill. If only there was a place for that.

The streets for San Jose were filled with unique characters over the holiday weekend as thousands of anime fans visited for FanimeCon 2012. Metro photographer Alex Stover was at the hub of the action in the convention center looking for the best dressed of the fest.