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!

 


Today is certainly shaping up to be a "best of times, worst of times" day. Of the former, Mel & I are here celebrating Kevin & Dana's anniversary. And there are ribs. Glorious, glorious ribs. Of the latter, the results of my grandfather's medical tests came back, and we get to take our pick of the bad news or the worse news.

So here I am, discovering how much I'm enjoying the new Coldplay single, Violet Hill, and wondering how much of this bit o' nowhere should be emotional breakdown or upbeat quirkiness. Generally speaking, I prefer the blog to be of the upbeat and quirky variety; not that I don't mind you all worrying on my behalf, because on the contrary I'm grateful to have good friends who do that. (It attests to how much you really, really love me despite all the horrid fic titles & ideas I help bring to infernal life.)

On the other foot, I'm always leery of veering off keeping the little bit of nowhere "real" and flying the proverbial car off the angsty emo cliff...whereupon, in traditional fashion, it crashes at the base, and it starts to rain, and the lone survive crawls out despite a hundred and three broken bones, pulling their dead boy/girlfriend behind them, and just as the car explodes in the background to provide a breath-taking in-the-rain visual, our broken hero(ine) sobs to the heavens over the corpse of their boyfriend/girlfriend/beloved pet goat.

(See how I casually tossed in that quirky addition at the end there? Damn, I'm good.)

Now comes the more important question: in that last big paragraph, how many cliches did I just inadvertently name, and how many shows/movies have we all seen that featured a scene like this?

In other news, apparently surprising Mel by sending her flowers while she's still in CT gets me called names. (Probably because her family didn't let her live it down and teased her a fair bit as a result.) But now she has returned, and yea, there was much snogging, and verily thou didn'st need to knowest that.

...and it appears there are ribs to be had shortly. Glorious, glorious ribs. If in the meanwhile you wish to send well-wishes, feel free to send them to Gary especially. I know he'd appreciate the support. (It'll probably be easier too, anyway, since you can comment in his LJ via your own LJ account. Vive le me still not bending to LJ!)

Labels: captain obvious

posted by Phillip at 1:13 PM

 

It was inevitable, I suppose. Despite having seen this coming for a bit now, it's still managed to utterly blindside me. There were differences Mel & I couldn't reconcile, and so now she's down in Connecticut with her family...

...to attend her youngest sister's graduation.




So yes, Mel's currently away in CT for her sister's grad. I myself would have enjoyed being down there along with her, but sadly there's this issue with me needing to work in order to have money to pay rent. And food. And gas (though that's reaching ridiculous heights/lows as it is).

She's been gone for three days now, and won't be back up to yonder north until next Monday. Which means I'm being left to my own devices for just over a week.

And no, the operative word is not "panic."

I have, as a matter of fact, survived on my own as a bachelor before. I can certainly handle things on my own. I mean, it's not like this is the first time I accidentally blew up a toaster. And those scorch marks come right out of the ceiling with a little bit of bleach and elbow grease.

But in all seriousness, it is a little peculiar to suddenly have the place to myself. Oh, there are the pets, of course, and somehow Shady has managed to hog both pillows on the bed. And I have entertained myself between bouts of writing and hardlining Dexter s.2 and the Venture Brothers.

However...after nearly 5 years of being together, to have the place to myself for this duration has left me feeling quite out of sorts. Mel & I still try & talk online for a bit, but I do miss her. On Sunday, I invited a friend over so I wouldn't feel lonely. Yesterday I fell asleep snuggling her pillow. Today I've taken to sobbing over chocolates and watching our wedding video repeatedly.

I'm quite optimistic about tomorrow!

Labels: this is what happens when I'm left to my own devices for a week

posted by Phillip at 8:50 PM

 



...you gave us so many amazing, iconic creatures. Though you've passed on the creativity, imagination and passion you put into all your masterpieces will live on.

Rest in peace, Stan Winston.

Labels: Stan Winston

posted by Phillip at 5:11 PM

 

I could entirely be wrong on this, but I think the bank near the mall could use a little handiwork done on its main door. There's nothing wrong with the handles, or the glass, or even the speed at which it swings open and closed. However, methinks the door doth protest too much as it moves.

You know those old toys shaped like round metal cans, and when you flipped them over they made a mechanical "moo!" sound? Imagine this tin toy being creamed mid-Moo! by a 350-pound linebacker and you'll have a pretty good idea of the sound this door made as it swung closed.

In the meanwhile, I'm working on a pitch for a new Harry Potter-based sitcom: Harry Loves Voldie!


[Cue Harry skipping into the kitchen, a heart-shaped letter in his hands!]

Harry: ^-^ "Heya, Voldie!"

Voldemort: [wearing a pink frilly apron as be prepares dinner] "Hi, Harry."

Harry: ""This just came in the mail for you."

Voldemort: "A valentine? Wow, I've never gotten any of those before."

[Voldemorts opens the valentine.]

Voldemort: "'Dear Voldie, you're ugly and you smell like turnips.' HAAAAARRRRRYYY!!!!"

Labels: Harry Loves Voldie, yet another pointless blog you've gotten me into

posted by Phillip at 8:30 AM

 




The day before the day before the Con went about as well as can be expected. I spent most of it working, and the parts of it I didn’t spend at the store were filled with frantic half-assed attempts to pack before I fell asleep in the suitcase.

I almost made it.



Having pulled off a miracle, all my bags were pack despite me not about to be leaving on a jetplane and not knowing if I’d be back again. I still had to work my shift that day, with money for rent & food being good and happy and all that, but it was about as laid-back as one can imagine. With few boxes of stock to open and even fewer customers to tend to (it was that quiet), I spent most of the day itching to leave.

Mel picked me up after my shift, and from there we loaded up the car and headed over to Kevin & Dana’s. Mattresses were inflated, food stashes were consolidated and questions over whether we’d see any Crossplayers were had. (Answer: at least 5 that we know of.)



I don’t know how we pulled it off, but all four of us were up before the Gabezilla. Which unto itself is a remarkable feat, considering we were mostly showered & ready by 11am - a time when usually most of us are only starting to grudgingly rise from beneath our covers.

We loaded all of our stuff into the van, and with Charlie in the driver’s seat we vroomed off to Toronto! (And with the way we had to stack everything around my lone seat in the back, every time we made a semi-sharp left turn, I was almost crushed beneath duffles, bags of cookies and other things.)

When I wasn’t being buried in an avalanche of Constuff, we enjoyed the trek by bouncing along to tunes from Haruhi, Avenue Q, Jonathan Coulton & Scissor Sisters. This naturally brings us to…Anime North 2008!

Yes indeed, glorious AN08!

And no Anime North experience is complete without the special guest appearance of Gimpy the Wonder Elevator! This being Gimpy’s 4th annual appearance, we dubbed it: “Curse of Gimpy!” (With Gimpy, Bride of Gimpy and Son of Gimpy being its preceding titles.) Marvel as you push the up button for the third floor, only to go all the way up to the eighth floor…and then back down to the lobby before Gimpy decides it’s toyed with you in its clutches enough, and finally opens on your floor.

Next year: Legend of Gimpy!

In the meanwhile, I delighted in having the sense to purchase a luggage trolley prior to the convention. Last year, our collective arms were nearly destroyed lugging all the heavy coolers across the hotel lobby, up to our appointed floor and then (naturally) down to the furthest room in the longest hallway. This time around, the cart neatly rolled both coolers along without so much as a squeak of protest.

My arms thanked me. Profusely.

In the room, Shady sulked profusely at our regular comings & goings, but at least she’d already had one Con under her proverbial belt, so while she sulked there was no longer any expressions of blind panic & separation anxiety. She just curled up and flashed us contemptuous glances whenever we left.

Anyhoo, to no one’s surprise the Cosplayers were in full force. Much my surprise, though, Naruto is already showing a decline in noted costumes. Instead, there were dozens of Bleach, Haruhi, Ouran and Vampire Knight Cosplayers. And with a giant-assed (but alas plunger-less) Rabbid and Pedobear thrown in for good measure.

And the Dealer’s Room. Oh dear lord, the Dealer’s Room. This year I truly believed there would be very little for me to buy. I’d already acquired all my manga from the earlier Viz sale, and the only DVD box I was gunning for was SpeedGrapher. All was going well…until I hit The Cage.

You remember The Cage, don’t you?

Two years ago, at that very booth, Kevin & I each scored the entire Last Exile box set for $42. This year was the year of Geneon. Now that Geneon’s gone all belly-up, everyone has been liquidating their old DVD titles. The Cage had most of their Geneon DVDs for $10 each.

So yeah…I committed Acts of Swag. Hellsing TV, the original Tenchi Muyo OVAs, the original El Hazard OVAs and the 3x3 Eyes DVDs have since been added to the growing collection. And that sound you just heard was the sound of my wallet crying out in anguish before being suddenly silenced.

On the personal side, I had the pleasure of meeting Dejana once again (and I have the picture of me in a Puchuu hat, brandishing her Sailor Pluto Timestaff to prove it), and the added delight of meeting my partner in crime, the Fic Bitch, for the first time. She celebrated the occasion by giving me a set of singing lederhosen.

I think she was trying to send me a secret message about pants. Probably telling me that all pants look silly, so I should stop wearing them altogether.

^-^ Can you guess what I’m not wearing as I write this?

There was also the Badfic panel--a pet project Gaffney, Nightbreak, Steve Savage and myself put together for the Con. The whole concept revolved around discussing what makes fanfiction fall flat on its ass, but delivering it in a Colbert-style fashion. Which is to say, all the worst possible things you’re supposed to avoid in writing fics, we heartedly endorsed and insisted it was instant win!

(Because fame is fleeting and lasts only until you post your next story, but infamy will live on in the fandom forever. It’s always the scariest fics ever conceived that leave an indelible skidmark in our memory.)

Overall, “Fic Fic Fic Boom” as it was called (a great pun courtesy of Nightbreak), seemed a rousing success. This can only lead to greater things for next year. Fear, puny fan-denizens! Fear our badficcing! Mwah ha hah ha ha hah!!!!

[We interrupt this Con diary as the author is pleasantly sedated and some pants are put back on him. Please hum “Caramel Dancing” while you wait.]



I greeted Saturday as any typical Con-going otaku would: grudgingly, and much earlier than I would have preferred. The ensuing day ended up being a rather large blur of run-arounds and activities.

Further treks through the Dealer’s Room scored me a number of advanced presents, and there were equally happy purchases made from Artists’ Alley. (Among them being a Bioshock “Big Daddy Crossing” road sign.)

Inevitably the source of my impending nervousness arrived: the Confic was due. The Fancrew marched down to our secured panel room…and self-inserted hell ensued. I have to say, I enjoyed watching & listening to everyone’s reactions at the various jokes & sight gags, and pretty much anything to do with Ebichu.

Everyone laughed at my bukkake scene…and also laughed when we warned them that the first 3 rows were bukkake splatter zones. Hey, we did warn them, and that sillyspray was everywhere by the end!

There were equal laughs and groans over the horrid fic ideas & titles we’ve all collectively conjured up over the last decade. (Think about that: the Fanboys! as a series has been around for at least ten years now. Feel old yet? I do. Oh wait…nevermind, it was just the pants talking. I’ll remove them now.) We got an unexpectedly phenomenal reaction from Kevin’s “It’s a trap!”/“Pay no attention to Admiral Ackbar” joke, and everyone enjoyed seeing extremely-tall Dave run around with the pint-sized Edward Elric plushie.

My personal favourite came from the “Chaos you fool, this ain’t a fanfic scene, it’s a Heavyarms race!” Two minutes of lead-in for that one single gag, and it garnered the reaction I had hoped for: an initial bout of laughter…followed by the horrified groans as they suddenly realized how ridiculous the pun was.

The ABC Crossover Horror omake also received a lot of laughs, which was a relief since it was the first time I’d ever recited a bloated, epic Chaosfic crossover. The concept works great when you’re reading it, but speaking the same thing to an audience is a bit of a different beast.

Someone approached me afterwards, stating that the idea of the Venom symbiote merging with Winni-the-Pooh to create Vemon-Pooh broke them. I knew there was a reason I wrote these omakefics!

Fast-forward to the evening’s Jpop dance. And verily, I indulged in the dance dance revolution, only without much dancing. My calves were still killing me a week later, and I was only in 2 dances. Either I’m getting old, or you need to perform warm up exercises first.

There is something to be said, though, for the rush you do get in standing by the DJ’s booth and watching the sheer vibrant energy of everyone else sprawled across the dance floor. Whenever a Haruhi song, or Caramel Dancing, came on the entire place was nothing short of kinetic.

But in the end, we had to call in a night, dragged our sore feet to bed and slept.



Also known as: the day the Harvey’s employees went suicidal.

There wasn’t much else to nab in the Dealer’s Room, primarily because I’d blown all my money and then some. But the Writer’s Block panel with Savage was a great way to cap off the Con…especially when we conjured up the notion of Naruto’s Choji super-inflating into a katamari ball and being rolled across Hogwarts by Prince of all Cosmos!Draco, who them got attacked by a giant squid.

Oh sure, it all sounds positively stupid, but jazz hands make everything better!

After a discussion with Savage of future project possibilities, Mel & I retired to lounge in our room with Jen for the last few hours. We also met up with Gary & Matt, and enjoyed a fantastic & relaxing dinner at Ginko’s. Expensive, but so worth it as a means of winding oneself down after the Con’s franticness. I hope to do it again next year.

This was followed up by a brief swim in the pool of not much else (thanks to the waterslides and Jacuzzi being taken offline at the same time), and a few rounds of hot or cold sake at the annual post-Con party. The night was capped off by sleep.

Beautiful, beautiful sleep…



Monday featured an early morning rollout for breakfast (with Mel happily sleeping in) with the Fancrew, followed by our room check-out and an uneventful return to Brantford. We all relaxed in our own ways over the course of the afternoon. Mel slept, while I spent all my time attempting to get a firetruck jump a bridge under construction in GTA-4.

But like all good things, the vacation had to come to an end. Mel & I loaded up the car for the long ride home, where there was unloading, and sleep. More, glorious sleep…until the alarm went off the next day for work.



The store hadn’t, in fact, burned down in my absence. Pity. I’d have had the ultimate alibi and reason for being completely out of contact range. If the store had been smote down while I was at the Con, it would have saved me a lot of paperwork and Incidence Reports to fill out.

On a quick note, Shady went to the groomers and now resembles a large rat instead of the small, fuzzy puppy we all know and love. Pictures may ensue if I can figure out how to dump the images from Mel’s camera onto the computer.

In the meanwhile, Tuesday and Wednesday were spent as expected: recouping as best as one can from an anime convention, both in terms of integrating swag into our apartment, and as I cleaned up the store & tended to backlog paperwork.

Which brings us to the here & now. I don’t think there’s anything witty I have left to say. In my current, fuzzy state of mind I’m not sure I could form anything coherently witty even if I tried. Overall, I’m still tired, which surprises me not in the slightest, and I’m betting it’ll take the better part of a week before I fully recover.

In the meantime, there are Emails that must be sent out, stories & fics that must be returned to, and boxer shorts that absolutely must be purchased. (In the last week, two of them have had the material run so thin that when I put said shorts on, one of my butt cheeks was hanging out. A sure sign of “replace me now” if there ever was one. And on that no doubt cringe-inducing mental image, I’ll leave you in peace.)

Labels: AN08 Con diary (now with 50% less pants)

posted by Phillip at 9:27 PM

 

I love nostalgia. Now that I'm finally old enough to indulge in it, I think it's great to think back to when times were simpler, cell phones were scarce and the size of bricks, and 80's fashions were...uh, well, not everything is meant to evoke nostalgia. Naturally, it comes as no surprise to anyone that entertainment is capitalizing on nostalgia. Tshirts sport "old school" games/shows/memes, classic movies from years ago are being "re-imagined" and the old kids shows we grew up with are being reborn. Not necessarily the released-on-DVD kind of rebirth either. This is something akin to Evangelion: Death & Rebirth, where after seeing it we're all sorely tempted to shout aloud, "Fuck all this for a lark, I'm going to the pub."

Of note is the resurrection of the Care Bears. I'll admit: I was a geek and watched the Care Bears as a kid. Though I confess I did want to see, if only once, what would happen if NoHeart finally captured and ate a Care Bear. Our room crew at Anime North '08 ended up watching an episode of Care Bears on the Monday morning before we checked out.

(See if this jogs your childhood memories: it was the one with the rich kid no one would play with, and NoHeart-as-Battlecat/fabulous-purple-tiger traps the Care Bears in the world's easiest maze...and still fails to eat even one of them despite them outnumbering him eight to one. You'd think statistically-speaking he should have managed to devour at least one. But I digress...)

Well, imagine my surprise when I strolled through the mall's Zellers store and encountered a "re-imagined" Care Bears DVD. Upon initial inspection of the DVD, I found a few points of note that started to raise the needle of my WTF-o-meter. First, the Care Bears were CG. Now I'm not against CG; how can I be when it's given us such glorious offerings as Advent Children and Pixar movies? However, it was disturbing to see the new CG Care Bears looking a little rounder, a little cuter and a lot younger.

In fact, the new Care Bears have a very distinctive look. Oh, how should I put it? Hmmmm...they look like they're pandering to the Loli crowd. Well, the Furry-Loli crowd, I guess, since they are anthropomorphic bears. But the truth is as I stared at the cover, I felt as if I should see Pedo-Bear lurking somewhere in the background.

And then we get to the coup de grace. They're not content on staying with the plethora of already established care Bears, oh no. They must introduce brand new Care Bears. And the one being featured on this DVD was none other than...Oopsie Bear.

Oopsie Bear?!

How the hell do you get an Oopsie Bear in Care-A-Lot? Everyone else has something related to either the word 'heart' or some positive trait we as people should endorse. But Oopsie Bear? That's not a name, that's a mistake Cheer Bear made when she got it on with Tenderheart one night.

Cheer Bear: "I'm pregnant."

Tenderheart: [stunned] "What? But how? I thought you were on the pill!"

Cheer Bear: "Um...oopsie?"



(Next bit o' nowhere will have my glorious Con memories displayed in all their pantsless splendour for you to gaze upon and despair, I promise. Especially the 'despair' part.)

Labels: the tragically comedic or comedically tragic tale of Oopsie bear

posted by Phillip at 6:53 PM