Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 

Well, June is upon us, summer is definitely here, and already I'm feeling the heat. Mostly because when Mel gets overly hot, she rolls around a lot in bed and almost pushes me right off the edge. I hold very little doubt that when she discovers this particular bit of nowhere, she's going to squeak in embarrassment, and then hurt me in some fashion.

But onto other things!

In an "it's a small world after all" moment, yesterday I happened to meet another con-goer from last weekend's Anime North. How did I know? Well, let me tell you that my innate oktau senses are finely honed; I can detect other anime fans based simply on their walk or manner of speech. The Naruto shirt she was wearing also helped out. (On an unrelated note, guess what series she Cosplayed as.) It's interesting to chance encounter other otaku outside of anything overtly anime-related. Then again, I'd probably enjoy my job a lot better if we also sold manga alongside our purses, or had Fruits Basket backpaks to sell.

Another interesting customer anecdote from yesterday. Yes, I know, I see a lot of customers on a day to day basis, but somehow this woman stuck in my memory. Maybe it was the half-condescending, all-neurotic way she talked...and talked...and talked...and wouldn't shut up. Maybe it was how she waffled and debated for easily twenty minutes over which of these two backpaks on wheels she should get. Or maybe it had something to do with the giant, frilly, purple tutu she was wearing.

Yeah, I was desperately trying to keep a straight face the entire time too.

She told me that she was a clown for a living. My dear, after having to endure your neurotic banter/whining for near a half hour, all I can say is you have no idea the accuracy of that statement....

In other news, I have discovered that Weird Al has cameos in all three Naked Gun movies. I'd known about the obvious "as himself" roles in the first and third movies, and was rather pleased to see they managed to squeeze him into the second one as a gun-wielding maniac who gets bested by Leslie Neilson and a well-placed door.

Today's Lesson: apparently, if you have a stone block for baking pizza in the oven, the best thing to do after each pizza is to scrape the contents off and leave the stone as is. This allows for the stone to...do something specific, though I forget the term used, but it's supposed to bake better pizza crusts as time goes on if you do this. The older and more used the stone, the better the crusts. (So there you have it: a valid reason to not have to wash pizza stones!)
posted by Phillip at 5:36 AM

 

It occurred to me after my last little bit of nowhere that there were other standout memories of Anime North 2005 that quite simply slipped my mind. It might have been the fagitue. It might have been the delerium. It also might have had something to do with the large white Mokona plushie staring back at me with that ridiculous grin from atop the computer monitor. We may never know.

Suffice it to say, a few days of rest and recover have passed. My mind is clearer and sharper, though not necessarily any more coherent than before. While I haven't launched back into writing, I find myself enjoying the momentary reprieve; a chance to recharge my batteries, so to speak. By tonight I'm betting I'll be writing again. Or else putting it off to watch more RahXephon. Wherever my whim takes me.

So here we go, more AN05 memories and observations!

Not surprisingly, Naruto and Inu Yasha were the big series to Cosplay this year. However, I was very pleased to see that there were 2 kids cosplaying as Negi Springfield from the Negima manga. Best of all, they were right around the 10 year-old mark, which made the overall Negi look for them absolutely perfect. All we need is a small army of fangirls cosplaying as the various girls in Negi's class, and there'll be more photo sessions than you can shake a Sesshomaro plushie at.

In the same vein, Gabriel looked adorably cute as P-chan to Donna's Akane Tendo. And his Godzilla costume has proven more than appropriate given his proclivity to either eat or stampede over everything as best as an aspiring toddler can. No wonder he's been nicknamed Gabezilla. Of course...he doesn't look so ferocious when he's curled up and fast asleep on Kevin's stomach.

I must also commend Roupen's card-eating skills from the Baka Royale Confic. It's not often you see an otaku so dedicated to their role that they are more than happy to take a "Blue Eyes White Dragon" Yugioh card, and cheerfully eat it. Judging by the roar of the crowd, I think the audience quite enjoyed seeing him eat the card too. (We're not very fond of Yugioh? Whatever would give you that impression?!)

And that pretty much wraps up the few random extras I have to add about Anime North. If anything else does come to mind, I'll try to put in down somewhere in my little bit of nowhere. In the meantime, hopefully everyone else recovering from the Con are also finding the chances to sleep, relax or cuddle their swag.

Today's Lesson: when you have to stack your mangain rows atop each other, yes, it is in fact an indicator that you need a new bookshelf. (As Mel & I discovered earlier this morning when trying to integrate the new tankobans into our collection.)
posted by Phillip at 11:52 AM

 

"It's aliiiiiiive!"

Oh come on, like you were expecting anything but that given the title. And yet the whole "blogenstein" theme seems vastly appropriate, as it's been a while since this little bit of nowhere has seen any sort of return from the dead, and I currently feel like I'm already there. Yes Virginia, there was indeed an Anime North 2005 convention, and it was good, and it has left me satisfied, exhausted and a wallet full of pain.

(My wallet would like to add here, "My twenties...all those crisp, happy, beautiful twenty dollar bills...gone...gone!!!")

(On the other hand, Mel would like to add here, "Shining happy box sets!")



Last Thursday saw everything at long last falling into place. Before I started for my afternoon work shift, I made sure that all of my things were packed, and that the "Baka Royale" Confic had all of its props and scripts accounted for. I really do think that the Thursday was the first real day I actually realized there was a convention happening, and got excited about it. Amazing what happens when there's no more Confic prep work to worry about.

Naturally this left me anxiously drumming my fingers throughout my entire shift. Time did not pass so horribly slow, as it once did when I was a child waiting for Christmas morning; at the same time time did not pass by so horribly fast, as it still does now that I'm an adult trying to actually sleep past 9am Christmas morning without having parents or siblings wake me up. Somewhere in between, I cleaned the store, thought about the Con, handled customers and write little notes to my employees asking them to pretty please not burn down the store while I was gone for 3 days.

Mel picked me up after work, and expressed her sincere happiness in how we decided to load up the trunk of the car with all the heavy things (ie, the cooler) in the morning, and didn't leave it for her to lug down the elevator on her own. With Shady in tow (and sticking her head out of the car most of the time), we headed off to Hamilton. There we stayed overnight with Carly, who was going to dogsit Shady for us while we were at AN.

I also discovered that there is a subtle yet noticeable difference between a drink that has rye & ginger ale in it, and a drink that has ginger ale-flavoured rye in it. Namely how unimpressed I feel in the morning.



"Wake up, you fool! There's a convention out there!"

At least that's what my alarm clock was trying to tell me. I couldn't hear too much of it, since Sinatra--Carly's shih-tzu, Shady's brother--decided that the most comfortable place to sleep was pretty much on my head. Shady, on the other hand, decided that right in between Mel and I was the best place to sleep, which made for some interesting noises when I tried to roll over in the middle of the night.

Eventually, I dragged myself off Carly & Jorrit's futon couch and discovered that it was mid-morning. Mel also woke up, discovered it was mid-morning, had a severe disagreement with this fact and rolled back over to sleep a little more.

After some caffeine, a shower and some reassurances that yes, I was still alive despite feeling otherwise, it was time to start the first day of Anime North. After a quick stop at a nearby grocery store for cold meats, cheese and some film I completely forgot to buy the day before despite writing it in pen on my forearm, Mel & I headed out to Toronto. And Toronto welcomed us with open arms, an inherent lack of rain despite the reassurances of the weather forecasters to the contrary, and lots of traffic that still barely managed to slow us down.

There it was: the Hilton Doubletree Hotel! Home for three days and two nights to many otaku sporting strange clothes and even stranger smells (especially on day 3). And as timing had it, just as we were joining the line of otaku waiting to check into their rooms, Chris, Ysabet, Jen and Sean were in the lobby too! Naturally, Mel left me to hold our place in line, where I stood all alone whilst she squeaked and glomped and made happy Mel nyu's.

(I should add here that Ysa did come over and attempt to glomp me, but it wasn't an authentic Ysa glomp, for which I am happy. She was wearing a studded collar, and I'm not one to kick off a convention with arterial spray from my neck.)

But I got cookies out of the deal, so I can't complain. But to think: complimentary cookies with your room passcards! The sheer concept still boggles me. And they were still warm when they were placed in my hands. Screw the mints on the pillow, I'll take my cookies and run!

After getting fixed up with my swanky green Panelist badge, we lugged our baggage up to our room, and Mel discovered that she could arm/honk her car from our 7th floor window. It became a bit of a hobby: honk the car and see how many of the otaku passing by it jumped.

Surprisingly enough, Friday was quieter overall for Con reg than I expected. This probably had something to do with pre-reg party they had the night before. Of course, they made up for it on Saturday with loooooooooong lines for both pre-reg and reg. Armed with a much larger Dealer's Room and a much larger Artists' Alley, AN05 began with...my wallet wincing in pain.

But it was a happy sort of wincing in pain. Not half an hour into the Dealer's Room, and I acquired some Fruits Basket manga for Mel I promised to nab, a Gir plushie for the Confic, Pocky and a Mokona (because I knew that it would make Mel smile, and that is worth me having to stare at that scary white marshmellowy grin).

I suppose a shortlist of swag is in order here, as collected over the entire weekend. Mel's swag list included a lot of backlog manga she'd been wanting (Ceres, Tsubasa, KareKano and CCS: Master of the Clow), as well as more Stellvia, and also the last half of Escaflowne...for $13 a DVD. She also nabbed some very cool Chobits fanart from Artist's Alley.

Outside of the Mokona, I was very pleased with getting a bunch of Blade of the Immortal books for $6 a piece, a small armada of pencil boards to compliment the wall o' pencil boards (now up to a sensory overload-inducing 92 shitajiki, and 5 mini-boards), and the RahXephon DVD box set for a ridiculously low price. Mel talked me into that, and after getting over the guilt of purchasing it, I'm very thrilled to have it.

But that's enough gloating. You can put your middle finger down now.

Onto the rest of the Con, namely all the fun of panels! First up, the late-night "Lemon Fanfic" panel! I will admit that at times discussing lemonfics can be rather surreal. Where else can you state, "Yeah, in lemon fics the yuri is out, and incest is the new black"? All I can really say is that Steven Savage is brilliant and evil, and any fandom in general needs more people like him.

Somewhere after this, I collapsed onto my bed and fell asleep.



I woke up early and feeling really decent that day. I don't know what happened. It might have been the cookies. More fan artists were talked to. More swag was purchased. And more panels were visited or chaired. Sean, Mel, Ginny, Donna and I all sat in on Ysabet's Fruits Basket panel, where the name of the game was "how vague can you get without spilling the spoilers?" And there were pins afterwards too. Yay, more swag!

I think somewhere following this, a bunch of us (Jen, Too-Tall, Dan and Nightbreak among the group) wound up eating outside of the nearby Subway store. Much to our amusement, in another nearby hotel there was a convention for a bunch of older ladies who all dressed in puprle dresses and red hats. I have to wonder: what would their expressions be like if a Cosplayer walked up to them and asked, "Who are you dressed as? That's really strange costume."

The Witch Hunter Robin panel proved fairly lively, and I was impressed at how much of the series I recalled despite having binged on the episodes months ago. And if you ever want an interesting story, ask Nightbreak about Mel's facial expressions. Or on a related note, homicidal sideglances.

The Yuri panel can be summed up in a few short words: there are some things I just really didn't need to know about some of the other panelists. That is all.

But at least Savage's "Create Your Own Anime" made up for it. I had way too much fun sitting back and watching otaku compete in what can only be described as "Chaosfic creation". What scares me more than some of the ridiculous and on-the-spot series creations (featuring croissant powered mecha and Dragon Power Layer teachers) is that somewhere out there, someone is probably thinking these would make a good TV series.

Nightbreak, Sean and I also used this to devise our own frightening Anime series. The tagline? "My eyes cry with tears of justice!" I'll have to remember to unleash it on Savage sooner or later.

And to cap off the night, the Jpop dance! Which was amazing and pulse-pounding, as usual. This time around, they had some cool light and smoke effects to help out. Of course, there's nothing that quite prepares you for non-sequitor moments like a Pikachu suddenly trying to dance with your wife, or spontaneous acts of yaoi.

I guess Yaoi Happens is the best way of saying it. As we danced, two guys decided it was time for a little PDA. This didn't disturb me. In fact, when I saw it my first impulse was to think, "I can kiss better than that." What did disturb me was how word of this yaoi moment spread across the dance floor at a blinding speed. With one excited shriek, yaoi fangirls were suddenly stampeding past us to get a glimpse of the action. How did they get there so fast? And how did they all understand one seemingly incoherent shriek? Is there a "yaoi fangirl" language I wasn't aware of?

*shrug* Today's Lesson might as well be: the speed of yaoi fangirl rivals the speed of sound.

Well, all things must come to an end, and the end happened around 2:30 in the morning as Mel & I dragged ourselves into bed and slept.



There was an Utena panel on at 10am. I don't know how I got there. I don't know how I managed to do it without forgetting one or more articles of clothing. What I do know is that an apple, a granola bar and a can of Coke can give you a jolt, but won't necessarily make you coherent. Not that it's a prerequisite for Utena, but I suppose it helps to sound like you understand what the hell that carwash scene in the movie was all about.

Lunch was had in Swiss Chalet with Donna, Gabriel and Matt. I ate some soup, and Gabe decided to wear his cookies and eat the highchair.

To finish off the Con, the entire fancrew assembled together for probably the first time since AN started--with the usual scattering expected with people chairing panels, or working on Constaff or in the Dealer's Room. All the work on the Fanboys! Live Confic reading of Baka Royale came to fruition.

I have to say I for one was really thrilled with the turn-out. Despite how ridiculously long the fic was (something I really hope not to repeat), the room was filled with people the entire time. And best of all: the audience laughed at all the funny parts, groaned at all the really bad puns, and went deaf when Ysabet performed 2 Hysteria screams. It's great when you have a fantastic cast doing the voices and performances, and even better when you have a receptive audience looking to get wierded out.

From what I could tell, the highlights included: me being unexpectedly pelted by props over a "drive-by bukkake" one-liner; Mel beating me to death with a foam beam sabre; Roupen's uncanny Guu impression; pretty much anytime Ysabet had to perform Hysteria's run-on sentences; Kevin-as-Ruckus playing the game of "guess where my hand is"; Chris' Ebichu voice; and the scene-stealing Gabezilla being read his Baby's First Anime ABCs, and deciding that we didn't need the letter Z...or trying to eat the book.

And with that, the Con came to a close. I think I'll leave it at that for the time being. I've been writing this for about an hour or so now, and despite returning to Kitchener last night so I could show up for my Monday morning shift, I think I could use another weekend to recover. As it is, Mel's still very exausted and rather out of it (which does explain the "Shining Happy Box Sets" song).

All in all: it was a fantastic Con, and the Confic was worth all the effort Kevin and I (and especially Mel, who became the FAC and did a lot of the behind-the-scenes work on it) put into it beforehand, and if anyone can find a way to let me sleep for the next 17 hours, I will love you forever.

But before I go, I will add that the spirit of Gimpy the Wonder Elevator seems to be following Anime North. First there was the Regal Hotel, and now the Doubletree. Ah, Gimpy...we were starting to think you'd forgotten about us!

Ja.
posted by Phillip at 7:02 PM