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!

 


One of the (few) radio stations our player gets in the store has a new lunch hour schtick: the Movie Marathon Lunch. Essentially, it's a whole bunch of random songs that were featured in movies...though almost all the songs are pretty mainstream and easy to identify which movie they came from.(I'm waiting for someone to request "Freebird" since it was played in both Forrest Gump and Elizabethtown.)

Well, yesterday what did my twitching ears hear but Cindi Lauper's "The Goonies R Good Enough." And, as the title of this little bit o' nowhere suggests, I had a random act of geekery. The Goonies remains one of my all-time favourite movies, and in my opinion has aged pretty damned well. I'm also terrified of some idiot trying to remake it, as is the trend in Hollywood these days.

As for the song, while it played I ended up smiling and replaying in my head the scenes featured around the song. (Where the gang ties Brant to the chair with his own spring-weights and then bike across Astoria to find One-Eyed Willie's treasure.) And then I started reciting most of the lines to myself....

"What are you doing? It took him three hundred and seventy-six lawn mower jobs to pay for that! It's his most favourite thing in the world!"

"Now it's his most flattest thing in the world. Come on!"

^-^ The smiley emoticon is definitely appropriate here. As an added bonus, during the Movie Marathon Lunch the radio DJs play a clip from a movie that featured one of the songs, and callers try to guess the movie. I hedged my bets that the movie would be from The Goonies, since you don't usually hear that Lauper song on the radio. And sure enough, it was! (Sadly, they used a random clip towards the end of the movie, as the Goonies are contemplating getting rescued by Troy while they're stuck in the wishing well. I was really hoping for: "First you gotta do the Truffle Shuffle." "Come on." "Do it!")

However...the first person had no clue what it was from. The wig of shame for them.

And then an unexpected factoid was bounced my way courtesy of the DJ: the reason they featured The Goonies yesterday (June 7, 2010) was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the movie's theatrical release. Yep, Mikey, Mouth, Data, Chunk and the gang are 25 years old, and still aging beautifully.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some nostalgia to indulge in. And then maybe follow that up with The Monster Squad too.

Labels: if you want me to talk about anything else today then first you've got to do the Truffle Shuffle, The Goonies 25th anniversary

posted by Phillip at 6:38 AM

 


Previously, on this blog....






Oh wait--that was last year. Oops!

And now, back to our regularly scheduled Con report:


CON FRIDAY

The morning was a write-off. Mel had to go in for a 4-hour shift ending at 1pm (due to Scheduling Dumbasses at work at her store). I had the full day off, so it was left to me to get up early myself and nab all the usual perishables we'd need for our Con food/meals.

I also had to grab an order from RightStuf at the post office (happily located right next door to the local grocery store). Normally this would have been used as extra swag money for the Con, but RightStuf being evil had some seriously good deals on some DVDs I was going to be gunning for anyways. And with the timing of it all, I might as well have considered it Conswag.

By the time Mel got back home via a cab, I had the car packed & ready to go. Shady came with us, and Chance & Tachi were left in the care of my mother while we were away. Off we drove, to Infinity and Beyond!

No, wait...wrong movie.

Luckily our timing couldn't have been more perfect. We glided through into Toronto with minimal fuss (a minor miracle considering this was a summer Friday), got to the Doubletree Hotel by 2:30pm and discovered *gasp!* no one was in line for checking into their hotel rooms. How the hell did we manage that? It might have had something to do with the epic line-up for the hotel elevators, but you never know. I'm blaming the lobster banditos myself.

We got ourselves checked in, and by the time I rolled my dolly cart o' awesomeness (stacked very high with coolers and Con gear) up to the elevators, the line-up there had vanished. Of course...two out of the five elevators were already out of service due to upgrading (though, if the rumours are correct, this wasn't by choice of the hotel management; mostly it involved serious tardiness and asshat-ery on the part of the fix-it contractors), meaning we had a few thousand otaku needing to glide between floors and only 3 cabs to do the work.

I'm sure those elevators hated us by Sunday. Hell, Gimpy the Wonder Elevator even put in multiple appearances, so I'm guessing they were quite grumpy when all was said and done. With regards to Gimpy, it was his usual fare: he refused to acknowledge the 5th floor entirely, and occasionally enjoyed skipping all the floors going up to just drop us off on the top/12th floor. Oh, Gimpy, how I've missed you.

Anyhoo, we ended up with a room on the 10th floor--best floor, incidentally, since it means you can easily snag any elevator going up or down, and it'll probably be near empty no matter what time of day it is. (Sucks if you're on the 2nd to 5th floors, though; you might as well walk up to a top floor and wait for an elevator that isn't already packed solid with people. You'll have better chances of getting to the ground floor faster.) Plus, our room was right near the corner overlooking the space between the Con hotel and the convention centre itself.

This gave rise to what is fast becoming my favourite AN pasttime: otaku watching! You can just unwind in a chair and watch otaku lumbering along with huge bags of swag, Cosplayers posing everywhere (which turns into the Name That Character/Anime game very fast) and people tempting fate by jaywalking into oncoming traffic. Frankly, I'm amazed someone hasn't managed to invoke Darwin's Chainsaw of Natural Selection yet.

After getting ourselves registered as Con panelists, we idled out in our room until the festivities began. This marked Shady's third Con, and while she knows we'll always return and try to spend as much time in the room with her as we do outside, she will always sulk whenever we leave. Seriously sulk. And glares, as if to say, "Yeah yeah, I know. You're abandoning me for anime. I'll just sit here on your pillows...alone. See if I care. *sniff*"

Though we did spend a lot more time with her in the room this Con than before. And that's mostly because almost all of our panels were in the same block of time on Friday.

Mel had her "Best & Worst Moments in Anime" right as the Con started and the Dealer's Room opened. Even then there was a decent turnout, so I guess swag isn't everything to some otaku. (Blasphemers that they are.) From there we hustled ourselves to the Dealer's Room, since we had only 2 hours to play with before I had a full 4-hour block panels taking up the remainder of the evening.

Naturally, the first stop you must make in the AN Dealer's Room is at Starstruck Entertainment, aka The Cage. Not so creatively called this nickname for the giant red cage it resembles. (Kind of hard to miss.) They've always had insanely epic sale items in years past. This year was no exception.

Hordes of normally $40-60 DVD box sets were going for $10-15 each. I managed to score Nerima Daikon Bros, and all of School Rumble for $25. They even had all of Vandread for $10, a series that only recently dropped down to $60 elsewhere. Damn, I want to know how they scored this! And more importantly, what they'll have next year.

Mel also scored a Kirby plushie (Kirby from Brawl, where he puts on a chef's hat, grabs a frying pan, and uses his final move to suck all his opponents into a giant soup pot to boil them for lunch) and I scored a Battle Royal explosive neck collar. I also was surprised to discover that the shirt I wore today--"The flying hamster of doom rains down coconuts on your pitiful town"--was a surprise hit, with a lot of people asking to read it, and then ask where I got it.

Sorry, everyone! It was a gift from a friend in the States, and I couldn't even tell you where he got it from.

After a hasty once-around the room (wherein we grabbed some manga titles we'd been hunting for, and Mel bought a gorgeous kanzashi from Maral's booth), it was off to more panels!

Yuu Watase: a small showing of people, but they were very interactive and fun to talk with. We made a few of them converts to some series, and overall I think it went quite well. We'd probably have had more of an audience if it had been on Saturday, but what can you do. I'll still take a small but fun audience over a large sedate one.

FicFicBoom: with no "cyanide" pills to kill us off for bad ideas this time, I opted to bring the Wig of Shame. I think Nightbreak only had to wear it once, whereas the rest of us had it on (or at least were threatened with it) three times easily. This remains one of my favourite panels, if anything for Nightbreak, Gaffney, Savage and myself resonating off each other's terrible writing ideas and making a bad potential story even worse. Next year we're contemplating having a panel devoted strictly to creating an epically horrible fanfic.

SailorMoon: a large audience this time around, and there was a lot of interaction. Especially (if not sadly) with the preteens in the front row who were in dire need of some Ritalin and an indoor voice. It's great to have the enthusiasm, but not the volume when you're trying to make sure you can hear everyone in the room and vice versa. Ah, the enthusiasm of youth is wasted on the young, I believe the phrase goes. Despite that, I was pleased with how the panel turned out.

Fandom Entitlement: this was our first year trying this one out (the inspiration for it being a panel Christalia had been on at a Writers Convention in the spring). Timing was against us for the most part: it was late at night, we were competing with a dance, a rave, an Anime Hell viewing, and most otaku just being wired for their first night at the Con. But once again, the small crowd we had was very interactive and had some good ideas/discussion points, and we had a great set of panelists.

By now it was midnight. (Hey, I warned you it was long block of panels.) So Mel & I trudged up to our room, took Shady outside to pee and retired for the night.



CON SATURDAY

Due to some slight technical difficulties with my own portable alarm clock (that had absolutely nothing to do with me accidentally dropping it on the floor and effectively breaking it just as I was packing it into my suitcase before we left for AN), we had to set the hotel alarm to wake up. Loud little bugger too, but it's just as well. I dragged my groggy butt out of bed at 9am, showered, took Shady out and had breakfast.

By now, it was about 10:00 and Mel was conscious but not awake--as is her usual morning state. I've long since learned that in her world waking up before 11am is blasphemous, and anyone who forcibly tries to poke her awake will not only lose their fingers, but have said digits shoved into any number of one's orifices.

We also made an interesting discovery: our floor had all the ladies who were participating as waitresses in the ever-popular, maid-themed cafe for the Con: Cafe Delish. You can imagine my surprise as we walked out into the 10th floor elevator lobby, only to be greeted by easily over a dozen women in frilly, black & white maid costumes. The following conversation then ensued:


Me: ^-^ "I think I've died and gone to fetish heaven."

Mel: ^-^ "Oh, death is certainly coming for you if you don't stop eyeballing them."


We left the maids to their serving, and headed over to the convention centre. Considering how we'd already acquired most of the "Hitlist" swag we'd been eyeing, the Dealer's Room didn't hold an OMG MUST GO MUST GO MUST GO allure. We meandered on over, had a more thorough walk-through, bought a few more things, said hi to Kevin & Jason at the Dragonstar booth, and then went back to our room for lunch.

This pretty much describes how most of the rest of Saturday & Sunday ended up. We'd meander over to the Dealer's Room in the convention centre, meet up with random friends like Matt or Jen or Nightbreak, then meander on back and relax in our room whilst watching the otaku. I suppose it comes with the territory of being what would be considered an Old School otaku. I know there are otaku who've been in the game longer than I've been alive, but with going on near 15 years of being hooked on anime I think I've earned the right to be a little more laid back. It's fun watching the newer (and usually younger) fans scramble wildly about; their enthusiasm is certainly contagious, but I've come to enjoy not having my entire Con schedule booked solid with one activity/panel/event to scramble to after another. That, and I really really enjoy having more than 4 hours of sleep a night for the weekend.

Today I opted to wear my newly-purchased Battle Royale collar, as well as the official Battle Royale shirt I'd received a year or so ago from Mel (an advanced birthday present she'd bought while at the con). And once again, in a puzzling way, I was a hit. A lot of people were stopping me to ask where I'd acquired either the shirt or the collar (and sometimes both). Many were disappointed that I'd gotten the shirt years prior; I guess no one was selling BR shirts this year...which I guess someone needs to remedy for next year. Even more people were stunned when I told them I'd gotten the collar from the Dealer's Room. I don't know how you couldv'e missed the display: so long as you took your time looking over each vendor's table, you'd be hard-pressed to miss a 3-foot tall rack of exploding collars.

Anyhoo, skip on ahead to the afternoon, there was the Fanfiction Panel. Once again, a good showing of people (who seemed oddly preoccupied with self-inserts and Mary Sues, if the numerous questions related to those topics is any indication) with an equally enjoyable group of panelists. Mostly. Nightbreak, Mel & Tim were excellent otaku & fellow writers/editors to interact with. He Who Shall Only be Known As SAM, on the other hand, tends to represent most everything I find wrong with fanfiction, fanfiction writers and writers in general. Thankfully he was kept reined in for most of the panel.

By the time Saturday evening rolled around, a bunch of us (including Ysa & Chris) ended up gravitating to the bar down in the Doubletree's main lobby. Once again, it seems odd that the best times of the Con for me came when we were just chatting with a bunch of friends/fellow otaku, but maybe it's the age talking. That, and I'm probably jaded from having seen so much anime in years past. You even mention the word "fansub" to a recently-inducted newbie, and they'll stare blankly at you. I fear I'm just one OVA away from prattling on about how otaku today have it easy, and those damned newbies need to git their Cosplayin' asses off'a my lawn! Wait...I did actually talk about how otaku today have it easy.

Oh God, noooooooooo!!!!!



Uh, what was I saying? Oh yes, the bar. Mel & I bowed out sometime around the 11pm mark to go visit Roupen at the JPop dance. The crowd was huge, the music was loud and security was one rubber glove away from performing full body cavity searches.(A sad necessity, considering the last year or two's troublemakers. Morons that they were....)

Despite the massive bass beats and screaming throngs, it was interesting to hear Roupen talk about how must of the used-in-anime songs weren't in as high demand anymore; most of the requests coming in from both the pre-Con online polls and the onsite list were primarily JPop and KPop (Korean pop). And his all-time favourite song "Caramel Dancing" was being requested on every 5th line.

He ended up using it to placate fans after the power blew out and they had to reset the systems. Five minutes of otaku chanting for music and slowly drawing closer to the DJ's stage makes me realize how a goldfish must feel as it's slowly being lowered into a tank filled with piranhas.

Sadly, once again I think my age is starting to show. I used to love being out in the dance itself, but for the last few years I prefer soaking up the energy from afar. I don't think my body has enough stamina in it these days to go all-out on the dance floor for a few hours. But hey, that won't stop me from at least stopping by and sampling the frenetic euphoria of the crowd.

Mel & I ended up bowing out from the dance and retiring by 2am. A decent hour, if you ask me, especially since we had no high-priority events left to be paranoid about missing.


CON SUNDAY

I think I ended up groggily rising around 10ish. Mel was up & about by 11am. The one thing I like about Con Sundays is how everyone has this tired but satisfied air about them. Most of the otaku are exhausted but still stoked on that last shot of adrenaline as they try to squeeze in as much enjoyment out of the last day as possible.

No fancy shirt was worn today, incidentally. I was just a generic otaku in the crowd. I'd have worn the Puchuu hat, but I didn't realize until after we'd arrived in Toronto that I had left it behind. Dammit.

With me having purged most of my Conswag cash, and Mel not really having anything left to shop for on her hitlist, we once again meandered the Dealer's Room. I tossed my last bit of cash into Artist's Alley. We'd gone through the day before and looked to see if anything caught our interest. I nabbed two prints from an artist who didn't really do the anime/fanart thing, but had environment pictures that I can only describe as Scenery Porn. Epic, beautiful and they looked like they can right out of a beautifully rendered game. If this guy isn't employed for his artistry skills, then there truly is no justice in the world.

As the Con wound down into the afternoon, Mel & I hit the pool briefly before once again making our now-traditional post-Con dinner at the Doubletree's Ginko restaurant. We would have gone swimming after dinner, that pesky "no swimming after eating" rule be damned, but the waterslides would have been closed by then, and I've been jonesing for some waterslide action for the last 2 years. So hurrays for waterslides! (And amazingly enough, the pool temperature wasn't freezing. Just a pleasant luke-warm temp.)

I think what I like about eating at Ginko's after the Con is how the atmosphere there is completely at odds with the atmosphere of the con. After a weekend of massive crowds and constant noise, it's great to unwind in a small Japanese restaurant that's both quiet and not filled with people. This might probably be due to the fact that Ginko is quite upscale, and most otaku would as soon spend $100 on swag rather than a nice dinner...but I'd as soon go for dinner.

Does this shame my honour as an otaku? Or do I get to prattle on about this makes me an upscale nobility-type otaku? Do I get bragging rights?

Anyhoo, Jen & Matt were up for dinner, so the four of us had some fantastic dishes (as always, when it comes to Ginko's cuisine). Matt also bought a large bottle of really nice chilled sake for us to drink with the meal. I think he & I ended up doing the equivalent of two-fisting our drinks, as we had about two glasses for every one that Mel & Jen drank. Buy hey, sake that good shouldn't be left to waste in the bottle. The downside is: after tasting ambrosia like that, I fear some of the other chilled sake I normally drink will taste like engine grease. I spend enough money on manga as it is, I don't want to be a sake elitist too! My wallet can't take that level of abuse!

With dinner over, we chatted a bit with Jen. Mel ended up calling it an early night and crashed, but I headed over to the Fancrew Dead Dog party being hosted by Gaffney & Nightbreak in their room. It was great to see everyone again, including some who hadn't been at the Con like Sarah & Ginny, and lots of festive celebrations ensued. We got to see Chris and his friend try 100 Year-Old Eggs...which disturbingly look like they're filled with a blueish sort of jello. Just don't ask what that goo is. Your brain will despise you for it.

Sadly, I ended up missing Storytime with Chris, but I didn't want Mel to feel neglected. After saying farewells to the gang, I headed back up to our room, chilled with some manga and then crashed.


POST-CON MONDAY

The best thing about coughing up the extra cash to say in the hotel over Sunday night is that you're not stuck for hours out in the hotel lobby or on the convention centre grounds guarding your horde of swag & suitcases. Especially good for us, as I'm not about to leave Shady in the car for hours while we stroll about.

I managed to get myself up for 9am, and shuffled downstairs to say good-bye to some of our further-than-TO travelling friends. Alas, I missed Ysa & Chris; usually they head back to Halifax later in the day, so I thought I could catch them hanging out in the lobby. This time around they had an early, early flight out, so I missed them entirely. Dammit. Sad panda in the snow, and all that angsty-ness.

But luckily I was able to see Gaffney & Nightbreak before they left for their respective planes & trains. Once Mel & I checked out of our rooms later in the morning, we packed the car and then hung out in the lobby (with Shady, of course) with Roupen, Matt, Jason and a few other friends & associates. It was there that Roupen mentioned last year's car accident at the end of the Con, and how it ended up giving rise to this magnificent Demotivational Poster:




(Which only makes sense if you're: a) an otaku, and b) know anything about the series Deathnote. But magnificent nonetheless.)

While the rest of the gang headed over to Perkins for lunch, Mel and & had to head home...as restaurants have some silly policy about not letting dogs into their establishments. I mean, honestly now, our little Shihtzu could easily be considered a seeing-eye dog, right? Right?

We got home with ridiculous ease and time to spare. Suddenly it was 1pm, and we had nothing left to do all day. This sort of thing hasn't exactly happened to us in...oh, wow, maybe 3 months. I puttered about unpacking the food and organizing our swag pile. (Hey, the new manga & DVDs won't integrate themselves into our collections!) Mel just collapsed onto the couch and decompressed from the noisy crowds. One disadvantage to working in retail: when you get the noisy crowds day-in and day-out, and uber-crowd like the one at AN tends to aggravate you pretty quick. Holidays are meant to escape from such things, but eh, what can you do? For all the good things the Con brings, I'll deal with it!

And that's pretty much it. We relaxed in the evening watching some of our newly- acquired anime DVDs. I took Shady out for a long walk and got to see not only a large gathering of ducks & ducklings in the nearby canal, but also a pheasant (or at least a semi-large and obviously flightless bird related to a pheasant) prancing about in front of the local elementary school. I've never seen a pheasant in this area before, so it was a bit of a surprise.

You can imagine I had to hold Shady back from chasing this new and interesting quarry.


So. There it is. An ultimately long-winded account of Anime North 2010. Mel & I have already signed ourselves back on for next year, so I guess it's just a question of what happens between now and then. But if I'm not ruling the world by AN11, I think I'm going to be sorely disappointed with how my New Year's Resolution didn't pan out.

Labels: Anime North 2010 Con report, in my fetish heaven all the maids will also wear neko-ears and glasses and--OH GOD NO I'M SORRY MEL IT WAS JUST A JOKE JUST A-------

posted by Phillip at 5:35 PM